Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rex groans as he hauls himself up into the walker, and it’s a pathetic enough noise to make Wolffe push up on one elbow, dropping his pad.

“Better have had a shuttle fall on you for a whine like that,” he says, pointed, and Rex pulls a face at him, slumping down right on the floor as he starts to pull the remaining pieces of his armor off.

“It was a tree,” he says, and chucks one of his gauntlets at Wolffe’s head. It’s a pathetic throw, too, and Wolffe doesn’t bother moving, just raises a judgmental brow as it sails across the walker and hits the floor, a good meter from his bunk. Rex pulls a face, running a hand over his newly shaved head, and sighs.

“Good-sized tree,” he mutters, tipping his skull back against the wall. “And it wasn’t him.”

Cold knots in Wolffe’s stomach, even though it’s entirely expected, even though he’s been waiting, braced for those exact words since the moment Rex left. The odds that it was—

“Another clone?” he asks, rough in his throat, but Rex is shaking his head before he even manages to finish the question.

“Some natborn who got in over their head,” he says on a sigh. “Shot by guards when we got ambushed.”

Wolffe grimaces, swinging his feet over the edge of the bunk and sitting up. Gregor’s gone, probably watching the sunset and trying to find them something to eat that isn't packaged protein rations, so that leaves him to listen, at least try to have some sympathy. But—it’s hard.

The troopers the Empire is recruiting now all sign up for this bantha dung. The clones never did.

“Cody's probably dead,” he says, and watches Rex flinch but doesn’t let it move him. “Years dead, by now. He served with Vader. You know what the odds are there, what happened to kriffing Fox—”

“I know,” Rex bites out, then closes his eyes, stops whatever else he’s about to say. Wolffe’s already heard it, anyway. This is a familiar argument. “Cody's still alive. He’s too stubborn to die. And Vader wouldn’t have killed him.”

Wolffe snorts, calling bullshit. Vader kills anyone who pisses him off, and clones are easy pickings, what few of them are left. Aging out, with nowhere to go, with their brains all scrambled from the chips, they're fat targets, and no one cares if they're killed.

“What about you?” Rex asks, closer to a challenge than anything else. “Find anything else about that new apprentice?”

Wolffe’s stomach turns for an entirely different reason. He doesn’t look over at his pad, but he doesn’t need to; he’s read the information more than enough times to have it memorized. “Yeah,” he says. “Padawan who washed out, Ferus Olin. Supposedly used to be part of some sort of rebellion on Bellassa, if the chatter’s not just rumors.”

Rex's breath rattles out of him, and he thumps his head back hard against the wall. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even try. There's nothing left to say. Palpatine’s gotten his hands on every single remaining Jedi, and the lucky ones died right away. Wolffe’s heard more than enough stories to know a quick death is by far the kinder fate. Palpatine moving on to former Jedi was the next logical step.

And—

He watches Rex's face, weighing his next words, weighing what the cost of them would be. It’s been weeks, and he’d thought the intervening time between finding Thire's message and Rex returning would make everything easier, would give him space to figure out the right words. It hasn’t, though. He has no idea how to tell Rex the truth.

Vader is Skywalker, he thinks, but just that would be enough to break Rex, Wolffe knows. He still talks about Skywalker like he hung the kriffing stars, and finding out—

Wolffe can't tell him. Wolffe can't be the reason another clone eats their blaster.

“Wonder if he joined of his own free will,” Rex says, and Wolffe opens his mouth to say that Skywalker must have before realizing that Rex doesn’t mean Skywalker at all. He means Olin, the new shadow in black who’s following three steps behind Palpatine like a good little dog.

“Maybe,” he says with a shrug, because at some point, it doesn’t matter. “Seems like Vader hates him more than most of Sidious's toys, though. Could mean he’s not.”

Rex snorts, then pushes slowly, painfully to his feet. “If Vader doesn’t like him, I think we could be friends,” he says, dry, and then, “Gregor?”

“Bad day,” Wolffe says quietly. “Think he went up on the bluff.”

Rex's mouth tightens, but he nods, scratching at his beard as he stretches his back. “I brought him some new scope parts. I’ll leave the box on his bunk. And this is for you.”

Wolffe catches the datachip, turning it over. There aren’t any markings on it, but it’s newer than most of the stuff they see in the Outer Rim, and he raises a brow, a little wary.

“Going to blow up my pad?” he asks. “What is it?”

Rex shrugs. “No idea. The officer I was trying to get out, he brought it. Gesture of goodwill, he said. Imps think there's a price for everything.”

In the Empire, that’s generally true. Wolffe frowns at it suspiciously, then reaches under his bunk, scrounging for the spare pad he keeps there, disconnected from the holonet. He’s not going to risk all the bits of info he’s managed to piece together just to satisfy his curiosity.

“Didn’t even try to check it, huh,” he says. “You 501^st boys always left the real work to the rest of us.”

Rex rolls his eyes. “At least I don’t have fungus growing on my lip,” he retorts, and limps past Wolffe, headed for the fresher. A moment later, the door thumps shut, and Wolffe waits for the hum of the sonics to start up before he rubs a defensive hand over the mustache he’s been halfheartedly trying to grow. It doesn’t look that bad, but—maybe it’s a little too much. He thought it might be, but he’d also kind of thought it was fine. But maybe with the mutton chops…

Muttering a curse at himself, he pulls his hand away, then picks up the pad, viciously switching it on and shoving the chip in. It doesn’t immediately shift the whole pad into a homing beacon leading the Empire right to them, which is more than Wolffe expected, and he scowls down at the files that open and spread across the screen, one after the other. Inventory lists, he thinks with a sigh, and thumps back against his pillows, disappointed but not surprised. Resisting a Sith-run Empire from the shadows seems to feature just as many cargo manifests as he dealt with as a marshal commander, and he isn't pleased with that fact at all.

Still, if it’s useful, they can at least pass it on to Tano, make sure it gets into the Rebellion’s hands. If it’s not, at least Rex made it back alive, and he didn’t get himself killed for useless supply logs and a natborn officer who should have known better than to believe the Empire’s lies. Not that anyone seems to have that much sense, these days.

And then, halfway down the page, just as he’s turning to the next one, Wolffe’s eye catches on a word that shouldn’t be in any supply list.

Lightsaber.

Jerking up, he shifts the pad, quickly flips back to the page and scans it again. He’s sure, for a moment, that his mind was just playing tricks on him, that he didn’t actually see it, but even as he thinks it his eyes come to rest on the word again.

29A15 - Lightsaber, Greelwood

Wolffe takes a breath, flips back to the first page and starts looking again. And, a quarter of the way down the page, there's another lightsaber, another listing. But—

There are only two places anyone can get lightsabers these days, and the first is from the Emperor and Vader, and the second is from the ruins of the Temple.

Ruin, Wolffe thinks grimly, is too kind a word. It’s a skeleton now, consumed by Palpatine’s palace on Coruscant. But Wolffe remembers when it wasn’t, remembers Plo telling him about ancient treasures too dangerous to be seen by the public and ancient artifacts that were evacuated from the Jedi’s main temple before they ever settled on Coruscant. He has no idea what was actually in there, but this sure as hell seems like a list of something important.

He runs his fingers down the list of objects, brows rising at the sheer number of them, the variety. There are diadems and lightsabers and crystals, gauntlets and armor and robes and crowns. At random he taps one of the listings, and the pad obligingly pulls up a picture, a short description, a holo of a listing in a physical book, the lettering neat and delicate and obviously done by hand. Done by a Jedi hand, Wolffe thinks, and there's a cold knot in his gut, hard and tight. He runs his fingers over the careful lettering, then enlarges it, ignoring the Empire’s clinical log of the silver circle.

The Crown of Verity, created by the Magistrates of Benetage, date unknown, crafter unknown. Forces truthfulness on the wearer, while also allowing the wearer to sense falsehoods in those around them—

Wolffe swallows, has to put the pad down for a moment. The Empire kriffing looted the Jedi Temple, and this is the record of it. This is a list of everything that must have been in the Jedi vaults, collected over thousands of years and carefully preserved, taken by the Empire like loot. Like they have any right to it at all. Plo probably—

Wolffe breathes, closes his eyes for a long, long moment. If he lets himself think about Plo, he’s going to think of the fighter that spiraled out of the sky and hit the tower so hard that it exploded, with no survivors. Wolffe saw it. Wolffe was the one who gave the order for Jag to take the shot.

His chip malfunctioned a few months later, damaged when Ventress carved out his eye and the Kaminoans implanted a cybernetic one instead. Too late, far too late for it to do any good. For him to do any good.

But. There's a record. There are words, written by some unknown Jedi, meticulous in their care, and Wolffe finds himself reaching for the pad again, clicking through to the next item, an amulet, and then the next, a gauntlet set with a blue gem. Each one has a listing from the Jedi’s ledger, a careful description, and Wolffe pages through each one, circlets and lightsabers and knives and dozens of different crystals. His heart is beating too fast, and there's a weight in his chest that’s all too familiar, an ache that’s creeping out to fill his bones. But—

It’s a small piece of the Jedi, and Wolffe knows, knows that he’s been missing them for the past fifteen years, just as much as he’s missed the other clones. But somehow, seeing this, seeing the list and the tangible proof that the Jedi are just a little more gone, have been erased just that much more—it hurts. It makes him angry.

The Empire did this. Chancellor Palpatine did this. Anakin Skywalker did this, and right now Wolffe hates all three of them so much it’s hard to breathe.

And then, as he clicks on to the next stolen artefact, everything inside of him freezes.

For a moment, he thinks he’s misread again. Thinks, disbelieving, that it can’t be right, and yet—

Orb of Passage, the listing says, in a different hand than the earlier entries. Found: Temple of Tet-Ami on Benja-Rihn, date of origin unknown, creator unknown. Said to control the flow of time (not tested).

Impossible, Wolffe thinks, staring down at it, and he can hear his pulse echoing in his ears. The Jedi are ridiculous. They can't actually have had something that supposedly controlled time just sitting on a shelf somewhere.

But. If it wasn’t tested, who would know besides the archivists? If it was old, who would remember? And—

When the Temple fell, there were only a few Jedi in it, most of them injured and recovering or children too young to be on the battlefield. They probably didn’t know about one artefact out of hundreds, locked in a vault deep beneath their feet. An artefact that could control time.

Wolffe breathes, carefully slow, carefully controlled. He stares at the picture, a simple image of a plain thing that’s smaller than the top joint of his thumb, made of what looks like pale green glass. He looks at the log number, probably its position on a shelf somewhere in Palpatine’s palace, and he’s not trying to commit it to memory, but clones have good memories anyway.

It feels like it means a hell of a lot more than it does, that the listing is marked 36R36.

Wolffe stares at his old CC number, typed out in plain letters, marking a little ball of glass that can control the flow of time, and then very deliberately switches the pad off and leans over to shove it into his waiting pack. His heart is still beating too fast, but—

There's something else rising, too. Something he hasn’t felt in far, far too long.

Time travel, he thinks, and lies back down, rolls over onto his side so that Rex won't see his face. Every muscle feels strung tight, and he tries to relax, tries not to look like he’s about to claw at his own skin.

It could be a trap. It’s probably a trap. That would explain Rex's extraction attempt going spectacularly south and why the officer brought payment despite not being asked for it. The Empire’s setting a trap for the Rebellion, waiting to see who comes to get the powerful, dangerous things stored away in their vaults. As soon as someone starts poking around, the trap will spring, and the Empire will take them.

But—

Wolffe closes his eyes, digs his fingernails into his palm. Distantly, he can hear Gregor humming outside, the sonics shutting off, Rex limping around the ‘fresher. Thinks of time travel, and a clock turned back, and millions upon millions of clones still alive, ten thousand Jedi still in existence.

It’s probably a trap. But even if it isn't, Wolffe’s chances of getting into whatever vault the thing is in are slim at best. The Empire probably has it locked up tight, right in the heart of the palace.

But.

Wolffe opens his eyes again, staring at nothing. There's a new Sith apprentice Palpatine is training, a former Jedi who Vader—who Anakin—hates more than he hates most things. A former padawan who left the Temple right before the Clone Wars, and that doesn’t mean anything, but it could.

It could mean everything.

Rex limps out into the bunkroom, favoring one knee, and in the reflection on the wall Wolffe can see he’s covered in blue-black bruises shading yellow around the edges. There's a blaster graze over his ribs, a look on his face that’s so deeply tired it’s painful. He throws himself down on his bunk without even bothering to get redressed, drapes an arm over his face, and sighs.

Wolffe feels the sound deep in his chest, and he doesn’t move for a long, long time.

Gregor never comes back. He doesn’t, sometimes, when his mind is particularly bad, and at this point, he has more bad days than good.

Wolffe doesn’t sleep. He lies awake long into the night, thinking, considering, weighing all the many paths forward.

He remembers, perfectly clear, something he said to Commander Tano once, almost two decades ago. Remembers it like it was just a few hours ago, with Plo at his shoulder and Boost and Sinker bickering in the background, the rest of the 104^th awake and aware and as free as they ever got.

The Separatists have no regard for innocent life. They don't care who walks away from war and who doesn't. That's why we move on them now, Commander, and Wolfpack leads the hunt.

The hitched, haggard breaths of a nightmare take Rex sometime in the early hours, and Wolffe rolls over to watch him shiver and twitch on his bunk, curled in on himself, with one hand pressed against his skull. His face is twisted, aching, and Wolffe wants to look away, but he doesn’t let himself.

That's why we move on them now, Commander, and Wolfpack leads the hunt.

“You’re leaving?” Rex asks in surprise, from a doorway that was empty a few seconds ago, and Wolffe tries not to let his shoulders go stiff. He shoves the pad down deeper in his pack, folds the old grey bridge uniform on top, and then ties it closed.

“Want to look into some of the info you got from that natborn,” he says, which has the benefit of being true. He’s good at lying, but Rex, for all his complete inability to say anything false without tying his own tongue in knots, can usually tell. “Might be useful.”

Rex frowns, scratching at his beard. There's dust all the way up his boots, which means he probably climbed the bluff to check on Gregor. Snice Gregor didn’t come back with him, Wolffe’s assuming it didn’t go well.

“Is it the kind of thing we should be looking into?” he asks. “We can just pass it on to Commander Tano.”

“I think a clone will get in easier than anyone else,” Wolffe says dismissively, though his fingers curl a little too tightly in the straps as he straightens, slings the pack over his back. He could pass word of the Orb on to Tano. It might even be smarter, given that she was a Jedi, that the Orb is something the Jedi had, that odds are only a Force user can make it work. But—

But. Wolffe keeps his mouth shut, and he doesn’t regret it.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Tano. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Rex, though he knows Rex would tell Tano the instant the words were out of Wolffe’s mouth. It’s probably a trap, though, and even if it isn't, the odds of getting in there, of any part of this working, are slim to none. And Wolffe wants to take the risk, to see.

I could fix everything is the strongest kriffing drug in the known universe, and Wolffe’s not immune.

“You going to wait for Gregor to get back?” Rex asks, bracing his shoulder against the doorway.

“Is he going to come down any time soon?” Wolffe counters, because he knows how Gregor is. He’s got too much in his head, and just like with Wolffe, Order 66 worked on him for a while. For too long. Wolffe’s never asked what it made him do, but—he doesn’t need to.

Rex grimaces, which is answer enough, and Wolffe nods. He thumps Rex on the shoulder, feels a hand grip his elbow tightly but doesn’t pause. There's no attempt from Rex to stop him, either, and Wolffe hits the ladder without looking back.

“Luck, Wolffe,” Rex says, and Wolffe takes a breath and nods.

“Keep your head down,” he says over his shoulder, and slides down to the dusty ground without waiting for anything else. If nothing comes of this, he’ll be back. But if something does come of this, he’ll make sure they never end up here in the first place.

The new Sith apprentice is thin and pale and drawn, with dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept well in years, and for all that he moves like a dangerous thing, there's an exhaustion that Wolffe knows all too well worn into every line of his being.

Wolffe is neatly shaved, neatly trimmed, mustache and muttonchops gone. He’s perfectly anonymous in his greys, entirely unremarkable when the vast majority of the remaining clones are trainers for the new stormtroopers and concentrated here in the back halls of the palace. Every single contact he’s made since the war was leveraged and threatened to get him to Coruscant, then into the palace, but he made it, and more importantly made it unnoticed. He doesn’t hesitate to lengthen his stride just a little, following Olin down a long, narrow hall that’s impossibly sterile and gut-wrenching compared to what Wolffe remembers of the Temple.

“Sir,” he says, pitched to carry, and Olin turns instantly, wary, ready. He comes to a halt, one hand on the lightsaber on his belt, dark eyes fixed on Wolffe like he knows precisely how much a threat one aging clone can be, and Wolffe tries to keep his thoughts bland, his face empty. He knows how clones act these days.

“Yes?” Olin asks, quiet. It’s not a threat. Not yet. But the knowledge that it could be is right beneath the surface.

“I was told to bring you files on a new squad,” Wolffe says, and pulls the pad from under his arm. “Lord Vader asked they be assigned to you before your next mission.”

The flicker that crosses Olin’s face is dark, but there's grief in it instead of the anger Wolffe expects. He drops his hand from his lightsaber, steps forward to take the pad, and the curl of his mouth is something grim and unhappy as he does.

“Lord Vader didn’t mention it,” he says, not an accusation but an explanation. “Neither did the Emperor.”

Wolffe pauses, like he’s been caught off guard. “I can go back and check, sir—”

“No, it’s all right.” Olin switches the pad on, then pauses. Wolffe watches the wash of incomprehension, the realization, the deep, bitter grief that washes over him, stiffens every line of his body, makes his fingers clench white-knuckled around the edge of the pad.

“This,” he starts, but his voice cracks, and he stops short.

“Sir?” Wolffe asks, pretending surprise. “Is something wrong with the selected troops?”

Olin takes a breath, another. “Did Vader give you this?” he asks quietly, but he still hasn’t pulled his eyes away from the picture of the blonde woman on the screen, clad in Jedi robes and carrying a purple lightsaber. There's an inventory listing beneath the picture, one Wolffe cobbled together on the flight here, in the same style as all the ones in the stolen information.

“Yes sir,” Wolffe says, like he still has no idea that there’s a problem. “Is something the matter?” He leans forward, like he’s stealing a look, and then says, “Oh, my apologies, sir. Lord Vader must have given me the wrong files.”

“He must have,” Olin says, perfectly steady, but he’s looking at the listing, at the numbers Wolffe slotted in. “This—the Empire still has Master Siri Tachi’s lightsaber?”

“That’s not my department, but it looks like it, sir.” Wolffe refuses to feel any guilt for the way Olin swallows, the way his knuckles tighten even more on the casing, like he’s about to break the pad in his grip. But—it’s a good sign, if just a glimpse of Olin’s former Jedi Master can invoke this much of a response, and it’s not one of anger. Wolffe hadn’t put all of his hopes on being able to trick Olin like this, has backups in case Olin didn’t care, but—

He knows grief when he sees it, and whatever his reasons for leaving the Order twenty years ago, Olin still grieves for his old Master. Wolffe doesn’t need to be a Jedi to recognize that, and it’s more than he dared to hope for when he came up with this scheme.

There's a long, long moment before Olin lowers the pad. He’s not shaking, not quite, but Wolffe almost thinks he’s about to. “I know it’s not your department,” he says after a second, “but do you know where this is?” He turns the pad around to show Wolffe the listing, and Wolffe takes it back, frowning like he’s trying to recall.

“I think it’s the main vault, sir,” he says. “Old items acquired from the traitors’ Temple.”

Olin doesn’t flinch, doesn’t waver. “I have a meeting with the Emperor, but if I give you my keycard, can you get this item for me? Bring it directly to my quarters, and tell no one.”

“Sir?” Wolffe says, startled, and goes to take a step back, but Olin catches his wrist before he can.

“Can you?” he asks, looking up, and Wolffe meets his eyes with some surprise, the desperation there almost jarring. Oh, he thinks, and the memory of Rex's question is close to the surface, the answer obvious right now. Do you think he joined of his own free will, and—

The answer’s no. Wolffe can see that plain as day, and he’d been hoping it was the case, but it’s still gutting to see it so clearly, to understand what it means.

A former padawan, training under Palpatine, but desperate to get his former Jedi Master’s lightsaber back. Wolffe intended the pad to invoke a response, and he still doesn’t regret it, but he maybe feels a flare of sympathy.

“You should have access to the vaults, sir,” he says. “With your codes, I should be able to, yes.”

Olin swallows, turns his head like he’s listening to something far away. It’s jarring, to see a Jedi gesture here, when every Jedi Wolffe has ever met is dead or fallen.

“You're a clone,” Olin says after a long moment. “Can I ask who you served under, before—during the war?”

Wolffe pauses, caught off guard by the question. He hadn’t been expecting it, hadn’t come up with a lie, but he remembers what information he managed to find on Olin, on General Tachi. The truth is too great a risk, but a timely lie, aimed to build loyalty—that much he can manage.

“General Adi Gallia, sir,” he says, and at the sound of his Grandmaster’s name, Olin closes his eyes, expression twisting. “And then General Stass Allie, after her death.”

“Oh,” Olin says, and swallows. He looks down at where his fingers are still wrapped tight around Wolffe’s wrist, then seems to realize and jerks his hand back, folding his arms over his chest instead. “You—you answer to Vader now?”

“I'm a trainer, sir,” Wolffe says, which is bland enough to be confirmation or denial. “Apologies for the mix-up. I’ll ask him for the actual files—”

“No,” Olin says, quick, almost sharp. “Don’t—don’t bother. I’ll bring it up next time I see him.” He pulls a card from his jacket pocket, handing it to Wolffe without ceremony. “Bring me Master Tachi’s lightsaber as soon as possible. If I'm not there, leave it and the card in my quarters.”

“Yes, sir.” Wolffe looks down at the card, far more easily acquired than he had dared to hope for, and asks, “Would you like me to show you where it is, sir? After your meeting with Emperor Palpatine.”

“No,” Olin says, and he loses about two shades of color from his face, swallows. “There—are there other lightsabers down there? From other Jedi?”

“I think so, sir.” Wolffe tucks the pad and card under his arm, keeping himself perfectly bland. “Would you like me to look for those as well?”

“No,” Olin says again, and takes a breath. “Just Siri's lightsaber. And—leave me your comm code when you leave the lightsaber. I may need other things from the vaults.”

“Yes, sir.” Wolffe steps back, salutes, and Olin gives the pad one last, half-desperate look before he keeps moving, steps long and quick. There's still that vibrating sort of tension strung all through him, and Wolffe watches him disappear down the long hall, then round the corner before he finally turns away as well.

Ferus Olin, he thinks, and breathes in, breathes out, forces himself to movement. He’ll remember the name. If this works, if he manages to make this work, he’ll remember this, and make up for it by looking Ferus up in the past, seeing what he needs so that he doesn’t end up forced to be a Sith apprentice still mourning his Master.

It seems like the least Wolffe can do to apologize for reopening old wounds, even if he doesn’t regret what he just did for a second.

Chapter Text

There's a pair of guards on the vault deep beneath the palace, stormtroopers in white armor that’s jarringly not right, but Wolffe nods short and sharp to them as he passes, swipes Olin’s card against the reader, and they don’t even try to call him back as he pushes in without pause. Not trained to ask questions, Wolffe thinks grimly, and he knows the clones weren’t, either, but at least they had the Jedi. At least the Jedi thought of them as people, as intelligent, respected them in every way.

He doesn’t care that the stormtroopers see someone in uniform and don’t blink. He cares that the clones would have and that they had that taken away.

Not forever, though. Not if Wolffe can do this. He can fix things, if the Orb of Passage works. He’ll bend time back on itself, step into the past, assassinate Palpatine before he can become the Emperor. One death, one act, and this whole future will be unmade. Far enough back and he can save every single clone, all the members of the original Wolfpack, all the Jedi who died trying to hold the war back. Wolffe can practically feel the weight of a sniper rifle in his hands, the itch of eagerness beneath his skin, and he moves quickly down plain white halls, past unremarkable rooms.

There's no one else in the vault, just echoing emptiness, and Wolffe tries not to let himself be overwhelmed with relief.

This production won't hold up long if it doesn’t work. Olin just has to speak to Vader or the Emperor once to realize he’s been tricked, that the vault doesn’t hold Tachi’s lightsaber at all. Wolffe probably has less than an hour to get to the Orb and activate it, and that’s one of the reasons he’s being reckless, why he didn’t pull Rex or Gregor into this plot with him. They don’t need to die for Wolffe’s ridiculous plan if this really does turn out to be a trap, or if it ends in failure.

But. But. He got this far, got into the vault, and Room 36 is just ahead of him. Wolffe glances down at the pad like he’s checking he’s in the right place, like the numbers aren’t already burned into his mind, and then swipes the card across the reader by the door, holding his breath.

The light flashes green, and the door opens.

Containing a ragged breath, Wolffe pushes in, glances at the lettered rows of plain white shelves, and finds R. The room is long and white and echoing, too much like Kamino for comfort, without a speck of dust anywhere, and Wolffe stalks, steps louder than they should be, because he wants to stomp all over everything and doesn’t have the time.

It just feels wrong, the same way the stormtrooper armor does, for Jedi artefacts to be in a sterile white room like this. Every time Wolffe visited the Temple, it was full of light and life and art, created across hundreds of generations. They decorated everything, made everything beautiful, and now Palpatine’s palace crouches huge and black and looming over their bones, not an ounce of beauty left anywhere on Coruscant.

Clones did this, Wolffe thinks, ragged. The same way he gave the order to fire on Plo’s fighter. Willing or not, aware or not, the clones brought this about, and Wolffe feels sick just standing here.

But. But. He’s going to fix it. All he needs is that little piece of glass.

The numbering on the shelves is neat and orderly, too, the displays dull in the bright lights. 36 is close to the top, on the third shelf down, and Wolffe finds it without difficulty, pauses for one more glance over his shoulder, and then reaches for the drawer, swiping Olin’s badge as he pulls.

Nothing happens.

Alarm spikes, too sharp for a minor setback. Wolffe tries it again, pressing the keycard to the scanner and pulling, but the drawer stays locked. There's a beep, a red light that comes on, and Wolffe curses, slanting a glance back at the door. There's no sound of any approaching yet, but—

His luck isn't going to hold. He already knows that.

Still. Still. He’s here and he’s this close and he can't turn back, because his odds of getting out of the palace again are already miniscule. He called in everything just to get here, and he’s barely a handful of centimeters away from the damn thing.

Jerking back a step, he reaches inside his uniform jacket, hauls out the two halves of the tiny detonator he was able to smuggle in. A blaster shot will just rebound, and a larger detonator would have been noticed, but he fits this one together just as the door clicks open.

“Restricted area,” a voice says, too close. “Come out.”

Wolffe slaps the detonator to the drawer, then triggers it even as he draws his blaster. The crack is deafening in the quiet, and there's a shout, running steps. The two stormtroopers round the other end of the shelf, and Wolffe fires without hesitation. With a cry, the first one goes staggering back, and Wolffe ducks a blast of red light, then lunges for the shelf where it’s warped and twisted. Another shot hits right beside him, but he doesn’t flinch, hauls the wreckage of the drawer free and sees a glint of pale green against the white padding. He grabs—

A shot hits it, ripping the drawer right out of his hand, and Wolffe snarls. He turns, fires, but the remaining stormtrooper is too close, lunges for him as he drops his blaster.

Sloppy, Wolffe thinks. Alpha-17 would have broken him in half over his knee.

He slams the trooper into the shelf with one hard body-blow, cracking the faceplate of his helmet, then sidesteps the attempt at a grab and slams him forward again. When he lets go, the trooper goes reeling sideways, and Wolffe turns, aims, and fires before he can recover himself.

Then, deliberate, cold, Wolffe steps over his body and bends down to get at the perfectly round bit of green glass that’s rolling slowly towards his boot.

There are footsteps in the distance, running feet approaching quickly, but Wolffe doesn’t move. He cups the Orb in his palm, staring down at it, at the faint, shimmering reflection of something that isn't real trapped inside of it. It’s slick-smooth and strangely warm against his skin, as light as if it’s made of air, and he holds it up to the clinical, too-bright lights, taking a deep breath.

“I don’t know how you’re supposed to work,” he says to it, “but kriffing please. Let me fix it.”

There's a shimmer, a wash of pale blue that bleeds across the green, a swirling grey that follows. Wolffe’s grey, Wolfpack grey, impossible to forget, and Wolffe’s breath catches just as the door of the room hisses open.

Then everything bends, gone in an instant, and Wolffe is somewhere very, very different.

“Heard you're still looking for a job, bounty hunter,” the mechanic says, keeping her eyes on her work.

Jon pauses, halfway through strapping his saddlebags to his speeder. Suspicion flickers, because he’s been on Tatooine for a week now digging for any traces of information, trying to find any traces of the bounty hunters he’s chasing, and this is the first time anyone has even made an overture.

“Yes,” he says, and the mechanic grabs for one of her tools, slides further under the speeder.

“Bounty hunters keep heading for Gardulla’s old palace,” she says, half-muffled. “There might be something there.”

Gardulla. Jon hesitates, wary of engaging the Hutts in any overt way. Even Nico, with his family’s roots dug deep into the history of Tatooine, tries to be more subtle here than most places. Jabba rules Tatooine even more tightly than most Hutts do their subservient planets, and he’s old and powerful. Jon knows little about Gardulla except her gambling addiction, but—she serves Jabba, and that makes her dangerous.

“I thought she was sent back to Nal Hutta,” he says after a moment. “As emissary.”

There's a pause, a clang. The mechanic sits up, shoving a tool back into her belt, and rises, flicking switches and bringing the engines to life. “Your information’s outdated,” she says, and smiles. “Gardulla is dead.”

No one’s mentioned it. Not one person has so much as whispered about it, whether they’ve known that Jon is in earshot or not. He goes still, because a Hutt dead should be news, people should be talking, but he’s heard nothing in all his days here. Fear, he thinks, the deep-seated, superstitious sort of fear that lingers on a name, and given Gardulla’s ways it’s not surprising.

“Thank you,” he says, and the mechanic casts him a quick look, a flicker of a grin. She taps two fingers to her brow in halfhearted salute, shakes out her dark curls, and heads for the main part of the building. Jon doesn’t watch her go, just swings onto his speeder and checks his comm. For a moment he debates contacting Nico, but—

Nico won't answer right now. He already knows that.

Still. Gardulla’s former palace won't be hard to find, and there's little reason not to head that way immediately. Jon's cover as a bounty hunter is infallible; not even other Jedi know his face, and he’s worked with and around the Guild enough times to pass unmentioned even among the most suspicious mercenaries. They don’t know his face, either, and if bounty hunters are heading for Gardulla’s palace in large enough numbers that the locals know that jobs are waiting there, if Gardulla is dead and no one is saying anything, Jon needs to find out what precisely is going on.

Swinging himself onto his speeder, Jon kicks the engine to life, pulls his hood further forward and a scarf up over the bottom of his face to keep the sand out. A'Sharad is somewhere nearby with his padawan, he thinks, but—it always feels uncomfortable contacting him. Like Ki-Adi-Mundi, he had an entirely different view of Dark Woman, was trained entirely separately from the way Jon was. Jon has very little in common with Aurra at this point, but—

She knows. It’s one of the reasons she’s never outright tried to kill him.

Beyond that, aside from any lack of even footing, though, this is also Tatooine. Jedi aren’t supposed to operate here, and while A'Sharad looks like a Tusken and nothing else from a distance, Jon doesn’t want to put him in a position where some powerful figure might decide to target the Tuskens because of an assumed association. He can't afford to have someone connect him to the Jedi, either, because the one thing that’s kept him able to slip in and out of the Guild at will is all the other members’ underestimation. If he’s seen with a Jedi, that will all be gone.

Jon isn't supposed to be in Hutt space, but the Force called him. Quiet, insistent, a pull like gravity drew him here, and he’s spent the week tugging threads but unable to find why he would have been called. This, though, feels like the reason.

When he leaves Mos Eisley, the suns are setting, the darkness over the desert settling in. The break from day’s oppressive heat is welcome, but Jon doesn’t let himself pause to enjoy it the way he might at some other time. There's a steady certainty in his chest that says he’s going the right way, a pull that doubles and redoubles with every kilometer of desert that passes beneath him in the darkness, and Jon has never been one to turn his face away from where the Force decides to take him.

Like Jabba’s palace to the north, Gardulla’s palace is built into the side of a rocky hill, the tower crowning it glowing with lights in the pre-dawn darkness. Jon leaves his speeder behind a dune and makes his way closer on foot, partly for ease of escape if he needs it but also to feel, with each step, the brightness of minds beneath the earth where he sets his feet.

Gardulla wasn’t the most powerful Hutt, even before Jabba deposed her. But now, after her death, there are several times as many people in the underground expanses of her palace as there were in her life, and Jon tracks the press of them, the lack of terror and despair that always used to choke the air here. There's an edge of fear, still, but…lesser. Not drilled into every soul within the palace, and that alone leaves the air lighter, easier to bear.

The main entrance stands tightly closed, which is new as well. Jon eyes the guard as he approaches, but doesn’t pause, and the guard eyes him right back, then takes a deliberate step forward to block his path.

“Paramita,” Jon says quietly.

“Bounty hunter,” Rumi returns, but she doesn’t move.

“I heard there was work here,” Jon says after a moment, and Rumi considers him narrowly, then snorts.

“Depends on what kind of work you're willing to do,” she says pointedly.

Jon doesn’t let his flicker of concern show, but—that’s rarely the sort of thing that’s good to hear from a mercenary. Even so…

“Sugi signed on with this?” he asks, because Sugi has more morals than most mercenaries, and if her whole crew is here, that’s not the worst sign.

Rumi considers him for a moment, like she’s trying to place him, then makes a sound of amusement and steps back, tapping her comm. The main door creaks open, and she tips her head towards it. “She’s not the one assigning jobs, if that’s what you're asking,” she says. “We’re security.”

Jon looks at the darkened hall, then back at Rumi. “Whose security?” he asks quietly.

“The Grey Wolves,” Rumi answers, like it’s not a secret. “In or out, bounty hunter. I'm not holding the door forever.”

Jon casts her a sideways glance, but goes, and he doesn’t bother to tug the scarf down as he slips into the dimly-lit hall. He half-expects it to look like an army came through, wrecked and tossed-over, but there's no sign of anything out of place. Not much sign of movement, either; Jon catches sight of a pair of servants carrying breakfast trays, and despite the hour they're moving easily, talking in low voices. Not slaves, Jon thinks. One is wearing golden bangles around her wrists, new and relatively expensive on a world like Tatooine, and the other could be, but neither of them has the edge of grim fear of a slave. They ignore him completely, vanishing down a side hall, and Jon watches them go, then turns his steps down the long hall, towards what was Gardulla’s audience hall.

Something has changed, he thinks, and tries to remember if he’s caught any word of a crime syndicate called the Grey Wolves in his travels. If he has, it wasn’t in a way that held his attention, and most mentions of criminals do. That means they're either operating solely in Hutt space or they’ve kept their activities quiet enough that most people outside of their organization don’t have any idea of their existence.

Neither idea is very comforting, because Jon has never been fond of competent criminals, but—the lack of fear in the palace stops him from reaching right for the worst conclusion. Some shiver of instinct, of an awareness that’s deeper than just what he can see, keeps him from immediately moving to oppose, and he considers the feeling, considers his own lack of reaction, and lets it be. Like following the pull of the Force here, he listens, lets himself be calm as he makes his way down a long, sloping path and down into Gardulla’s old audience chamber.

It’s nearly empty, which isn't a surprise given the hour. There's an older Human woman with greying hair crouched in front of a control panel, frowning down at a pad, and Jon looks at her for a long moment, caught by the strange feeling of her in the Force. Bright but muted, he thinks, and considers going over, but she seems caught in her work and he doesn’t want to mark himself as suspicious immediately. With that presence, he’ll be able to find her later, and he marks her, then keeps moving, keeps looking. A pair of Twi'lek women are sleeping in a tangle along a wall, covered in someone’s cape, and there's a young Human man, familiar in a vague way that means Jon has seen him elsewhere before, playing with a deck of cards as he sits beside them.

Quiet, Jon thinks. None of Gardulla’s desperately ritzy parties, full of greed, none of the fear that came with her, none of the malice of the Hutts. It’s a strange feeling, not quite relief, not quite wariness. He doesn’t know what to expect here, and it unsettles him.

And then, in the shadows, someone moves.

Jon looks, immediate, and goes still. He’s being watched, close and suspicious, and he meets mismatched eyes with a shiver of pure awareness down his spine. Predator, something whispers, but there's a strange drag, like a tide across the sand, that pulls Jon closer, one step and then another. He stops himself in the middle of the room, caught off guard by the strength of his reaction, almost shaken by it, and takes a breath.

The man in the shadows is still watching, cybernetic eye glowing faintly. When he sees Jon frozen, he pushes away from the wall, tall and broad and fit like a fighter who knows how every inch of his body moves. His hair is steel-grey, and he’s older, past middle age, steady and imposing in a way that makes Jon's nerves prickle, caught between wariness and something far less alarmed.

“You're new here,” the man says, looking Jon up and down, and Jon can't help the urge to reach up, tug the scarf over the bottom of his face a little higher. He doesn’t need the man to read his attraction on his face, to see that that’s what caught Jon so off-guard.

“I heard there was someone hiring,” he says, a little rough in his throat.

There's a pause as the man considers him, eyes narrowed. He has a severe face, a sharp frown, a long scar that cuts down over his cybernetic eye that’s gone white and faded with age. Jon can feel the full weight of his attention, the clinical, almost vicious sort of assessment, and it shouldn’t make him feel stripped bare, but there's something about the man that does. Something about him, about the way he feels, like he’s more vivid than anything else in the room. Jon's never felt the Force react to anyone that way before, and he doesn’t know why it’s happening now, but—

Between that and the way the man is watching him, it’s difficult to breathe steadily.

“Bounty hunter?” the man asks, and Jon nods, not able to bring himself to move as the man crosses the space between them. He comes within an arm’s length, and like this it’s easy to see the scars on his knuckles, the breadth of his shoulders, the way he holds himself. Military training, Jon thinks. Something formal and structured and long-term, that left its mark in his posture and bearing. An officer, maybe. He looks like the type to give orders, rather than follow them.

Jon swallows, but tips his head up, meets the man’s eyes as evenly as he can.

“Name?” the man asks.

“Jon Antilles,” Jon says, because there are more than enough bounty hunters with that name already to make him unremarkable. It makes the man raise a brow, disbelief flickering, but after a moment he just snorts.

“And why should I hire you in particular?” he asks coolly. “I've got plenty of men able to hold a blaster.”

Jon weighs his responses, tries to pick apart what the man wants to hear. Easy to guess that this isn't some low-level grunt, but a leader. Maybe the leader, depending on how the Grey Wolves are set up. That makes this more important, makes a good impression vital. Jon doesn’t want to be forced to leave. Not with two people in such close proximity who have strange signatures in the Force.

But that thought sparks an idea, instinct and whim caught up in each other, and Jon says quietly, “I heard you freed Gardulla’s remaining slaves.”

The man doesn’t react, but there's no surprise in his emotions. Truth, then. He really did free Gardulla’s slaves after her death. “And that made you trek all the way across the desert?”

“Yes.” Jon doesn’t move as the man takes one step closer, near enough that Jon can almost feel the heat of him in the cool air. He doesn’t move, either, when the man raises a hand, slow, deliberate. Callused fingers catch the scarf, pull, and Jon doesn’t let himself react as it slides free, slipping past his throat with a whisper of silk. The looped ends pull, and Jon takes a step forward before they can go tight, automatic but unwise. It puts him too close, makes him freeze, and the man’s eyes sweep his face, flicker down. His fingers tighten in the scarf, his original eye darkens, and he tips his head.

“Sure you're just here as a bounty hunter?” he asks, and pulls Jon in the last handful of centimeters. Leans forward, and Jon's breath tangles in his throat as he tenses, torn between the urge to twitch back and list forward. In the end, he doesn’t do either, and the man pauses with a bare few centimeters still between them.

Around his throat, there's a silver chain, a flash of something pale green and glowing. It makes a shiver that has nothing to do with the heady heat of the man’s touch wash over Jon, but Jon doesn’t let himself look. Doesn’t want to look, not when the man is watching him so closely, so intently.

“Well,” the man says after a moment, and there's a touch of humor in his voice that makes Jon flush hot. “You're not trying to stab me, so I assume Jabba didn’t send you.”

A test, Jon thinks, and swallows. “He didn’t,” he says. “You're the leader of the Grey Wolves?”

“Wolffe,” the man says, and lets go of Jon's scarf, letting it slip free of his fingers. He doesn’t take a step back, watching Jon with something close to interest. “The hood come off?”

No, Jon almost says, but—the room is almost empty, and some strange urge has him reaching up, pushing the heavy cloth back. He’s entirely conscious of his scars, of the stubble from a whole night of traveling, of his worn clothes and the sand still clinging to him. Wolffe doesn’t linger on any of those things, though; his eyes are on Jon's face, direct, considering.

“Jon,” he says, pointed, and it should be an insult, a first name used when he has no right to it, but Jon finds it hard to care. He offered his full name, and Wolffe took it. “What if I ask you to kill someone for me?”

Jon doesn’t waver. “It would depend on who you wanted killed, and how.”

One of Wolffe’s brows lifts, just slightly. “How,” he repeats. “Most mercenaries don’t draw that line.”

“I won't break myself for credits,” Jon says. He means it. He won't do it for a mission, for the sake of cover, for anything. The lines he’s set for himself are the Jedi Code, and he won't cross them. No mission is worth that.

Wolffe’s mouth pulls, an almost bitter curve. “You're not doing much to convince me to hire you,” he says, and pauses for a long moment, watching Jon. Reaches up, and Jon doesn’t let himself shiver at the brush of a thumb across one of the scars on his cheek. It’s probably useless; Wolffe is likely more than aware of Jon's reaction, of the fact that Jon wants him, but—he hasn’t mentioned it, hasn’t leveraged it. Either he doesn’t care or he’s not the type to do so, and Jon feels strangely certain that it’s the latter.

And then, low, Wolffe says, “That looks like a lightsaber scar.”

Jon stills, able to feel the flicker of danger as clearly as a warning flag. Wolffe’s eyes are narrowed, dark, and Jon can't tell what answer he wants to hear, what will let him keep his cover.

“It is,” he says after a long, long moment, and Wolffe’s thumb presses hard against the scar. Jon doesn’t twitch, just so much as move, just holds his gaze and lies. “Dark Jedi tend to fight back, when you try to kill them.”

The pressure on his cheekbone lets up instantly, and Wolffe takes a breath. Some thread of deadly tension eases, and his mouth curls into a just-there smirk, all sharp edges.

“You like killing Dark Jedi,” he says. “Ever killed a Sith?”

A Sith. Cold washes through Jon's veins, the heat of Wolffe’s touch suddenly distant second in competition for his attention. The only Sith that the Jedi have seen in a thousand years was the Sith on Naboo, who fought to help the Trade Federation and then died before they could find out if he was the Master or the apprentice. It’s been a millennium since the Sith were a presence, a threat, but—

But. The last one was just eight years ago, and now Wolffe is talking like he knows another. It’s no surprise that the Force led Jon here, if that’s the case.

“No,” he says, and knows it’s cold, knows it’s full of sharp edges but doesn’t try to hide that. “But I think I would enjoy trying.”

Wolffe lets go of him, steps back, turns away. “You're hired,” he says. “Pick a room. I’ll have your first job tomorrow.”

Jon takes two steps after him before he forces himself to stop, off-balance, unmoored. His heartbeat is too quick, unsteady, and he forces himself to look away even as Wolffe rounds the corner and disappears.

Chapter Text

Jon finds himself a room, deep down in the lowest levels of the palace, but he doesn’t stay there.

He visited Gardulla’s palace a few times, over the years, when someone he hunted ran to her or when information he needed could be gleaned from those around her. It’s enough to give him some vague memory of the layout, at least enough to keep from getting entirely lost as he slips through the darkness, still unsettled, still uneasy. That strange Force presence that was wrapped around Wolffe still calls him like a beacon, draws his attention even three levels down, with meters of earth and stone between them. It’s hard to turn his mind from it, and Jon traces his way through parts of the palace that are just coming awake, one portion of his awareness always on where Wolffe is.

It’s distracting. It’s captivating, in a way Jon has never quite felt before. Like standing within a Force nexus, but—brighter, more immediate. Nexuses are ancient things, stately, but this feels like Wolffe himself, wary and sharp and intent and prowling. It makes Jon's skin prickle, but not with alarm.

He almost wishes it were alarm, because wanting Wolffe so guttingly comes with its own host of problems.

And then, like a shadow, a woman slips out of a dimly-lit room and pauses, frowning down at her pad.

Jon pauses, cautious. She’s the same older woman who was in the audience chamber earlier, a little worn, dressed in plain skirts and a patched shirt, her greying hair caught up in a heavy knot at the nape of her neck. The sense of her in the Force isn't as vivid as Wolffe, but there's a subtlety to it that catches Jon's attention, a vastness. He considers her for a moment, weighing the distraction in her expression, the attention she has trained on her pad, and then steps forward into the light.

“Is there something I can help with?” he asks quietly.

The woman doesn’t startle, just looks up and blinks, her pad lowering. “Oh,” she says after a moment. “Pardon me. I didn’t see you there.” She looks him over, then smiles. “You're the bounty hunter who arrived earlier.”

Jon bows to her, not entirely sure why, just sure that it feels right. “Jon Antilles,” he says. “You work here?”

The woman’s smile goes a little crooked. “I'm Shmi Skywalker,” she says. “And yes. Gardulla used to own me when I was younger. When Commander Wolffe took over her palace, he wanted someone familiar with it to help him, so he bought me and freed me.”

Freed, just like the rest of Gardulla’s slaves. Jon breathes out, lets that knowledge settle him a little more. It sounds like Wolffe bought Shmi from someone else, even, so it wasn’t just a way to spite Gardulla. That’s a good sign. “Well met,” he says politely. “Do you need any help?”

Shmi looks him over, then looks down at her pad. “Are you any good at climbing?” she asks a touch wryly. “The security systems are all up high, and I'm afraid I can't reach them easily.”

Jon nods, falling into step with her as she heads for the next branching hallway. There's no way to ask about her Force signature without admitting that he can feel it, and he doesn’t trust that she won't take the information right to Wolffe when her loyalty is so clearly to him. “Thank you,” he says quietly. “For something to do.”

Shmi's smile gentles around the edges. “Thank you for the offer,” she returns. “You came a long way for work.”

There's a question in her words, though it’s phrased so that Jon can ignore it if he wants to. He considers doing just that for a moment, but the rudeness itches. “I was stuck on Tatooine for the foreseeable future. The Grey Wolves seemed like the only syndicate that I could allow myself to work for.”

“Wolffe is a good man,” Shmi says, and it’s quiet but there's steel in the words. “Here, this is the next one.”

Jon follows her into a wide hall, then follows her finger to a panel high up the rocky wall. “What do you need me to do?” he asks.

Shmi passes him a small datachip. “Just hook this into the system and I can manage the rest.”

“All right.” Jon tucks it up his sleeve, then takes a running step, leaps, and gets a foot into a narrow shelf in the stone. He hauls himself up, braces an elbow against the ceiling, and gets the panel open with one hand. The slot for the chip is easy to see, and he slides it in, then tips his head. “Good?”

Shmi makes a sound of confirmation, attention already on her pad. “The readout up there, what does it say? A string of numbers near the top.”

Jon brushes the dust and grit away, then lists them off, and Shmi nods her thanks. “That should be all. Thank you, Jon.”

Lightly, Jon drops, landing in a crouch. “You're a tech?” he asks.

“A mechanic,” Shmi corrects. “Gardulla was the one who had me trained, before she lost me and my son to our last owner.”

Gambling, likely, knowing Gardulla’s habits. Jon grimaces, but he follows Shmi as she makes her way towards the next hall. “Your son,” he says. “Is he here?”

“No,” Shmi says, and she keeps her eyes ahead, her steps steady, her chin lifted. “He was taken to become a Jedi.”

Skywalker, Jon thinks, and breathes out slowly. He doesn’t visit any of the Temples or other Jedi enough to know if her son is still in training, if he’s become a Knight already, if he left the Order entirely, but—just for a moment, he wishes he could give her some kind of information, even if it broke his cover.

“The Jedi will care for him,” he says, soft. “I'm sure he’s well.”

“I am, too,” Shmi says, and this time the smile she casts at him is warm. “He always held on so tightly. The fact that he hasn’t tried to find me again—I miss him, but it’s a relief, too.”

“I encounter Jedi, sometimes,” Jon offers after a moment. “Would you like me to pass on a message to the next one I see?”

Shmi's fingers tighten on her datapad, and she takes a careful breath. “I—I have a datachip,” she says. “Messages for Anakin that I've—that I've saved. If you do meet a Jedi, would you pass them on? I tried to comm, once, but—I was turned away before I could even reach the Jedi Temple, and I couldn’t try again.”

The cost of a long-distance comm into Republic space must have been all but impossible for a slave, Jon thinks, and inclines his head. To be turned away—he can't imagine how that must have felt. “You have my word that it will get to them,” he says quietly.

There's a pause, and then Shmi pauses, reaches out. She slides her fingers into Jon's, grips his hand as he freezes. “Thank you, Jon,” she says. “Truly.”

Nico is close, Jon thinks. With Dooku, helping him recover, last Jon had heard, and he returns to the Temple frequently, now that he has Tae. Jon will find him, pass the chip on as soon as Wolffe gives him his next mission and he can leave without drawing attention to it. He nods, carefully freeing his fingers from Shmi's and sliding back a step, not entirely sure how to take her sympathy, and asks, “Next?”

Shmi chuckles, tucking her pad under her arm. “This should be all I need for now. I’ll be doing the western section of the palace this afternoon, if you're free.”

Jon nods, and Shmi smiles at him. “I’ll find you then,” she promises, and turns away.

As she leaves, she passes a tall, thin figure, ghastly pale in the shadows, blaster rifle slung across her back. Jon meets her gaze over Shmi's shoulder, feeling cold settle through his chest, and closes his eyes for a long moment.

“Aurra,” he says quietly.

“Little brother,” Aurra purrs, and her smile stretches wide and cruel as she approaches. “It’s been far too long, hasn’t it? How is our old Master doing?”

Jon doesn’t flinch back from her, doesn’t try to step away. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t see her.”

Aurra laughs, reaching out, and her long, thin fingers skim the edge of Jon's hood like a taunt. “Because you don’t want to see her? Or because she doesn’t want to see you?”

“That was years ago,” Jon says, even. “I couldn’t go with you then, Aurra.”

Aurra snorts. “Then,” she mocks. “Like the answer would ever have been something different.”

Jon closes his eyes again, just breathes. The churn of guilt is set deep in his stomach, but—he wasn’t the one to cause Aurra’s fall. She fell years before Dark Woman found a nameless child, strong enough in the Force to catch her attention, on an Outer Rim planet. Jon knows that, but…sometimes it’s harder to remember than other times.

“You tried to kill me on Dantooine,” he says, soft.

“I've killed a lot of people,” Aurra says, and her smile is cruel but her eyes are dark, and when Jon reaches up to grip her wrist she doesn’t try to pull away. “And if I’d tried to kill you, little brother, you’d be dead.”

It’s likely true. They’ve encountered each other on the opposite sides of jobs often enough for Jon to believe it’s true.

“You're working for the Grey Wolves?” he asks. Aurra might give him up to Wolffe the minute he turns his back. Or, equally likely, she won’t give him up at all. There's no way of knowing, with Aurra.

“I was employed for my services and knowledge base,” Aurra says, her smirk a cruel thing. “Are you pretending to be a bounty hunter again? Going to help me hunt down the innocent and murder them, just so you can catch a few whispers at the same time? Dark Woman must be so proud.”

Jon flinches, shifts back. Aurra doesn’t let him go; she follows, pushes him right up against the wall, and snaps a hand up, and Jon jerks on instinct at the familiar motion, ducks his head, braces—

But Aurra isn't Dark Woman, and the slap doesn’t come. Aurra’s hand settles in his hood, tugs it back just slightly, and then she leans down and presses a mocking kiss to his forehead. “She must love her best puppet,” she croons, low and sweet, and Jon's fingers curl tight around her wrist. He can't make himself let go. “So obedient, so devoted.”

“That was years ago,” Jon says, and it’s nowhere near as steady as he wants it to be, wavers and cracks just faintly.

For a fraction of a second, he almost thinks he sees Aurra hesitate, but then her expression splits in a harsh laugh, settles into cutting amusement.

“Don’t play the victim,” she tells Jon harshly. “You could have ended it. You could have gotten away. And now look at you. I think getting sold to pirates was the better end of the deal.”

“She didn’t sell you,” Jon says before he can stop himself, and then flinches, ready for a burst of anger that’s well-deserved.

But Aurra just snorts. She pulls away, tossing her long, fire-brown hair over one shoulder, and says silkily, “Of course she didn’t. That would be immoral, and she’s so pious and righteous and holy. But she sure as hell didn’t come after me, either.”

There's nothing Jon can say in the face of that, nothing he can offer when it’s the truth. “Aurra—” he starts, and then stops, because he doesn’t know what else he can possibly say. Please don’t sell me out, except Aurra will do whatever she wants regardless of what he says. I'm sorry, but he’s said that too many times already. I wish I’d chosen differently, but—he isn't sure he does. Whatever Jon felt back then, he’s a Jedi now. He was made to be a Jedi, every piece of him honed and beaten and refined into the perfect form. He doesn’t want to be anything else. He doesn’t know anything else. Even being a person is harder than being a Jedi, most days. If he didn’t have that, he has no idea what he would be.

It doesn’t matter, in the end. Aurra doesn’t look back, and Jon doesn’t have anything to say regardless.

“Anything?” Wolffe asks brusquely.

“He wasn’t interested in the security system,” Shmi says, watching him as he sorts through information on Grievous’s most recent whereabouts. “He seemed more interested in you.”

That doesn’t entirely set Wolffe at ease; it wouldn’t be the first time Jabba or the Hutt council has sent someone meant to murder him. He grunts, unimpressed, and ignores the way Shmi's gaze weighs on him. “The systems?”

“I have most of them back up,” Shmi says, and finally looks away, pulling up files on her datapad. “Some of the lower levels need to be rewired, and I'm not a tech. But most of the rest work, with a bit of kindness.”

Wolffe doesn’t like even that much of a question where function is concerned, but this isn't the GAR. He’s doing what he can with what he has, and already there's been plenty he’s managed. Killing a Hutt, for one, and surviving the backlash, for another. The Trade Federation is about to lose its Viceroy and most of its upper management, too, if Sugi and Embo manage to finish their mission.

Dooku survived. That will probably need to be addressed in the future, but for now, there's supposedly a pair of Jedi staying with him, and Wolffe’s going to assume that even Darth Tyrannous will try to keep his nose clean with someone who won't hesitate to behead a Sith around.

That leaves Grievous, some of the heads of the other trade guilds, and Jango. And, potentially, one rough, scarred bounty hunter sent to take Wolffe out.

Wolffe’s not stupid, and he isn't one to trust easily. A bounty hunter with lightsaber scars and a history of killing Dark Jedi washing up on his doorstep is too close to everything he needs for him to believe in it without question, and the way Jon reacted—

Wolffe breathes, and curls his fingers against the desk, and curses himself for getting too close, for acting as reckless as Sinker ever did. He’d just meant to test Jon, see if he would pull a knife or a blaster when Wolffe gave him a perfect opening.

It’s somehow less comforting that he didn’t than it would have been if he’d immediately gone for Wolffe’s jugular. Especially given the heat that’s still knotted low in Wolffe’s belly at the memory of the look Jon gave him as the scarf pulled free.

If Jabba sent someone to seduce Wolffe, to get him in bed and vulnerable and easy to kill, they could have done worse than Jon.

“Has Sing coughed up the information on Fett yet?” he asks harshly, catches his tone, and grimaces.

Thankfully, Shmi knows better than to take his moods personally. “Not yet. Should I tell Rumi to ask?”

Rumi probably has a better chance of getting the information out of Sing than anyone else, and Wolffe doesn’t entirely trust himself around her. She killed Jedi in the war, killed Ponds. The only reason he hasn’t fed her to a krayt dragon yet is that she knows where Jango is, and Wolffe wants Jango out of the way and safely locked in a cell more than he wants her dead.

“Do it,” he says, grim. Pauses, breathes in, and forces his hand to unfist, his fingers to lay flat against the desk.

He’s close. He’s closer than he ever thought he would be, when he staggered out of the Temple two years ago, blinking in the sunlight. A Jedi Temple Guard had helped him out, perfectly courteous, perfectly concerned, perfectly kind when Wolffe talked about getting lost in Coruscant's underbelly and finding his way into the Temple’s heart.

That happens sometimes, the Guard had told him, gentle. I'm glad you weren’t hurt, he’d said, and Wolffe had thought I'm going to save you like the words were a drumbeat in his chest.

He will. Plo, Tano, Windu, and all the rest—they're halfway to saved already, and he has just a handful more things to do.

“I asked Cad Bane about Jon,” Shmi says after a moment. Wolffe doesn’t quite go still, but he turns his head to show he’s listening. “He said Jon is low-level, but he doesn’t let bounties escape once he starts looking. He hadn’t heard anything about Dark Jedi, but he didn’t seem surprised.”

Wolffe grunts, but for an instant all he can think about is the slick-smooth scar under his thumb, the exact same texture as his own. A lightsaber scar, he’d known as soon as he touched it, and that’s not easily faked.

He stares down at the reports scattered across his desk, not quite seeing them. He’s so close, and the options for what he can do are narrowing. Bounty hunters dispatched after most of the leaders of the trade guilds before they can push worlds to secede, generals taken out, droid factories or factories that could produce droids in the future destroyed, and Wolffe was a marshal commander, understands the value of delegation. He didn’t come back far enough to have the time to save the galaxy single-handedly, and that’s a stupid fantasy anyway.

“Calrissian come through with those funds yet?” he asks.

“Yes,” Shmi says, and sets her pad down in the middle of his desk, then steps back. when Wolffe slants a glance up at her, her eyes are steely. “I was going to send Castas to deal with the head of the Mining Guild, since he was the only one who wouldn’t pay.”

“Good,” Wolffe says, and straightens. He thinks of Jon, the look in his eyes when Wolffe asked him about killing Sith, and bares his teeth. Either Jon is a better liar than Wolffe thinks or that was genuine, and if it was, Wolffe knows exactly where to aim him. “You're in charge. I'm taking Antilles on a trip.”

Shmi doesn’t even blink, just catches the comm Wolffe tosses her. For a moment, she just watches him, and then she says quietly, “When I told him about my son, he offered to take a message to the Jedi for me.”

One hand on the door, Wolffe pauses. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that, and he stares at the battered, sand-pitted metal for a long moment, trying to process. He and Shmi don’t talk about Anakin, because Shmi is the only reason Wolffe hasn’t found a sniper rifle and put Anakin on a pyre personally, but—he knows what Anakin means to her, what that kind of offer would mean to her. It’s not one most bounty hunters would make, either, given how they skirt the edges of the law, and potential proof that Jon really meant it when he said he had lines.

“Any time you want to go to Coruscant, all you have to do is say it,” Wolffe says without looking back.

“I don’t,” Shmi tells him, and there's a thread of that same steel in her voice. “I'm the one who told him not to look back, Wolffe. I just want to hear his voice, and be sure that he’s doing well.”

He’s doing so well that the Sith Lord wants to turn him into his right hand, Wolffe doesn’t say. He just nods once, curt, and pushes out into the hall. “Where’s Antilles?”

“Out near the back, below the watchtower,” Shmi answers, and Wolffe heads that way without looking back. Shmi's been his second in command since he took over the palace and killed Gardulla, and she knows what to do. Even if Jon does try something, and manages to be successful, Shmi knows what needs doing, even if she doesn’t know why. She’ll finish Wolffe’s work.

Not that Wolffe is planning to roll over and die that easily. If Jon wants to kill him, he’s going to have to put some effort into it.

The rocky expanse of stone beneath the watchtower is completely devoid of life when Wolffe pulls himself out through the hatch, and he grimaces at the harsh, wind-blown sand that stings at his skin. There's likely a sandstorm coming, which is all the more reason to be off Tatooine right now. Raising a hand to shield his face, he scans the rocks, but can't spot any life at all.

And then, caught by the wind, a whirl of dark cloth curls from behind a spur of rock halfway up the nearly-sheer cliff face. Wolffe raises a brow, a little surprised, because he didn’t see a jetpack or jet-boots among Jon's gear, but he makes his way over, looking up. Jon is on a narrow ledge three meters up, curled back with his spine pressed into the stone, his hood down and hi face turned up to the sky. The wind catches strands of dark hair loose from their messy knot, and there's a look on his face that makes Wolffe’s throat feel tight though he doesn’t quite know why.

“Jon,” he says, not a conscious choice to use his given name, but—a slip, maybe. Except Wolffe finds he doesn’t regret it the way he should.

Jon tilts his head, looks down. There's a pause, like he’s startled, and then he gets a hand on the stone, pushes off and drops, landing lightly right in front of Wolffe. Another pause, considering, as he straightens, and then he says softly, “Shmi called you Commander. Is that what I should call you, too? Sir?”

Sir. Wolffe’s fingers curl at the thought of Jon saying it, though not for the reason they should. “Commander is fine,” he says curtly. “Or Wolffe.”

“All right.” Jon watches him for a moment, and he’s softspoken but his expression is sharp, like he’s aware of everything around him. There's nothing gentle about the scars, the way he moves, the way he watches everything, but his voice is. His tone is. The way he thought to offer to carry a message for Shmi is. When Wolffe touched his scars, Jon let him without argument or attempts to pull away.

Wolffe wants to see what else he’d allow.

And then, quiet, Jon says, “I'm not here to hurt you, or anyone who works for you.”

Wolffe breathes in, out. Doesn’t let himself react, because at one time he was used to people who could read his emotions even more easily than they could his face, and for all that Plo and the other Jedi tried to be aware of it, polite about it, sometimes it was just instinct for them. Jon reading his face, his tells, is nothing in comparison to that.

“There's absolutely no reason for me to trust you,” he says harshly, and takes a step forward, threatening. Jon doesn’t give ground, just watches him, and his eyes are the same washed-out blue of the sky above, so colorless it’s almost eerie. Wolffe thinks of his reaction when he pulled the scarf tight around his throat and wants, sharp and hungry.

It’s been—a long kriffing time since he fucked someone, and even if Jon's here to kill him, Wolffe’s dick doesn’t particularly care.

“No,” Jon agrees, almost soundless, but Wolffe can see him swallow, and he takes another step forward, right into Jon's space. Jon's breath catches, and Wolffe herds him back, runs him right up against the stone and pins him there. His heart is too fast, too loud, but Jon is watching him with pale eyes going dark, his lips parted on a breath, and there's an ache and a want knotted tight in Wolffe’s belly, heat sinking through his veins.

“You don’t,” Jon says, just a little unsteady, “seem to think I'm going to stab you.”

“Maybe I want to see how far I can push you,” Wolffe counters, and Jon shivers, closes his eyes.

He’s not faking that want. He wants Wolffe, old and grey and worn down, so much that he can't even begin to hide it. And maybe it really is a trick, but it hits Wolffe hard, heady and addicting. A couple of words, a touch, the rock at his back, and Jon can't control his response.

Reaching up, Wolffe drags the backs of his fingers up Jon's throat, presses a knuckle against the slick-smooth lightsaber scar that follows the line of his cheekbone, then sinks his fingers into Jon's hair and anchors them there. Jon jerks, tilting his head back into the touch, and swallows as his eyes flutter shut. He’s not a pretty man, but it’s a hell of a pretty picture, and Wolffe wants to growl, wants to get teeth in his throat and bite.

Instead, he slides a hand down his chest, over the front of his pants, and says, low and rough in his throat, “Is this what you want?”

Jon shivers, leans even further into Wolffe’s hold on his hair. “Do you have to ask?” he wants to know, and when his eyes slide open they're blown black and depthless. He watches Wolffe like Wolffe is all that matters, and Wolffe would have be a far, far stronger person to resist.

This is stupid. Every part of this is ill-advised and likely to get his throat slit, but Wolffe shoves forward, pins Jon right against the rocks, and kisses him hard. Jon jerks, gasps, but before Wolffe can even contemplate pulling away Jon's hands are on his back, hauling him in tighter. Wolffe growls, jerking Jon's pants open and shoving a hand down them, to where Jon is already hot and hard, and when he closes his hand tight around Jon's cock, Jon jerks, moans. The sound vibrates through Wolffe, hits like a kick in the gut, and he squeezes tight, strokes Jon's cock and feels hands fumble for his own.

“Hands up,” he says, sharp, before he can think better of it, but Jon sucks in a breath like Wolffe just winded him and curls his hands around Wolffe’s shoulders instead.

That hits, too. That hits hard, and Wolffe breathe through it, presses Jon fully against the rocks and kisses him again. He strips his cock, nothing gentle, nothing slow, tight and quick and with each stroke of his hand Jon jerks, trembles. His kiss breaks into a cry, only barely muffled, and Wolffe wants to spin him around, strip him entirely, push him up against the rock and fuck him right here in the open, hear those noises when Wolffe has his cock in him and his hands pinned to the stone.

His cock aches, and Wolffe deepens the kiss, steals Jon's gasping breathes and ragged cries before they can even reach the air. Jon's whole body shudders, and he arches into Wolffe, fingers bruising around his shoulders, hips jerking into Wolffe’s hand.

Stupid, Wolffe thinks, even as he twists his hand hard, strokes up, bites his way into Jon's mouth. This is stupid, and Jon just walked into the palace from nowhere, with nothing believable about his story, a hundred thousand reasons why Wolffe should keep his distance.

But—

“Wolffe,” Jon gasps, and it rings in Wolffe’s ears, sings through him. He drops his head before he can think better of it, nips hard at Jon's throat, drags skin between his teeth and sucks, and Jon cries out, the sound breaking. He comes, Wolffe’s hand on his cock, Wolffe’s teeth on his throat, a shuddering moan caught by the wind and trapped between them.

Wolffe goes still, breathing hard, trying to gather himself. Slowly, carefully, he lets go of Jon's softening cock, his hair, his throat. He pulls back, and Jon shudders, sinks down like his knees can't hold him. He slides down the rock, head falling back against it, looking up at Wolffe like Wolffe is the only thing he can think about, and Wolffe has never been so hard, has never wanted anyone more. Jon looks wrecked, pants open and hitched down, hair a tangled mess, chest heaving. His mouth is bruised and swollen, and his cock is still wet and half-hard.

Nothing has ever been as tempting as the thought of following him down and fucking him right here in the open, and Wolffe has to close his eyes, fight not to give in.

Not yet. Not now. His cock doesn’t care that Jon could be some kind of threat, and for all that Wolffe’s inclined to agree, he’s not entirely led by his dick.

“Mission,” he manages, and can't help but look Jon over once more, committing the way he looks right now to memory. “You're coming with me.”

Jon swallows, wets his lips. Looks up, and it takes everything Wolffe has not to wrap his hands in Jon’s hair, drag him forward to get those swollen lips on his cock. “Am I?” he asks, low, and Wolffe takes a breath, thinks of his ship, and breathes out. Soon. He’s a former marshal commander, though. He can plan this out, minimize risks.

Jon won't be a threat if he’s entirely incoherent in Wolffe’ bed.

“If you get to my ship before I leave you behind,” he says, and turns away.

It takes a hell of a lot more effort than it should to leave Jon there, sprawled against the stone like he’s waiting for Wolffe to join him.