Archive of Our Own ^beta

Seventeen watches Prime out of the corner of his eye.

The man has been acting odd all morning, unnervingly gentle when he corrects their forms instead of his usual brusque efficiency. Gentle and a little wild around the corners of his eyes. This happens sometimes, Prime gets weird and nice for a day or so (or less) and then something happens and it’s back to the empty sternness. There’s something hot edged this time though, not directed at any of them but it’s like bein’ handled by cushioned durasteel when you know the outside is molten for all you can barely feel the heat. Safe, cause for once the danger isn’t directed at them.

Seventeen isn’t sure if this is better, even if it is nice ‘cause it’s winding him and the others up, waiting for the other karking credit to drop-

“Mister Fett,” Nala Se says and Seventeen’s heart damn near stops mid kata. “Rio Ka would like a quick word with you.”

The gentleness Prime had been displaying all morning vanishes like rain in a vaporator.

“Would he,” Prime intones. It’s not a question.

Seventeen stays very, very still. Twenty-eight catches his gaze, his own eyes wide. Prime hasn’t noticed they'd stopped yet, glare still locked on Nala Se. Seventeen had seen that sort of expression in the eyes of things that swam past the deep level windows, empty and dark and cold.

Nala Se just blinks placidly back.

“Yes,” she says, “If you are not available then perhaps Boba will be? It’s a simple test.”

Seventeen goes cold. Prime’s expression goes colder.

“Very well then,” he grits and turns to them. “You’re dismissed.”

The room still feels cold even after Prime and Nala Se have left and Seventeen does not shake like the cadets, he’s six and too old for that.

(two days later someone who isn’t prime comes back)

They are not people, The Voice Says, unyielding.

But they have my face, my eyes, my voice, he thinks.

They are not people, The Voice Says, unyielding.

But they have-they have my face-their own eyes-, he thinks. He stutters.

They are not people, The Voice Says, unyielding.

But they are children, the future, what am I doing? he thinks. He questions.

They are not people, The Voice Says, unyielding.

But they are, he thinks. He snaps.

They are not people, The Voice Says, unyielding.

If they are not people, he thinks. He snarls, am I?

They are not people, The Voice Says, unyielding.

Very well then, he thinks. He drowns.

There's something wrong with Prime.

The thought rattles through Seventeen’s skull even as his bones rattle from the impact of the mats. The others know it too. It's been days since Nala Se collected Prime and, and.

There's something wrong.

(puzzled pauses and distant expressions but like looking at something far away instead of just away and then like he can see the souls the trainers say they don't have)

Nala Se had come back a day after the first time and Prime had just gone with her, distant and almost dazed like a CT who'd been a bit too clever and been taken-

Seventeen hits the mats again and rolls and gets back up.

"Again," Prime says, rote, and Seventeen flings himself forward.

Later he thinks again of clones a bit too clever and independent being taken and lets himself put Prime in that context and he wants to scream because if the longnecks would do that what else could they do to them. He buries the thought deep deep deep along with the bitter hiss of he deserves it made of too many broken bones.

"Again," Prime says, rote, and Seventeen flings himself forward, and doesn't let himself think at all.

The reconditioning doesn't fully take the first time.

Jango wakes up in an empty hallway mid stride. He wakes up in an empty hallway so there is no one to see him stumble, see him hit his knees and press shaking hands to his face. No one to hear the second of terrified keening that escapes before he cuts it off.

Jango has spent years now being not-himself but he has never realized the hideous boon that was at least remembering that. His first impulse is to run like he should have when a count offered him revenge, to just take his son and go and he starts to stand-

Static washes in.

There’s a small child in his quarters.

He thinks it's his quarters. Determinedly not stumbling footsteps and muscle memory had led him here through the winding too white halls. Something bitter in the back of his throbbing head mumbles about new fields. He leans against the wall next to the that click means locked door and stares at the small child. It looks, he thinks distantly, a lot like him.

The small child stares back, big dark eyes blinking. “ Buir? ”

The title drops into his aching skull like jagged shards of glass wrapped in thorned wire, catching on everything on the way down and making memory bleed in syrup slow-

Ah. That’s Boba. H i s son.

He blinks. That’s not. Quite right.

But he can make it so.

“Boba,” he rasps, and the kid scurries forward, tucking his tiny, tiny body against his side and something ropey and warm and possessive roils in his chest. “Ni kar'tayl gai sa'ad, Boba.”

His son blinks up at him, brows furrowing in confusion but allows himself to be fed and wrangled into bed. The movements are familiar, almost the same way breathing is he knows this but his eyes catch on scarred up nicks on his hands he does not recall getting and the soft thick texture of his son’s hair as he brushes it back is new even if the motion isn’t. It’s all familiar but it isn’t. Especially. Well.

(are you awake, 001?)

It's fitting, he thinks later, that he knows his son’s name before his own.

The boys are watching him.

He knows them, in the vague but bone deep way he knows he loves the child in his quarters, the weight of the blaster on his hip, that there is a reason the armor he wears feels wrong-

He knows them, is the point. He also knows to keep quiet about what he doesn’t, until the Kaminoans have turned away.

“What’s your name?” he asks the boy he’s correcting the stance of, gangly and too thin limbs terrifyingly delicate in his grip. Limbs that go utterly rigid at the question as the boy starts to twist to look at him. He corrects, gentle.

“No,” he says, “don’t look. Keep going.” The boy does and pride blooms quietly in his chest.

“Alpha-17, sir,” the boy replies and runs through the kata again, flawlessly this time.

That’s not a name he thinks but doesn’t say. What would he know, anyway. Takes a breath, takes a risk-

“Do you know mine?”

(he drowns and drowns and drowns and deep in the water-)

The icy plain is empty but for the two standing amongst gore from a terrible slaughter.

You are not me, the loth-wolf howls with its terrible teeth. It is panting and blood stains the snow beneath.

I am, the dog snaps back, stiff legged and snarling and sore, I am what comes after, no weaker than before

Lies, the loth-wolf snarls, You are made to be weak and slow.

Lies, the dog laughs back, You are weak and alone but I have room to grow

You are not me, the loth-wolf snaps, drool foaming red.

What does it matter, the dog says, I am here and you are soon to be dead.

If I am alone you will be too, the loth-wolf rasps, bleeding out where he lay.

I will not the dog declares and in the distance the hounds start to-

(he wakes to the bright lights of the medical bay)

-

It’s not the Kaminoans fault, they didn’t know.

It’s another word for brainwashing, they think, a way to restore the product to its original clean slate. A slate the clones have such easily erased marks on, being relatively new and in such a carefully guided environment. They’re wrong there too, of course, but-

Decades of scarring and hurts and habits do not ruin a person, just shapes how they react, how they think, what they might or might not think to do. It does not change what is at the base. What happens though, if you slough all that scarred up habit away?

(just a simple man-)

There are still some things left of course, untouched habit and muscle memory because the last thing they want is damaged product or a damaged template. It was so clever of them, they think, to test reconditioning when the template was already under for its contractual reminders. So very efficient.

It’s not the Kaminoans fault, they didn’t know.

-

“Do you know mine?”

Seventeen stares.

“Is this a joke?” he snaps, unthinking and just barely stomps on a flinch. Prime just raises an eyebrow.

Oh kark, he's serious.

Seventeen’s second thought is I thought they only tried this shit on the CTs. The third thought is just smothering the second.

Seventeen had heard the rumors about some new reconditioning the longnecks were cooking up, most of the older clones had. The longnecks didn’t really notice if you heard anything if you kept your head down right, and Twenty-eight was scarily good at fading into the background for that exact kind of thing. Hells, reconditioning wasn’t even new, the longnecks liked to drag the CTs in for every little thing and the CCs too. Seventeen himself had gotten dragged in once but all it ever did was make someone fuzzy and kinda far away for a day or so and while incredibly unpleasant it wasn’t horrifying.

This, Seventeen thinks, as Prime looks back at him with an expression that’s subtly different and wrong, might be. He knows it’s Prime, he’s too old even for the Nulls and the pattern of scars is all Prime. But all the little ticks and movements that clones notice because that’s how you tell brothers apart are all off and the hair on the back of Seventeen’s neck stands on end.

Not-Prime is still waiting expectantly.

Seventeen still hasn’t answered the question.

“Jango Fett.” A pause. “Prime.”

The man in beskar hums thoughtfully and says “No, not quite.”

It takes Jango three years to wake up the first time. He will never forgive himself for that. He desperately wants to say that he was fighting the whole time, that he’d always known something was wrong somehow and he broke through but-

he didn’t.

Instead Jango is just standing on an observation deck watching rows and rows of children run through katas when the world tilts every so slightly and he thinks what the fuck am I doing?

Revenge against the jetiise, his mind offers in his own voice. It's a well trod thought, reflexive and reasonable. They deserve it.

They do, Jango thinks, and before the world tilted it would have stopped there.

But revenge through children?

Pain.

Jango stays standing somehow, stays blank faced somehow, even as a vice crushes his skull and molten metal pours in this is why we wear helmets, Jan'ika and he does not scream-

and the agony vanishes.

Later he'll realize the pain was meant to be a deterrent, simple but effective means to ensure that even when the dar’jetii’s compulsion wears off habit remains.

That might have worked on anyone else.

Jango stands and breathes.

( k'atini k'atini it's only pain-)

Jango stands and breathes and stares at the rows and rows of children.

He has to figure out how to fix this. Now.

Unfortunately, Jango has never been a subtle man. He has three hours before the Kaminoans notice. Five before they have contacted Tyrannus. Seven before instructions on how to reactivate the compulsion arrive. Eight before Rio Ka insists on having a word with him.

Jango is standing on an observation deck watching rows and rows of clones run through katas. They'll be ready for the next set soon.

It happens again.

It only takes six months this time and the timing is such that Dredd Priest lays dead on the floor.

Rio Ka is far more nervous this time as he should damn well should be and Jango has his blaster up and aimed and-

"Should I have the product retrieved from your quarters to ensure your cooperation?"

"You will not touch my son," Jango snarls and oh that was a mistake because Rio Ka is smiling.

"We will not," Rio Ka says, and leaves the rest unsaid.

He only had an hour this time.

The next time they actually bring his son, toddling and wide eyed, to the room. Jango keeps his head down, after that.

(and that burns and burns, shame coating his throat like soot guilt lead in his belly all he can do his make himself gentle during the days where he's him and whatever wretched metric the longnecks use to notice hasn't kicked in yet he does what little he can until-)

“Buir?”

“Hm?”

“Tell me a story?”

He pauses, the fabric of the blanket soft under his hand. Boba peeks up at him from under said blanket, a devious slant to his pleading gaze. Stories to thwart bedtime, some whisper mumbles.

“What kind of story?”

“Mmm,” the thoughtful hum is drawn out as his father settles next to him on the bed. “My favorite!”

“Ah,” he breathes. Static hums, washing through his skull like the waves outside. “You’ll have to remind me how it goes.”

“.....buir?”

His son’s voice has gone small and confused and he really didn’t think he’d have to explain so soon or ever, he didn’t want his child to lose a parent like he, like he. Had he?

Static washes back in (like waves like a howl) and when it recedes his son is sitting up against the wall and watching him with wide, wary eyes. Seventeen had looked at him like that.

“Ni ceta, Boba.”

Confusion joins the wariness, which is slowly sliding towards fear.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t remember the story,” because that is the gentlest wound he can offer but it’s only the first. “

“Oh,” Boba whispers. Then, tremulous, “Are you a clone?”

"No," not-Jango says, because that is the one thing he's sure of. He hesitates then, because this will hurt and he has never wanted to hurt his son. "Something happened, and I can't-"

He sighs, runs a hand through his child's thick unruly curls, "I'm still your buir," he says, and it's truth made real on his tongue, by a vow he’s already spoken, "you're still my son. Never doubt that."

He breathes, tries to find a way to explain the emptiness and static but not wanting such things to even brush his son, "The Kaminoans did- something and I don't, I don't remember very much now."

"Oh," his son says again, voice small and lost. He bites his lip, looks up at not-Jango with a naked hope that hurts, "Can you make them fix it?"

It's another hurt to his son that he’s helpless to fix and when he breathes it is with rage like poison on his tongue that he swallows back because he cannot let that out here.

"I don't know," he says, instead of making himself a liar, "But I'm still here, and I love you and that will never change, okay?"

Boba is silent, still, searching his face for something not-Jango doesn't know. He hadn’t realized how fragile his heart is until he set it in the hands of his son.

Finally Boba nods to himself and presses close to not-Jango's side with a sort of desperation, tiny hands tangling in not-Jango's shirt. He twists a little, settling his head over not-Jango’s heart like he needs to assure himself that at least that beat hasn’t changed.

"Okay," Boba whispers, "I'll tell the story this time, and then you can tell it to me next time."

Not-Jango breathes out, folds his son into a hug and murmurs "Alright," into his hair.

The Kaminoans do not realize the reconditioning went wrong because for them it was a success.

Are you awake, 001?

Yes

No undue aggressiveness, none of the independence the original displayed. A single session and no more distasteful threats they needed to make. No more potential loss of some of their best work.

Quite the triumph all around, really.

Are you awake, 001?

Yes, says the dog

You are not a person, says The Voice.

But I think, I love, I have (a) son(s), he thinks. He questions.

You are not a person, says The Voice.

But they are people, and they have my face, my voice, he thinks. He states.

You are not a person, says The Voice.

If I'm not a person, he thinks. He snarls. Then are they not people too?

You are not a person, says The Voice.

Fuck that, he thinks. He burns.

Kal Skirata loves his kids. Becoming a father hadn’t been what he expected out of this contract, agreeing to no longer exist for a Mand’alor who no longer existed either.

Kal wasn’t even sure if just Jango Fett did most days. He remembered the man when he was younger, before-before a lot of things. The bright, burning flame was gone, crushed or smothered or simply changed. Kal is-disappointed is perhaps the kindest word, disgusted another, in what Fett allows to go on here.

They’re not people, Fett had snapped once, concern yourself with your own pets.

Kal had nearly drawn on the man then and there. The only thing that had stopped him was that with Fett dead there would be nothing left to protect his sons from the longnecks.

So he does his best to avoid Fett apart from required meetings. There's only so much disappointment a man can take in a day after all. The little flickers of guilt Kal sees on a rare blue moon actually makes it worse. The urge to shake the man until he sees sense never fully subsides but Kal can be professional. For his kids sake.

So one day when Kal walks in to see Fett speaking quietly with several Alphas he only pauses for a moment before heading over because this was his time slot damn it.

Fett looks up.

Kal has a single, horrified moment of being utterly convinced that the Kaminoans had cloned Fett once more in hopes of creating an imposter, accurate down to the scar through his eyebrow.

Th body language, the expression, everything is off just that little bit made more obvious by years of having to tell clones apart but none has instilled this visceral sense of wrongness-

They called themselves the Cuy'val Dar- those who no longer exist and it was almost a joke but now Kal is looking at someone who is not Jango Fett and bile rises in his throat.

"Who are you?" the man who is not Jango Fett asks, shifting slightly so he's between the Alphas and Kal.

Like Kal's a threat to them. Like Fett hasn't sent them back to the dorms bruised and bleeding from training.

There’s no recognition on Fett's face.

"What happened?" Kal asks but he says it to Alpha-17, who's hovering behind Fett like a gangly too small shadow. Fett stiffens.

"No, you speak to me," Fett shifts further in front of Alpha-17.

"Who are you then, because you're not Fett and none of the clones are near old enough," Kal snaps back. “And if you’re none of those you have no business being here.”

Fett eyes him and to Kal’s shock actually turns his head to look at Alpha-17. Alpha-17 seems equally startled for a moment before turning that assessing gaze he inherited from Fett on Kal. After a few seconds he nods.

Fett unbends a bit, a hint of a morbid smile tugging at the scar on his cheek, "I guess I'm what happens when they test the new reconditioning on the template."

Oh hells.

"So you are a prototype!" Comes the triumphant and not nearly quiet enough whisper. Kal closes his eyes briefly. That has to be Alpha-67 because Sixty-seven has never kept his mouth shut in his fuckin life.

Fett just barks a laugh.

"Something like that."

I died alone, the corpse of the loth-wolf says in a voice like lead, surrounded by the dead.

You did, the dog replies in quiet tones, nudging gently at the loth-wolf’s bones.

Why are you still here, the corpse of the loth-wolf asks, instead of with the pack you hold so dear?

Soon you will be gone, the dog whispers, and I would see my old self to the dawn.

Do as you may, the corpse of the loth-wolf snaps, Nothing of me shall see birth of day

In the distance hounds start to-

"So six years and memory loss is what it takes to regain some sense, Fett?"

A hum. "I think he tried."

"Not well enough."

The hair on the back of Kal's neck stands on end when not-Fett, Proto the Alphas have been calling him when they think they can't hear, slants a thoughtful look his way.

"What would well enough look like?"

“I need you to hide with your brothers, Boba.”

“They’re not my brothers! They’re not people you-y-buir said so!”

“I was wrong, I was wrong and you need to listen to me, Bo’ika. I need you to go to your brothers who look your age and hide. The longnecks can’t get you if they can’t find you. Boba-look at me.” His son’s shoulders are so gods damned small under his hands. “I want you safe, and I want to make your brothers safe, and to do that I need you to hide.”

His son (i know your name as-) his son stares up at him with wide, searching eyes and he’s so young what is he doing-

And then Boba takes a deep breath and nods firmly.

“You need to cut my hair first.”

Pride blooms warm and heavy and not-Jango presses his forehead against his son’s.

“Thank you.”

There's something dead in him.

He doesn't tell anyone about it because he knows what it is, what he is. An echo of a corpse strapped in beskar the first him was unworthy of and he as a not-person shouldn't touch. There’s nothing he can do about it, not really.

Part of him is grateful for the traces of the ghost lining bone and sinew for what it has given him, because sometimes muscle memory is the only kind he has.

The rest of him just wants to scream loud enough that the echo that is him overwhelms the original. Wants the dead thing him to finish fucking rotting so that something new might grow.

Boba tells him a ghost story, stumbling and shy. It's my favorite, he mumbles, and he knows that's a lie but. A parent that dies, but doesn't leave. It ends bloody, most Mandalorian stories do, but not for the child.

He holds his son and thinks of ghosts and growing things.

Kal Skirata leaves, taking the Nulls (his sons his sons his sons) with him. Field training he calls it, and does not protest the many trackers the longnecks fit them with. Not-Jango-maybe Proto watches them go and hopes they don’t come back. When he heads back to the Alphas training area he traces one hand along the walls absently.

(his first memory is white lights against a whiter ceiling, dispassionate voices running through a system of checks and he knows he hates them, that’s the first thing he truly knows is are you away zero zero one and rage like a dying thing and then these hallways, winding and curved like the inside of seashells he’s never seen)

There’s no true plan, not really. Just low burning rage, a hunter's patience and the thud of today today today like a heartbeat.

He has to move first, he knows this. The longnecks use threats to the soft underbelly of his being and somehow that first him never realized that the simplest thing to do would be to hide one pup in a pile of them and move before they think to kill them all at once. It’s a numbers game and if the first blow is struck quickly enough-

But it has to be the right ti-

“Good morning, Mister Fett,” Nala Se says.

The Alphas are at perfect attention in front of her, white faced. Proto very much does not freeze but he wants to because he can all but smell the fear wafting off of them and, much to his chagrin in certain simulations, very little frightens the Alphas.

“This batch is proving much too aggressive for standard,” Nala Se continues despite Proto’s lack of acknowledgement. “But as you have previously mentioned it would be a waste to fully scrap them and Rio Ka had an excellent suggestion I believe would work very well.”

Static washes in, washes out, leaving rage and fear exposed like shoreline at low tide. Nala Se turns her head to him, delicate neck weaving in amusement.

“Our reconditioning is much more effective now, wouldn’t you say so, Mister Fett?”

Kaminoan blood is red. Seventeen hadn’t expected that, somehow. He should have, it’s the most common blood color among living things in the galaxy, or so he’d learned during flash training. It’s a much paler shade than what he’s used to seeing splatter across the training mats or smeared across his brothers’ dark skin.

It’s also weirdly thick and viscous as is pools under Nala Se’s corpse. Proto is scowling down at his armor, nose scrunched like every cadet who’s discovered what the dark green vegetable cubes taste like.

Makes sense, Seventeen thinks, mind running unacceptably slow in imitation of the Kaminoan blood, that looks a bitch to clean out.

“ Ad’ika, ” Proto says and he’s lookin at Seventeen, face gone warm and gentle amidst the gore. “Who next?”

“What?”

Proto gestures at the corpse with his vibroblade, blood on it wet and gleaming under the lights.

“Who next,” he repeats.

Oh.

Seventeen looks at the corpse again. Thinks of waking to little brothers gone. Thinks of blood on training mats. Thinks of always hurting. Thinks of the longnecks' constant dispassionate gazes.

Thinks of how very easy it was for Proto to kill one with the simple element of surprise.

Seventeen straightens up.

“We'll show you.”

(and in the distance the hounds start to-)

-