nova

"And Nova... well he's the quiet one, and if you're an idiot you might overlook him. But he misses nothing. Everyone expects him to grow into one of the best scouts. He adores climbing and can rappel and zipline like an adult. Gives me a heart attack when he pulls a stunt. He... has really been learning a lot on Coruscant, I don't think he wants to go back to Kamino."

nova is three years old when the clone wars grind to a halt, without ceremony for him; they aren’t told about it on kamino for another month, when the jedi come in and force the long-necks out, and the tired cadets cheer, stomping the needles and electrosphere droids into plastisteel dust, littering the no-longer sterile white hallways.

( it takes some time for the republic to decide what do to with them. )

nova is woken by the rain. at least, he thinks it’s by the rain, it has to be. but there’s something else telling him something, like one of the trainers taking his arms and gently guiding him through the motions, so he rubs his eyes and climbs out of his sleeping tube and follows it.

kamino is full of jedi now.

and despite their sad eyes and their words that say that they’re here to help, plenty of the vod’e still don’t trust them, especially not when they get their hands on holopads, announcement reels, and read the word slavery and associate it with themselves.

nova isn’t old enough to know what their lives should be. it’s all well and good for a republic he’s never seen to suddenly declare them people, but nova is three years old and has spent those three years on kamino and is still on kamino now.

which is why he gives the jedi a wide berth, bare feet padding softly down the halls as he follows the strange pull.

if his breathing apparatus allowed for it, high general plo koon thinks he would be shouting in frustration right now. semantics and politics, and there were still thousands of children wandering the halls of kamino in straight lines, because when they learned how to walk, they learned how to walk in file. was the republic really so vehement to erase their mistakes that they would leave kamino in isolation?

( there’s a grim answer deep in his chest, and he resolves to change it. )

for the past two hours now, he’s felt dark golden eyes watching him curiously.

not something uncommon on kamino, given that you’d find the same eyes in jango fett’s face, but these were boring into the back of his head, and he waits until he’s alone in one of the old genetic chambers to rumble out ‘i know you’re there. do not be afraid.’

slowly, from behind one of the pillars, walks a child about knee-tall to plo, and there’s a feeling of deja vu overcoming him as he gently sinks to a knee and reaches out a hand, to be on the child’s level. ( though the boy in front of him now is equivalent to much older than little ‘soka had been. old enough that there’s a spark of distrust, wariness, in his eyes even as he reaches out to take plo’s hand. )

‘ what is your name? ‘

‘ clone cadet 5621, sir. ‘

plo just looks steadily at him until the cadet’s gaze drops, shaggy black hair falling in his face, and the faint sense of purpose that had been with him melting away.

‘ nova, sir. ‘ he’s looking up at plo with eyes that, before all this, the kel dor would have called oxymoronic - there’s a definitive look to a child’s eyes, raw and curious and innocent, and there’s a cast all soldiers have to theirs, and the two things shouldn’t go together, but he has not seen a clone, even at this age, for which it does not. nova is frowning slightly. ‘ i’m meant to tell you something, i think. but i don’t know what. ‘

plo looks. not through his goggles, but he closes his eyes and focuses. all clones have vastly different force signatures. nova’s is bright, and fiercely so, and for a moment, plo almost wonders if that’s how he got his name. no, the kaminoans said that they eliminated force sensitivity from their creations as a possibility. right?

but there is a golden thread of energy linking him to the clone cadet, ghostly and hanging from nova’s small-bright presence, and when plo opens his eyes, he sees nova’s eyes focused in the same place, where the line ran through the force.

so they were wrong about just one more thing.