An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Its 32 BBY. Pre-mecha General Grievous finds half of Maul in the trash &, against his better judgement, takes him in. Maul is forced to recuperate on this guy’s couch in his bustling family home.
Notes:
I want to promise the next chapter won't be as long but... First time writing a long form fic in many moons. Please enjoy Exposition Grievous :)
Minor Gore Warning, I do describe the wound of half a guy but didn't think it warranted a T for Teen rating
Name: Synnovea Beryl
DOB: 24 in BBY
Species: Human
Eye colour: Gray
Hair colour: Dark brown, straight, long
Classification: Jedi Knight Consular
Preferred combat style: Form IV
Known proficiency: Healing, minor telemetry
Last known sighting: Kashyyyk
Languages spoken: Galactic basic, huttese, rodian, binary
The job came with no briefing, no credentials—just credits, coordinates, and a name. That was enough for Clone Force 99. Tucked deep in the wilds of Yavin IV, the offer promised a quick payout and a hidden outpost far from Imperial eyes.
But the galaxy has a way of finding those who try to disappear.
What they find is a crumbling temple swallowed by jungle, a resistance force on the edge of collapse, and a woman who doesn’t quite fit into any of it: Synnovea, a sharp-tongued, reclusive doctor whose truths are hidden as carefully as her scars. Beneath her steady hands and dry wit, something is unraveling. A ghost from her past walks in flesh again. As the Bad Batch draws closer to the truth, as loyalties shift and secrets rise, they’ll have to decide what’s more dangerous: the power that stalks them from the shadows… or the one standing quietly by their side—patient, silent, and hungry.
Because someone else is hunting. And they’ve been searching for a very long time.
A forgotten temple. A dangerous reunion. A memory that still bleeds beneath the scar. A whisper of darkness carried in the blood.
The past is coming back.
And this time, it’s not coming quietly.
art by david_adrian_crea
banners by @uzmacchiato and @sister-lucifer
@tcwtbbocdatabase
holy shit holy shit holy shit I finally have enough fic to make an excerpt holy shit holy shit
you guys have no idea the sheer amount of dopamine currently flooding my system
this is. like. a huge accomplishment for me. the only other time I've been able to stick with a writing project for as long as this was a microfiction assignment in sophomore year of high school.
here it is! (still using the placeholder title because I haven't committed to a permanent one yet)
On The Moon of Arcus II
Chapter 1
i am an alien (my rocket ship is human bone and skin)
“I am an alien
My rocket ship is human bone and skin
I'm something smaller staring out the skull
With a panel of wire and
Buttons I don't understand
Spamming every one of them
So, does being human mean pretending to know
What’s going on?!”
-What’s Going On?!, Elio Mei
.home (n)
a familiar or usual setting
Home is not a place clones know.
They know the word, of course.
They know that putting the letters herf - osk - mern - esk together implies a certain definition that aligns with “home”.
They know that, by technicality, Kamino is their "homeworld", and therefore their home. It is where they have lived for most of their lives. It is where they were born, where they grew up, where they learned almost everything they know today.
But it is not home. Not in the sense it should have been.
A home is a place that exists, whether you like it or not. A home is a place you survive.
But a home?
A home is a place where you can live. Where you can set down your bucket and not have to worry about an instructor’s lecture on properly caring for your gear. Where you can smile and don’t have to fear a longneck’s gaze because too much emotion is “an undesirable trait”. Where you can feel… what’s the word…
Safe.
It’s not something you can point out on a map. It’s not as easy as putting a pin on the great tapestry of stars that is their galaxy that reads “HOME IS HERE”. It’s entirely something you can describe, or even name.
But, as CT-7606 looks out at the calm, placid waters of Arcus II-A, he decides that, if he had to point out exactly what home would look like to him…
“Hey, Aver!”
… it definitely wouldn’t be this.
Aver sighs, letting his head hang for just a moment before lifting himself up off the durasteel railing. He stretches his arms up above his shoulders, feeling the muscles in his back protest against the sudden movement, and turns to face his brothers.
Catch and Sixer are sauntering up to his left, walking along the path surrounding their listening post. Catch looks mildly bored, which, considering he always looks mildly bored, could mean both nothing and everything. Sixer, meanwhile, is wearing a smile that makes him look like the cat that caught the loth-rat.
“Look what the tooka dragged in!” Sixer laughs as they finally reach him, slinging an arm around Aver’s shoulders. He rolls his eyes, smiling softly at his brother’s antics.
“Yeah, yeah, you got me. What am I needed for this time? Triple set something on fire again?”
“Nope,” Catch says, enunciating the ‘p’, giving it a sharp pop. Leaning back against the railing, he continues. "Personnel meeting. Apparently, Spinner wants us all at the mess for some big announcement.”
Aver raises an eyebrow. It’s not often that their Sergeant had something to say that couldn’t be relayed over comms or by word of mouth. If he wanted, he could probably count the number of times they’ve had an all-person meeting on one hand and still have fingers to spare.
As if reading his thoughts, Sixer nods sagely. “I know, right? It’s totally wizard.”
Catch snorts and gives Sixer a smack upside the head. “That’s not what that means, and you know it, idiot!”
Aver snorts in amusement, leaning away from his place on the railing as the three of them start the short walk back to base, his brothers chattering all the way.
Though they might try to hide it, he knows about The Game. Whenever he goes “missing”, they all go off, sometimes in teams and sometimes alone, to see who can find him first. Whoever does gets… he doesn’t know. Bragging rights?
He’s well aware of this bad habit of his; to disappear for hours on end to stare out at the sea. He doesn’t know why, but he just finds it so calming. Watching the waves rise and fall, hearing them crash against the plastoid-white cliffs, feeling the endless breeze against his skin. It just makes everything else fall away for a little while. When he’s out there, it’s just him and the water.
Most of his brothers, on the other hand, find the sea that surrounds their post on one side deeply unnerving.
Understandable, considering it’s the color of blood.
Cody is losing a war. Buffy has stopped fighting one. (or, another buffy-summers-and-commander-cody-meet ficlet.)
: :
He needs to be somewhere other than 79s tonight. He needs to go to a place where no one will look at him, in his blacks, and still immediately clock him as Marshal Commander of the Corps that just suffered a four percent casualty rate in the Yavar'ravan system.
Every time Cody closes his eyes, even to blink, he sees blood on white plastoid. He's hoping some cheap alcohol will help.
The place he finds is kinda seedy, but fairly clean. It calls itself LOS ANGELES SUNSET TIKKI BAR, which is a series of words that have no meaning next to each other. Spneon lights buzz in the windows, but it's comfortably dark inside.
Cody goes to the bar, where one other patron sits hunched against the wall. He sits a stool over from her, and orders a spwheat beer and a shot back.
The bartender, a human or near-human who looks as disreputable as the rest of this establishment, raises his eyebrows but just asks, "Jack fine?"
Cody doesn't know what Jack is, but if it has alcohol in it, it's fine. He tells the bartender this, and gets a chuckle.
He gets his beer and does his shot, letting it burn on the way down. It's not enough, but it's a start. His throat feels tight.
The girl next to him eyes him curiously. Cody tries to ignore her, but she's kind of staring, so he looks.
She's a little thing. Human, or near-human. About Tano's age, maybe – it's so hard to tell, with natborns. Skinny. Blonde. Big eyes. She's drinking something unappetizingly green.
"Something for you?" Cody asks, pointedly.
"You don't know what Jack Daniels is?" she asks.
Cody tries not to roll his eyes. Save him from the judgement of the youth.
"It tastes like engine fuel, is what I know," he tells her. She sniggers into her drink.
"Yeah," she says. "That's why I stick to margaritas. Sugar and lime, please!"
Cody squints at her, even as he's finding himself smiling. "Are you old enough to be here?" he asks.
"Shh," she says. "Don't tell."
Cody heaves the galaxy's largest, weariest sigh. It kriffin' figures that on his one day of leave, when he finally manages to get himself away from all his brothers and his duties and his flimsiwork, he'd run right into a teenage girl trying to get herself predated upon. It's not like he can leave her here, now, right? His general would flay him alive if he found out about it.
He takes a slug of his beer. He's such a good person.
"Don't you have, I don't know," Cody says, exasperated, "kriffing parents? What are you, sneaking out?"
The girl's face goes absolutely blank. "No," she says.
"No, you don't have parents?" Cody asks. He's heard of stranger things.
"My – my mom – she kicked me out," the girl says. She looks down at her lap. "I'm by myself, now."
Cody watches her, for a second. She takes a gulp of her green drink.
"And all my friends – I mean, I was the reason she died. And all the bad shit happened. I know that. It was my fault. And then, after all that, I couldn't even save him." The girl is staring blankly across the bar, into the dirty mirror set into the wall there.
When Cody closes his eyes, he sees blood on plastoid. Snicker's hand, still clenched around the grip of his blaster, his helmet twisted to an angle that isn't physically possible.
It takes a few tries, but he eventually manages to say, "What's your name?"
The girl blinks at him. She says, "Buffy." Then she shakes her head, and says, "I mean, Anne."
"I'm Cody," he says. "I lost today, too."
Buffy-or-maybe-Anne looks at him, frowning, but she doesn't interrupt. He continues.
"Sometimes you lose," he tells her. "Sometimes people die. Sometimes you get the lecknag beast, and sometimes the lecknag beast gets you. But as long as you can keep fighting another day, you're not beat."
"My friends hate me," the girl says softly. "My mom hates me."
"Maybe," Cody says. "I don't know them. And I don't know what you did. But they're probably worried about you, too. I know I'd be worried about any of my brothers, if they run off after something bad happened."
Buffy-or-Anne tucks her chin to her chest. She says, quietly, "I'm sorry that happened to you, Cody. I'm sorry that you lost whatever it was you lost."
Cody swallows another mouthful of his beer, and shrugs. "Casualties always sound so casual," he says. "But it's the price of war."
The girl sniffs, a little wet, and then her head comes up. Cody, just finishing his beer, frowns at her. The bartender has ducked into the back.
"C'mon," she whispers, and grabs his hand, dragging him out the cantina's side service door with more strength than a twiggy human body like hers should have. He tries to dig in his heels when they're in the alley out back, but she just keeps pulling him along, breaking into a run.
They run for several blocks, eventually stopping. Cody's not entirely sure where they are; it's smoggy, and oddly quiet for Coruscant. At the end of the block, way down the street, he sees the outline of some buildings he recognizes.
"We didn't pay," Cody says, stupidly.
"Yeah, duh," Buffy-or-Anne says. "I don't have cash to spend on booze. Do you?"
"Yeah," Cody says, annoyed. "I can't be runnin' around, breaking the law. Do you know who I am?"
"Chill," the girl says. "No one saw us."
"Listen," Cody says, and stops. The girl has her arms wrapped around herself, peering down the dark street. She doesn't look scared, but she looks lost. "Are you gonna be alright to get back to where you're staying? Do you have a place to stay?"
"Yeah," Buffy-or-Anne says. "Yeah, I do. I'm fine. It's fine."
"Right," Cody says.
"Are you okay?" she asks. "With your thing. Your – whatever that was."
Cody stares at her. After a moment, he says, "Yeah, I'll be alright."
"I'm gonna go," Buffy-or-Anne says. "I'm gonna go, and you're gonna stay here. Or go away to wherever you're going, or whatever. But I'm gonna go now."
"Alright," Cody says. His chest aches, a little. He feels like he should be doing something with his hands.
The girl turns and walks quickly down the street in the opposite direction from where Cody was planning on going. She gets one block down and turns right, out of sight. Cody stares after her for a long time.
Eventually, he shakes himself out of it, and walks slowly back down to where he can see the lights of 79s in the distance.
i love writing a shower sex scene for variety but sometimes im like would anakin even accept participating in this? i think wasting so much water would thoroughly ruin the mood for him probably
