Chapter Text
There was little on the city-planet of Coruscant that didn’t feel artificial: the sea of fluorescent lights, the scent of the smog-choked air, the nonstop cacophony of trillions of life forms eking out an existence on the most populous planet in the galaxy, the words spoken in the Senate Building on a daily basis. Only the wind felt real as it whipped through Riyo’s hair and made her eyes water, as she stood at the edge of Landing Bay 412-Peth, looking down at the world below her feet. Just one misstep and it would be a long way down—they said that there were thousands of levels to Coruscant, so deep that some low-level dwellers never saw natural light. She squinted into the hazy gloom, where the columns of winking lights converged onto a distant point like into the maw of a black hole. How long, she wondered, would it take for her to fall all the way to the bottom?
Not that she seriously had a death wish, although the past three days of this Senate session was enough for her to consider jumping. Had it been only three months since she had arrived in Coruscant so bright-eyed and ambitious, armed with her naive idealism and grand plans to change the galaxy for the better? Riyo felt like she had aged twenty years since the start of her tenure as the Senator of Pantora, not that she had anything to show for it. Every bill she had helped draft, every vote she had cast—all of it meant nothing in the face of the impenetrable majority in the Senate. Her one, small voice had been swallowed up by the loud, overpowering voice of the masses.
Her vision blurring, Riyo forced herself not to blink as to let her tears fade away. It was so hard keeping up the brave face and stiff upper lip all the time. Nobody had told her that things would be like this as a freshman senator on Coruscant: senior senators talked down to her like she was a child, her comments were routinely ignored during committee meetings, not to mention she regularly got nasty calls from constituents back home who were dissatisfied with everything she did. They didn’t seem to notice—or care—that she was a person with feelings when they treated her so hurtfully.
It was the main reason she was hiding out here—to get away from the commlink in her office. By now, she had developed a conditioned fear of the thing, and she found herself flinching involuntarily every time it rang. Were she just Riyo Chuchi, she would have just let her commlink keep ringing, but the senator of Pantora always had to pick up.
Goddess, how she missed Pantora. Missed her parents, missed her friends, missed the natural beauty and serenity of the homeworld she left behind. Why did she ever think she had any business coming to Coruscant in the first place? Riyo felt the tears spill over at last, but she roughly rubbed them away. She couldn't be crying now—she had just cried barely three months ago.
“Ma’am?!”
She started at the noise, swaying slightly on her feet.
“Ma’am, I must ask you not to move!” Even modulated through a vocoder, there was no mistaking the panic in the voice addressing her.
At the entrance to the landing bay stood a clone trooper. It was the first time she has heard one speak, and she was surprised at how deep its—his, the voice sounds male—voice is.
His armor had been painted with red accents, with the crest of the Galactic Senate splashed proudly across the chest. Riyo often saw troopers around the Senate building, but they always made themselves scarce in the presence of dignitaries. For the most part, they chose to hover in the shadows of Senate chambers and hallways, standing silent sentinel in a way that they blended into the background with the rest of the furniture. She had found their presence unsettling when she first arrived, but her peers had told her just to ignore them.
“Just let them do their jobs,” they’d said. “It’s what they’re created to do.”
Created, Riyo thought. It was an ugly word to use for someone made of flesh and blood. Yet what else could be said about a being whose sole reason for existence is war?
“Please move away from the edge,” the trooper insisted. “It’s not safe.”
Embarrassment suffused her as she realized the reason for the trooper’s panic. “I…I wasn’t planning to jump,” Riyo stammered, as she backed slowly away from the edge of the landing bay. She must have looked a sight—unkempt, teary-eyed, perched on a ledge high above the city. Small wonder the trooper thought she was suicidal.
The trooper stalked purposefully towards her, and Riyo couldn’t help her faint trill of surprise? anticipation? as he approaches. He was built tall and broad under the armor, and she saw the many weapons that bristled from his person, the rigid set of his body like that of a predator ready to spring. But despite the raw power emanating from his person, Riyo didn’t think he would harm her. He drew to a stop a respectable distance away from her, his demeanor radiating concern.
“If you want to talk to someone, I can contact a doctor or counselor for you,” the trooper offered.
“Oh no, that won’t be necessary, Trooper…” she trailed off expectantly.
The trooper inclined his helmet towards her. “CC-1010, ma’am, at your service.”
Years of instinct and deportment lessons urged her to extend a hand in greeting, but her mind spluttered to a stop when it came to giving her name.
“I’m…Maya.” The name fell, unbidden, off her tongue. Riyo didn’t know what occurred for her to give that name, of all fake names to give him. This was the name of one of her cousins, who had run off to Canto Bight and never returned. Maya had never been particularly nice to her while they were growing up.
The trooper stared at Riyo’s proffered hand like he had never seen such a gesture before. She was getting ready to drop her hand when he unexpectedly reached out—and grasped her forearm, just above the wrist. Riyo belatedly mirrored his greeting, fingers curling around the cool plastoid of his vambrace. Though he wore gloves, she could feel the searing heat of his skin like it was a brand on her skin. While Riyo was considered a good height on her homeworld, she felt utterly dwarfed by the size of this clone trooper.
But not for a moment did she feel unsafe in his presence. She knew he was many things, but dangerous was not one of them.
The awkward silence between them stretched a hair too long before the trooper—CC-1010—dropped his hand and addressed her again.
“It’s not safe for you to be out here alone, ma’am. The landing bays are exposed and unguarded. Let me escort you back inside, where it’s secure.”
“I don’t want to,” Riyo blurted out.
Going back to her office meant returning to the existence and all the troubles she had tried to escape. She came out here to be alone for a reason.
The trooper looked like he wanted to say something else, but Riyo cut him off—all the while cringing inside at her rudeness. Normally, she knew better, but she just couldn't go back yet.
“You’re here now,” Riyo added. “I think I’m plenty safe with you.”
Though it was hard to tell what the trooper was thinking, Riyo thought he might be gawking at her underneath his helmet. Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say. In hindsight, her comment could come off as...flirtatious. Could clones even register that type of speech? But since she made no attempt to move, neither did he.
“I’ve had...a rather trying day,” she confessed. “I want to get away from work, at least for a little bit.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Riyo sighed. She shrank into herself, as if trying to make herself as small as possible. “It’s just...nothing I do here seems to matter. Do you ever feel that way, sometimes?”
The trooper seemed taken aback at her comment, and it took him a few moments to answer.
“I serve the Republic, ma’am. Everything I do has purpose.”
“But what you do actually has purpose!” Riyo exclaimed. “You and the rest of the clone army are fighting the Separatists and freeing worlds from their grasp! You’re defending the Republic! Whereas I—I’m—“
“I’m just one clone commander, ma’am. And I’m stationed on Coruscant, not in the Outer Rim.”
Riyo knew, dimly, that the clone army must have some kind of command structure, so it made sense that there would be ranked officers in their midst. Come to think of it, she had noticed differences in the way the troopers’ armor was painted: many of them sported splashes of red, but never in the same pattern or location. Were the painted ones the officers?
“I’m sure you still accomplish a lot more than I do,” Riyo sighed. “Nothing I’ve done in the Senate resulted in anything.”
The trooper shifted his weight onto his heels. “Permission to speak freely?”
“Go ahead. You don’t need to ask.”
He slipped easily into parade rest, his hands clasped behind his back and helmet canted upward as if he were gazing ponderously into the distance.
“There are millions of clone soldiers in the GAR, but all of them have different assignments that are all crucial to the war effort. Would you say that a galley cook is less important than a radar officer or field medic?”
“N-no.”
“Then you shouldn’t be so harsh on yourself. Though your part seems small, your work helps keep the Senate—and the Republic—running.”
There was something benevolent about the trooper’s tone, even though his modulated voice was as toneless and artificial as the landscape. Riyo peered intently at the T-visor of the trooper’s helmet, trying to imagine what his expression might look like underneath. She wanted to imagine that his face was as kind as his words.
This encounter had proved to be the opposite of everything that she has ever heard about the clones. This trooper had been genuinely concerned for her safety, and had done his best to raise her low spirits, even though he did not know her and undoubtedly had far better things to be doing. He was not the feral animal or soulless droid the stories made him out to be; if anything, Riyo thought him far better than most of the senators she worked with.
“I suppose so,” Riyo acquiesced. “I try to do what’s best for my people, for the galaxy, but it’s hard to remember that when we’re so far removed from them.”
“Our work may be far from the front, but it is no less important.” His voice was softer now, as if he was trying to convince himself of the truth of his own words.
“For sure!” she agreed. “You took the time out of your busy schedule to comfort a senatorial aide who had a bad day. That’s plenty important.”
“Yes, even that,” he said, with all seriousness.
Despite her glum mood, Riyo found herself cracking a smile.
“The Republic is lucky to have you,” she said fervently. What she really meant, though, was, I’m lucky to have met you. Perhaps people in Coruscant weren’t so awful, after all. Well…in a manner of speaking. Clones legally were not considered people, which put a slight damper on her improved mood. It didn’t seem right or fair, not when he had treated her so kindly and expected nothing in return, unlike most of the people she interacted with on a daily basis.
”I’m just doing my job, ma’am.”
“Please, I’m just an aide. Call me Maya.”
Fox found it rather odd that the Pantoran senator gave him a false name and identity, but he didn’t dwell too long on it. He had been around senators long enough to know how devious and two-faced they are, smiling even as they betrayed each other behind their backs, making promises that they never meant to keep. As far as the senators were concerned, the clones guarding them and fighting their war were nothing more than droids made of flesh and blood—below their notice and unworthy of their attention or respect.
But from their conversation, Fox did not get the sense that Senator Chuchi was like the rest of them. If anything, she reminded him of his vod’ike when they were cadets on Kamino, unsure of themselves and looking to him for reassurance. The life and motivations of a clone cadet were simple and uncomplicated in every way those of a nat-born were not, and Fox could not say if his words had been what the senator wanted to hear.
He could scarcely believe the interaction he’d just had with her. She had offered him her hand in greeting, like she saw him as a person. She had spoken to him as an equal, which no other senator or nat-born had done before. She had listened, as if she genuinely valued his opinions.
And when she smiled at him...the only word that came to mind was sunshine.
Her little lie was probably to save face, Fox decided. Widespread knowledge of her suicide attempt—off the side of the Senate building, no less—could put a serious dent in her reputation and put her budding political career at risk. As a clone, and as a member of the Coruscant Guard, Fox had no business or desire to spread gossip; he didn’t have anyone except his brothers to share it with, and nobody of import cared about the word of a clone. Her little secret would be safe with him.
Although...if she made a regular habit of hanging out alone on the landing bays, appropriate adjustments would have to be made to the Senate compound’s security. Fox made a mental note to add this observation to her dossier, for future reference.