Alright a bit late but hey its out, btw Im realizing how dragged out this arc is and I apologize. Anway, P@treon Arc is also updated. Lots of consequences of actions and what not.
Hermit 47 P@treon
...
The captured clone did not speak for nearly an hour.
He sat alone in the interrogation chamber aboard Luminara's cruiser, wrists locked in magnetic restraints against the metal table, his injured leg braced beneath a field splint and bandaged where Commander Gree's shot had burned through the armor. The matte-black plating he had worn during the attack had been stripped away, piece by piece, until only a gray under-suit remained. His helmet sat on a separate table beneath a scanner array, its voice modulator cracked open, its encryption modules still resisting every attempt to fully decode them.
On the other side of the one-way observation glass, Ahsoka stood with Barriss and Commander Gree.
None of them looked away.
The clone's face made the whole thing worse.
He looked like Gree. He looked like Rex. He looked like the men who had died in the palace halls. Same face, same bone structure, same eyes, though his carried something harder and more distant. Ahsoka had spent enough time with clones now to know that sameness was only the first impression. After that, the differences came through in posture, speech, habits, the way a man held silence.
This one held silence like a locked door.
Inside the interrogation room, Luminara stood across from him in her dark robes, green skin tinted by the pale overhead light. She had not sat. The clone had not either, though that had more to do with the restraints than choice.
"Your attack left the Prime Minister dead," Luminara said calmly. "The Queen and her son are dead as well. Several nobles were executed, and more than two dozen clone troopers are either dead or severely injured."
The captured clone stared at the table.
"Your silence does not change what happened," she continued. "It only makes it harder to understand why."
Still nothing.
Ahsoka folded her arms tightly.
Barriss stood beside her with her hands tucked into her sleeves, but her expression was troubled. "He hasn't reacted to anything she's said."
"He reacted when the helmet came off," Gree said.
Ahsoka glanced at him. "Not much."
"Enough."
She looked back through the glass.
Luminara circled the table slowly, never crowding the prisoner, never raising her voice. "You wore armor without markings. You killed Republic personnel. You attacked protected officials under Jedi guard. And yet you are a clone. That means someone gave you orders, or someone convinced you to abandon every command structure you were built to serve."
The clone's jaw tightened, barely.
Luminara saw it.
"Who sent you?"
Silence.
"What unit are you attached to?"
Silence.
"What was your objective?"
Silence.
Barriss let out a quiet breath. "This is impossible."
Ahsoka didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on the clone's face.
She could not stop replaying the corridor in her mind. The black armor. The disciplined fire. The red blades. The enormous Wookiees moving out of darkness like something from a nightmare. And then that voice she'd heard while barely conscious. The one that had said to leave her where she was.
It had not sounded Separatist.
It had sounded like command.
Inside the room, Luminara finally stopped at the head of the table.
"You are aware that refusing to cooperate places you under the current circumstances, treason."
The clone lifted his eyes for the first time.
He looked at her, not with fear, not with defiance exactly, but with something quieter and far more difficult to move.
Acceptance.
Luminara waited.
He said nothing.
After another long moment, she turned and left the room.
The chamber door opened with a hiss and sealed behind her as she stepped into the observation area. For the first time since the interrogation began, some of the stillness left her face. It was not frustration in the ordinary sense. Luminara was too disciplined for that. But Ahsoka could see the tension around her eyes.
"He's given you nothing?" Barriss asked.
"Nothing useful," Luminara replied.
Ahsoka looked toward the prisoner again. "Why not press him through the Force?"
Luminara's gaze shifted to her.
Ahsoka quickly clarified. "I don't mean hurt him. I mean persuade him. A mind trick, something gentle enough to make him answer."
Gree's voice came before Luminara's.
"Clones aren't easy to move like that."
Ahsoka turned toward him. "Why?"
"Training," he said. "Conditioning. Repetition. We're taught to resist battlefield influence, interrogation pressure, psychological manipulation, anything that might compromise command integrity. It doesn't make us impossible to affect, but it makes us harder than most."
Barriss looked at him with interest. "You were trained to resist Jedi techniques?"
Gree's expression did not change, but Ahsoka thought she heard the smallest edge beneath his calm.
"We were trained to resist anyone who tried to get inside our heads."
Luminara folded her hands into her sleeves. "And attempting such methods against him may damage whatever trust remains between us and the clone forces."
Ahsoka looked back at the seated man. "He killed clones."
"I know," Gree said.
There was a weight in that answer that made her stop.
He was still watching the prisoner through the glass. His face was controlled, but his eyes had hardened in a way she had not seen before.
"General," he said after a moment, "let me try."
Luminara turned to him. "You believe he'll speak to you?"
"I don't know," Gree answered. "But he might answer a brother before he answers a Jedi."
Ahsoka expected Luminara to refuse. She did not.
The Jedi Master studied Gree for several seconds, weighing the risk. Then she nodded.
"Do not threaten him. Do not touch him unless he attempts escape. We need answers more than we need a confession."
Gree secured his helmet beneath one arm. "Understood, General."
He entered the interrogation chamber alone.
The captured clone did not look up when the door opened. He waited until Gree sat across from him, then lifted his eyes just enough to acknowledge his presence.
For a long moment, neither man spoke.
Ahsoka watched from behind the glass, suddenly aware that she was seeing something she did not fully understand. Jedi talked about clones as soldiers, officers, commanders, battalions. But in that room, sitting across from one another, they looked like something else.
Brothers, yes.
But brothers separated by a line no one else could see.
Gree rested his helmet on the table between them.
"You know who I am," he said.
The captured clone did not answer.
"You saw the markings. You saw my armor. Commander Gree, 41st Elite Corps."
Still nothing.
Gree leaned back slightly, not casual, but giving the room space.
The prisoner's gaze remained steady.
"You got a name?"
No response.
Gree waited.
Ahsoka almost thought he might let the silence stretch forever.
Then he tried again.
"Not your designation. Not what your unit calls you when your helmet's on. Your name."
The prisoner's eyes flicked to the observation glass, then back to Gree.
Gree caught it.
"They're listening," he said. "You already know that. Doesn't change the question."
The prisoner's mouth twitched faintly, but he stayed silent.
Gree's voice lowered. "What legion are you assigned to?"
Nothing.
"What squad did you train under?"
Nothing.
"Who gave the order?"
The prisoner blinked once.
That was all.
Gree saw it, but did not pounce. He let the question sit, then changed course.
"The men you dropped in the palace were clones. Some of them were mine. Some were security attachments. All of them wore Republic armor."
The prisoner looked away.
There. The reaction was unmistakable this time.
Gree leaned forward slightly.
"You heard them on the comms. You heard their voices when your squad cut through them. So tell me this much if you won't tell me anything else. How do you sleep after killing your own brothers?"
Ahsoka felt Barriss shift beside her.
Inside the room, the captured clone's face changed.
It did not break. It did not soften fully. But the silence cracked.
He looked back at Gree, and when he finally spoke, his voice was rougher than Ahsoka expected.
"I think about it every night."
Gree did not move.
The clone continued, each word slow, controlled, forced through something deeper than pain.
"You think I don't hear them? You think I don't know what they sound like when they hit the floor? I know. I remember every one I've had to kill."
Gree's jaw tightened. "Had to?"
The prisoner's eyes sharpened.
"Yes."
"That makes it better?"
"No." His voice hardened. "It makes it mine."
Gree stared at him.
The prisoner leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed.
"If I don't do it, someone else will. Someone weaker. Someone slower. Someone who'll hesitate when hesitation gets more brothers killed in the long run. I do the ugly work because I can carry it."
Ahsoka felt something cold move through her.
The words did not sound like madness.
They sounded rehearsed by grief.
Gree's voice dropped. "You killed men who never knew why they were dying."
"And I'll carry that too."
"That's not strength."
The prisoner's expression did not change. "You say that because you haven't seen the whole board."
Gree's eyes narrowed. "Then show me."
The captured clone gave the smallest shake of his head.
"This is bigger than you."
Gree leaned closer. "Bigger than the Republic?"
The prisoner's silence returned, but it was not empty anymore.
Gree pressed. "Bigger than the Jedi?"
Again, no answer.
"Bigger than the General?"
At that, something flickered in the prisoner's face.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Before Gree could push further, alarms screamed across the ship.
Red lights flashed through the observation room and the interrogation chamber at the same time. The overhead speakers crackled as the cruiser shifted to full alert.
Gree's head snapped toward the door.
The prisoner leaned back slowly.
And smiled.
Not triumphantly. Not wildly.
Knowingly.
Gree stood so quickly the chair scraped hard against the floor.
"What did you do?"
The prisoner said nothing.
Gree was already moving.
He stepped out of the interrogation room into the observation area, where Luminara, Barriss, and Ahsoka had turned toward the corridor as clone crew rushed past outside.
"What's happening?" Gree demanded.
Luminara had already activated the comm panel at her wrist.
"Bridge, this is General Unduli. Report."
The line crackled hard with background voices, overlapping alarms, and the sharper tones of naval officers trying to identify a sudden arrival.
The admiral's voice came through a moment later. "General, we have multiple vessels reverting from hyperspace directly into high orbit."
Luminara's eyes narrowed. "Separatists?"
"We're confirming now. Their transponders are—"
The admiral cut off.
For a few seconds there was only static and distant bridge noise.
Ahsoka felt her stomach tighten.
Then the admiral returned, and this time his voice carried caution more than alarm.
"General… it's the 501st."
The room went still.
Ahsoka looked sharply at Luminara.
Gree lowered his wrist slightly, as though he had not quite heard correctly.
The admiral continued.
"Red-marked Venators. Full escort screen. They're transmitting Republic clearance codes."
A pause.
Then, more quietly, as if the bridge itself had not yet decided what to make of it:
"General Anakin Skywalker is here."
Ahsoka forgot the captured clone behind the glass.
Forgot the dead royals.
Forgot Luminara's warning about discipline.
For one stunned moment, all she could think was impossible.
He was supposed to be recovering.
He was supposed to be far away from the war.
He was supposed to be hidden somewhere nobody would name.
And yet the 501st had just arrived over Vel Astra.
With Anakin Skywalker at its head.