You don't exactly realize how quickly everything can change until the world suddenly gets flipped on its head. One minute, it's an average day on the job, and the next you're bearing witness to events that will change the course of the galaxy forever.

Order 66 wasn't expected. No one knew it was coming until it was issued, and if anybody did know, then they sure as hell never warned any of us. I heard whispers of CT-5555 going nuts and rambling about a conspiracy, how one day one of the 501st went crazy and shot one of his Jedi, and rumors flowing in from reports on Mandalore about how some Dathomiri was screaming about the end of the Republic, but this... How we couldn't have seen it coming is beyond me.

There were so many warning signs, and yet somehow no one managed to see the biggest one of all.

Tor and I had been out on Coruscant when the transmission came in.

It was the day everything changed.

We were running a routine patrol. It was nothing very serious as far as the day was concerned. We assisted with a break-in or two, but nothing excessive. The day was going well, all things considered. We had been talking about something when our comms beeped. Tor pulled his comms out first as I fished for mine, and I saw him flick it on to see the grainy figure of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine pop onto the screen.

"Execute Order 66," he said.

The words meant nothing to me, but Tor instantly changed. His entire body went taut and rigid, and he gave one nod, "It will be done, sir." He looked at me, "We need to go and start checking the hangars for runaway Jedi. If they've turned on the Senate, they can't be allowed to escape."

I wanted to protest. It didn't make any sense at all. The Jedi would never do something like that, regardless of what I personally felt about them. They were the guardians of the Republic. I couldn't make sense of any of it, but whatever the Chancellor had told Tor seemed to click for him before it did me. I didn't argue, though. When I went to, something in the back of my head, some buried survival instinct, told me to keep my kriffing mouth shut. It probably saved my life.

One person came to mind amid the chaos and confusion.

Where was Talen, and was he alright? He couldn't have been involved in that whole mess, surely. I didn't know it at the time, but all across the galaxy, my brothers had turned their blasters from Separatists onto their own Jedi - men and women who they knew and cared about, who they were friends with - and they couldn't stop themselves.

I followed Tor anyway, getting the sinking feeling in my gut that arguing within would be a bad idea. He wasn't himself. Neither were the other Guardsmen we passed. They all walked with that same rigid, taut posture. Ramrod straight backs, measured steps, eyes locked dead ahead. It was unnerving and it was the first inkling I had that something wasn't quite right. Usually, we would be chatting together or humming something or looking round in some idle state, but every single Clone I passed was walking around like a droid.

The next inkling I had was when a Jedi saw us and moved towards us, clearly trying to keep a low profile, "Guardsmen! Thank the stars. Something has happened. I need to-"

Tor didn't even hesitate to shoot the Jedi at point-blank range and then fill them with holes.

This was Tor we were talking about. This was the Clone who loved Jedi more than he loved himself, the Clone who would hold Talen's lightsaber with stars in his eyes and a childish wonder written across his face, the Clone who would lay down his life for a Padawan he barely knew.

Whoever that was wasn't him.

I refused to believe it.

The real Tor died when Palpatine gave that transmission. Believing that makes it easier to live with at the end of the day.

*

We marched into a hangar filled with boxes and Tor scanned the area as he turned to me, "I'll take the next one over, sir. You manage this one."

I nodded, too scared to speak for fear that he'd realize that whatever spell had fallen over him hadn't managed to sink its talons into me yet. I hadn;t put the pieces together on why he was like that and I wasn't. As I looked through the various containers, I tried to put pieces together. I had never even heard of Order 66. I knew we had a list of coded orders in the event of infiltration, seizures of power, coups, and the like, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out where Order 66 even came from. Something was already not adding up in my mind.

I prowled through the hangar hoping that I wouldn't find what I was looking for. If I could go through the whole place and not find a single Jedi, I would be happy. Whatever I felt about them, I knew that whatever we were doing wasn't right.

It wasn't going to end the way I wanted. Nothing those few days I was forced to patrol those places did. There was this sinking feeling coming on and it was going to drive me insane. It didn't take me long to figure out why.

I heard something in one of the crates. I wanted to walk away. I wanted to pretend that I didn't hear it, but when I heard it again, I knew I couldn't just walk by. I turned to the crate and walked over to it, silently hoping I would open it up and it would just be a loth-cat inside or something, maybe a womp rat.

Instead, I opened it up to find a crate full of younglings. They were all staring up at me, utterly terrified.

I wasn't supposed to be something that scared them. I was supposed to be someone that kept them safe, but they were looking at me like I was some horrifying demon that was out to kill them. I knew what my orders were. I knew exactly what I was expected to do.

The Jedi had turned on the Republic. That much I knew if Tor was telling me exactly what he knew this Order 66 was supposed to do.

I didn't want to believe it.

They were the enemy, according to the Chancellor.

I had my orders.

Something stopped me when I went to raise my blaster, though.

They were kids. They were younger than even Talen was when he was on Geonosis - all of them around five or six, wide-eyed and shaking. These were actual children, some barely old enough to be away from their families, and my orders were to kill them. They weren't traitors. Their masters, maybe, but those kids?

I was a lot of things, but I wasn't a baby killer.

I heard someone charge a blaster behind me. "Drop the weapon, Clone."

Things that weren't going to happen: that.

I spun around with a kick and it connected with a quickly raised arm. I recognized Major Venn instantly, but he seemed to be under the impression that I was in the same scenario as my brothers. We found one another staring down the barrels of each other's blasters just before they flew from our hands and Venn went soaring backward into one of the crates.

"Stop!" I turned to the voice and saw Talen. He slung the blasters away and locked eyes with me behind my visor as I pulled my helmet off. He hesitated a moment, something he had never done before when it came to me, but I felt him reach out. It was like someone had their thoughts in my head, probing somewhere deep, but not in a way that was close to intrusive. After a moment of uncertainty, he bolted across the hangar and threw his arms around my neck. "I knew they wouldn't get you," he whispered against my neck as I returned the embrace.

I wrapped my arms around him and couldn't bring myself to let go for a long time.

He was alive.

That was all that mattered to me.

"What happened to your Clones?" I asked as we clung to one another.

His silence and the way his body stiffened in my arms was my answer. They were like Tor. I just knew it. It only made me squeeze him tighter to give him something else to think about, something else to focus on.

"Touching," Venn had pushed himself up as we reluctantly pulled away from each other - from the one comfort either of us had, "but mind explaining how you're not a murderous killer right now?"

"I have no clue, but Tor..." I trailed off. Both of them understood - Talen more than Venn.

"Kando, I'm sorry," Talen reached out and took ahold of my hand like he used to do when he was younger. His hand was trembling in mine and I saw him shaking despite how calm he was trying to keep himself. All I wanted to do was keep him safe.

"There has to be a way we can find out what's going on..." Venn snarled as he went back and boxed the crates back up before the droids continued lifting them up onto the rickety old transport. He slowly turned to Talen, and I knew what he wanted to ask him to do as a look came over his face.

I shoved the kid back behind me, "Don't you dare, shabuir."

"We need answers, Captain!" Venn countered as he jabbed his hand at me.

"How about you both let me decide!" Talen shouted from being me, making both Venn and I turn to him. He was standing with his fists balled up and shaking, whether it was with fear, adrenaline, or anger, I didn't know. He turned to Venn, "I am not your personal crystal ball! Don't ever assume I will use my powers just to give you an edge!" Then he looked up at me, his voice softening, "And I'm not helpless." He passed me up and stood between us, slowly closing his eyes before he reached out and held out his hand to me.

I took it. No questions asked.

He stood there for a long time before his face suddenly seized before it contorted into pain as he began to speak.

"Screaming..." Talen muttered, "Screaming, trapped inside their heads... They don't want to do it. Bodies moving on their own like droids... Some of them don't even know. Good soldiers follow orders... It's all they hear. Over and over again. One of them knew the girl since she was a Padawan. Watched her grow up... They were friends, but he gunned her down and couldn't stop himself... He's replaying the memory over and over again... I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Please, forgive me. I can't control this at all. I'm sorry..." Talen looked up at me with tears in his eyes as he brought his hands to his ears and shook his head, "So much pain... What did we do to them?" He finally looked away and blinked away tears that began to roll down his cheeks, "I am so sorry... We did this to all of you...

Here my vode were, killing his own people, and he was apologizing to me. I pulled him to me and wrapped him into a hug, making sure the only thing he could feel was me.

Venn watched him and looked away, "I think I know what happened... They played you all from the beginning, this Sidious and his henchmen. They played all of us... This war, you Clones, all of it just some elaborate game of sabacc where everyone loses except the one who set it up..." He finally looked up at us, "I lost contact with my friend in the Techno Union. I later got confirmation from my droids that he was assassinated. Everything that has happened was a massive, long-winded powerplay..."

"And we just walked right into it," I replied with a shake of my head.

Talen looked up at me, "No, you were the real victims here. You all never had a choice in any of this... I don't hate you. None of you. I hate whoever did this to us."

I saw it in his eyes. It was that fire that I knew would consume him in the end, and I couldn't bring myself to see it happen. I rested on hand on the back of his head as he pressed the side of it against my chest, "Jedi don't hate, kid. Remember?"

"They took everything from me!" I didn't need to see his face to know that he was crying. "My home, my master, my friends... my family," he looked up at me as he spoke, "and I'm scared, Kando. I'm so kriffing scared."

He tightened his arms around me almost instinctively and I held him tighter in response as I looked up at Venn, "Can you keep him safe? Get him off-planet?"

Venn nodded, "That's the plan, Captain."

Talen shoved away from me, eyes wide, "You're coming with us, right?"

I smiled at him and shook my head, "Not this time, kid."

Talen's face fell. He looked so lost and desperate when he looked at me, and it genuinely caused me pain to see him like that. "Why not?" He sounded small when he spoke, too small for the fledgling Jedi I knew he was.

"If I come with you," I began as I rested my hands on his shoulders, "I'll be putting all of you at risk. I'll stay here, claim I never saw you, and wait for my chance to leave." He dropped his head, but I moved my hands to his cheeks and lifted them up to me, "You need to be strong, Tal. We're family, remember? We'll find one another again. I swear to you we will."

He threw himself into my arms again. "I'll never forget this, Kando," he whispered.

"You will always be my family," I said the words as we stepped away, and I saw the gratitude there instead of the fire now, and it made me swell inside in a way I never felt before. "Never let them stop you, Talen. You're a good man. No matter how dark this galaxy becomes, never let them take that light away from you."

"I won't... buir." I think when he said those words to me that I understood what Wylan felt when I called him that for the very first time.

As the last of the crates loaded, I watched Talen climb up into the cargo hold with them before I finally turned to Venn, who was watching me the entire time. "Take care of that kid, Major," I nodded after Talen, finding it harder and harder to keep my composure.

Venn slowly nodded, "I won't forget this, Captain. You saved a lot of lives today. We'll come back for you. Just you wait."

He climbed up into the freighter beside Izvoshra, who I caught sitting in the co-pilot's seat, and the old ship rumbled to life and lifted off just moments before Tor rejoined me and watched the fly off. "Find anything?" He asked his tone more robotic than conversational, and I shook my head and steeled my voice.

"No. The ships were clear."

"Let's get going, then." It felt like I was talking to a droid with the way he robotically replied and turned to walk away. I wanted to throw up.

I told myself I could wait a few years for Venn to find me again and break me out, or maybe for Talen to find some way to come and find me. It was a long shot, but there was this selfish, naive part of me that thought for even just a tiny moment that maybe - just maybe - they'd find me. That maybe teaching in that academy on Coruscant would make me easy enough to find again. That maybe somehow my name and location would get leaked by someone, by anyone, and I would be able to go home to my family on Concordia.

So, I waited.

I waited until the Republic was a shadow and the Empire had risen to take its place.

Venn never came back.

Neither did Talen.

In the place of Talen and any children I dreamed of having, a lanky cadet from Corellia came into my life and taught me how to live again.. even if it was only for a couple of years.