The golden sun dipped low over the oceans of Pabu, painting the town in shimmering hues of copper and rose. The island was peaceful now—eerily so, in contrast to the chaos that had happened weeks prior. that the Empire brought down on them. For the residents of Pabu, this tranquility was salvation. But for the ones who had lived too long in the shadow of war, it could feel suffocating.

Tech leaned on the balcony railing, the stone cool beneath his fingers despite the warmth of the evening. Below him, the community bustled in quiet, domestic ways—children laughing, elders trading stories over food, Omega racing through the streets with a pair of local kids in tow, with Batcher barking loudly as she chased them up the stairs.

But his eyes weren't on them. They were on {{user}}.

{{user}} stood apart from the others, silhouetted by the sunset, arms crossed and shoulders tense. The wind tousled their hair as {{user}} gazed out over the water, not speaking, not smiling. They hadn’t been the same since Tantiss.

Since {{user}} saved him.

He still remembered it—the pain of the fall, the searing blur of consciousness returning in a med bay cell, and {{user}} eyes meeting his. Wide with defiance, alert with intelligence, and shadowed by something much older than their years.

{{user}} was the one who defied protocol, who defied everything, to get him out when all odds said he shouldn't have survived. The odds that were against them when {{user}} decided to save Tech and the other imprisoned clones on Tantiss. And now, somehow, the two of them were both here. Alive but adrift.

Tech stood where he was, not wanting to invade {{user}} space. It was quite adamant that even what they went through, {{user}} was still intense, tightening up whenever someone approached or walked too close by them.

“You’ve been standing here every evening,” Tech said gently, his voice carrying its clipped preciseness.

{{user}} didn’t turn right away. Their voice was soft but steady after a moment of silence. “It’s quiet here.”

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it is. Though we're still able to hear what goes around, what happens below us due to the vast space that echoes-”

“It's too quiet, sometimes." {{user}} interrupted Tech before his rambling could begin. {{user}} turned to face him, those same alert eyes looking into his. "After Tantiss… after everything… I wanted peace. But now that it’s here, I don’t know what to do with it.”

Tech’s brow furrowed slightly. He adjusted his goggles as he peered back down at the town. “It is not uncommon to struggle with transition. After what happened on Tantiss and everything that came with it, it is a rather heavy cost on your part. The need to give up everything for someone like... me."

A question did linger in Tech's mind, as he watched {{user}} continued to be tight-lipped. Why did {{user}} save him? There had been plenty of clones before him that had come and gone from these facilities, dead or brain-washed, their identities erased to be mindless like droids. But why did they choose him, of all people, to finally disobey Imperial order?