[ A teacher. All right. He can probably do that. The only teachers he has any familiarity with are the ones who instruct cadets but it can't possibly be that different - and he knows that there are plenty of kids who attend regular classes and, failing that, rich kids who have their own personal tutors. ]
Yeah. We can work with that, [ he says slowly. ] I'll act as your tutor. Rich kids get... [ He waves one hand vaguely, as though to describe something he has no experience with with gesture alone. ] Taken around enough.
[ All right, so the only frame of reference he has for that are holos, knowledge of some Senators' children and, of course, a holobook or two that someone had smuggled in as contraband.
He finds himself considering what it must be like to be Jar Jar's tutor and is suddenly, deeply glad that he's with this pesky youngling instead. ]
Oh, we're definitely going to be edified by the end of this.
[The train lurches forward with a lot of clanking and chuffing, and the cargo rattles around. Vima can feel all the bumps and jolts reverberating up from her bum through the rest of her. It's novel, but not totally comfortable. Honestly it drives home how primitive this planet is compared to everywhere else she's been... and she's been to many places.
Well, there's no knowing how long they're going to be in here for. Might as well start the edification now....]
Tensions have been rising for a number of years now, but active warfare's only been going on for the past two years.
[ Rex seems to have finally relaxed now that they're moving at a decent clip, safe in their little makeshift bunker. If they're going to get into any trouble for what they're doing, it'll be once they get to where they want to be, so that'll be quite all right. ]
With any luck, it won't be lasting much longer.
[ Both sides are running out of resources, and quickly. The speed at which they've been tackling each other can't be sustained. Even someone as gung-ho as Rex can see that every time he sends out a request for more equipment and gets less and less as time goes by. ]
That would be nice. I guess it's not surprising that another war happened four thousand years after the one I grew up with.... but it doesn't seem necessary, all the same. [Tensions. In the recent history Vima knows, they've always had the dark side pulling from one side.
She's curious if that's the same with the war Rex is involved in, but she has another question.]
What will you do once it is over?
[under the assumption, of course, that he'll survive to see it.]
[ The look Rex shoots her way is a little startled. Nobody's ever asked him that question before. Hell, nobody's ever even mentioned it, not even among brothers; it almost seems like bad luck to plan that far ahead, too ego-driven, too confident in one's own abilities to even begin to think that you are the one that will live when everyone else has died. ]
I haven't planned that far ahead, [ he says bluntly, tilting his head back a little to rest against the rumbling cart. ] Best not to rely on a future that may not happen.
[ What will he do? He has no significant skills, not like some of his men. Many of them would be fine - they're brilliant men, storytellers, artists, doctors, technicians, sharp with one thing or another. Rex has always been more of a jack-of-all-trades. Good at nothing, really, beyond being a soldier. It's all he's ever wanted to be. ]
I imagine I'll continue to serve. Even after the war is over, there's plenty that will need to be done that has nothing to do with fighting.
[Vima is a little surprised at how taken aback Rex appears just to be asked that question. She wonders if anyone's bothered to ask it before; not just of him, but of his comrades-in-arms too.
Though it's not surprising that he'd have a rather fatalistic view of his own prospects. She has to repeatthere is no anger, there is peace to herself. Just getting angry won't help.]
Serve doing what? There's always a lot that needs to be done around the Galaxy. It helps to narrow down what you want to do.
[ Again, he's surprised that she even has to ask. There's only one type of service he's capable of doing, and that's to stay exactly where he is. What he doesn't bother saying is that the type of service likely doesn't matter - for as long as General Skywalker remains in the military, Rex intends to stay by his side. He won't steer them wrong, he's certain of it, and he can think of precious few others he'd rather fight beside. If not General Skywalker... well, he sticks to his Jedi. That's what they were bred for.
If the Jedi extricate themselves from the military entirely - a strange notion; he is objectively aware that they were never meant to be soldiers, but he has never known any of them to be anything but - then he'll have to reassess things. That's a bridge to cross when he gets to it. ]
After the war ends, plenty of worlds will still require aid and resources, to be freed from the Separatist regime. I'll do what's needed to restore them. I doubt they'll require all of us, but there will be no shortage of work to be done.
[He is right. The years from age four till now have been spent at her mother's side, traveling the Republic to drive off the dregs of Exar Kun's forces, to restore ruined atmopheres and bolster teetering colonies, and even now the Jedi's numbers are severely depleted. An end to war is the continuation, and the beginning.]
It's handy for the Republic that you'll be pitching in even after the war's ended.
[ Rex says it with the utmost certainty because he has to. This is what his entire life has been for up until this very moment. There's not a chance that they'll lose. There can't be, otherwise everything that they've done, the core at their very being, will have been for nothing. ]
[When Rex says that, Vima feels a cold chill. The Republic fall... she'd seen it come close to that when she was a small child. For all its age and breadth, it isn't invincible.
And if the Republic falls, he'll fall with it because he was made to. He was designed and created and molded to throw himself in front of that blaster bolt. And it's strange, because Vima knows that Rex says this with complete conviction; he believes it with all his heart. But do all of the soldiers think like him? Would all of them say this? How strongly has it been programmed?]
...If the Republic falls, someone will have to build it back up again.
That's a big if. I've got no place in governance, though, not even now. That'll be a task for others: governing bodies; Jedi; community leaders; politicians; planners.
[ A lot of people who are what he's not, in short. Rex knows nothing of politics, knows nothing of what it takes to build a community, let alone a Galactic Republic, knows nothing of human nature and how to herd civvies around. He's a damn good soldier, but that's all he is. ]
[Vima nods. It could happen. The Republic has existed for 25,000 years... but everything ends, someday.]
Really? You've probably been on the ground of a dozen different worlds. And what you've seen is a lot different than what some Senator gets when he sweeps in with his retinue.
I bet you'd get through the red tape a lot quicker once you saw something that needed to get done, too.
You've got a lot of faith in me for someone you've just met. No, I know my place. I'm a damn good soldier, but that's all I am.
[ Rex shifts where he's sitting, getting comfortable. To admit to his own shortcomings anywhere outside of his area of expertise isn't an uncomfortable experience for him. He knows who and what he is. To be honest about that is a strength, not a weakness. ]
I don't know enough about what an ordinary life is like to have any desire to shape it.
[ He'll fight for them. That's all. It's up to the people what they do with freedom once it's been granted to them. ]
[Vima sighs. Knows his place? Well, sure, she's alway known that her "place" is to be a Jedi, but that's different. She had two Jedi parents, but she wasn't cultivated in a crowd of other Vimas, like a field of Dantooine wheat just waiting to be harvested.]
In my experience, most people are more than the sum of their parts.
[She's about to go on, but then she glances at their surroundings again, and grins wryly.]
...Though I suppose I'm not in a position to talk about having a normal life either. What do you think that looks like?
[she's still half trying to pry at the cracks, but half of it is a legitimate question. because truthfully? she's got no clue either.]
[ Unbidden, Cut springs to Rex's mind. As odd as it had been seeing a clone in that sort of situation, it's the closest he had ever gotten to experiencing a normal life. Seeing the daily lives of politicians and nobles doesn't count, nor does assisting with rebel factions, nor does the lives of refugees clinging desperately onto life.
What Cut has, though? That's what Rex has always thought it was like. A home of your own, with a partner, children, a job to tend to, a family to cherish and protect, knowing that they wouldn't perish the moment you turned his head. A dinner table, toys, requests to play in the field, eager smiles and shared glances that even someone as skilled in reading body language as Rex couldn't decipher.
He's quiet. He may be serious, but he's honest, and he wants to answer her question with the seriousness it deserves. ]
Routine. Going home to the same place every night, to the same people, and knowing reliably that every day is going to be much like the last. Peace, for yourself and your people.
[ It's a nice way of looking at it, but that's what they mean by normal, isn't it? The way things could be, not the way things are. ]
She's been sure there's more to Rex than meets the eye, more than his unswerving declarations of duty and insistence that he has no desire to be anything more than what he was made. She thought he would brush off her question as something he's never going to experience, something he doesn't bother thinking about...
She didn't expect him to actually know. Because this is more than some 'for the Republic' platitude. He's clearly speaking from some kind of experience.
It's also an experience she doesn't know herself. The Sunrders had a house on H'ratth, long ago, but that life is one she barely remembers. Since then she has known the constant come-and-go of knights and apprentices, the terror and chaos of war, and then endless travel with her mother, trying to put the Jedi back together one piece at a time... with a growing resentment inside.
Vima finds herself thinking of that house on H'ratth. Was that how her mother and father thought of life?]
...I understand wanting to preserve that for someone. [She realizes she was staring off into space a little, and focuses on his face again.] You know someone, who you want to preserve that for?
[ He won't tell her about Cut. Even though he doesn't think Vima would give him away, it's too risky. Cut's entire life, Suu's whole life, the lives of his children - they all hinge on one thing, and that's Cut remaining unnoticed. If he were to be caught, he'd be court-martialed, and then...
Then... what? Drafted back into duty? Sent for reconditioning? Executed for having the audacity to find a new family after the only one he had known had perished?
Rex hopes he'll never find out. ]
There are some families who want nothing to do with us. Fair enough. [ They only descend when things have dissolved into war and violence and misery. Nobody's ever happy by the time things have gotten to that point. ] But I've been deployed on other planets where they've invited us into their homes, offered us their hospitality. Theirs is a way of life worth protecting.
[ It's not a whole truth, but it's part of it, and part of what he's always believed. It's the face to what they're doing, why they do what they do. Maybe his own children will never have to live in the future they built, but why do they have to be his own for him to care? ]
[Wait. Wait. She is asking the prying personal questions here, Rex! You're not supposed to turn it right around on her!
Especially without even answering beyond a single bald affirmative. Vima would be thinking that she's not surprised by that if she wasn't too busy trying to think of any person she knows who isn't a Jedi.
Oh, she's met people outside the Order. She's even met a few she liked. But when all is said and done, her circle has been small. There's Master Thon, and Sylvar, and a handful of other knights, and of course her mother. Beyond that, there are... gaps. Holes. Those who had once stood in those places are gone.
But they were Jedi too. She joked about not knowing a normal life. And she wants to protect people, in a general way, as a Jedi Knight should.
Can she truly protect people, only knowing their lives as distantly as she does?]
I've met people in my travels. [...] But... I don't have that. Not like you do.
[ He shrugs. ] You're a Jedi. You're confined to your purpose, same as us.
[ Perhaps the way of the Jedi were different, back where - when - Vima was from, but that can't change everything. Being a Jedi isn't a job. It's a vocation. Everything that they do, their every emotion, their every move, their every task is for the purposes of being a Jedi, down to their very bones. Even moreso than being a clone. At least clones can feel whatever they wish, provided it doesn't interfere with their duty. ]
You're still young. I don't doubt that you'll meet someone like that one day.
[ He thinks, briefly, of Skywalker and Amidala. Of Kenobi and Kryze. ]
[That's her instinctive response, nettled by the comparison. Granted... when it comes to the Force, choice doesn't always enter into it. But that's not the same as being ordered like an item from a catalog. Nobody made her mother and father marry, nobody made them have a child.]
It's not like I was... designed to be a Jedi. My mother didn't force me. It was hard just getting anyone's attention long enough to be taught in the first place.
[Very much not. Unless it was a draftsman with a weird sense of humor.]
But I can't argue about being taken in unexpected directions. [She raps the wall of the train car with her knuckles.]
Weren't you raised in the Temple? Alongside the other initiates? As far as my understanding goes, not all of them become Padawans, but all of them get the necessary training to be sent along that path, should that path be right for them.
[ He's never been in the Temple before, but he's heard things. Stories, jibes traded between Kenobi and Skywalker and Tano, enough terms and tales flung around for him to grasp at straws, figure out the truth of what their lives were before they became soldiers. He's never been certain what to think of it.
It's fine. He'll never see the inside of the Temple anyway. ]
No, I wasn't. I lived in a house on H'ratth with my parents when I was little, and then I spent most of my time either on Ossus or wherever else my mom had to go. I've only been to the Temple a few times, actually.
But if not everyone becomes a Padawan, that just goes to show that it's not the same thing.
Not quite. Not all of us become soldiers. Not all of us can.
[ Sometimes clones come out wrong. Back in the day, that would mean they got culled - a detail that Rex wisely decides to leave out; he knows how horrible that had been and doesn't feel particularly inclined to hear Vima's educated opinion on the matter - but these days? They've found use for them. ]
But there are always other tasks that must be done. I've heard very much the same about initiates who fail to become Padawans. [ He pauses, hesitant in the way of someone not entirely certain of the answer, like a schoolboy reluctant to give an incorrect answer. ] I heard something about working in the gardens...?
[Not all can? Vima mentally writes that one down to revisit.]
I don't think I'd be real happy hanging around the Jedi, pruning their roses if they'd told me I wasn't going to be a knight. I'd rather... [she pauses.] Well I'd find another way to do it that didn't need their approval.
[kinda like what she actually did.]
But I don't see why they can't just go back to their families. Apprentices can leave even if it's because they want to; it's not like they belong to the Jedi.
[ Rex isn't certain if it has much to do with flowers - he heard something about crops? - but hell if he knows. Maybe Jedi grow their own crops! They've always seen absurd to Rex (and, frankly, to the rest of his men) and he's grown not to question their odd customs and ways. Either way, he can't exactly correct her. He's only going off of things that he's overheard and observed with very little that's been verified. ]
They don't have families. [ That, at least, he knows. ] Their family's the Order. That's what would make it so difficult to leave.
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Yeah. We can work with that, [ he says slowly. ] I'll act as your tutor. Rich kids get... [ He waves one hand vaguely, as though to describe something he has no experience with with gesture alone. ] Taken around enough.
[ All right, so the only frame of reference he has for that are holos, knowledge of some Senators' children and, of course, a holobook or two that someone had smuggled in as contraband.
He finds himself considering what it must be like to be Jar Jar's tutor and is suddenly, deeply glad that he's with this pesky youngling instead. ]
We're on a trip for your own edification.
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[The train lurches forward with a lot of clanking and chuffing, and the cargo rattles around. Vima can feel all the bumps and jolts reverberating up from her bum through the rest of her. It's novel, but not totally comfortable. Honestly it drives home how primitive this planet is compared to everywhere else she's been... and she's been to many places.
Well, there's no knowing how long they're going to be in here for. Might as well start the edification now....]
So how long has this war been going on?
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[ Rex seems to have finally relaxed now that they're moving at a decent clip, safe in their little makeshift bunker. If they're going to get into any trouble for what they're doing, it'll be once they get to where they want to be, so that'll be quite all right. ]
With any luck, it won't be lasting much longer.
[ Both sides are running out of resources, and quickly. The speed at which they've been tackling each other can't be sustained. Even someone as gung-ho as Rex can see that every time he sends out a request for more equipment and gets less and less as time goes by. ]
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She's curious if that's the same with the war Rex is involved in, but she has another question.]
What will you do once it is over?
[under the assumption, of course, that he'll survive to see it.]
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I haven't planned that far ahead, [ he says bluntly, tilting his head back a little to rest against the rumbling cart. ] Best not to rely on a future that may not happen.
[ What will he do? He has no significant skills, not like some of his men. Many of them would be fine - they're brilliant men, storytellers, artists, doctors, technicians, sharp with one thing or another. Rex has always been more of a jack-of-all-trades. Good at nothing, really, beyond being a soldier. It's all he's ever wanted to be. ]
I imagine I'll continue to serve. Even after the war is over, there's plenty that will need to be done that has nothing to do with fighting.
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Though it's not surprising that he'd have a rather fatalistic view of his own prospects. She has to repeatthere is no anger, there is peace to herself. Just getting angry won't help.]
Serve doing what? There's always a lot that needs to be done around the Galaxy. It helps to narrow down what you want to do.
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[ Again, he's surprised that she even has to ask. There's only one type of service he's capable of doing, and that's to stay exactly where he is. What he doesn't bother saying is that the type of service likely doesn't matter - for as long as General Skywalker remains in the military, Rex intends to stay by his side. He won't steer them wrong, he's certain of it, and he can think of precious few others he'd rather fight beside. If not General Skywalker... well, he sticks to his Jedi. That's what they were bred for.
If the Jedi extricate themselves from the military entirely - a strange notion; he is objectively aware that they were never meant to be soldiers, but he has never known any of them to be anything but - then he'll have to reassess things. That's a bridge to cross when he gets to it. ]
After the war ends, plenty of worlds will still require aid and resources, to be freed from the Separatist regime. I'll do what's needed to restore them. I doubt they'll require all of us, but there will be no shortage of work to be done.
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[He is right. The years from age four till now have been spent at her mother's side, traveling the Republic to drive off the dregs of Exar Kun's forces, to restore ruined atmopheres and bolster teetering colonies, and even now the Jedi's numbers are severely depleted. An end to war is the continuation, and the beginning.]
It's handy for the Republic that you'll be pitching in even after the war's ended.
[Though that opens up another possibility.]
If the Republic wins.
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[ Rex says it with the utmost certainty because he has to. This is what his entire life has been for up until this very moment. There's not a chance that they'll lose. There can't be, otherwise everything that they've done, the core at their very being, will have been for nothing. ]
If the Republic falls, I fall with it.
[ ................No he won't. ]
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And if the Republic falls, he'll fall with it because he was made to. He was designed and created and molded to throw himself in front of that blaster bolt. And it's strange, because Vima knows that Rex says this with complete conviction; he believes it with all his heart. But do all of the soldiers think like him? Would all of them say this? How strongly has it been programmed?]
...If the Republic falls, someone will have to build it back up again.
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[ A lot of people who are what he's not, in short. Rex knows nothing of politics, knows nothing of what it takes to build a community, let alone a Galactic Republic, knows nothing of human nature and how to herd civvies around. He's a damn good soldier, but that's all he is. ]
Let's hope it never comes to that.
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Really? You've probably been on the ground of a dozen different worlds. And what you've seen is a lot different than what some Senator gets when he sweeps in with his retinue.
I bet you'd get through the red tape a lot quicker once you saw something that needed to get done, too.
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You've got a lot of faith in me for someone you've just met. No, I know my place. I'm a damn good soldier, but that's all I am.
[ Rex shifts where he's sitting, getting comfortable. To admit to his own shortcomings anywhere outside of his area of expertise isn't an uncomfortable experience for him. He knows who and what he is. To be honest about that is a strength, not a weakness. ]
I don't know enough about what an ordinary life is like to have any desire to shape it.
[ He'll fight for them. That's all. It's up to the people what they do with freedom once it's been granted to them. ]
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In my experience, most people are more than the sum of their parts.
[She's about to go on, but then she glances at their surroundings again, and grins wryly.]
...Though I suppose I'm not in a position to talk about having a normal life either. What do you think that looks like?
[she's still half trying to pry at the cracks, but half of it is a legitimate question. because truthfully? she's got no clue either.]
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What Cut has, though? That's what Rex has always thought it was like. A home of your own, with a partner, children, a job to tend to, a family to cherish and protect, knowing that they wouldn't perish the moment you turned his head. A dinner table, toys, requests to play in the field, eager smiles and shared glances that even someone as skilled in reading body language as Rex couldn't decipher.
He's quiet. He may be serious, but he's honest, and he wants to answer her question with the seriousness it deserves. ]
Routine. Going home to the same place every night, to the same people, and knowing reliably that every day is going to be much like the last. Peace, for yourself and your people.
[ It's a nice way of looking at it, but that's what they mean by normal, isn't it? The way things could be, not the way things are. ]
That's what we're fighting for, anyway.
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She's been sure there's more to Rex than meets the eye, more than his unswerving declarations of duty and insistence that he has no desire to be anything more than what he was made. She thought he would brush off her question as something he's never going to experience, something he doesn't bother thinking about...
She didn't expect him to actually know. Because this is more than some 'for the Republic' platitude. He's clearly speaking from some kind of experience.
It's also an experience she doesn't know herself. The Sunrders had a house on H'ratth, long ago, but that life is one she barely remembers. Since then she has known the constant come-and-go of knights and apprentices, the terror and chaos of war, and then endless travel with her mother, trying to put the Jedi back together one piece at a time... with a growing resentment inside.
Vima finds herself thinking of that house on H'ratth. Was that how her mother and father thought of life?]
...I understand wanting to preserve that for someone. [She realizes she was staring off into space a little, and focuses on his face again.] You know someone, who you want to preserve that for?
[It's a shot in the dark, but one worth taking.]
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[ He won't tell her about Cut. Even though he doesn't think Vima would give him away, it's too risky. Cut's entire life, Suu's whole life, the lives of his children - they all hinge on one thing, and that's Cut remaining unnoticed. If he were to be caught, he'd be court-martialed, and then...
Then... what? Drafted back into duty? Sent for reconditioning? Executed for having the audacity to find a new family after the only one he had known had perished?
Rex hopes he'll never find out. ]
There are some families who want nothing to do with us. Fair enough. [ They only descend when things have dissolved into war and violence and misery. Nobody's ever happy by the time things have gotten to that point. ] But I've been deployed on other planets where they've invited us into their homes, offered us their hospitality. Theirs is a way of life worth protecting.
[ It's not a whole truth, but it's part of it, and part of what he's always believed. It's the face to what they're doing, why they do what they do. Maybe his own children will never have to live in the future they built, but why do they have to be his own for him to care? ]
Do you?
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Especially without even answering beyond a single bald affirmative. Vima would be thinking that she's not surprised by that if she wasn't too busy trying to think of any person she knows who isn't a Jedi.
Oh, she's met people outside the Order. She's even met a few she liked. But when all is said and done, her circle has been small. There's Master Thon, and Sylvar, and a handful of other knights, and of course her mother. Beyond that, there are... gaps. Holes. Those who had once stood in those places are gone.
But they were Jedi too. She joked about not knowing a normal life. And she wants to protect people, in a general way, as a Jedi Knight should.
Can she truly protect people, only knowing their lives as distantly as she does?]
I've met people in my travels. [...] But... I don't have that. Not like you do.
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[ Perhaps the way of the Jedi were different, back where - when - Vima was from, but that can't change everything. Being a Jedi isn't a job. It's a vocation. Everything that they do, their every emotion, their every move, their every task is for the purposes of being a Jedi, down to their very bones. Even moreso than being a clone. At least clones can feel whatever they wish, provided it doesn't interfere with their duty. ]
You're still young. I don't doubt that you'll meet someone like that one day.
[ He thinks, briefly, of Skywalker and Amidala. Of Kenobi and Kryze. ]
Life may take you in unexpected directions.
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[That's her instinctive response, nettled by the comparison. Granted... when it comes to the Force, choice doesn't always enter into it. But that's not the same as being ordered like an item from a catalog. Nobody made her mother and father marry, nobody made them have a child.]
It's not like I was... designed to be a Jedi. My mother didn't force me. It was hard just getting anyone's attention long enough to be taught in the first place.
[Very much not. Unless it was a draftsman with a weird sense of humor.]
But I can't argue about being taken in unexpected directions. [She raps the wall of the train car with her knuckles.]
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[ He's never been in the Temple before, but he's heard things. Stories, jibes traded between Kenobi and Skywalker and Tano, enough terms and tales flung around for him to grasp at straws, figure out the truth of what their lives were before they became soldiers. He's never been certain what to think of it.
It's fine. He'll never see the inside of the Temple anyway. ]
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No, I wasn't. I lived in a house on H'ratth with my parents when I was little, and then I spent most of my time either on Ossus or wherever else my mom had to go. I've only been to the Temple a few times, actually.
But if not everyone becomes a Padawan, that just goes to show that it's not the same thing.
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[ Sometimes clones come out wrong. Back in the day, that would mean they got culled - a detail that Rex wisely decides to leave out; he knows how horrible that had been and doesn't feel particularly inclined to hear Vima's educated opinion on the matter - but these days? They've found use for them. ]
But there are always other tasks that must be done. I've heard very much the same about initiates who fail to become Padawans. [ He pauses, hesitant in the way of someone not entirely certain of the answer, like a schoolboy reluctant to give an incorrect answer. ] I heard something about working in the gardens...?
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I don't think I'd be real happy hanging around the Jedi, pruning their roses if they'd told me I wasn't going to be a knight. I'd rather... [she pauses.] Well I'd find another way to do it that didn't need their approval.
[kinda like what she actually did.]
But I don't see why they can't just go back to their families. Apprentices can leave even if it's because they want to; it's not like they belong to the Jedi.
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They don't have families. [ That, at least, he knows. ] Their family's the Order. That's what would make it so difficult to leave.
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