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.
Well - when they're born, the Jedi take them. With permission of their parents, of course.
[ He's pretty sure, anyway. ]
If they want their child to be trained in the way of the Force, if they're Force-sensitive, they hand them over. Their parents are still out there. Doesn't make them family.
[ Blood binds. Rex believes that. But even he can understand that blood means little if you've never so much as met your kin. ]
[Vima looks at Rex askance. Not that she thinks he's lying; she would say he's the type to conceal, not dissemble. But seriously?]
If it happens that young, it'd be pretty hard to go back. But I've never heard of parents giving the Jedi their kids right after they've given birth.
I mean, it's not like the Force even shows itself until you're at least a few years old, not unless you've got a Jedi next door who can sense it. You've got to learn to walk before you can levitate.
[ Rex shrugs. ] Maybe they've found new ways of knowing when an infant's Force Sensitive. I wouldn't know. None of us are.
[ Nobody's ever heard of a Force-sensitive clone and, to them, the Force remains a mystic, mysterious presence, something that allows their Commanders and Generals to become a supernatural force on the battlefield and not much else. There are parts of it that Rex finds reassuring at times, in dark corners and during the dead of the night, but it broadly remains something he knows very little about and doesn't care to learn any more about. It's never going to be relevant to him. ]
I suppose that could happen after a few thousand years.
[So... no Jedi clones. Is that intentional, she wonders. There's really no way to predict where it will show itself. Oh, it tends to run in families; she's proof of that. But it's not a guarantee, and there are plenty of knights from planets that have never even heard the word Jedi.
But as he points out, maybe they've taught themselves how to manipulate it in the future. Vima almost thinks of it as a better understanding--but it's not. It would be the reverse.]
How many of you are there, anyway? Thousands? Millions?
Millions. If there were only thousands of us, the war would have been as good as lost. Our enemy outnumbers us even so.
[ It's easier to manufacture droids on a massive scale. Clones take more of everything - more resources, more time, more training, more money, more materials. But they're smarter than droids, better in a fight and, cheesy though it may be, you'll always fight better when you've got something to fight for. They do. ]
Even with the Jedi on our side. You're a remarkably rare bunch, statistically speaking.
[Geez, she'd thought she'd said that as a joke. Of course if the manpower shortage was that severe, it makes sense, but... good grief. That's still beyond what Vima had imagined.]
Wow. If you wanted to, you guys could populate your own planet. In fact, you should suggest that for when the war's over.
[...but the mention of Jedi puts another thought in her head.]
So do the Separatists have their own? Dark Jedi, that is.
A planet inhabited by us and us alone? [ Rex lips quirk. ] I don't think so.
[ As much as he loves his brothers, that sounds miserable. What he would want... what he'd want is for them to be able to disperse across the galaxy, doing what they need to do and what they want to do. Rex would stay in the military, of course, but there's not a chance in hell that they could run their own city with any measure of satisfaction.
The mentions of Dark Jedi, however, sobers him, expression settling into something grim and unpleasant. ]
The Separatists are led by the Sith. Surely they still exist in your time. I've always been led to believe that their way is an ancient one.
[Vima's expression sours, not altogether unlike Rex's.]
I was hoping that the Sith hadn't managed to hang on. Even though the Jedi are still there... you can never destroy a good idea, but you can't destroy a bad one either.
I guess they think that this time, they're definitely going to win, right?
Something like that. And they're willing to go to great lengths to do so. Killing children - [ all those infants still in their tanks, a mess of viscous liquid pooling with red upon the floors of Kamino ] - blackmailing different civilizations, interfering with independent planets' politics...
[ Rex shakes his head. He has no love for the Sith. None of them do, after all that they've seen. He'd be glad to see the whole lot of them killed. He's heard vague rumblings that they were once Jedi, a force for all that is right and good, before something grew odd in them, twisted.
Apparently it has something to do with attachment.
Rex thinks that's a load of bantha shit. ]
Perhaps our times aren't so different after all. What's your experience with the lot of them?
[Vima nods soberly. It all sounds too familiar, all things that the Sith and their admirers have committed in her lifetime.]
I was young when the Great Sith Wars ended, but... they did the same. They could easily wipe out one planet to conquer another.
The worst was when Jedi fell. The old rulers of Onderon, the Krath, they were all Dark Side followers. They killed thousands, oppressed millions. But they didn't... [She struggles to find the right word.] They only cared about what they could see in front of them.
A Jedi serves the Republic--all of it, everywhere. And a fallen one will destroy it all, everywhere.
[ There is little Rex can do with knowledge a little closer to the source. He is a clone, a soldier, not a Jedi - the likes of him has no chance against a Sith. But he has contacts and resources and knows that if he can deliver something, anything to his generals, they may not believe him, but they won't discount his words out of turn.
After all, this sort of magical hoodoo is what Jedi are good at, what with their talk of premonitions and visions and dreams and feelings. Rex doesn't operate based on how he feels. He likes cold, hard facts, and there's a distinct chance that Vima may be able to provide those for him. ]
[Vima looks away. It's a natural question for Rex to ask. For him, the Sith are the present tense, a threat for him to face down, a weapon to deactivate. But it hasn't been so long for her since Ulic's death.
And though it was ten years ago, Ossus doesn't seem that far away either. She pulls her knees up to her chest, trying to view the memories with dispassionate fact.]
One of the Jedi who turned. He... turned back. Led us to Exar Kun's last stronghold.
My mother led the Jedi. They purged Kun's jungle moon with the power of the light.
[ Jedi talk about light and dark an awful lot. Rex doesn't understand it beyond the general implication that the light is good and that the dark is bad and that they discuss it as though it's more than a metaphor. At the very least, he doesn't think it will ever apply to him. Clones are fine occupying their shades of grey. ]
If I were to say that to a Jedi, would they understand what you mean by that? You lot have your own language.
I don't know. [because she doesn't, really.] It was the last resort, and once they started it kept going on its own. The whole moon practically burned to the ground.
[Likely, that was because Yavin IV had been steeped in the dark side. But it was a good thing they didn't have to try it on Onderon or some other populated world.]
It wasn't commonly known. I don't know how well records were--will be kept into your time either. They should look for Thon or Odan-Urr or Ood Bnar if they want to know more about it.
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no subject
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.
no subject
[ 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. ]
no subject
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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Well, we don't just spring from holes in the ground. [or out of a clone tank] Where do you think new Jedi come from, anyway?
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[ He's pretty sure, anyway. ]
If they want their child to be trained in the way of the Force, if they're Force-sensitive, they hand them over. Their parents are still out there. Doesn't make them family.
[ Blood binds. Rex believes that. But even he can understand that blood means little if you've never so much as met your kin. ]
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If it happens that young, it'd be pretty hard to go back. But I've never heard of parents giving the Jedi their kids right after they've given birth.
I mean, it's not like the Force even shows itself until you're at least a few years old, not unless you've got a Jedi next door who can sense it. You've got to learn to walk before you can levitate.
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[ Nobody's ever heard of a Force-sensitive clone and, to them, the Force remains a mystic, mysterious presence, something that allows their Commanders and Generals to become a supernatural force on the battlefield and not much else. There are parts of it that Rex finds reassuring at times, in dark corners and during the dead of the night, but it broadly remains something he knows very little about and doesn't care to learn any more about. It's never going to be relevant to him. ]
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[So... no Jedi clones. Is that intentional, she wonders. There's really no way to predict where it will show itself. Oh, it tends to run in families; she's proof of that. But it's not a guarantee, and there are plenty of knights from planets that have never even heard the word Jedi.
But as he points out, maybe they've taught themselves how to manipulate it in the future. Vima almost thinks of it as a better understanding--but it's not. It would be the reverse.]
How many of you are there, anyway? Thousands? Millions?
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[ It's easier to manufacture droids on a massive scale. Clones take more of everything - more resources, more time, more training, more money, more materials. But they're smarter than droids, better in a fight and, cheesy though it may be, you'll always fight better when you've got something to fight for. They do. ]
Even with the Jedi on our side. You're a remarkably rare bunch, statistically speaking.
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[Geez, she'd thought she'd said that as a joke. Of course if the manpower shortage was that severe, it makes sense, but... good grief. That's still beyond what Vima had imagined.]
Wow. If you wanted to, you guys could populate your own planet. In fact, you should suggest that for when the war's over.
[...but the mention of Jedi puts another thought in her head.]
So do the Separatists have their own? Dark Jedi, that is.
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[ As much as he loves his brothers, that sounds miserable. What he would want... what he'd want is for them to be able to disperse across the galaxy, doing what they need to do and what they want to do. Rex would stay in the military, of course, but there's not a chance in hell that they could run their own city with any measure of satisfaction.
The mentions of Dark Jedi, however, sobers him, expression settling into something grim and unpleasant. ]
The Separatists are led by the Sith. Surely they still exist in your time. I've always been led to believe that their way is an ancient one.
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[Vima's expression sours, not altogether unlike Rex's.]
I was hoping that the Sith hadn't managed to hang on. Even though the Jedi are still there... you can never destroy a good idea, but you can't destroy a bad one either.
I guess they think that this time, they're definitely going to win, right?
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[ Rex shakes his head. He has no love for the Sith. None of them do, after all that they've seen. He'd be glad to see the whole lot of them killed. He's heard vague rumblings that they were once Jedi, a force for all that is right and good, before something grew odd in them, twisted.
Apparently it has something to do with attachment.
Rex thinks that's a load of bantha shit. ]
Perhaps our times aren't so different after all. What's your experience with the lot of them?
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I was young when the Great Sith Wars ended, but... they did the same. They could easily wipe out one planet to conquer another.
The worst was when Jedi fell. The old rulers of Onderon, the Krath, they were all Dark Side followers. They killed thousands, oppressed millions. But they didn't... [She struggles to find the right word.] They only cared about what they could see in front of them.
A Jedi serves the Republic--all of it, everywhere. And a fallen one will destroy it all, everywhere.
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[ There is little Rex can do with knowledge a little closer to the source. He is a clone, a soldier, not a Jedi - the likes of him has no chance against a Sith. But he has contacts and resources and knows that if he can deliver something, anything to his generals, they may not believe him, but they won't discount his words out of turn.
After all, this sort of magical hoodoo is what Jedi are good at, what with their talk of premonitions and visions and dreams and feelings. Rex doesn't operate based on how he feels. He likes cold, hard facts, and there's a distinct chance that Vima may be able to provide those for him. ]
How?
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And though it was ten years ago, Ossus doesn't seem that far away either. She pulls her knees up to her chest, trying to view the memories with dispassionate fact.]
One of the Jedi who turned. He... turned back. Led us to Exar Kun's last stronghold.
My mother led the Jedi. They purged Kun's jungle moon with the power of the light.
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[ Jedi talk about light and dark an awful lot. Rex doesn't understand it beyond the general implication that the light is good and that the dark is bad and that they discuss it as though it's more than a metaphor. At the very least, he doesn't think it will ever apply to him. Clones are fine occupying their shades of grey. ]
If I were to say that to a Jedi, would they understand what you mean by that? You lot have your own language.
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[Likely, that was because Yavin IV had been steeped in the dark side. But it was a good thing they didn't have to try it on Onderon or some other populated world.]
It wasn't commonly known. I don't know how well records were--will be kept into your time either. They should look for Thon or Odan-Urr or Ood Bnar if they want to know more about it.
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