Chapter Text
Romar couldn't quite keep the snap out of his words as he shot them at the trooper at his table. “We did exist before the war, you know.”
The clone waited a moment before answering, his fingers tapping with annoyance – or was it anxiety? – on the tabletop before they began working on the data cube. The makeshift splint kept his broken leg rigid, but the awkward way his boot was twitching against the floor made the older man think that his usual coping mechanism would have been bouncing his leg instead.
When the soldier finally spoke, his voice was quiet and blunt.
“I never thought of it like that.” He cleared his throat, his eyes traveling to the opening in the floor where Omega had disappeared back down into the basement. “Perhaps because we did not.”
Romar looked at the man sharply, confusion faintly clouding his eyes. “What?”
The clone looked up at him, turning his face away from the assorted odds and ends Romar had left on the table, and the Serranian was suddenly aware of the weariness and muted pain glazing the trooper's eyes behind those thick goggles.
Just as suddenly, he remembered this clone had a name – Tech .
That was what the other one had called him, right? And the girl had mentioned it, too. He knew all the Republic clones had numbers, but this one had a name.
Romar glanced at the man – for that was what he was beginning to see him as – and swept his gaze over him with new understanding. He knew just as much about clones as the others. They were mass-produced soldiers, a standing army that could replenish their ranks with newly trained troopers at a moment's notice. He knew they were all based on one DNA template and that they were programmed – or was it raised? he didn’t know – to fight. He never thought that they'd been born, or how.
Or when .
“Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we exist due to the war.” Tech cleared his throat, his movements still constricted by the pain from his shattered femur but his voice frighteningly level, considering the agony he must be in. His fingers played along the cube’s wires with an expert touch. He seemed to be feeling what the issue was, rather than merely looking for it. “My brothers and I were decanted in thirty BBY. Though the war did not commence until twenty-two BBY, we and the rest of the Fett clones were created solely in preparation for future hostilities.”
Tech met the older man’s gaze and Romar felt slightly uncomfortable. Those big brown eyes were scarily intelligent, comprehending and analytical in a way he’d never seen. And yet, despite the troublingly piercing aspect of the gaze, it was strangely… human.
Romar blinked. “You said thirty? That was…” His mouth went dry.
“Eleven years from our current position in the timeline,” Tech finished for him. “That is the chronological age of my batch.”
Romar couldn't quite make his tongue unglue itself from the bottom of his mouth. His brain felt like it was overheating. “You're …eleven years old?”
“While our biological and neural development are genetically accelerated thanks to the scientific exploits of our creators, we are in fact, chronologically eleven years old.” Tech looked back down at the table and absentmindedly rubbed a connecting wire between his index and forefinger. The data cube’s back panel had been removed while he spoke, and now he paused before moving on to the internal components. “I say this only to inform your opinion of us, not necessarily to change it. While I am drastically under-learned in the pre-war cultures and politics of the Galaxy, I can assure you I am no stranger to tyranny and overbearing structures of authority. Or –” His voice wavered for just an instant. “ – to loss.”
The clone – man, Romar stubbornly reminded himself – looked up again, and this time empathy shone in his honey-brown eyes. “I am aware that the object you gave my sister is known as a toy, and is commonly given to children below or around the age of five.” It sounded like he was reading it straight from an information packet. Distant and foreign. Like he had zero personal experience with such things. “I have taken the liberty of assuming that you once knew the child to whom it belonged and that, as it is unused by that child at this time, her or she has either reached an age of fighting capability or is…a casualty of the Empire's overreach on your planet.”
Romar stared, dumbfounded. “Ronin is my nephew. He left here with his mother.” He swallowed. “She told me she had last heard of him when he joined a resistance movement.”
“Undoubtedly, he believes in what he is fighting for. He has chosen that path to follow, and has made his own decision regarding the cause for which he might lay down his life.” Tech was fiddling with the wires again, patching something Romar couldn't see with the cube turned toward the clone instead of himself. It was as if the soldier’s gloved hands needed to be constantly occupied, doing something, as he talked. “We were not afforded that luxury.”
“Hold on.” The older man’s mind seized on to a word he had passed over. “Your sister?”
“Yes. Omega is also a clone. Because she was not engineered with our accelerated aging, she looks as a child of around twelve or thirteen should.”
Romar wondered if he had any more of that whiskey hidden in the back of the cupboard. He certainly felt as if he would need it. “She’s older than you ?”
“Yes. Chronologically speaking.”
The older man sat back in his chair a little more heavily than usual, his mind whirling not unlike the kaleidoscope he had given the girl. “I…never would have thought…” His voice trailed off, and a little bit of shame or maybe guilt flushed his cheeks beneath his beard. He had been so quick to defend his people, to imply that the clones knew nothing of their story, yet he had not even given an instant of consideration to their own.
“I do not expect you would have.” There was no irritation in Tech’s voice, no animosity. It was almost as disturbing as his age, the way he seemed perfectly used to being seen or at least subconsciously perceived as unimportant, as subhuman. “Even in the Republic, citizens were not encouraged to think of the clone armies as their equals. It would have been much more difficult for them to accept us as products – objects to be bought and used, in a cycle of creation and destruction.”
Tech closed the data cube’s panel with a soft click of metal on metal, and nodded to himself, as if he were satisfied with his work. “The repair is complete. Your people’s culture –” He was careful to use Romar’s exact words. “– the art, and the music – that is stored here, is now discoverable once more.”
Romar felt as if all the air had been knocked out of his lungs, and realized he was gripping the table harshly. He tried to let go, but his fingers wouldn’t quite obey. A hot, flustered feeling was boiling in his chest, and shortly he realized it was anger.
Tech had saved his people’s culture, or fragments of it – and yet the man sitting across from him had no idea what it meant to have things like that of his own.
“You were seen as products,” the older man repeated slowly. His brain still didn’t want to accept it. “Even by those you fought for?”
Tech nodded. His index finger was drawing a silent circle on his thigh. “It was the most uncomplicated definition they could assign to us,” he said simply.
“So they were fine with using slave armies and you still fought?”
“Desertion was not looked on favorably.” For the first time, Romar saw a little bit of light infect Tech’s calm brown eyes, but it quickly vanished. “And in either case, the entire Republic knew, once war became imminent, that the clone armies had been ordered, paid for, and created . Slavery is a nasty word that they associate with the Zygerian method of kidnapping and trafficking. A legal bill of sale and the knowledge that that is what we were created for eased many consciences, I believe, in the Senate and the galaxy at large.”
Tech looked back at him, peeling his gaze from the floor, his brown eyes both conflicted and resigned. “I am…uneducated in many things,” he said. Romar thought it almost pained him. “But as I said, the complexities of this world in which we have found ourselves, in the aftermath of a war that destroyed much and solved seemingly nothing, is not one of them.”
Romar was going to answer. He wanted to say something that could convey his own feelings on the matter – wanted to apologize for assuming he knew anything about Tech and his family when that very kind of assumption had driven him to offense –
Just then the other clone appeared in the doorway, his eyes that were hidden behind the helmet still scathing as he surveyed the room.
“Where’s Omega?” he asked. His voice was not as annoyed as earlier when he had stormed out, but his words were just as tense.
“She was just here.” Tech glanced around, and Romar mirrored the action. His eyes landed on the toy he had handed to Omega, now abandoned carefully on the floor, and he frowned in concern. He continued to look around the room, not quite sure what he was looking for, something that was nagging him in the vague corners of his mind.
“Well, she’s not now!” The other clone – Echo , Romar dragged the name out from the back of his mind – snapped with worry lacing his voice.
Romar suddenly realized what he was looking for, and why he couldn't find it. “My rappelling cable’s gone,” he announced flatly.
“I suspect she went after the war chest.” Though Tech was behind him and hidden from view, Romar heard rigidity snap into his words. He was doing a good job of hiding his pain, but fear for another member of his party – for his sister , the old man remembered dizzily – was another thing entirely.
Echo was already back in the threshold, looking as if his prosthetic legs were spring-loaded and ready to launch him into the dark night beyond. Romar suddenly wondered what kind of torment the man had been through, what kind of horrors he had experienced, that had taken both his legs and one of his arms, and left him with the metal attachment that seemed permanently mounted to the back of his skull. “We have to find her before the Empire does.”
“Go. I will catch up.” Tech made his decisions quickly, it seemed, and did not expect to be contradicted.
The cyborg hesitated, torn between staying with his injured brother or going to find his missing sister, but at a reassuring nod from the other man, he sped out the door.
As Romar turned he saw Tech struggling to his feet, seemingly unaware of his shattered femur. His only acknowledgment of his pain was a soft grunt of discomfort, the kind Romar might utter if he stubbed his toe on a chair leg.
“You won't get very far in your condition,” he called after him.
Tech stopped just long enough to put on his helmet. “I can manage,” he said crisply.
Romar watched sadly as he left. He was without a doubt now that Tech and his brothers were used to managing on their own, in a wide variety of situations and dangers. But from the sweat the older man saw already beading on Tech’s brow before he slipped on his headgear, he doubted that managing this kind of injury would be an option for much longer.
He looked at the repaired data cube, and sighed softly. Then he picked up his coat and started for the door.
~~~~~
When Romar broke from the thick underbrush, his heart skipped a beat at the sight that met him. Other clones, the ones in white armor, were sprawled around the clearing, unconscious or something else he didn’t want to name. There was only one figure that he recognized, and that one was lying on the ground, a blaster in hand, unmoving.
He sprinted toward the man and tried to keep a tremor from his voice when he spoke. “Ace?” He grasped Tech’s shoulder and shook him, his eyes taking in the other man’s condition. There was no blood that he could see or blaster scoring… Tech was breathing, at least, so anything else should be fixable. “Ace, wake up!”
Tech stirred and jerked to life, shaking his head as he tried to rise. “What are – you doing here?” His voice, so recently awakened from unconsciousness, wasn’t able to hold the dissociated calm it had earlier. He was confused – genuinely confused – and couldn’t hide it.
Romar could see Tech wasn’t doing well getting up on his own. Without giving the clone time to react, he reached around him and pulled him up, wincing at the pained hiss that escaped the other man’s helmet filter.
“I heard blaster fire.” That wasn’t quite a lie. Romar didn’t have to tell him he had been on his way toward the clearing anyway, though tracking trained commandos in the dark was not one of his strong suits. “I thought you needed help.”
The strange thing about Tech’s helmet, he realized, was that you could see his eyes regardless if he had it on or not. After his brief explanation, the man’s big brown eyes blinked at him widely, shining with the same bewilderment that had colored his voice. It was as if the man’s brain registered the words I thought you needed help, but his eyes seemed to ask
And you thought to give it ?
Romar tried not to let the clenching regret and sorrow that he felt in his heart show on his face. Instead, he gave Tech a soft smile and hoped it spoke louder than his earlier words. “And I was right.”
Tech looked back at him for a second longer than necessary, those sharp eyes calculating and analytical as if Romar was some equation he couldn’t quite figure out – and then he looked forward, his eyes focused once more and his blaster in hand.
Romar put one foot in front of the other, slow enough to accommodate the other man’s broken leg, and they walked on toward the ruckus, toward the fighting – a clone and a Separatist, together.
And somehow, on a ruined planet with attackers waiting on every side, Romar felt freer than he had since the war began.