Trooper CC-9705, called Fiver, was starting to miss the old format of a typical memorial service.
Sure, the Republic had watered down everything to a mushy, unpalatable gruel as it tried to represent and honor innumerable different faiths. It was laughable, but it at least tried to offer vague hope for some possibly pleasant (but perhaps not) afterlife. The new service only offered praise for glorious service in the Empire. Fiver was not a religious man - none of the clones were, and ever had been - but there was still something comforting about vague platitudes. The closest thing they had were themselves. The Brothers believed in each other. The final death would come when the last clone brother died, years from now, centuries even, if the Empire stood strong. That was at least a little comforting, even as he saw the ranks change day after day, new and unfamiliar faces joining them as the Empire conscripted planet after planet.
But Fiver also hated the new memorial service because it was half an hour longer, and he knew Rex had been a man of efficiency. Their captain deserved better.
He was telling Eights that as they walked in, and didn't see what had been placed on and around his bunk until he turned around.
"Wait - what's this?"
Nobody spoke up even as he took a mental inventory. The Bylluran Athletic bolo-ball posters, the small box of hair bleach, the two blaster pistols, and the blue pauldron.
"No, no. ...This isn't funny. This is sick. Sick."
Everyone in the dorms had fallen silent, but they had turned to stare.
"Why are Rex's things on my bed? Seriously, it isn't funny. Not at all." His voice was going shaky even as he turned to point at Blues, so nicknamed because he was the only one on the squad with blue eyes, something Fiver still thought oddly disturbing and unnatural on some level. "Was this you, Blues? If it was -"
"Check the datapad, Fiver," someone said quietly, nervously. "Admiral Yularen told us to do it."
"It was orders, Fiver," Blues finally said. "I'm sorry."
The datapad's logo was set to the ISB insignia. Sullenly, he sat down, and carefully read.
Like every other clone brother, Fiver was bred, born, and trained to be damnably loyal. But he still at least attempted to look aggravated when, two hours later, at a specially appointed time, the secure holotransmission line opened up with the Admiral, so that they could discuss his orders.
"Commander."
"Admiral, sir."
"I'm sure you have questions."
"Only a few, sir." He grit his teeth. "What happens if I refuse this command, sir?"
"That is not something you wish to do, Captain." It was a quick, calm answer, and Fiver got the idea immediately.
"Very well, sir." He gulped. "And this... test?"
"In three day's time, as a prerequisite to your promotion, you will be given an exam. You must thoroughly know the strategies, orders, commands, and battles that clone trooper CC-7567 is associated with."
"So I have to know about Rex, sir?"
"Yes, more or less."
"And what happens if I fail the test, sir?"
"You do not," the Admiral said firmly, "want to fail the test."
For a moment, they stared each other down. The Admiral was, as usual, unflappably calm, nearly icy. It was a well-known adage that you could not fight the Imperial Security Bureau and win, and Fiver was starting to see the truth in it. "Yes, sir," he finally muttered. "I understand my orders."
"Excellent. I will hear from you in three days, Captain Rex."
He stared at the blank End of Transmission screen for a long while before finally getting up and going to bleach his hair. And he made sure that he passed the test.
The test consisted of exactly one thing. Yes, there were questions of battles, but it was obvious that those were less important. They addressed him as Rex, and he didn't flinch, but instead responded, almost as if it were natural. There was a dreamy quality to the entire proceeding, as if he couldn't really believe it was happening. And like a tune stuck in his head, the same memory kept coming back to him. Nearly two years ago, shore leave, a dive bar with free drinks for the brave troopers. They had all stayed far into the night. But at some point the conversation turned gloomy, and Rex (the man he had helped bury, Fiver had to remind himself) started rambling about Vader - Vader (he had spat out the name) and how the man, the droid, the monster was little better than a petulant, spoiled child, a boy with softhearted parents who would not tell it to stop crushing his pet's skull when trying to pet it. A brat who needed a crutch. A weakling. A failure. And as Fiver listened to the man explain how he was an enabler, he remembered how his captain started to laugh, and laugh, each laugh half a scream until finally he started to sob.
In the morning they all blamed it on cheap everclear but he was now starting to realize how very right the other man was.
"Very good. You may go. And congratulations on the promotion, Captain," one of the ISB officers said lazily, pausing to shake his hand.
"Thank you, sir. ...I had one question," he said quickly.
"Of course."
"How many Rexes were there before me, sir?"
A slightly uncomfortable silence filled the room, and the officer looked at the floor instead of into his eyes. "Three," the man admitted in as polite and businesslike a manner he could manage. "You're the fourth."
"Thank you, sir."
"Good luck out there, Captain Rex."
Vader accepted too easily how he had been 'just injured', and was now back from a stint in a bacta tank. He knew that surely the monolith of a man had seen the memorial service announcement. But it was a fiction that he felt he was now duty-bound to help create, and so he did. With the regular deaths that happened apparently spontaneously in Lord Vader's presence, it was really quite easy to think of the man as somehow insane. The last thing anyone wanted to do was provoke the madman. So gradually, he started rooting for Bylluran Athletic in earnest, and he always made sure to have his hair bleached properly. At some point he accepted that all the Brothers had were each other, because all the Brothers were each other. A strange form of immortality. But the orders had been that Fiver would die to make sure Rex lived on, and all Brothers respected orders.
He was still nervous when Vader's gauntleted hand gestured at him, beckoning him forward. "Captain Rex," the voice rumbled, continuing to give orders and strategy. "You will lead the 501st here; we will convene at this point and resume the assault as a unified force. Just the same as on Ryloth." And he scrambled for the memory of the dossier that he had been handed, holding his breath, trying to remember which answer to that test question had been the right one. "I trust you remember Ryloth?"
Vader turned to stare him down, and he gulped softly. But it was not as terrifying as he would have expected, as if being Rex meant sudden, instinctive knowledge of something underneath that obsidian, skull-like mask. He was not sure if it was a whisper, half lost in the mechanical wheezing, or if the words somehow snaked their way into his thoughts directly:
Tell me we're still heroes, Rex.
"Yes, sir," he said promptly.