Collection Name: "Gregor's Journey" by emjalen.
Title: "Death of a Dish Washer"
Author: spikala
Rating: K+
Synopsis: After retrieving his armour from the diner, Gregor tries to remember who he was as he dons his kit and prepares for battle.
Word Count: 1225
==o0o==
Death of a Dish Washer
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Then with a swish of a door, he was alone in the hovel that he called home. Old memories tugged at Gregor, images of neat, orderly, grey walls and bunks, men with his face laughing with him. He searched for names only to come up blank. Yet another mystery hidden on the other side of the black wall that had haunted him all this time, sealing him off from whoever and whatever he was before. Before life as a dish washer. Before Abafar. Before Sarrish.
The droids and their unbalanced frog leader were patiently waiting outside for Captain Gregor, a man who Gregor wasn't sure even existed anymore. Surely if he was Captain Gregor, a commando, he would've found his way back to the Republic by now instead of languishing in the Outer Rim, washing dishes at Borkus' Power Slider? No. That was Gregor the Dish Washer talking. For the first time, Gregor paused. Did he want to be this man, this soldier in the Grand Army of the Republic? He had hoped earlier that seeing Captain Gregor's face in the mirror might trigger some latent memory, help him punch through that damnable black wall—nothing. What little he could recall of life beyond the wall, of Sarrish, was pain: pain ripping through his chest, throbbing ribs, and a stunning explosion of pain at the base of his skull.
Gregor rested his head in his hands only to hear a familiar phantom.
"Get out of here, Cap! There's nothing for you here now!"
It was the voice from his dreams. He'd always thought it was his voice, that he was the one breathing in painful, ragged gasps, teetering on the edge of control and calling out to the mysterious Cap. Hot wetness on his hands, coppery tang assaulting his nose, and pain. Always pain. But he was Gregor the commando, the Captain—he was Cap. So who did the mysterious voice belong to? Another clone? A friend?
"You're wrong," he whispered to the dying stranger. "There's nothing for me here either."
He couldn't stay seated anymore. Gregor leapt up and started pacing nervously around the room. He no longer doubted the little frogman about his origins. Seeing that holo had been startling enough, then there had been that ghostly barcode on the inside of his forearm. Both of which could've been faked. That much Gregor knew, even if he wasn't sure how he knew that. What couldn't be faked was his body's reaction to the sudden appearance of a man in his apartment. He'd come up in a fighting crouch, ready to deal with what had startled him—no dish washer did that. Then again as they'd left the diner, he'd looked at his boss, Borkus, that lying slimeball, with new eyes. The eyes of a clone, a soldier of the Republic. Noting weak points, places that when struck would inflict crippling pain, other places that would pinch nerves and cause temporary paralysis or even permanent damage. It had scared him. No, wait, that wasn't right. It had scared Gregor the Dish Washer. Gregor the Soldier—Captain Gregor—had just watched dispassionately, calculating the most efficient way of inflicting pain on another sentient.
He reached up, fingers probing the old, raised scar tissue that ran underneath the dark hair at the nape of his neck. It still throbbed from Borkus' blow earlier. Sprawled over the precious crate of armour, remembered pain and flashes of memory had overwhelmed him and by the time he'd clambered to his feet, it was all over. But the wall had cracked. He'd seen glimpses of the other side. If he stayed here, he'd never find out who he was, who the dying stranger was. The only way out was forward, to find the Soldier and leave the Dish Washer behind.
Gregor picked up the helmet and set in on the bed beside him. He wasn't quite ready for that yet. Instead he plucked a piece of smooth, grey armour out from the crate. He held it against his bare forearm, feeling the cold of the plastoid against his skin. Memory stirred, seeping through the cracks in the wall. He saw an arm, his arm?, reaching for someone… something… ramming into the neck joint of a commando droid. No, not his arm, a knife. Warm dark liquid sprayed his T-shaped world and Gregor the Dish Washer remembered the glint of a black-smeared knife as it retracted into his gauntlet. Gregor pressed a small, concealed stud on the plastoid. With a kachonk, a blade sprang from within the gauntlet. He ran a cautious fingerpad across the blade; a red line appeared. Still sharp, he thought as he sucked on the cut. Tucked away for all this time but the edge is still there.
With quick, efficient movements, Gregor stripped off his clothing—the scent of stale grease and old food clinging to them—and donned the skin-tight, black body glove that was emblazoned with the eight-rayed roundel of the Republic. He clipped on piece after piece of matte-grey armour. His hands seemed to remember, even if his head didn't and before he knew it the crate was empty and he'd donned every piece of the strange-yet-not-strange armour. Everything fit him perfectly, its weight settling into place as though it were part of him that had been left off all of this time. Only the helmet remained sitting on the bed beside him, its blue visor glinting in the light of the room. He reached for it then pulled back, hesitant. Once he put that helmet on he would be CC-5576-39, Captain Gregor. Gregor the Dish Washer would be erased.
"There's nothing for you here now."
Before he could overthink things, Gregor grasped the familiar-yet-not helmet and slid it over his head.
Blackness.
Gregor looked left and right, searching for a sliver of light, but saw nothing. He blinked rapidly, trying to see into the blackness and the screen flickered into life. It was the T-shaped world from his dreams—his nightmares—ghostly strings of data overlaid on the world around him, gently whirling circles and pulsing bars of light. It felt… right. As though his arm had been asleep this whole time without his realising and it had just woken up.
"Too bad this thing doesn't have a memory bank," he muttered.
As he spoke, luminous letters flickered across the top of the screen.
[Memory accessed. Select an Entry or Play All?]
"Play all?" he asked, voice hopeful, and a welter of images assaulted him.
When he emerged from the confines of his helmet, Captain Gregor felt like he had aged by years.
He remembered.
He remembered the blood bath that was Sarrish. He remembered seeing his squad mates fall, hearing his closest brothers imploring him to leave them, to keep going. He remembered slogging across the muddy plains of a world that had fallen into enemy hands anyway. The colourful jungles of Felucia, the red sands of Geonosis, the stormy skies of Kamino. Laughter when things went well. Pain and suffering when they didn't. The rush before battle, the bone-sapping fatigue afterwards. The blood, sweat and tears of years of training as he pushed himself to be the better than the best because that was what he was. He remembered it all.
He was CC-5576-39. A Republic Commando. Best of the best. And outside was a Colonel who needed his help.
Captain Gregor checked his decee's charge, tucked his helmet under his arm, and left the Dish Washer behind. He never looked back.