Purged
When Fixer crept out of his bed at dawn in what he mentally termed a silent self-extraction, managing not to awken either of his two remaining squadmates whom he shared a room with, and made his way down to the monumment Skirata had constructed for the clones who had died during the war between the Republic and the Separatists, he had assumed that it would be deserted. He certainly hadn't thought that he would find his former training sergeant standing there, staring blankly at the names of the three commandos he had trained who had perished on Geonosis.
Uncomfortable at the idea of human grief and even more discomfited at the notion of it existing in Vau, Fixer pivoted and started to retreat, confident that his prensence alone would be an intrusion on something so private that it would be indecent for anyone to witness.
He had believed that Vau was so engrossed in his own musings that he hadn't even noticed Fixer approaching. However, he was proven wrong when Vau called after him, "Come join me."
Reflexively, Fixer obeyed as rapidly and as automatically as he complied with every other order issue to him.
"Your Sev isn't listed here," Vau told Fixer as he reached him.
"Affirmative, sir," responded Fixer. "There are dozens of Sevs listed, though. They won't mind if I address them in my head as if they were my Sev. If there is nothing after death, then neither they nor my Sev will ever know that I tried to communicate like this, but I will feel better at least. If there is an afterlife, then my Sev might be able to hear my thoughts somehow, and the other Sevs won't mind, because they probably enjoy hearing someone employ their squad nickname. Most clones do."
"You don't," Vau remarked.
"No." Fixer shook his head, discovering that he was in a rare talkative mood. "The Kaminoans elected to designate us with numbers and not names to make us essentially human droids. I embraced my identity as a human droid with my by-the-book methods and my preference for my number instead of my nickname, acting as if having a preference at all wasn't a sign of being fully sentient. I thought that if I embraced my idenity as a flesh droid that would make what was done to us all less horrible."
As he established as much, he felt his throat constrict as he contemplated Sev. He wondered if Sev would have relished shooting so much if he hadn't had a gun placed in his hand when he was two. He wondered if Sev would have been as certifiably insane if he had been born naturally instead of been a product of genetic tinkering and a need for a slave army. He wondered if Sev had been raised by a normal family if he would have spent his life counting his blessings instead of counting his kills.
Oh, he realized that Sev had been dangerous, deadly, and deviant, but every clone was to some degree. That's what resulted from tampering with people's DNA, forcing them to mature at twice the normal rate, and training them from birth to be the greatest warriors the galaxy had ever seen. When you ruined the natural order of things, you got abnormalities like the clones. You couldn't fault the aberrations themselves. No, you had to blame the beings who had created them.
Maybe it was because Fixer knew he was born a deviant of nature that he was so obsessed with rules and regulations. Perhaps he loved them so much because he thought that they would make his life less complicated and offer predicatble results. Maybe to rules simplified everything about the abnormal human experience that had been thrust on him when he had been decanted, and perhaps that simplicity was the best he could expect from his brief, artificial life.
"I wish that our Sev was listed here, though," Fixer muttered before he could halt himself. If he could just classify Sev as dead, at least he would have order and closure. Right now, Sev couldn't be labeled as offically dead, so he was like the squad ghost where once he had been the squad psycho, and Fixer had never even believed in ghosts before Sev had gone MIA on Kashyyyk. The mission to Kashyyyk had upset the order that Fixer had worked so hard to implement in his life, and maybe the lack of closure order that he had to contend with was his punishment for abandoning Sev.
"MIA is better than KIA," said Vau, as grim as ever.
"Sir, I'm confident that Sev was KIA," Fixer replied. "We just don't have a body to prove it, because we received orders to clear out and we did as instructed."
"I went to Kashyyyk after Sev was classified as MIA, and I could find nothing," Vau grunted. "The trail had gone cold."
"At least you tried to find him, sir," commented Fixer. "We didn't. We just obeyed our orders like perfect little flesh droids. I always thought that following regulations would be our salvation, but instead that was the death of Sev."
Biting his lip, he observed inwardly that he should have seconded Scorch when Scorch had wanted to return to Sev. If he had, then Boss would have agreed to return, and all their lives would have been so different. If he had, then Scorch and Sev would still be holding their never-ending stupid competition to see who could accumulate more kills. If he had, then Scorch and Sev would still continue to fill the helmet comlinks with their pointless banter. If he had, then Delta would be able to sleep at night.
Gazing at the rising sun, he remembered how Sev had loved the dawn during training, because it had heralded a new day in Sev could shoot more things. Dawns on Kamino had not been very spectacular, filled as they were with pelting rain whipped in every direction by the strong winds, flashing lightning, and a weak sun struggling to shine through the gray. If he had to assign each member of the squad an element, he would have named himself as the steady and ordinary rain. He would have classified Boss as the relentless and commanding wind. Scorch would be the blazing yellow sun struggling to shine its light through the clouds. Sev would have been the lightning—swift, accurate, lethal, and gone from existence in an eyeblink.
"You did what you thought was right," Vau pointed out.
"You should be advised that I thought incorrectly, sir," countered Fixer stiffly.
"Skirata thinks that Uthan is getting close to discovering a cure for what the Nulls delicately refer to as your premature exit from this life," Vau informed him, apparently deciding it was a tactful time to change the subject.
"With all due respect, sir, that's no good," muttered Fixer.
"What was that?" Vau arched an eyebrow in his direction.
"In my opinion, Skirata shouldn't be having her fiddle around with our DNA like the Kaminoans did," Fixer clarified. "We are aberrations—affronts to the natural order of things. He should let us die when we were designed to. It's for the best."
"Forty--" Vau began, but Fixer cut him off.
"You may call me Fixer, sir, since I'm not in the army anymore, and, thus, my former designation is no longer truly applicable," he interrupted, ruminating on the fact that he had lost hiw whole identity when he deserted from the Imperials.
"Fixer, then." Vau bowed his head in acknowledgement."Skirata and I rarely see eye to eye on anything from what hue the sky is on a particular day up, but we both agree that the aiwha bait—to use his term—are the real freaks of nature for doing what they did when they produced you."
"I am aware, sir, that the Kaminoans were insane to tamper with our genes as they did, but when they did that, they set into motion a chain of events that couldn't be stopped that made us deviants as well. Now we can never be normal, and any attempts to make us so will just be met with failure. Some actions can never be reversed, and some wrongs can never be made right."
"You won't be deviant any more if Skirata can discover the cure for your rapid aging," insisted Vau. "That can't change the past, but it can alter the future."
"Negative, sir. We'll still be aberrations." Fixer shook his head. "We aren't normal, and it's a delusion to believe that we ever could be. We are meant to be soldiers. It is our purpose in life, and when we aren't fighting a war, we are listless and miserable. That's why Boss has been roaming pointlessly around the homestead ever since we got here, and that why Scorch's jokes are getting lamer by the day. We were meant to die in battle, as uncomplaining as always, and the kindest thing anyone can do for us is to let us die our premature deaths. I can feel myself slowing down already, and I don't mind. I've done more in thirteen years than more beings do in seventy."
"The aging you feel would slow down if Skirata found his cure," Vau persisted.
"With all due respect, I don't want him to find his cure, sir." Again, Fixer shook his head. "If he finds his cure, it can be used by geneticists like the Kaminoans to create an army of people that could reach maturity twice as rapidly as normal humans and then when they reach adulthood, the aging process could be made normal again with Skirata's antidote. Then, we would have soldiers who had to serve twice as long as us who were also born and bred to die in someone else's war."
"Skirata says he would destroy the knowledge once he had distributed the cure to every clone who wanted it."
"Sir, my job is to uncover information that sentients want to keep hidden. I know that no knowledge can be concealed once it has been used," reasoned Fixer. "The best way to ensure that nobody has to suffer a life as short, brutal, and artifical as we did is to just let us die without a fuss. Then, we stand a chance of being forgotten, we can be purged, and order will be restored."
"You must do what you deem best, Fixer. Refuse the cure if you want to," sighed Vau after a long pause. "I am a mercenary, and I took the job of training you boys for the credits. Learning after Order 66 went down that my men were Jango's final revenge on the Jedi was just icing on the uj cake. I never really thought that I would come to care about you boys at all, but I did even if I never became a sentimental mush like Skirata. When I saw all of you arrayed before me for the first time, I felt the odd, overwhelming compulsion to protect you lads. That's why I swore to you all that everything that I did from that moment on was intended to make you strong enough to surive. At that point, all I wanted was for you boys to live as long as your abbreviated lifespans would allow. It was only after our experiences on Triple Zero that my objectives changed. I saw how Omega longed for the civilian life that had been denied them since they were decanted, and I suddenly wanted to give my men a choice. I wanted them to have an opportunity to leave the army if they wished. The aiwha bait had made you all slaves when they robbed you of a chance to choose, and I wanted to make you free by giving you all a chance to leave if you wanted it. That's why I asked for you and the rest of Deltato help me steal from my family vault on Kamino. I wanted to make a generous donation to Skirata's clone welfare agency."
"You should be advised, sir, that Skirata perceives himself as the buir of every clone," Fixer remarked. "He would have helped any clone desert that requested his assistance."
"That's not the point," snapped Vau. "Fixer, I don't want you to be in Skirata's debt, nor do I want you or him thinking for a moment that I can't look after my own men."
"I wasn't questioning your authority, sir," Fixer assured him, his survival instincts as honed as ever.
"My authority isn't the point, either." Now it was Vau's turn to shake his head. "The point is that I went to a lot of trouble to ensure that you and your brothers had the right to choose that you were deprived of so many years ago when the Kaminoans created you in vats. You had the chance to desert, and you and the rest of Delta chose to seize the opportunity. Now, you have the opportunity to choose whether you want a normal lifespan or not."
"You think that I should choose to take the antidote once Uthan discovers it, don't you, sir?" Fixer demanded, eyeing Vau closely.
Again, Vau was silent for several beats before he admitted, "I won't pretend that in many ways you men of Delta have become what Omega and the Nulls are to Skirata. I won't say that you aren't the Delta that I am closest to thanks to our shared interest in tech. I won't pretend that I wasn't happy in my own non-demonstrative way to see you and the rest of Delta show up here. I won't pretend that it wouldn't be nice to have you around here for many more years to come. However, I won't pretend that those are my desires. I won't pretend that I know what is best for you, and I won't deny you the opportunity to choose your fate that this whole thing has been all about. You are a grown man, and you have the right to choose your own destiny. That is all I want for you. I want you to choose your own fate because you should be nobody's victim and nobody's fool. When you make your decision, just keep in mind that, as you said, some things can't be reversed, and death is certainly among them."
His brain going into sensory overload at Vau's confession of true emotion, Fixer could only stammer, "I'll—I'll have to think about what you've said, sir."
"You don't have to decide immediately." Vau shrugged. "The cure hasn't even been discovered yet."
"Affirmative, sir." Fixer nodded, and then found himself murmuring, "I wish Sev had gotten to choose. I know that someone who killed so many sentients that he lost count of them sometimes and who was one of the sharpest snipers in the galaxy shouldn't really be classified as a victim especially if that is one of the last things he would want to be callee, but I still regard him as such."
"Honor him with your choice then, whatever it turns out to be," Vau told him.
"I'll choose whatever Boss and Scorch do, then," Fixer declared after a few seconds. "I'm never abandoning my brothers again. Brotherhood is the only order I care about now, and I don't think that is so abnormal, after all."
