AN: you can listen to this story as a podfic on my pay tree on (for free)
She was so young.
It didn't occur to him at first. She was Jedi, and clones didn't think of their Jedi as being anything but powerful, awe inspiring leaders. Jedi didn't register as people.
He was so young.
It didn't occur to her at first. He was a clone trooper. A soldier, through and through, tough and strong and engineered for war. And as ashamed as she was to admit it, clones didn't really register as people.
But once he took the time to actually look, to notice, it was painfully easy to see. It was in the way she talked. The way she was so overconfident and yet so unsure, her fearful, fearless, untried optimism. The fact that she was so kriffing tiny. It was obvious.
But once she took the time to actually notice, to pay attention to him as an individual, it was painfully easy to see. She could feel it in the force, her sense of him was so new, without the layers that come with age. It was in the way he'd look around when they were planetside and he thought no one was watching, wonder and excitement written on his face. The look of a child for whom the world was new and untried.
It all came down to experience, he thought. Here she was, all of fourteen years old. She had never faced blaster fire, never been expected to fight a war. Sure they'd taught her well enough to use her lightsaber. But fighting was only a small part of battle. She wasn't trained to face the battle field, she wasn't trained to deal with the aftermath of blood and death. And it was a twisted world where she should be prepared for those things. She was just a civvie, and a painfully young one, and she was thrown into a war and told to take command.
It all came down to experience, she thought. Here he was, all of ten years old, no matter that he was physically twenty. The only world he'd known were the Kaminoan facilities, he'd grown up in a lab, before they had tossed him off to war. She didn't care what kind of training they'd given him. He was just a youngling with zero actual life experience, and they expected him to die for the republic.
It made something burn deep inside him, deep and harsh and furious, to see her fighting. The wrongness of it, of the Republic, the Jedi, sending a child to war. It made every instinct in him scream. But there was nothing he could do to stop it. All he could do was fight to protect her, and he swore he would. With ever breath and pulse of his being he would.
It made something burn deep inside her, to see him and his brothers fighting, dying. The wrongness of it, of the Republic, the Jedi, sending younglings to war. It was far too emotional to be fitting for a Jedi, yet the sureness of conviction it instilled in her, hot and still and constant, was the closest she came to perfect calm. She couldn't singlehandedly end this war, couldn't turn back time to ensure they aged normally, had childhoods. But she swore she would fight to protect them. To her death she would protect them.