A/N
Hi Readers,
I decided that this needed to stand alone.
Sued13
Chapter Seventy Six
Imperial Detention Centre & Labor Camp LEG-817, Wobani.
His feet scraped along the ground, as they dragged him back; his right eye totally closed.
He would add these bruises to the others in his collection; it was getting larger by the day.
They unlocked the triple locks and flung him in the small cell.
He rolled over and smiled.
The Stormtrooper started to head towards him byt was pulled back; the door locked behind him.
Crawling onto the bunk, he ignored his cell mates and they him, it wouldn't pay them to help.
Lying there on the scratchy, threadbare piece of material that passed for a blanket, he stared at the bunk immediately above him; the mattress sinking, moving, confirming it's occupant was alive, still.
Not unlike the sleeping pods in Kamino.
They'd interrogated him only once since he arrived.
Why?
He asked himself that every day, waiting for the next one.
His stomach growled loudly; the rations were woefully inadequate for the manual labour they were doing.
He had tried to exercise but that sapped him of the strength that he needed to work.
Scrambling as quickly as the next man, fighting for the crumbs they were given.
He wasn't proud of himself in here but that's what it was supposed to do.
Make you lose your pride.
Break you.
He had lost count of the number of times they had beaten him.
The first time had been when they had taken Kallie's lock of hair from him.
He had resisted.
Three troopers beat him with durasteel bars fashioned from the scrap the prisoners sorted.
Then the young girl they had beaten for refusing to go with the Stormtrooper. 'Around the back.'
Everyone knew what that meant.
He had defended her; he hated bullies.
She still disappeared.
The durasteel bars came out again.
The Storm troopers named them... "The Clone's Friends."
He met them so often.
He soon learnt; you couldn't be honourable and survive, and he wanted to survive. He had to survive.
Lose your honour.
Lose your pride.
The tiniest infringement resulted in a beating.
Looking at a guard.
Beating.
So you looked down.
Not fast enough on the production line.
Beating.
So you got faster.
You answered back.
Beating.
So you obeyed their orders and kept your mouth shut.
They would soon find something else to use to break you.
It was only a matter of time.
He had just met 'The Clone' Friends' again.
For 'smiling'.
Rex looked at the bunk above him then closed his eyes.
Every night - this ritual.
Ana's face – smiling at him.
Her smell.
Her touch.
Kallie's face.
Kallie's smell.
Kallie's little hand squeezing his finger.
Maya's happiness at being adopted and pride at being chosen to be a shock trooper.
Wolffe and Gregor laughing.
Their arms flung around his shoulders, when they caught a Joopa.
These memories, they couldn't take them away from him.
They illuminated his sleep.
These memories kept him alive.
They hadn't quite broken him.
He would survive.
