"How many times must I teach you this lesson, clone?" came the hissing, disdainful voice.
"Madam please, I didn't mean to disobey you. I only wanted to train some more," Dagger was pleading for her to understand.
"Good clones don't sneak out after hours to train. Especially not when they have orders to stay in their bunk. Your discipline will be swift."
Dagger flinched from where she kneeled on the mat. The Madam had caught her training in the middle of the night. This was the second time this week that she had gotten caught. Dagger had thought that she would be pleased that she was training more. Nothing she ever did pleased the Madam.
It was as if her entire existence was distasteful to her, which was likely true. She just wanted to be a good soldier, she didn't understand why she couldn't train more.
She heard something slide across the floor and shuddered. She knew what that was. She knew that this time would be worse than last, she braced her hands on her thighs and gritted her teeth. This is what she got for disobeying, this is discipline.
She shot up in her bed with a gasp. Her eyes were slow to adjust to the dark room. She didn't remember where she was, her helmet was gone. Everything was so quiet, normally the soft snores of her brothers helped her sleep. She grabbed her dagger that was tucked under her pillow unsheathing it and holding it at the ready.
Dagger blinked rapidly, there was a light coming from under the doorway and she was able to see the lamp next to her and turn it on. As light filled the room she remembered that they were in the GAR barracks on Coruscant.
Talking a deep breath to relax her racing heart she put her dagger back in its sheath. She ran a hand down her face. She could feel a dream slipping away. She had no idea what it was, but it had obviously terrified her so she could take a at her crono she saw that it was only 0630. There was no way she was going to be able to get back to sleep. She donned her armor and made her way down to the nearest food court.
The durasteel doors slid open. She was surprised to see a few brothers in the dining hall when she entered. Three brothers sat at the same tabel all seeming to be talking over breakfast and early morning caf. One she knew was Rex, but the others she couldn't quite tell who they were. They had intricate grey markings on
Dagger walked around the edge of the room, trying to avoid the gaze of the other officers. She made her way across the line and quietly asked for the food she wanted. The cook happily placed the food on her tray, she thanked him and made her way back to the door.
"Well, well, you certainly aren't an officer," said the deep voice right in front of her. One of the grey painted clones had put himself right in her path. She looked up and her breath caught in her throat, there was a long scar across his right eye which was milky white.
"One of mine, Wolffe, don't antagonize him," Rex said from the other side of the table.
Wolffe let out a huff of air and returned to his seat, "you're no fun Rex."
"Training isn't until zero nine, what are you doing up?" he asked.
"I could ask you the same question sir," Dagger said, still holding her tray in front of her, facing the door.
The three laughed then the other clone, who hadn't been introduced, asked, "why don't you eat with us, trooper?"
Dagger's heart dropped, she wanted to stay and eat with them, but she still didn't trust anyone, especially not brothers she just met, with her secret. She shook her head, "thank you sir, but I really wouldn't want to intrude. Good morning, gentlemen. Captain, I will see you at training at zero nine."
Then before they could say anything more to her she walked quickly away. Once through the doors she let out a breath that she didn't realize that she had been holding.
Back in the dining hall, Wolffe and Sinker both looked at Rex. The Captain just shrugged, "that's Dagger, he doesn't mean any disrespect. He just doesn't take his helmet off around others."
"And that isn't suspicious to you?" Commander Wolffe asked.
Rex bristled at the question, "Dagger has been with my battalion for months and in that time he has never been anything other than loyal and hardworking. His first mission he saved Commander Cody's life. So if he wants to keep his helmet on I damn sure will let him."
Sinker held up his hands to placate Rex's anger, "we aren't questioning your men Rex. I forgot how protective you were of your troopers."
"There is a reason the 501st has one of the lowest loss ratios in the GAR. I protect my men at all costs, no matter the enemy," Rex reminded them, he was proud of that statistic. He hated losing men and he would do everything in his power to avoid the loss of lives.
"Anyway, did you see that new holo-movie that came out the other week?" Wolffe asked, changing the subject.
~B~
Everyone was in the training room before 0900 and as soon as the chrono hit 9 Rex was on them getting them started on training. First they would be working out, doing PT together, then they would spilt and work on battle skills.
Wasting no time he spurred them into a warm up run around the perimeter of the admittedly very large room.
The Captain set the pace at the front of the group as they all ran. Dagger ran near Echo and Fives, listening to them talk about what had happened last night. Apparently they were the only two in dorm 3 who didn't end up going out last night. She laughed as they tried to guilt trip her about not going out last night.
As they approached the end of their final lap, she promised to go out with them tonight on the condition that they take her to look at a knife shop. She loved her Dagger but she did want to see if she could get another. They agreed as long as she went with them to the club another night.
They all lined up in formation and did the exercises that Rex was telling them to do. By the time they were done with PT, Dagger swore that they had to have done 300 pushups. Her arms were killing her from working out last night and the exertion of today's workout.
They were split into two groups, one group was to work on sparring while the other would go do some blaster practice. They would have an hour for each training circuit. Rex assigned platoon leaders to go through specific drills for each circuit.
Dagger ended up sparring first and her partner was Cricket. He was as chatty as ever, for the most part she just ignored him and went about training. She was content to listen as he talked and talked.
She was itching to get to blaster practice. It was one of her favorite parts of training. It almost didn't come soon enough, and it definitely was over far too fast.
It seemed like the blink of an eye and the five hours of training that they had to do was already over. Dagger looked down as everyone started to leave. She dragged her feet as she made her way to the doors.
"Hey," someone called.
She turned and saw Captain Rex approaching, "are you ok? What's got your head down?"
She scuffed her boot on the duracreet floor, "I like training and I just don't want to go right now."
He let out a laugh, "you do seem like the gym rat type. Just because mandatory training is over doesn't mean that you have to leave. You can stay and train on your own as long as you like."
She perked up immediately, she didn't even realize that she would be allowed to stay. Dagger just figured that there would be other battalions who needed to use the gym themselves. She would have thought that she would have to sneak out every night still to avoid anyone seeing her train more.
Rex smiled as he saw Dagger do a little hop from foot to foot in excitement, "just don't wear yourself out too much kid. This is supposed to be R and R for the unit."
"I won't sir!" she said and immediately took off to jog around the room again. She liked running a lot and figured it would be a good time to do some extra cardio. Rex shook his head, that one sure was dedicated. He decided to go back to his own room to shower, he decided that he would come back later and check on Dagger.
He clipped his helmet to his belt and waited for the elevator. He mentally went through the other tasks he would have to do today. He was kept semi-out of the loop on the actual reconstruction of the Resolute, but that was one responsibility he was glad to be rid of.
He did have a meeting with Skywalker and Ahsoka in the evening. Maybe afterwards he would even go out. He hadn't had a proper drink in a long time and he thought it was probably due by now. With a smile he decided that, barring any emergency calls, he would go out tonight. Probably even ask the other officers on R and R if they wanted to go as well.
~B~
A little later than Rex wanted to admit, he remembered that he was going to go check on Dagger back in the gym. Oops. He jumped as soon as he realized that his newest trooper had been left unattended for far too long. He remembered the first time he let Cricket be alone for too long he got his head stuck in an air vent.
To this day he still does not know how he did that, but it took an ungodly amount of butter to get his head out. Sure Dagger was very different but Rex would bet that even the quietest clone he had ever seen would be able to get himself into a whole different problem set.
Rex jammed his finger into the elevator button willing it to get there faster, "c'mon, c'mon."
It felt like ages before he finally reached the gym floor. He tried to maintain his composure as he all but ran. To be honest, he trusted his men with his life on the battlefield. But unsupervised and without a mission, he didn't trust them not to break themselves or anything else. So he was a bit nervous about what he was going to find in that gym.
His racing heart stopped as he burst through the doors to see an empty room. There was no movement in the room and a single armored body lay on one of the mats in the back corner of the room. No movement, just laying there.
Holy shit.
This is it, the end of his career.
One of his troopers is dead.
Holy shit.
He ran as fast as he could to the back corner, where Dagger laid. Skidding to his knees he grabbed his shoulders and shook him, "Dagger! DAGGER! Don't you dare be dead!"
Dagger shot up with a gasp. She grabbed his arm, "Captain?! What happened? Who died?"
"What are you doing?" He yelled, very much startled by the trooper sitting up when he thought he was dead.
"I just laid down for a minute after my workout. What happened?"
Rex sat back on his legs holding his face in his hands. He had to take a few deep breaths before looking back up at Dagger, "I just saw you laying there and I thought you were dead."
"Captain," she held her hand to her heart, "I am offended to know that you think I would die without a pool of blood and smoking battle droids around me."
He let out a nervous chuckle, "you scare me Dagger. C'mon let's get you back to your room so you can take a shower. You smell awful."
She took his hand and stood up, "gee thanks, Captain."
Dagger stood, the combination of sore muscles and a sudden vertical ascent caused her to sway violently. She would have toppled over if she hadn't collided with Captain Rex. His hand came up to grab her arm as she let out a "whoa."
"Hey, are you alright? You look like you are about to pass out," he was concerned.
"I'm fine, just sore. I'm not that fragile, Captain," she said, gently pulling her arm out of his grasp and heading for the door, "just sore."
He nodded, still assessing the trooper, "I heard you leave your room in the middle of the night last night, but somehow I doubt that you actually left the building. I would be willing to bet that you went to go train. You know you don't have to train like crazy anytime, but especially when we are on R'n'R right?"
"I know, I just want to be able to keep up with the others. And I don't have anything else to do until tonight anyway. Echo and Fives are taking me out," she said excitedly.
Rex smiled, it was good that Dagger had made friends and that they would take him around Coruscant. Part of him was just a little disappointed that he wouldn't be able to go as well. But it wasn't his place, his was their superior. If he asked to come they would likely say yes because he was their captain, but if they actually wanted him to come was a different story.
"So where are you guys going to go" he asked to keep up the conversation as the elevator took them back to their floor.
"Well when I first joined the unit, Echo said he would take me to go look at knives and daggers if we ever got time off planetside. So they agreed to take me to a weapons shop tonight. They also wanted to go to a club, but that might have to wait until tomorrow," she explained.
"Careful if you do end up going to a club, it gets pretty crazy sometimes," he warned and she nodded her head.
They walked up to their doors and before they parted ways Rex stopped her, "hey, if you ever need someone to hang out with I'm just right next door ok? Might be better than running yourself into the ground with training."
She smiled, even though he couldn't see it, and nodded her head. Dagger then slipped into her room leaving Rex alone in the hallway contemplating what he had just said.