"You could still be,
what you want to,
What you said you were,
when I met you.
You've got a warm heart,
you've got a beautiful brain.
But it's disintegrating,
from all the medicine…"
'Medicine' - Daughter
The Finalizer was a massive ship.
It was entirely possible to see a face aboard the huge Destroyer, spend an entire week on the starship and never run into that particular face again. The anonymity was complete when one's role was that of a Stormtrooper and being out of uniform – helmet included – without permission was a serious breach of conduct. Her fellow soldiers might see her out of uniform and know the distinctive vibrant pink skin and obvious blue hair, but non-infantry personnel and ranking officers would never realize that the alien woman was one of Captain Phasma's men. They were more likely to assume she was a low-level maintenance drone.
The lack of recognition suited her mood just fine.
Distressed was an adequate description of how ZL-U58 felt at that very moment. It was a very unfamiliar and uneasy sensation for a woman that had always enjoyed a regimented, unemotional, sensible outlook on life and her role in it. While the Darkside might fuel itself upon passions and volatile emotions, the parts and pieces of the whole that was a Stormtrooper did not function in such a way.
Duty. Obedience. Loyalty. Discipline. Distressed was not one of those four tenements. She swallowed a deep mouthful of air and realizing she was nearing the mess hall, hearing the hum of several hundred voices released from duty and enjoying evening chow, ZL-U58 slowed. The scent of food on the air didn't tempt her churning stomach, so she turned on her heel, changing course, and headed instead towards the personal quarters of her division. She did not want company right now.
The interrogation itself had opened up something inside of her. It was like a healing wound, one that had been forgotten. Still there, underneath her skin. Tender to the touch, hot with an infection that threatened to grow if it wasn't treated. It was emotion. Or rather…the feeling of it in another, the sensing of it and the effect it had upon her.
ZL-U58 paused outside the door to the infantry personal quarters and stared unseeingly at the palm panel, then just closed her eyes and rubbed her fingers firmly over her brow.
The Resistance Pilot. Poe Dameron. She had let herself open up to get the job done and break his hold on his secrets. Instead, he had nearly broken her. She had felt it, all of it: the hideous pain of broken ribs, the way his skull felt like it might burst from the blows to his head, the determination to keep his friends safe, the worry and fear that he wouldn't.
At the time, those emotions and the sensing of them had helped her with her purpose. Turning his concern for others against him, using them to weaken his resolve. It had been her orders and therefore, the right thing to do. Then the attempts to drape her influence over him, to calm him, had failed and he had seen through the deception.
But not entirely. No, not entirely. By the Maker, he had believed her story, shouted at her to be strong even as her fellow soldiers had beat his already battered and broken body. Who was that gullible? Who was that kind? All that pain, all that suffering and it had only made him kinder.
She felt sick…sick in gut, sick in heart. Guilt, an emotion she had only passing acquaintance with, tore at her. And Kylo Ren had seen it. Stars help her. There was no one worse to have inside her head than that man.
The headache brewing behind her skull made her just want to find her bunk and sleep away the next several hours. Opening her eyes, ZL-U58 straightened and palmed herself into the barracks. Inside, she headed for her bunk, just one of many built into the room and stacked three high. She was of sufficient standing to have the added luxury of being a top bunk. Even with a layer of alloy, synthweave covered mattress and bedroll between the bunk mates, an odiferous fellow trooper could ruin a good night of sleep.
Her dry and aching throat reminded her that though she might not be hungry, she was thirsty and the blood beginning to cake on her bruised face was cracking and itching. She needed water.
ZL-U58 changed course for the locker room and refresher set towards the back of the ship barracks. The barracks were quiet, dark and empty with her own and the other divisions in the mess hall having chow. The absolute quiet and the darkness would help her mind clear, she reasoned. Wash up, lay down for a power nap, wake up with a fresh perspective. Wasn't it very unlikely that, after her failure today, her superiors would hesitate to use her Zeltron traits again? Stars, I hope so. She didn't want to be split open like that again.
As she reached for the panel to open the locker room and refresher door, it opened on its own accord and she was face to face with FN-2187, the light from the locker room washing into the barracks. ZL-U58 frowned, eyes traveling him from head to toe.
"Second time today we've been in the john together. Re-conditioning?" She asked quietly, tipping her head to the side. He exhaled a long breath, then just shrugged. He was still in uniform, save for the helmet held underneath one arm. His face, what she could see of it in the dim light behind her, was calmer than before. But his eyes were still too wide and as he stood there looking down at her, she saw that his jaw was clenching and unclenching.
"It was re-conditioning. A couple hours of being reminded why we do what we do, pep talk with a nice little syringe at the end to make sure it all sticks…" His jaw worked again, his face still flat and expressionless and it struck ZL-U58 that his mind was fighting his body. His body was surrendering to the combination of neuro-stimulants that helped a Stormtrooper to better absorb re-conditioning: his mind was resisting…and probably at great personal cost. Resisting the effects of re-conditioning could cause nausea, headaches, mood swings…
"Go back inside…I need to wash my face and get some water." She ducked her head and squeezed in past him in her off-duty issue and moved to a sink. "Get a shower, 87. Then go have a couple hours downtime. You'll feel better when you wake up." It'll all make more sense when you wake up. Just like she hoped it would for her, too.
"What happened to your face?'
Over the running of the water, she just barely heard his question. Unfolding a sanitation wipe from the dispenser, she paused, staring down at the wipe, then lifted it to her face and began to scrub it over the scrapes and splits in her pink skin. It burned badly enough to make her eyes water up.
"The Captain suggested that I assist in interrogating the Resistance Pilot. General Hux thought it best I appear like a fellow prisoner." She wiped hard at one gash just running through one of her slashing blue brows and shut her eyes at the burn, then dragged the sanitizing wipe under her nose to clean up the blood that had been clotting. Her nose had already been slightly crooked from being broke before, so she pressed in at the bridge until she heard the faint pop of it shifting back into place.
"They needed to make you look like a prisoner…to get answers out of the Pilot…" He repeated slowly, behind her. "And to do that, they beat the hell out of you?"
Insulted, ZL-U58 glared at him in the mirror, the wipe clutched in her hand. "Knocking on my face a bit is hardly beating the hell out of me, 87. Give me some fucking credit. It was a few good hits. I've had a lot worse."
"That's not the point!"His shout made her lower the cloth, clutch it to her waist. The emotions from him came in one fierce wave: Anger, panic, fear. She swallowed, tried to clamp down on that part of her that was now so wide open to other people's pain, to cut it off. "The point is you're a loyal soldier without a bad mark to your name, but they couldn't find any way to work this out other than put a fist in your face? A good soldier means so damn little to them?" In the mirror, she watched him turn and begin to pace in a stiff and anxious gait.
"I agreed to it. It's my duty to help the Order in whatever way they deem that I'm needed. You know what I am, what my race can do. I should be honored that Captain Phasma thought of me. But it doesn't matter, seeing as how I failed and he saw through it. My own fault, I should have maintained. Should have just kept it up. Kylo Ren was sent in after me to break him…" She trailed off at the anxiety on the air, a mounting frustration and a burst of hate. She felt the terror that was running under the hate, the desperate panic the terror was building up inside him.
She was witnessing the breaking down of a soldier.
"I have to go," FN-2187 said hoarsely, shaking his head. "They used you, like you're just a whore for them." His words made her flinch, echoing Poe Dameron's very words, but she doubted FN-2187 saw her the hurt flash through her. He was spiraling too deeply into his own. "They use all of us. We're just numbers, we're not even people to them, 58. just toys to play with and step on and leave behind when we break."
"You can't just go," she tried to speak reasonably, setting down the cloth and moving towards him. "This is your home, 87. Where would you even go? You belong here. Maybe you just need another round of re-con-"
FN-2187 lunged towards her, took her shoulders in a grip that managed to still be gentle. His dark eyes bore down into her own until he finally shook his head slowly. ZL-U58's eyes widened, then fell shut on a fresh wave of tears that had nothing to do with her wounds as her friend pressed a kiss to her brow. He was trembling, his breath shuddering over her face from the force of his emotions. "I can't stay here," he whispered against her brow. "Not when everything in me is just…coming apart. If I stay, I'm going to die. Because I'll die before I ever open fire on innocent people again." He released her and spun around, heading for the doors. "You said Ren went into the Pilot's cell…if I'm lucky he's not a brain-dead mess and can still fly…"
The knowledge of what he was going to do hit her like another fist to the face. With dawning horror, ZL-U58 shoved off from the sink, following him.
"Don't do this, don't do this!" There was real panic in her voice, in her belly like a coil of eels, in her throat hot and aching, rising upward. "87, don't do this!" She chased him, hands reaching, but they were damp from cleaning up her face and slid right off the surface of his armor. "Please, 87! You can't do this! They'll never stop hunting you! And I'll have to hunt you and I don't know if I have the strength to do that!" But he wasn't stopping, he wasn't slowing as he jammed on his helmet with a hiss of the seal and grabbing his weapon from the rack. And beyond the barracks door, she couldn't chase him…Past that door, he would be her enemy.
"Please," she croaked out once more, and the weakness in her own voice made her ashamed. She drew a deep breath past the knot in her throat and made herself look at him, look at what he was doing. He was running away from his duty, his loyalties, his friend. He was running away from the very Order that had made him. "If you walk out that door and do this, you're doing it as my enemy. You're doing it as a traitor." This time her voice didn't shake or crack.
He slowed, he stopped and stood there, head lowered, weapon in his hand. Finally, he turned back towards her and she saw her rigid reflection in his helmet.
"Stay out of the main docking bay, 58." Then the door was hissing open and he was through it and gone.
Ten points to Gryffindor if you caught the muddled Doctor Who reference in this chapter.
My chapters might be coming slower as my classes start back up on Monday, but I will still be updating as regularly as I can. At LEAST once a week, if not twice.
Someone had asked me in a PM why ZL-U58 isn't a FN. That will be explained in a later chapter. Thanks so much for all the comments, favorites and follows. If you have a tumblr and want writing updates or just to see all the Star Wars posts I plaster my blog in, my name on there is bluemilkinaredsolocup.