And Nobody Has to Think Too Much

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"

'Desolation Row' – Bob Dylan

Fives knelt behind a lichen covered tree, blaster poised, ready. Two troopers were making their way, slowly, towards him and the hidden pair behind him.

Two Gungans, a mother and a daughter. They crouched low in a dip in the terrain, the mother holding the little girl tightly in her arms.

It had gone well, until departure. Now half the swamplands of Naboo seemed to be alight. Smoke clogged the air, smoldering on wet woods, setting the eerie pathways of the Gungan lands into a foggy haze. The hot humidity hung with the stink of rot and smoke. They'd been separated in the chaos of running bodies, blaster fire and flames.

Fives wished, so very much, that the pair they had set out to rescue had not followed him through the melee.

Two troopers, blasters poised, ready, held in grips so very much like his own. Two troopers, two brothers, on an opposite side of a battle. It was bizarre. It was wrong. He knew where his loyalty lay. The Republic. Always the Republic. Was it that different, going by a different name? Empire, Republic? How different were they, ruled by the same man and defended by the same army?

It would be so easy. Set down his weapon. Step out. Give a story, say he'd been pulled along, unwillingly. The Commander said they'd be considered missing. He knew what she really meant. Traitors. Deserters.

The Captain, the Commander, Echo. He could leave them to themselves. If they escaped, fine. He wished them no ill. If they were caught, they would be traitors. He remembered rumors of a brother who had gone turncoat. He wouldn't be like that. He knew where his loyalty lay.

A white armored figure turned his way. A black visor prevented him from knowing exactly where the man looked, but it seemed to peer through the air, lock onto him. He leaned back slightly, around the curve of thick tree trunk.

It was too hot. The humidity, the heat. Beads of sweat stank their way down his neck.

He felt too exposed. He wanted his armor. Civilian clothes with bits of gear attached was pathetic. Flimsy. Smooth, seamless white armor. He missed it.

He could step out. Set down his blaster. Raise his hands. Tell a story of coercion. He could go home.

A faint rustle came from below him. He caught himself before he gasped. There was the sound of battle in the distance, but this was close.

The little Gungan girl looked up at him. She was tucked flat against her mother, but her head peeped over the woman's shoulder. A hand was free, and it was braced against the dirt and moss her mother leaned against. A couple of pebbles skittered downward, set loose from her touch.

Yellow eyes looked up at him, and her head tilted to the side. She blinked solemnly at him.

The girl couldn't be more than four, perhaps five standard years old.

He wished them no ill.

A boom of gunfire echoed off surrounding hills. There were other troopers in the swamplands. He didn't know their mission, but it was tearing through the wetlands. He'd seen Gungans struck down as he and the others had run into the mob that separated them. There were not really that many soldiers. But they were armed, professional, and descending on an unsuspecting and unprepared city. They'd never attacked so defenseless a place before. Why now?

Fives' breathing grew jagged. A little girl. She blinked up at him.

His brothers were tearing apart a city to capture a little girl. A little future Jedi. He frowned. Execute Order 66. The Jedi are traitors. That couldn't possibly mean younglings. That was insane.

It was all wrong. They were the good guys. The heroes. Heroes in white armor, doing what had to be done for the betterment of all.

What did destroying a defenseless city have to do with it?

Yellow little girl's eyes were watching him. Her wide mouth slowly began to stretch into a smile, chin tilted upward hopefully. Trusting.

He turned back to the swamp, watched as one of the two soldiers drifted closer.

It was all wrong. Civilians were relying on him for safety, and it was all wrong.

The first soldier stepped beside the tree. Fives' hand snapped outward, dropping his own blaster as he shoved other's down, muzzle pointing to the ground as it went off. Five slipped around, arm snaking around his neck, yanked the man in front of him up and back. There was a cough of surprise from the man he was restraining, and a yell of challenge from the second. Fives was faster. His prisoner's blaster was flailing around as the man struggled, and he had a hand on the trigger. It took only a moment for Fives to place his hand over his brother's and squeeze it.

The first shot flew wild. The second trooper spooked, leapt to the side out of an instinct for self-preservation. A second squeeze of Fives' hand and the other man went down, collapsing as a leg crumpled from under him. He bellowed in pain. He was down but not out, and was writhing in the mud, trying to right himself. Fives twisted the man in his arms backward, jerked his knee upward into his prisoner's, back, then shoved his foot into the back of his left knee, splitting him into an arch, then down to the ground. He spun quickly, down to his own knees as the second soldier finally got himself righted enough to begin firing wildly in his direction. He twisted the blaster out of the other man's grip, shot back as carefully as he could with blue laser bursts flying past his face.

It hit the other man's arm, hard, and it flapped upward, fingers releasing the blaster, which spun through the air before squelching down into the mud. There was a heavy groan of pain across the clearing. Fives took the end of the blaster in his hands and rammed it sharply into helmet of the man at his feet. He spasmed, then lay still.

He was breathing hard. It took a moment to gulp in enough of the smoldering air to right himself, stand. His vision tunneled for a moment, and he worried about passing out. Then the world cleared, and he heard a clicking noise.

He turned, too fast. Blackness spun around his vision, but cleared almost instantly. He found himself in a near crouch, ready for another attack.

But there was no one else. The Gungan mother had stood, and was hefting his dropped blaster in her free hand. The other was full of her child. He must have had a shocked expression. The woman said, "Meesa be knowin' what they be plannin' with my girl." Her own yellow eyes narrowed, her lips drawn tightly together. "Meesa not be knowing much about fightin', but nobody be gettin' her except through meesa." Her finlike ears flapped lightly across her back in defiance and fear, the binding she had in them when they first arrived lost in the swamp.

Fives was suddenly shaken. They were supposed to be preventing harm. Not causing it. This woman should never have been placed in such a situation. She was a civilian. It was sickening.

"Come on," he said, finding himself sounding strangely steady. It was eerie, even to himself. "Just don't shoot me on accident if you don't know how to use that thing."

Her eyes widened a little bit, and she looked at her daughter quickly. Both of them then seemed to come to some sort of understanding, and they looked at Fives with resolution.

He jogged over to where the other blaster lay, and quickly detached its power cell. The man nearby groaned, his helmet facing them. His armor was blackened, and there was a smell of char and burnt flesh in the air. Fives tried to apologize, but the words didn't come.

The Gungans were moving forward, mother running with child in one arm and weapon in the other. They paused, waiting for him, at the other side of the little clearing.

He turned and followed.

Fives sat on the edge of his bunk. He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. It seemed like he was doing this a lot lately. His head hurt, and he knew it wasn't from an injury or a normal headache.

His brain felt too full. And like someone had just shaken it, really hard.

They'd all made it, somehow. Their ship was on the way to Alderaan, where they could have some measure of safety.

The door opened with a light rush of recycled air, and Echo entered. He sat on the bunk across from him for a moment, then reached out and plucked up the holobook sitting on the narrow table in the center of the little room. He paid attention to it, occasionally pressing buttons until he found whatever it was he was looking for, then settled into reading. His posture mimicked Fives', though rather than his hands pressing against his face, they were filled with the holo.

They sat in silence. Eventually, Fives asked, "What you reading?"

Echo shrugged. "Holonovel. Commander suggested I find something."

Fives snorted. "No manuals?"

Echo gave him a wry grin. "Nah. This stuff's not so bad, though." His eyes flicked across the screen. "Want one? I think we've got another somewhere."

Fives shook his head, and silence slowly reclaimed them, save for the sound of the engines and the occasional tap of Echo flipping an electronic page.

"Do you," Fives said after a time, the quiet filling the room too heavily, "Do you think it's right?" He shifted uncomfortably. He felt half uncertain of what he even meant.

Echo looked up from his holonovel and across the table, seemed to think for awhile. "I don't know," he admitted, looking just as uncomfortable. "What went on down there, I don't know. Doesn't seem right." He held the holobook lightly, letting it hang between his knees. "But the Commander. The Captain. They wouldn't order us to tear apart some city like that. Least, I don't think so." He shifted a little and asked, nervously, "You think this is going on everywhere?"

Fives closed his eyes, bent his head. If it was happening elsewhere…what was happening to their other brothers? They were good men. Faces they knew well, and not just because they mirrored their own. What was happening to the rest of the 501st? Were they being ordered to find young Jedi as well?

Little girl's eyes watching him in the swamp. A mother trying to pick up a blaster to defend herself, while their brothers tore apart her home and burned it. Two brothers who attacked him, and he left them lying in the mud.

Painfully, he said, "Yeah. I think it is."

I've been trying to keep this fic running along the lines of canon, but all knowledge is limited, I'm still relatively new to this depth of canon knowledge (so I don't know precisely how much I may be missing) and there's only so much I've been able to dig up about the immediate aftermath of the Clone Wars, Order 66 and the very early days of Empire. I'm assuming that any known possible Jedi would be hunted down as well, including children, to be either killed or recruited. Either way, death or being sent to the Emperor is bad.

~Queen