Post-Order 66 arc
Order 37
Chopper hated Order 37. He hated crushing the spirits of civilians. Most of the time he'd been able to stay away from the interrogations; but once or twice he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and Commander Appo or one of the captains would point at him; most of the other, original troopers breathing in relief because it wasn't them.
Mostly he'd been able to fake it; to touch the woman on her face, cover her mouth with his big hand and press himself against her thigh instead of violating her. It didn't help the prisoners much with any other trooper, but Chopper could do nothing about that though once he'd put his hand over a screaming girl's mouth and nose, pressing long enough and hard enough against her delicate skin that she died. He'd gotten a reprimand from Appo for that.
He only stayed for Rex; the same as Fives had stayed for a while before disappearing. Rex had lost any concern about his appearance. He'd remember to shave or bathe only when reminded but not always, even then. If Chopper or one of the other troopers didn't clean his armor then it wasn't clean. He never smiled or joked around with his troops anymore. Worse, he never said remembrance for the dead. He hadn't since the night they'd burned the Jedi Temple; as though he'd died that night, as though they were now all part of the dead.
Chopper squatted; his head slightly shorter than the new prisoner as she sat on the cot bolted to the floor. She was terrified but trying so hard not to show it. He admired her will; she was determined not to be backed against the wall. Her knuckles were as white as her predator teeth as she gripped the metal frame of the cot. She been caught running a rebellion message. Just a runner, just a youngling running messages she probably didn't understand and Chopper had objected to taking her back to the cells.
So Appo, fresh from battle, had commanded Chopper to take her back to detention with the implication of rape her, beat her, break her. Appo had begun striding from the room then turned to look Chopper full in the face. Chopper had a reputation of ignoring unclear or imprecise orders that he didn't like. So Commander Appo spelled it out for him in short words.
"Take her back to detention, Sergeant Chopper. Before the sun rises tomorrow morning you will personally rape her, you will personally beat her and you will break her by any and all means at hand. You will not kill her. You will bring her and any information she has regarding rebellion to me no later than 0800 tomorrow. Do you understand that, Sergeant?"
"Yes, sir." Chopper had growled. So now he had been backed into a corner and there was no other choice for him anymore.
"Kev," Chopper spoke closed channel to the other trooper. "I am tired to death of implementing Order 37."
Kev, standing guard at the door, nodded.
"I'm going to let the captain know it, I'm going to bring him down here and if he can implement that kriffing order with this child," Chopper let his plans fade. If Captain Rex could rape this girl then Chopper would desert. Appo had left him no other choice. He wondered if he should kill the captain first; he'd consider it a mercy killing, and he'd have to take his blaster in case his first couple of plans didn't work, but…. Don't think of that until you have to make a decision.
Kev looked from Chopper to the prisoner. "Chopper, he isn't Captain Rex of the 501st anymore. He's not who he was…"
"I know that Kev. None of us are."
The girl's lower lip quivered violently and her lekku were tightly curled at the tips. Her face was so pale you could barely make out the white markings against what should be sunset-colored skin but was only a pale orange color in her fear. She growled at him, showing sharp little teeth, a tiny sign of defiance meant to bolster her own courage more than anything else.
Chopper wanted so badly to hold her, give her a comforting hug and reassure her. Instead he stood. "If she can't get through him…."
"I've got your back, Chopper. Whatever you do."
Chopper shook his head. "At the end of this neither she nor I will be here anymore." He gave a heavy sigh. "If I fail, give her a clean death, Kev."
"Yes, Chopper. Yourself?"
Chopper gave a twist of his lips; not quite a smile. "I hope I won't be that incompetent. But if I am Kev, yeah, give me a clean death also."
They were speaking treasonous words, every little syllable, treason.
Rex twisted the empty mug in his hand. Appo had just left the mess and Rex wondered if the presence at his side was Appo returned to tell him it was all a mistake - that Sergeant Zeer - the last man of Rex's original command wasn't dead. That he'd been on the final retreating LAAT... Rex would have given almost anything to hear those words.
Kriff, while he was wishing, might as well wish for...
No, Appo wouldn't admit to a mistake.
"Captain Rex." The voice at his side was harsh and gravelly with anger and other dark emotions.
It was Chopper. Only Chopper had the nerve to call him out in that tone. Sometimes he called the captain only by his name; something he'd first done on Coruscant the night Rex had danced with a princess. Or had that been only a dream?
Late at night when Rex was wishing for more than caf and hidden tears in his mug, when crystal stars seemed too perfect for the galaxy, Chopper would sometimes call him simply 'Rex' as though they were equal in rank. Perhaps that was why Rex allowed the sergeant to call him out so belligerently. Chopper had been her favorite trooper. Perhaps that was why. He'd been Fives and Echo's bunk mate, a friend to Coric and Kix. Perhaps that was why. But they were all dead now; Echo on Citadel, Coric in the Temple. Or gone, deserted like Kix and Jesse. Fives also was gone though no one knew when or where or how and there was no record he'd ever been assigned to the 501st. Rex wondered if there were any records, outside of memory, showing ARC Fives existed. Appo had raged at Fives disappearance, had demanded everyone's helmet for inspection and put Chopper on punishment detail.
They were all gone now. All but Chopper. And, ultimately, that was why. Chopper was the final witness to every bad decision he'd ever made.
"Sergeant Chopper," he acknowledged with a sharp, downward tilt of his head as he stared into the empty mug.
Chopper stood in front of him and executed a sharp salute.
Kriff, thought Rex, closing his eyes wearily. He is not in a good mood. No one was in a good mood these days, but there were times when friendship overtook the black moods of his brothers and times were … almost… like before the Empire.
"What is it sergeant?" His eyes opened. Rex's voice was tired as he rose from the table his fingers barely touching the rim of his mug.
"Your presence is required in the cell block, sir."
Rex sighed heavily. Not only did he not go into the cell block, but that 'sir' from Chopper had been amazingly insulting. It must be something that Chopper wanted changed; some ambiguous order of Appo's that Rex could countermand.
They were in the corridor before Rex turned to Chopper. "What is it, Chopper?"
"It has come to my attention, sir." The honorific dripped with venom, as though Chopper hadn't been one of the two men to take out Ahsoka. "That you have never had the opportunity to enforce Order 37 on a… personal level."
Rex stopped in mid-stride. "I don't do that, Sergeant Chopper." His tone was sharp and brusque; hard enough to make any shiny quake in his boots, angry enough to have a line of men come to attention so sharply they'd snap.
Except Chopper wasn't shiny; he'd broken so long ago that he had healed. Chopper knew being broken was only a measure of the standards you held yourself to; how good you were, that being broken was only temporary.
"You've repeatedly said there isn't anything you'd make your men do that you wouldn't do."
There was silence between them then, after a long pause, Chopper continued toward the cell block. He didn't look back.
When Rex finally made it to the cell block, Chopper was there playing a hand of sabacc with Kev and three guards. Chopper stood, glancing down at the bottle in Rex's hand. It was almost empty, barely a swallow remaining of the heady beverage.
Chopper remembered that bottle. Corellian whiskey. Ash had given it to him. After the interview with the Jedi Council, Chopper had opened it for a celebratory drink with the commander, Rex, Echo, Fives and Kev; the commander coughing and sputtering, her nose twitching as she drank her small amount, the men laughing at her words of 'you drink this? On purpose?'
After the landing at Point Rain on Geonosis, they'd had another toast for victory and survival. It had been solemnly opened after Umbara; a drink in honor of the dead salted with sorrow. It hadn't really been touched since then. So much had happened since then, none of it worth celebrating and too much death to risk acknowleging.
Chopper wondered how much other alcohol had been under the Captain's supervision; he looked far more inebriated than a single bottle – even Corellian whiskey - could account for. Chopper permitted himself an inward smile. Inebriated, the captain would be far more susceptible.
Helmet in hand; Chopper led the captain down the hall to the cell block with the Togrutan girl. There were the familiar moans and crying sobs from cells they passed, begging entreaties to be released, offers of money and favors. Chopper ignored them, saw Rex flinch at the first sound, then harden himself to walk the gauntlet of despair.
Kev and Chopper had kept the other men from touching her, invoking Captain Rex's name and Commander Appo's orders. When Chopper pushed open the door, she was sitting wide-eyed on the bunk waiting. Her feet were pulled up and her arms were around her knees. She knew rape was inevitable. Chopper wondered momentarily how cruel he'd been to keep her waiting in terror, but he'd had no other option.
Rex became a statue, the bottle slipping from his fingers to shatter against the duracrete. The youngling jumped at the sharp noise and the scattering of crystal shards; her shoulders snapping up and only her white fingers keeping her steady.
"Damn you to hell, Chopper," Rex hissed angrily. "Damn your kriffing, miserable shabla-scarred-hide to the deepest pits of Mustafar."
"Enforce Order 37, Captain." Chopper ordered with a half-smile, half-sneer on his face. "I'll watch." Or maybe it was just the arrangement of scars on his face that gave that impression.
Rex turned to face his sergeant, his fist coming up and around but was far too inebriated to handle the girl, much less Chopper.
Chopper slipped the binders over her wrists. These were a newer style, with a third ring that could be attached to other binders, or a chain or some stationary object or the belt of a trooper.
"What's your name?" Chopper asked the girl as he snapped her binders around the medkit on his belt after lifting her over Rex's prone body. At a distance, she looked securely attached to him, but if necessary, she could jerk the medkit off and run. Her eyes narrowed as she noticed this. He touched the binders again, jingling the metal against the plastoid case of the kit, bring it to her attention. She nodded and her eyes snapped up to stare at him through the slits of his helmet.
"Keeta," she replied sullenly.
Chopper grunted a laugh. "Keeta, huh?" Before Order 66 the commander had taught him some Togrutan. Keeta meant 'as fast as rumor, swift news'. It was probably a coded name. After her 'pacification', she'd be run through identification and her real name known. Hopefully, that wouldn't happen now.
Chopper bent down and threw the captain over his shoulders. Kriff, Rex, how much weight have you lost? Rex was a shadow of a stormtrooper's normal weight.
"Captain passed out," he told the guards with a harsh laugh, noticing that Kev had a hand near his blaster. "Must have got shorted on a gene or two. I'm taking them back to captain's quarters." He started to move pass them, Keeta at his side.
"She's a prisoner," one of the guards objected pushing his baton in front of Chopper's path.
"Captain did say he wanted a Togrutan," slipped in Kev as he dealt another round. He glanced at Chopper then let his eyes linger on the girl. "Said he missed a pretty Togrutan commander and wanted a replacement."
"Yeah," put in one of the other guards. "I remember 501st used to have one of them. She got taken out in the purge." He was silent for a moment, his lips twisted bitterly as he remembered something - possibly what he'd done. Suddenly somber, he bent his head to his cards.
"Makes sense captain would want to replace something so valuable to him," added another guard as he inspected his cards closely.
"No wonder command always seems more relaxed. They get the cream of the crop while we get the yellers." The guard removed the baton and turned back to the game as Kev flicked down his final card.
Kev eyed the Togrutan at Chopper's hip. "She looks like a yeller to me, Stix. Leastwise, after the captain wakes."
"Yeah, yeah, take her then," muttered Stix as he laughed and threw down his cards in triumph, a natural 23.
Chopper shook his head as he moved down the corridor, Rex over his shoulders and the Togrutan youngling at his hip. He smiled grimly.
Kev had been cheating again.
Chopper stopped in shock as he entered the captain's quarters. There was glass everywhere and large wet splotches on the wall where most of the splinters were concentrated. Rex had been in command of more than Chopper's bottle of Corellian whiskey.
He quickly glanced down at the prisoner's feet, like most Togruta, she was barefoot.
"Pull loose, little rumor-monger and climb on that locker chest. I'm going to put him on the bunk."
She pulled the binders up over the kit and glanced out the door.
"Too many troopers," Chopper warned her and, with a frown, she climbed to the top of the chest locker.
As Chopper strode across the room with Rex on his shoulders, slivers of glass crackled under his boots. He'd come back when it was dark, sleeping hours for most of the troopers of Vader's Fist.
Like many other troopers, he didn't call it the 501st anymore.
It was only a couple of hours later that Chopper was moving quickly toward the Captain's quarters. He'd heard a rumor that Captain Rex had escorted a girl off the military installation and Chopper was worried about what that meant. If it meant what he thought, Chopper couldn't wait. He'd have to get the captain out now. Drunk and disorderly were punishable by a few days in lockup and loss of rank. What Rex had done was a ticket to Kamino – no matter the excuse, no matter the rank - and Commander Appo would be thoroughly pleased to send Rex back for reconditioning or termination.
"Com'on captain, time to go," he said to the man as he leaned over to help him rise. Chopper's hand clasped around Rex's elbow joint. He was shocked at the thinness and took a closer look, suddenly wondering when he'd last see the captain out of armor. When he'd last seen the captain eat something; not just sit in the mess with the inevitable mug of caf, but actual food. "Too long," he murmured to himself.
"Long past time, Chopper. I should have gone before her." Rex looked down at the floor. "So, this is it. Why don't I hate you, Chopper?" Rex was staring at him, speaking in the measured tones of a man who knows he's drunk. "You killed her. Me too. My heart stopped beating when you and Fives stood there saying what you'd done. You didn't even leave a body. Nothing I could touch. Nothing left to hold. Nothing to say good-bye to." The captain stood straight with no drunken wavering. "Think I'll take care of it all now. No Kaminoan inhibitors against suicide when you're this drunk." He reached for a blaster to find only empty holsters. Chopper had taken that precaution first.
Rex was too far gone to realize that. "Kriff, Chopper. I let her go and she takes my blasters. I liked those blasters. I've had them since Teth." His lips tighted remembering Teth then he looked into Chopper's eyes as they moved along the empty corridor. "You know Zeer's dead? Appo lost him and 56-Target in that little skirmish yesterday. Or today. Or whenever it happened."
Chopper started and stared at Rex; so that was why Kev had wanted to speak to the Captain, why he'd looked so dismayed when Chopper asked him to play sabacc with the guards. He owed Kev and he'd never be able to pay him back. They walked in silence in the darkness, Rex following Chopper then sitting next to him as they came to a bench in the shadow of a stone wall and Chopper finally stopped.
"Why'd you kill her?" Rex asked softly, as he sat, "you and Fives?"
"She told us, captain." Chopper was simply talking now to keep Rex pacified while they waited. "She said 'if it has to be done, you and Fives are who I choose'. She hugged Fives and he slipped her fingers under his helmet. Crying, I bet. I was."
Rex was quiet as well and, for his next words, some sort of sobriety was overtaking him as he leaned against the coolness of the stone wall. "Chopper, I don't want to be reconditioned." He clasped his hand around Chopper's wrist. "If it has to be done, vod. You are who I'd choose as well."
Chopper nodded slowly. "Whatever has to be done, Captain. It is, and has always been, my honor to serve with Rex of the 501st."
"Except at the Temple," Rex muttered angrily. "It couldn't have been an honor to serve with Rex of the 501st then."
"No," said Chopper, "but I don't think Rex was there."
Rex exhaled deeply, as if he'd been holding his breath since Order 66. Tears glittered in his eyes and he turned away. "I don't think I was there either just Vader's puppet." In moments he was asleep.
Chopper waited. She'd be here though she didn't know who she'd be meeting. Chopper wished he could have given the task to someone else so he could avoid her accusing eyes. But there was no one else he could trust this much. Not anymore. Sometime between cheating at cards and the little runner's release, Kev and some men of Zeer's squad had deserted. Now Chopper knew why. He hoped they made it. He'd tell her their names, just in case they became part of her line of intelligence.
Riyo moved quietly down the street followed by Keeta Lahtu. Released from Imperial detention by some drunken stormtrooper, Keeta had been amazingly lucky. She'd delivered the message to someone in the rebellion who had taken her to someone else who had contact with Bail who had asked her to get Keeta off Coruscant as soon as possible.
Seeing the white armor of two stormtroopers on the waiting bench at the gate of the port caused Riyo to stop in shock, Keeta giving a soft whimper behind her, "I'm sorry, I didn't know it was a trap."
Slowly, one reached up and removed his helmet, revealing a veil of scars over the right side of his face stretching over a portion of his scalp. His eyes, one whiskey-brown the other yellow-green, gazed over her form but he didn't more any more than that.
"It isn't," she said to Keeta as she strode closer to Chopper and... was that Captain Rex snoring against the wall?
"Chopper," she spoke quietly, tears gathering in her eyes. "It has been a while." Should she tell him she still cried herself to sleep? That she listened to his harmonica music nightly? That sometimes she thought she saw him among the white-armored troopers that only seemed to serve the senate.
He only nodded then turned to place his white-gauntled hand on the shoulder of Captain Rex.
"Senator Chuchi," his voice was soft with fear for his captain. "Please, he needs to escape as well."
She stopped in mid-stride, her back straight. There was nothing of love in his voice, in his movement. "You would do for him what you would not do for your commander?" Riyo suddenly realized he had practiced giving nothing away with his body, that he was trying to keep his thoughts and motivations concealed. Her lips tightened; she was a rebel in the court of the emperor. Her survival rested on reading bodies, on understanding what people didn't say.
He was silent, his lips pursed against words he might say, his eyes downcast for what they might reveal. She read his body enough that her next words were softer.
"You know that diplomatic immunity only pretends to exist. It does not extend to stormtroopers. If they suspect, they will board my little vessel and take him away. They may or may not take me away, but you can be sure I will be made to pay for my treasonous transgression against the Emperor. A lesson for his enemies."
"I know, senator." How he wished he could call her 'my lady' once more but he'd given up that right. Now, it would change things, bring unwanted attention to her. There was already too much of that. It was known she had anti-Imperial sympathies, it was rumored she assisted rebellious representatives, senators, conspirators. It was thought she had provided her home – diplomatic territory – to a group of rebels.
The only thing lacking was proof.
Troopers didn't like detaining her flyer and its crew. She was an acknowledged prima donna; demanding, huffing impatiently, eyes rolling, barely acknowledging the existance of the clones except to find fault and insulting them in her very body lauguage. The first time Chopper had seen it, he thought it a good act. The stormtroopers who looked over her ship were usually quick; perhaps a bit too quick to be totally efficient but Chopper didn't mind that.
There were rumors about Senator Chuchi; that she took lovers from among the rebellious with no concern for common or political decency. Chopper knew the rumors were untrue. Too many nights he had spent standing in the hallway to her apartments, too many nights sitting in his phase III at the lobby desk checking visitors to the senatorial apartments. She usually came home alone, her steps usually tired and sad. No handsome stranger went into her apartments. No smiling, sated man came out. Chopper had been the last and that, almost two years ago.
He had changed his voice through the enunciator of his armor; he gave a difference cadence to his sentences, a pinched mouthing of vowels. He walked differently now and always wore his helmet. Still, some times she looked at him with narrowed, pained eyes and he wondered if she recognized him. He wondered if she missed him. He saw her almost every day and still missed her with his entire being.
She turned to the Togrutan girl and gave her some direction Chopper barely heard as he drank in the grace of her movements. The girl moved toward the senator's flyer as Riyo turned back to face him. She moved into her Foundation, revealing her every emotion to him. Her face was twisted in anguish and her golden eyes seared Chopper with the pain in them. He had caused too much of that pain. His very presence was causing that anguish.
"I'm sorry, Riyo," he whispered without thinking. He stood and she raised her face slightly higher as he realized his mistake.
"You stand in your Foundation now, Chopper." There were tears running down her face, sliding into the hollow by her nose the past her lips. He could see her fingers tremble and how she curled them into a fist to hide that small weakness.
"S'shto," Chopper muttered as he looked up, away from her gaze otherwise he'd grab her with his hands, hold her face in his palms, run his fingers over her silken skin and daub those tears away. He sighed, closing his eyes in pain. He'd raise those trembling, slender fingers to his lips and kiss away the pain.
"I know what you do." He said. "I know. I have proof of so many other's involvement. I can destroy the rebellion here on Corsucant." He heard the sudden shift of her breathing. Chopper gestured to Rex. "The cost of my continuing silence is getting him get off Coruscant and out of the realms of the Empire."
Her eyes widened in fear. "What are you going to do if I say 'no'? He is a captain, Chopper, not someone who can easily disappear."
Chopper sighed deeply. He couldn't even hurt her this much. He hadn't thought he could do it but he had hoped she might hate him enough to go on with her life. Had hoped the threat alone might frighten her enough to stop risking her life on Coruscant, that she might return to Pantora.
"Nothing, Riyo except plead with you. Please take him. He's been getting worse since Order 66. It eats at him, what we did in the Temple. It's been eating at him since then. I've been watching for when he'd be ready to desert, but he won't say so. I don't think he'll ever say it. He would have to care and he doesn't care what happens anymore. For what I did in the Jedi Temple, he'll never say anything to me."
"And if he wakes aboard my ship and decides not to be a deserter?"
"I'll slit his throat myself, Lady Riyo, then my own for embroiling you in this mess." Wrong words, Chopper told himself, it implied he'd go with her. Certainly not the way to convince her she should stop rebellous activities, certainly not the way to convince her to move beyond mourning the love they'd once had.
Riyo was silent for a moment, as unmoving as a statue then she took a step toward him. "I would find that more painful than everything else I have gone through, my love."
His knees wobbled; as they'd done so long ago on Orto Plutonia. As they'd done the first night he had visited her. But he couldn't call her 'my lady'.
"Please don't, Senator Chuchi," Chopper begged in a low voice. "What you do, what I am, makes it dangerous."
Riyo took a step closer and laid a blue hand on his cheek. Chopper closed his eyes to that touch. It was the cheek with scars, but that didn't matter. It hadn't mattered since the first night when she had touched every single scar on his body and still loved him. His scars had never mattered to her.
"We live in dangerous times, Chopper. Isn't it time you escaped?"
"I have no place to go."
"That is not in your Foundation. You are lying."
"I have no place to go that I wish to go." He sighed deeply, there was nothing left to give but the truth. "Here on Coruscant, I can see you. I can be the trooper in the apartments. I can make sure that the troopers who inspect your flyer are the incompetent ones or the ones most likely to turn a blind eye to vague inconsistancies. I can come close enough to touch you when you get an Imperial escort, close enough to smell your perfume. If the time ever comes, I can be the one to arrest you." Slowly he reached out his hand to touch hers, holding her slender wrist in the circle of his thumb and middle finger for a moment as if to illustrate the point then releasing to hold her hand in his cupped palm.
She suddenly knew he had a plan in case she was ever arrested.
"Being on Coruscant is as close as I can come to being at your side." He raised her palm to his lips, wishing he could kiss the soft skin of her hand. He had no right; he had left her, no matter that it was for her protection, he had deserted her.
Senator Chuchi took a step forward, her palm pressed against his armor over his heart. "I don't want you by my side here on Coruscant, Chopper."
His heart skipped a beat; skipped several and his face twisted. Chopper hadn't realized it would be this painful to give up hope.
"Ssshh, love." Her hands moved up to his face. "I don't want you by my side, Chopper. It is dangerous and I want you safe. I want you gone from Imperial City. I want to tuck you in my heart and carry you away. What you did to the Jedi, to Ahsoka pains me and it will always pain me; but you had no choice. I see that, I know that. I don't understand but that is because I was not there."
Chopper's knees again were weak; what was it about this tiny, delicate woman that made him go weak? "Then take me home, my lady. Take us both home."
He'd tell her about Ahsoka later; when their escape was secure. When he told Rex.