A/N: This ends on a kind of cliff hanger. I do intend to follow up on it though. This is part of a series. The idea is to have a bunch of short stories featuring different characters who each have a piece of the puzzle connected to Palpatine and the control chips. Eventually the different threads will all be tied together this will end in a fix-it.
Gree sighed in relief when he saw the tension drain from Bariss's face. Kriff, she looked so young. Of course, she was still very young. She was only sixteen - eight by clone standards. They had only allowed eight-year-olds on the battlefield when it became clear that their need for numbers was greater than their need for those numbers to be fully trained.
Bariss had been fighting since the very beginning of the war though, one of the few Padawans who had actually survived the first battle of Geonosis. Gree wasn't sure that he approved of the Jedi's decision to bring her there.
Gree had seen the way her face had drained of colour, making her tattoos stand out vividly, when it was announced that they would be returning to Geonosis. She handled it very well, but after what happened with the worms… she was a wreck.
The medics informed him that she had had to be sedated in order to get her to sleep. Even then she kept having nightmares.
The worst part was that she didn't talk to anyone about it. She continued to be the calm, diligent Padawan - always on time for meetings, datawork submitted early, fighting like a storm during battles.
In between though, she would just go missing. No one - not Gree, or the medics, or General Unduli - knew where she was. When she turned up again, her eyes would be swollen from crying.
Judging by the General's concerned glances, her Padawan wasn't confiding in her either.
Eventually Gree had had enough.
According to standard operating procedure, Padawan-commanders' reports had to be reviewed by one of the other officers before being submitted. This was mostly to prevent anyone reviewing the reports from the atrocious spelling of Padawans like Tano. Gree usually didn't bother to do more than skim Bariss's reports. Like everything else she did, she wrote her reports meticulously.
Gree specifically looked up the Geonosis report. He'd gotten the rough idea of it already. He needed to know the details though, needed to know what horrors were so bad that they were keeping his vod'ika from sleeping or from even telling anyone that something was wrong.
The report was every bit as bad as he had expected. But it wasn't until the third page that Gree's blood turned to ice in his veins.
Bariss had always had an impressive memory. Her reports were always very detailed. This one wasn't. It did note one detail however, the words the trooper had said before infecting Bariss with the Geonosian worm.
If there's one thing we clones know, it's how to stop a Jedi.
Gree stared at the report while his thoughts raced. It was such a minor detail. In the midst of everything else that had happened, most people would overlook it.
Any clone would understand the significance of that sentence though.
They never talked about the nightmares. They all had them. No one was sure when exactly they started - they had had them for as long as they could remember.
In their dreams they killed the Jedi. The strange part was that it had started before they had even met the Jedi. When Gree had met General Unduli for the first time he had recognised her from his nightmares. There was something deeply unsettling about that.
He tried not to think about it. And for the most part it worked. Whatever the nightmares were, they could be ignored. After all it wasn't something that could ever really happen. Gree had known Bariss and General Unduli for all of two minutes when he knew with unshakable certainty that he would lay down his life for them. There was no way in haran he could ever harm them.
He had never spoken about the nightmares to either of them though.
Throughout the war the Jedi had proven themselves to be far kinder than the Kaminoans (he supposed that wasn't really saying much given how low the bar was). However, this was a secret he wasn't willing to trust them with. At best, they would think he was insane. At worst…
He couldn't let anyone read that report. If the Jedi found out what Bariss had heard, they would try to investigate the clone's words. That could lead to them discovering that their army - the men who had fought by their side for a year now - had dreams about killing them.
He didn't know how they would react. It wasn't that he didn't trust the Jedi. He did trust them; he trusted them with his life and the lives of his brothers. He just wasn't sure if the Jedi would be willing to trust him.
Heart beat thundering in his throat, he erased the part of the report that mentioned the trooper's words to Bariss. His hands shook when he was finished. Falsifying reports was grounds for a court martial. He could be sent back to Kamino for this.
That was a better option than allowing the Jedi to find out about the nightmares though. This way, if something happened, all the scrutiny would be on him.
The logical part of his brain tried to override his panic. The reports were almost never read fully; everyone was far too busy for that. Only Bariss had heard what the clone had said and she wouldn't think to follow up on the report. No one would ever know. He tried to calm himself with that.
No one would ever know.
A/N: Thank you for reading. If you're comfortable with sharing, I would love to know what you thought of the story or any predictions you may have about how it will end.
Hope you have a great day/night. God bless.