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Rex was… resigned, to his status as General Jinn’s Captain. He had, according to Cody, gone through all five stages of grief when he’d first heard the news, but he’d accepted it now. Jinn was a real kriffing freak, even for a Jedi, but he was a good man. He could identify the entire 501st by name, while blindfolded and in the dark, which Rex knew because they’d actually tried, even switching armor, and Jinn had never gotten a single person’s name wrong.
“You each feel distinct to me,” Jinn explained, when Rex finally worked up the courage to ask about it. “Even if you really were identical, which you aren’t, it would be difficult for me to become confused because I can sense you in the Force.”
“So we don’t feel the same in the Force?”
“Of course not.” They were preparing for a fight as they spoke, and Jinn reached up to begin pulling his hair into a ponytail. “No matter how similar your genetics, all people are different, with distinct destinies, hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, loves and hates, bonds and boundaries. When I see each of you, I see those things.”
“You can tell all of that just by looking at us?”
Jinn shrugged noncommittally. “I do try not to pry, but some things are hard to miss. I know you’re close with Cody. I can feel Kix’s headache every time he walks into a room. Someone should probably take a look at that, by the way.”
So, Rex liked General Jinn, even if he was a lunatic who was going to get them all killed. When he inevitably did, it wouldn’t be from any sort of malice or because he didn’t see them as people. The real trouble with Jinn was that he didn’t see any people, clone or Jedi or civilian. He saw time and space and all sorts of weird banthashit that Rex didn’t understand, but not people, really.
All of this was to say that when they heard the 501st was getting a Padawan Commander, that General Jinn was going to have to look after an apprentice, Rex’s first instinct was to feel a wave of sympathy for the kid.
And then, of course, he had the distinct misfortune of actually meeting him.
1) Qui-Gon Jinn
“General… are the high generals certain about placing this new commander with us?”
Qui-Gon, eyes still closed and legs crossed under him, snorted amusedly. “The High Council, in their infinite wisdom, feels I need to learn the skills that only teaching a padawan can provide. I believe the specific match was Grandmaster Yoda’s idea, if that relieves any of your fears.”
It did not. “What do we… do with him?”
“The same as you would with any shiny. Learn about him and let him learn about you. Give him your trust and earn his in turn. I’ll take care of the practicalities of his education, of course.”
“We can’t take an untrained shiny into battle, Sir.” At that, Qui-Gon cracked open one eye.
“Not to worry, Rex. Master Yoda tells me the boy is the most promising duellist the Temple has seen since Master Windu.”
Based on the stories Rex had heard from Ponds, that statement was not reassuring. Still, even his worst fears were nothing like what Commander Dooku actually was.
The Commander was ice-cold. Hoth had nothing on this kid. He couldn’t tell the 501st apart, disdaining them instantly, and the feeling was, essentially, mutual. He knew the regs backwards and sideways, talked like he ate the thesaurus for breakfast every morning, and somehow managed to find the time to press his robes in a warzone.
At first, Rex thought he was just nervous. Who wouldn’t be, to go from childhood in a religious enclave to life surrounded by soldiers, so once, on a more casual off-shift encounter where Rex was only wearing his blacks, he tried to actually talk to the kid.
“You know, there’s nothing to be nervous about, kid. My brothers and I are here to help you and keep you safe.”
Icy stare dismissive, he said, “of course, Trooper.”
Rex bristled automatically. “I’m Captain Rex.”
“Of course you are.” The kid was gone before Rex could get another word in edgewise.
After that, the kid always called him ‘Captain’. Never Rex, just ‘Captain’.
2) Jesse
So, nobody in the 501st liked Commander Dooku, except for Dogma. Trooper Dogma managed to have enough admiration for the Commander to cover the entire battalion, and thought both suns of Tatooine shone out of his ass.
So, if anyone in the 501st was going to compliment the Commander to Rex’s face, he would have expected Dogma. Instead, it was Jesse, half dead in medbay, who grabbed Rex’s forearm.
“Th’nk c’mn’dr.” Rex, who had only slipped in to drop off one of the new shinies, whose name he hasn’t learned yet, didn’t have time to stop. He did so anyways. Jesse’s mouth was stuffed half-full of cotton.
“For what?”
Jesse gave him a frustrated glare and jerked his head at Kix. Rex repeated the question at their chief medic.
Kix popped his bucket for half a second to wipe sweat off his face. It was hot in medical. “Dooku carried them in. Three men, almost a mile, uphill.”
Jedi. “Wait, if Dooku was carrying the men back, where was the General?”
“Wuvvv ffffuh,” said Jesse. Unfortunately, all of them had known General Jinn long enough to know what he meant.
Kix put his bucket back on and hyposprayed Jesse in the neck. “Will of the Force. He’ll be fine. Check on the commander.”
Commander Dooku was sitting not far from medical, cleaning his lightsaber. His robes were soaked with blood up to his elbows, and his hands were the only clean part of his skin, but the sword shone silver. Rex had seen him duel, knew that the weapon wasn’t for show. In their last encounter with a Sith, Dooku had come face to face with Savage Opress and walked away. Full-grown generals couldn’t say the same.
“Jesse tells me you saved his life.”
Dooku looked up from the curved hilt. “He’ll live?”
“He’s with Kix.”
He nodded to himself. “He’ll live.”
“Where’s the General?”
Dooku pointed vaguely in the opposite direction of the separatist encampments. “My apologies, Captain. I didn’t sense what he did, earlier. I will endeavour to have clearer information for you next time.”
This ad had carried three grown men to safety and he was apologizing to Rex for not having kept track of his lunatic Master. And still he wouldn’t acknowledge that Rex was a person with a name.
“In his absence, you’re in charge, Sir.”
Dooku leveraged himself to his feet, wincing as he put weight on his right leg. His grip on his blade shifted to battle-ready. “Do you have the results of the aerial survey?”
“In the General’s tent, Commander.”
“I’ll review them. For now, maintain the assault according to plan. Master Jinn can look after himself for the moment.”
“Permission to speak freely?” Dooku nodded. “Don’t let Kix see you putting weight on that leg.”
“Noted, Captain.” There was a tiny flicker of pleasure on his face.
He’d carried three men back here with what looked like a twisted or even sprained ankle. “You did good, Dooku.”
The smile fled as if it had never been there. “As the Force willed it.”
3) Obi-Wan Kenobi
Rendezvous with the 212th were the primary source of Rex’s sanity. Without them, he probably would have been dead a few months into the war. This was not, to be clear, a statement that the 212th was sane. If anything, they were as mad as the 501st, but in opposite ways. Cody was a mad, neurotic bastard, and his neuroses fit with Rex’s like a clip into a blaster. Jinn and Kenobi were the same.
The Commander, as usual, was the odd man out. Rex came upon the generals once, watching Dooku run drills in a field, azure blade moving fast enough that it almost seemed to be in multiple places at once.
“He’s brilliant,” General Kenobi intoned, keeping his volume low so as not to alert the kid to his audience.
“He focuses too much on combat work. His connection to the living Force is worse than I had at eight.”
“Give him time. The living force comes easier to you than it does to the rest of us.”
“He’s been afforded such remarkable privilege, and all he thinks about is the battle. None of my lessons get through to him, Obi-Wan.”
Of course all he thinks about is the battle, Rex thought. It’s his sword that’s keeping him alive, not some Force poodoo. Still, he bit his tongue, and Kenobi said, “at his age, I was the same. Anakin kept dragging me out of warzones by my hair and all I wanted was to throw myself in. It was the highest value I could see in myself.”
In a meaner tone than Rex had ever heard from him, Jinn said, “well, perhaps I lack Master Skywalker’s patience.”
Kenobi just laughed. “Oh, his patience you have in spades. Believe me. But I was his third Padawan, remember, and he was sometimes co-training me and Komari with Master Tano. Nobody knows how to teach when they first begin.”
“So what do you recommend, then, master-mine?”
“Learn to speak his language.”
“And do you know how to speak his language?”
Rex sucked in a breath as Dooku threw his lightsaber into the air, whipping end over end until it seemed to cut a hole in the sky that was bluer than blue. It was beautiful and showy and it landed cleanly in his hand like it was nothing at all.
“I’m negotiating an understanding,” Kenobi said and, shrugging off his robe and drawing his own lightsaber from his belt, he went to meet Dooku on the field.
They fought like a dance. Rex, who was beginning to consider himself something of a connoisseur of the martial arts, found it beautiful.
It was the words that stuck with him, more than the clash of blue blades in the midday sun. Learn to speak his language.
What was Padawan Dooku’s language, anyways? Blades? Basic? Force Osik? Rex, who made a point to understand each of his men, even the mad ones like Jinn, whose language was clearly Force Osik, didn’t know. The realization both troubled and infuriated him.
4) Jocasta Nu
Rex had come to have a certain fondness for Coruscant in their few weeks there. It was a planet with a number of charms: 79’s, a steady rotation of vode in and out, quick information about the war, better rations, Ponds and Fox. It was also a planet where, for days at a time, he could stop worrying about his Jedi. General Jinn liked to spend their time on Coruscant meditating at the temple, and the kid was usually swept up in a rush of exams and study subjects he fell behind on in the front lines.
Because of this, when he saw an old Jedi at the door to his quarters, his first thought was that she’d made some kind of mistake.
“General Jinn is usually in the Temple, General.”
“I am no general,” she corrected, hefting a large package under her arm. Her other hand held a cane that disguised what Rex could tell was a wiry strength. “Madame Jocasta Nu. As it happens, Captain, I was looking for you, although if you’re occupied, I’m sure the favor I require could be fulfilled by one of your Lieutenants.”
Rex might have enjoyed lying back in his bunk and watching one of the crappy holodramas Bly had gotten him hooked on, but Madame Nu had his attention now. “What’s the favor?”
She hefted the package. “Advance delivery for Padawan Dooku. He won’t take it if it’s given before the 501st break atmosphere. I would like someone to distribute its contents to him more slowly.”
“What’s in it?”
Nu set the box down on the edge of his bed and opened the top to show him. There was a selection of datachips, a couple datapads, two flimsi file-folders, some scrolls, and even a genuine paper book. “All duplicate materials. People on Coruscant often leave portions of their estates to the Jedi Archives, and all materials belonging to individual Jedi revert to us when they die.” Nu, it seemed, was one of the Jedi who talked to everyone as if they already knew what she was talking about.
“You want to give him books?”
Misinterpreting, she said, “you and your men are welcome to share, although several of these texts will be of little interest to someone not studying advanced lightsaber forms.”
“It’s a kind gift,” Rex told her, feeling awkward. “Are you and the Commander close?”
Nu closed the box, hand lingering a moment on its surface. “We could have been, in another life. I wanted Padawan Dooku as my own student, but his skill with a blade was too fine for him to be given any other task than war, at a time like this.”
Her tone had a deliberate neutrality that could not disguise her bitterness at the fact. “We all do what we can.” Rex’s tone was much the same.
“Regardless, this gift was not entirely mine. Some of these choices are from Master Koon, who brought Padawan Dooku into the order, and others from Lady Tano, who is the grandmaster of his grandmaster. We all try to provide him with some guidance.”
Dooku, Rex thought, needed more guidance than most. “He’s lucky to have the three of you in his life.”
“He deserves some area of luck,” Nu said, obscurely, and then, “you have a question; ask it.”
“Why won’t he accept the gift if you give it to him?”
“He would accept it,” Nu corrected, “he would not bring it into a war, where it will likely be lost or destroyed.”
Dooku was a finicky person. He liked everything neat, order and in its place. His robes were usually cleaner than the General’s. He also had a strong taste for life’s pleasures. He complained incessantly about the food. Very little about him belonged in a warzone.
“You’re surprised,” Nu observed, “but you shouldn’t be. The Padawan is young, and has yet to learn an essential lesson.”
“Which is?”
“Knowledge is more valuable here–” She tapped his forehead. “–than here.” She tapped the box. “It should be shared, kept communally, rather than hoarded away.”
“You think Dooku doesn’t know that?” He often carried a datapad with him, when they weren’t in active combat.
“Padawan Dooku studies ancient Jedi philosophy as well as swordplay. It was part of the reason he was thought to be well matched to Qui-Gon. You know them both. Has Padawan Dooku ever told you a single thing about it?”
“It isn’t really my area.”
“How do you know that, if you haven’t heard his ideas?” Rex had to concede that point, and Nu smiled at her own victory. “Perhaps I should prepare some generalist resources for the entire GAR. If I keep to text files, the storage effects will be minimal.”
“We have to fight a war and now you’re giving us homework?”
Her cane tapped lightly on the floor as she folded her hands over it. “Can you really say none of your kin would want it?”
Dogma. Echo. Cody, probably, so he’d have something to talk to his General about. “No.”
“Exactly so, Captain…”
“Rex.”
She extended a wrinkled hand. “Thank you for your service, Captain.”
He got the distinct sense, based on her side-eying the package, that she didn’t mean the war.
Rex left random datachips and books in the kid’s room every week for their whole next deployment, and got plenty of amusement out of watching him frown at them. If he got a little pleasure out of watching him trying to explain to Dogma the distinctions between different interpretations of the Jedi code and how they’d evolved over time, well, that was Rex’s business.
5) Count Gora
It was one thing to know that his Commander was the son of a Separatist General. It was quite another to see Commander Dooku drop to his knees on an enemy bridge in front of a severe old man in a cape.
“Count Gora,” the kid said, breathless as if he was seeing a holonet star instead of his own buir, “I humbly present myself before you, by name and title, as Commander Dooku.”
“Not so much a step up from Padawan as a lateral move,” the Count said, looking down at him like the kid was so much scum on his boot. “And one that suits you less well, I think. Never much a man of action, Dooku.”
“As you say, my Lord Count.”
Seeing Dooku like this was not unlike seeing a man possessed. Rex suppressed a shudder. He had to trust that the kid had a plan to get them, and the rest of the squad who’d been taken away to the cells, out of here.
“But are we your Lord Count, Dooku? You have been committing acts of treason against us for many months.”
“I followed my duty, Count Gora.”
The old man slapped him across the face, the sound of the blow ringing through the room. The droids on the bridge jostled each other, roger-rogering nervously. The Serennians, the humans who should have been shocked and angry at this, politely averted their eyes as if it was nothing.
“You followed the heels of that lunatic Jinn like the dog you are, and in doing so you betrayed us. It was your duty to bring your freakish nature under control and return home to your family. And what do we hear from Darth Maul and General Grievous? Report after report of your increasing freakishness and escalating treason.”
“Yes, Lord Count.”
“What do you have to say for yourself, boy?”
Dooku raised his head, and Rex finally recognized familiar sharpness in his gaze. He’d never thought that coldness could be so comforting, but it was a relief to see that, even when acting so strangely, the kid was still himself.
“I offer to remedy my mistake, Lord Count. My service, freakish or otherwise, to the cause of House Serenno, long may they reign. All I ask in turn is that Captain Rex and my – his – men be allowed to leave here in condition as befits the noble countenance of House Serenno.”
“And how do I know you are honest in your intent?”
“I give you my vow, by name and title.”
Count Gora’s lips curled into a sneer. “And what title would that be, Dooku?”
Whatever this meant to the pair of them flew completely over Rex’s head, but Dooku’s eyes widened with horror. “No. Please. I’ll swear it to Jenza, to the Force, to Mother. I’ll serve under whatever title you want. Just let the Captain and his men go. Please.”
Count Gora turned to someone standing behind Rex. “Take them to their cells. Helmsman Tyris, contact Darth Maul and inform him of these developments. Lord Wei, prepare to begin interrogations of the non-Jedi.”
“Yes, Count Gora,” they echoed, and Rex saw something he had never seen before as Dooku began to struggle, writhing against his bonds and even managing to bite one of the Serennian guards on the neck like a karking vampire before she stunned him into submission.
The Count, in an amused aside to one of his aides, said, “I suppose we know now why the wolves didn’t eat him. He was one of their own.”
Wolves were more, well, Wolffe’s purview, strictly speaking, but as Rex looked at the Serennian guard with her hand to her bloody neck, he thought, he’s one of ours.
+1) Dooku
He knew that Dooku wasn’t okay from the way he was cleaning his lightsaber. In the four hours since their rescue by General Jinn (actually remembering he had a padawan for once, and furious to discover they’d been hurt), he had only begrudgingly stopped disassembling it and polishing every piece when Kix forcefully grabbed his right hand to set the dislocated finger there. Now, with his hand bandaged, he was polishing with his left hand, the Force, and occasionally his teeth, one of which he had apparently chipped on the guard’s necklace.
“Ask your question,” he said to Rex, “or leave me alone to meditate.”
“You aren’t meditating.”
With a mulish expression that reminded Rex very much of the General, he said, “I could be.”
Rex spun the chair around and straddled it, looking closely at the kid. How old was he, even? Rex wasn’t great at nat-born ages, but he was pretty sure that, for all his posturing and stubbornness, the kid was still younger than any shiny.
“You’re not, though. If you don’t want me to ask you what that was about, I can ask the General, or General Kenobi, next time we see him. Or do they not know about… whatever that was?”
Dooku sighed, and returned his impeccably clean lightsaber to his belt. “The entire GAR knows Count Gora is my father, I think. It doesn’t interfere with my work.”
“No?”
“Your father was no better, was he, Captain?”
There were vode who would have decked someone for that kind of insult to the Prime. Rex, who was not particularly fond of his template and was more than used to Dooku being a little asshole, took it as the defensive response it was. “That wasn’t my question. I want to know about the titles. Why do you always do that, call me ‘Captain’ and call the men ‘Trooper’? I thought you meant it rudely, at first, but you don’t, do you? It means something else to you.”
The Kaminoans had taught them Basic, begrudgingly turned a blind eye to their learning Mando’a, but they hadn’t given them nearly enough cultural competency to handle ten thousand Jedi, many of them from multiple cultures. Rex had thought he understood enough. Clearly, he didn’t.
Dooku was staring at him. “How could it be rude?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone hadn’t seen us as people with names.”
His eyes went wide. “Of course you have names. I’m not as good as Master Qui-Gon about the Force signatures, but–” He cut himself off, regained his composure. “Serenno is a pseudo-mononymic world, Captain Rex. People from Serenno have a name and a title on the official register. Your title changes over your life, ‘heir,’ ‘infant’, ‘child’, ‘student’, ‘apprentice’, ‘citizen’, ‘father’. There are regulated titles, like guild or military positions, but most titles are respected as long as you declare them. By using the appropriate one, you signify your understanding of a person’s character, status, and chosen course. I, perhaps, made a slight error of judgment.”
In Dooku-speak that meant ‘I kriffed up’. “You thought we worked the same way. That’s why you’re such a stickler about titles. You were trying to be polite.” In his own, shitty, Dooku way. “And you thought I was being the asshole, calling you ‘kid’ and using your name alone.”
That cool gaze searched Rex’s face. “You didn’t know that? Master Qui-Gon told me when I came on board that the men chose what they were called. I thought…”
He was more specific than the CT and CC designations, when he could be. He said ‘Medic’ and ‘Helmsman’ and ‘Marksman’ and ‘Navigator’. He had thought their specializations were part of their names.
“General Jinn meant that we choose our names, instead of our numbers. He meant you should call me ‘Rex’.”
Dooku blushed. “This whole time, the 501st has thought that I…”
Also the 212th, and the 104th, and the Coruscant Guard, and the 327th. Actually, by this point, most of the GAR probably thought that Commander Dooku was a little asshole who didn’t respect his troopers. “That’s about the size of it, yeah.”
He brought his left hand up to hide his face in it. “Kark.”
Rex was learning all sorts of new things about his commander today. “Well, at least we know, now. I’ll explain to the vode, and I’ll try to call you ‘Commander’ off duty. You can try and call us by our personal names then too.”
Dooku’s posture shifted into something defensive, and Rex remembered the conversation he’d witnessed – could it be called a conversation if one participant belittled and the other groveled? – between Dooku and Count Gora.
“What did Count Gora mean, when he wouldn’t let you swear by your title?” Dooku didn’t look up at him. “Did you get… disowned?”
To the floor, he said, “I was already disowned. Count Gora left me exposed to die when I was revealed to be a Jedi.” Dooku lowered his voice as if sharing a horrible secret. “He untitled me.”
Titles were names you chose, the inverse of how it was for the vode. “He unnamed you?”
Dooku nodded unhappily, slumping further. “So you can call me what you like. I’m nobody.”
“Because they took your name off the register?” Another miserable nod. “You know what the ship’s manifest says under my name, don’t you? You’re neurotic enough that you actually read the manifest.” A slight bristle of offense. “What’s my name?”
“Captain Rex.”
“And that’s not what the karking manifest says, is it? But you’ve never called me that. Not once. You’ve stumbled. You’ve called me by other people's names, gotten my title wrong, even, before you knew who I was.” No wonder Dooku had looked so embarrassed about that. “But you’ve never called me that.”
“The Kaminoans have no authority to dictate–”
“Your father has no authority, either.” The child looked up at him, wide-eyed. “No authority over you, and no authority over anyone else. He’s a traitor and a war criminal, and whatever debt you owed him for siring you, he lost the right to the moment he EXPOSED YOU to DIE.” Dooku shushed him, hurriedly. He probably knew that if the entire 501st found out about this, Count Gora was going to get shot the next time they came across him. “Your name isn’t on the manifest. That doesn’t matter. The manifest doesn’t pick your name. Who are you?”
His eyes were cold but bright, like the sun glistening over newly-fallen snow. “Commander Dooku, 501st Battalion.”
Rex clasped an instinctive fist to his chest in recognition. And then, because he knew Dooku wouldn’t know enough Mando’a to understand, he said, “Ni kyr'tayl gai, vod’ika.”
By the tiny, embarrassed smile on the kid’s face, he understood anyways.