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lurkingcrow · 7 years

Text

I really need to stop thinking so much about the tragedy of SW

Third and last bit of the "people who might have known" thing started here . We've covered Padmé's colleagues and friends, now it's time for the other group who might have guessed. Blame @albaparthenicevelut and @letslipthehounds for giving me clone feels.

TW: references suicide

Kix has heard the rumours. He's seen the bounties. And yet he still cannot bring himself to hope. Even now, sitting in the bar three doors down from the tiny shop where he plys his trade, watching footage from the latest Rebel raid his first thought had been that someone back on Kamino got a hold of the General's gene specs and made themselves a shiny new Jedi. But the Skywalker Kix remembers was never quite that short. The body shape's wrong too - slighter and less broad in the shoulders. He bets this one will end up more like Commander Tano, all quick moves and acrobatics rather than powerful, unrelenting attacks. If Empire doesn't get him first, that is.

He takes a swig of his drink. Still better than the moonshine Coric used to make on board the Resolute. That stuff had only been good for sterilising medprobes and degreasing the dropships' notoriously fickle fuel cells. Kriffing hell. The Rebellion has a Skywalker. One shiny enough not to realise just how big a target he has painted on his back. Of course if he's anything like Kix's general, it probably wouldn't make much difference. Jare jetii! Too reckless for their own good. And now there's one running about the galaxy without any of the vod'e to watch his back like they should and...

Kix takes another, deeper, swallow. Two decades gone and the pain is as raw as ever. He'd been one of the lucky ones, he thinks. When the Captain came to him, wanting his chip removed, Kix had listened. He did the research, worked out how to reprogram the med droid, and handed Rex's chip back himself. A fortnight later, with no signs of increased aggression or instability, Kix had put himself under and woke up with a new scar on his skull and a tiny piece of circuitry on the tray beside him. It looked so harmless at the time. Hardly the sort of Sith machination it proved to be.

His second piece of luck was being deployed to the siege of Mandalore. It was bad enough to stand and watch Order 66 take hold and his brothers become nothing more than meat-clankers. To see them betray that which they once would have died to protect. If he had been on Coruscant with the rest of the 501st, if he had taken part in the Temple massacre? Kix shudders. He still doesn't know where or how his general had fallen. The most likely scenario was that he'd been in the Temple when that scum-sucking sithspawn Vader led the purge, but Kix can't be sure. He hopes Skywalker gave the Sith hell. Kix can't imagine he went down without a fight. But his brothers aren't amateurs, and the Jedi had no warning...

A month after Rex disappeared into the chaos following E-Day Kix had gone searching for answers. There were none to be found. Their reinforcements from the main regiment, the ones who'd been on Coruscant were adamant. The Jedi were traitors. Why was he asking about them? Desperate, he'd convinced one of the veteran troopers, Nax, to let him remove his chip, citing potential damage from a CIS shell. The horrified scream of realisation will haunt Kix for the rest of his days. Nax was broken. Over and over he whispered a frantic litany of apologies interspersed with desperate demands to know "why?". When his brother's sobs had died down Kix embraced him, told him it wasn't his fault. Nax had looked him in the eye and shook his head. "It doesn't matter. We were made for the Jedi. And we slaughtered them." He said no more. Two days later he ate his own blaster. Kix didn't attempt any more chip removals.

That was when Kix started seriously considering going AWOL and setting himself up on some backwater world like Cut had years before. He couldn't keep going like this. When it became obvious that whatever dubious protections the Republic had once afforded it's troops no longer applied in the Empire, and casualty rates rose to heights not seen since Krell and the Umbara campaign, Kix began preparing. It was heartbreakingly easy to slip away in the night, a quick slice adding his designation to the list of that days losses. In the end it hadn't been necessary. Six days later as his transport docked at Botajef the insurrectionist bombing of the Mandalore garrison hit the waves. Torrent company, like the rest of his past, was gone. He drifted for a while, hopping from system to system avoiding Imperial sweeps and trying to forget how his joints ached. Now here he was, old beyond his years, patching up broken knees and blaster wounds in a back alley clinic on Ison and pretending the galaxy hadn't stopped making sense twenty years ago.

Though, looking at the footage of the Rebel's latest raid, maybe things were beginning to make sense again. Kix watches as the rebels on screen fight their way back to their ship, the camera stopping to zoom in on their faces. Even if the shiny Jedi wasn't a clone, he definitely had Skywalker's genes. And come to think of it... He watches the replay, as this new Skywalker tucks away his lightsaber to grab the blaster offered by his companion (Organa's daughter? He'd always seemed a good sort for a civvie. Nice to see he'd passed his competence on).

It's an unlikely move for a Jedi, but his aim is superb. His look of concentration is also vaguely familiar and... Oh Sithspit! Kix is a damn idiot. That's the Senator's expression! Amidala always had been a damn fine shot. Smart too. Add in her looks and insistence on treating them all like individuals and there were few in the 501st who weren't at least a little taken by their General's lady. Not that their admiration wasn't obvious. General Skywalker hadn't taken the nose art, or the drinking songs, particularly well, for all that he agreed with the sentiment. Kix smiles. Honestly, and they thought they were being so sneaky! He silently offers a toast to their memory. Wherever their spirits ended up, he hopes they're together. They deserved that much at least.

His nostalgia doesn't last long. Whatever small joy he takes from knowing a part of that remarkable couple lives on is quickly subsumed by the overwhelming wave of guilt. They'd failed this one too. Skywalker Jr might have made it to adulthood, but he was clearly not as well trained as he should have been (would have been, had the Jedi lived, had the Republic not fallen, had his brothers not been made to betray all they loved). He might have his father's uncanny piloting skills but the Empire's gunning for him hard. One day they're going to catch up with him, and when they do... the kid's no match for Vader. Nobody alive is a match for Vader.

Kix swallows the last drops in his glass. What can be do? Once, he might have packed his bags and set off to stop the kid from getting himself killed through typical Jedi heroics. But despite his chronological age Kix is an old man. It's been years since he was anywhere near fit for combat. And even if he did make it through to the rebellion, the role the clones played in the fall of the Republic is well known. How could he even begin to explain?

Truthfully though, Kix knows He's afraid. Call him a coward but he cannot take the risk of getting to know another Skywalker, of regaining his purpose, only to watch the Empire take it all away again. He orders another drink. No. They're both better off if Kix stays right where he is and forgets all about Jedi and generals and fighting the good fight. His war is done.

...For now, anyway.

So that's all I've got for the moment - there are a couple of ways I can see this going AU, but none are really gripping me right now. So like everything else I've written, this one will probably sit on that backburner for a while until inspiration strikes again 😉

#star wars #my fic

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