You are decanted, not born, with a number not a name.
You were made for a purpose, the Republic, the Jedi.
They will need you one day soon.
You have so many brothers, you will all fight one day for a higher cause.
You whisper in your bunks, late at night, about the future.
You wonder about the war, the one you will fight, sometimes you wonder whether it will ever come.
You argue about the stars, whether seeing them will be different from the images in your training simulators. You think it will be different. You want to see them.
You theorize about the Jedi. Will they be good generals? Can they really lift a tank with their minds? Will they be kind? Or will they be unfeeling and cold, like so many of the trainers?
The promised war comes too soon and too late all at once.
You survive your first battle, it’s louder than you could have imagined. All that training, all that work and it’s nothing like you thought it would be.
You aren’t sure how you make it, it feels more like luck than skill.
You mourn brothers lost, the unlucky ones, just as well trained, just as ready as you and gone in an instant anyway.
You get to see the stars. They are so much better than you could have imagined. One of your brothers finds you staring at them for the first time and laughs. You call him over and you sit and watch them together.
You have a number and a name. It’s short, just like most of your brothers', easy to shout across a battlefield between explosions.
You love it for it is yours, the one thing that really is.
You have a Jedi General, she can tell your brothers apart easily, something no one outside your brothers has managed before. She smiles at you, there’s sadness and regret in her eyes when you look sometimes.
She never fails to call you by name.
There are days when sparring and watching the stars aren’t enough to chase the ghosts away.
You were made for war, there wasn’t much consideration put into what war does to the people who fight in it.
Your general notices, of course she does, she sees the restless pain despite your best efforts to hide it. She asks if you and your brothers want to learn something new.
In the moments between battles you learn to meditate with your brothers. It helps, a little, to have something else to calm the itching of your muscles and the screaming of your mind.
Sometimes she talks about her people, the temple and their beliefs. There’s a wistful look in her eyes and a sad twist to her smile. It strikes you that no one told you very much about them, what they believe, it wasn’t as important as military tactics and working effectively with your Jedi generals.
One day, you hear rumors that a clone went rogue and killed a Jedi.
Your brothers can hardly believe it. A betrayal of all that you are, of all that you were meant to be.
The explanation comes weeks later.
A virus.
You don’t have much time to think about it before you move on to the next mission. Always on the move, always struggling, always fighting.
One night your general tells your little group around the fire about Padawans, she’s never had one before. She tells you how they’re chosen and how if it wasn’t for the war and how dangerous your postings are, she would have chosen one.
She talks about how, if this war ever ends, there’s a little one she’d like to teach.
You wonder if she’ll introduce you, if this war ever ends, to the little girl back at the temple with bright eyes and an unmatched passion in her soul.
It’s quiet, when the order comes through.
One of those odd moments where the tension is still tight after the battle and everything feels unnaturally still. It’s anticipation and it’s perfect.
You struggle when the order comes in, it doesn’t feel like you're struggling. You’re not sure what’s happening, there’s something very wrong.
You walk towards your General and you know something’s wrong.
You say nothing and your soul screams and your heart breaks.
You kill her, of course you do.
It’s easy. She never saw it coming and neither did you.
It is terrible.
It is true.
Perhaps your long dead brothers were the lucky ones.
There was never a choice.
This was always going to happen.
Your role, unshakeable, unchangeable, was defined from the moment it began.