#yes i named one of the kids in my file as jas because it pained me that peaches couldnt adopt her as a daughter and live in my goddamn farm | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

soundwavefucker69 · 3 years

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So, what was Jango's reaction to finding Grim trying to steal Bric's ship? Like, what made him decide to pretty much save Grim?

Let's have some FUN!!!

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There's an older cadet on the landing platform. He's drenched to the skin and shivering, caught in the wings of Bric's ship, numb fingers shocked from the sparks of the wiring. Jango knows for a fact this cadet isn't trained in these things, and doesn't want to wonder about who taught him and why. All he wants is an explanation, but the cadet is just standing there, shaking and shivering and stiff.

"What were you doing?" Jango asked bluntly, and the kid just shuddered harder. Through the sleet of the rain, he can barely see the number on his reds. CC-3737. From Kote's batch. It's taking Jango a moment to place him. He's not 5052, couldn't be 5052, and 1010 would definitely not have that look on his face. 3636 would be blasting him with his bullshit so this is... Grim. They were calling him Grim lately, and Jango didn't pay all that much attention to the CCs, not like he paid attention to the Alphas, but he was a meek sort until he got his temper up. If Jango remembered right, this was the one that had picked a fight with Jaing. The damned Null liked the kid, kicked him across the training room while laughing his ass off the whole time. Kal had been eyeing the kid like he wanted to poach him, but he'd already done enough stealing the remaining Nulls.

Why was the cadet pulling this shit?

"Are you going to have me decommissioned?" CC-3737 asked lowly, probably too lowly, and Jango squinted. "I'm deserting, so I have to be decommissioned."

"I should," he replied, half tempted to grab the clone by the ear and drag him out of the rain. He looked like a drowned tooka. Too damn gangly. He was the runt of the batch, if Jango was remembering it right.

"Okay. So decommission me. Sir," the clone said and straightened up, looking Jango dead in the eye. "I'm a deserter. You have to."

Jango didn't often put much thought to the clones. They were a tool, a means to an end, and he got what he wanted out of it. When the war started, he was going to take his son to a nice, quiet planet in the Unknown Regions and drop by Kamino every few months or so for more DNA donations and wait for it all to blow over. He had a plot of land he was planning to build a house on, a plan for what to do, and the clones were just. Here to him. Fulfilling their purpose.

So, he didn't often give much thought to their thought processes. Didn't care to read them, barely cared enough to oversee their training. He tried to not think about them, because every so often he got an uncomfortable twist in his gut at what was waiting for them, what he'd done, what Jaster would say if he could see him now. But this cadet... standing there, calmly confirming a decommissioning... This was suspicious.

Trying to off yourself? There's easier ways to do it," he said calmly, and the clone shook as a particularly strong wind caught him.

"I'm not trying to off myself. Sir. I'm trying to get off planet," he said, and Jango made a mental note to look into why the clones were such damned terrible liars. "So I'm deserting."

"That's what you're sticking to?" Jango asked, half tempted to peel off his helmet so he could really look at the clone.

"I'm a deserter," the kid repeated, and Jango snorted.

"I know your training program isn't that bad. You know you'd never get off this planet alive." None of them ever did. They got shot down. Bric would be pissed his ship got trashed, but they'd replace it.

"I'm a deserter," CC-3737 repeated, like he was trying to put it in Jango's face.

"You're trying to do a suicide run," Jango clarified. "Why."

The kid... the clone was shaking. Shivering. Half drowned. He looked like he needed a meal and a blanket. Jango tried to put it out of his mind, view the kid as a malfunctioning piece that needed a trip to the decommissioning chamber, but it was getting increasingly difficult.

"I'm a deserter," he repeated, and his lips were turning blue. Jango's temper was fraying, and with a growl, he lashed out and grabbed the kid by the ear to start dragging him under cover and inside. The clone didn't even resist, didn't react to the pain, just let Jango drag him towards the doors, and the second they opened, Jango was shoving him inside and out of the infernal rain.

"Yes, we've covered that. Why."

The kid paused, and Jango picked up the exact moment he was about to lie. Something flickered in his eyes, and he straightened his back, like he was puffing up his chest, but the gesture fell short when he was soaked like this.

"I don't want to fight," he said stubbornly, and Jango's eyes narrowed under his helmet as he pieced together some pieces assembling in front of him.

"You don't want to fight," he repeated, like he was tasting it on his tongue. That wasn't the CC-3737 he'd seen. He seemed to not have an opinion one way or another, about anything, really. His batchmates got into spats and he just stared at the wall in mild exasperation. Kote loudly declared some stupid thing or another, and he didn't say anything. Wolffe knocked Fox on his shebs, and Grim did nothing. He consistently tested in the highest percentile, for everything, was consistently at the top of his class, but... "That's bullshit. You're fighting right now, aren't you?"

He'd seen Grim not even a month ago put himself between an Alpha and Kote when Kote was bleeding on the floor. It was rare you saw him show emotion, but when you did, it was fiery and in the face of pain and he did not back down when he felt like he needed to protect something. Namely, his batchmates. Other batches knew damned well you didn't fuck with Kote's batch, because Grim was willing to wait. He waited, and waited, and struck, and half of the CC batches were terrified of him. He wouldn't abandon his batchmates like this.

"I don't want to fight," Grim repeated, and Jango's eyes narrowed. He was breaking, and he should have thought about this before he decided to pull off this bullshit plan.

"What happened?" He asked bluntly, and Grim hesitated. Jango could see the cracks start, and realized this clone was losing his damn mind. He was desperate.

"I'm showing defects," he blurted, and then stopped, like he was cursing himself, but he was shaking and looked like he was about to cry. "I'm too... high strung. They did a psychological profile and I'm showing abnormalities. I thought I answered everything right, I thought I picked the right answers, but it went against what they had on my file, and they're saying it's anxiety. My brain isn't working, so they're going to recondition me, and I can't... I can't do that to them. So I'm a deserter now. Decommission me."

A long moment stretched between them, and for a second, Jango was half tempted to do exactly that just to deal with the damned problem so he wouldn't have to think about it. But the kid... there was something burning in his eyes. Something desperate, and Jango realized this was the perfect soldier. Willing to die pathetically in a room before he even saw the galaxy to keep his peers from falling apart. Falling on the sword. It would be a karking waste. In another world, in another time, Jango would have killed to serve with someone like that. Had served with men like that, fought by their side, for all the good it did him. This was a clone that saw everyone more important than him, was struggling and fighting and coming up with the most batshit idea Jango had ever seen, and what the hell did the Kaminoans mean, anxiety was a defect? That was a damned tool, he just needed the right framing, the right way to deal with it. Jango had fought alongside plenty of people with shit like anxiety and depression and PTSD, and they were all going to end up with anxiety and shit by the end of the war anyways, so why were they bumping off someone with a head start? Stupid. It was beyond fucking stupid, and that was what he was standing by. The clone was looking like he was going to cry, and what was he right now? Eight? He didn't even fit into the finished armor yet. This was stupid.

"That's not good enough," Jango decided, because Kote's batch was going places. The entire damn batch was too good to lose to reconditioning paranoia, and it would be a fucking waste. "Go get changed and meet Alpha-17 outside your sleeping berth. Now."

The clone was breaking, and Jango was just going to have to teach him how to piece himself back together. Fucking stupid long necks didn't know a damned thing about war. The hell were they thinking? He wasn't going soft.

This clone, though... This clone he was going to form out of beskar. Jango wasn't going to accept any less.

#tw suicide #decommissioing #reconditioning #jango is an ass but #this was what was going through his head #shrooms is writing #the point where we shatter #commander grim #baby grim is best grim

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