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O Captain, my captain!
That was how the poem began.
Someone - Rex couldn’t quite remember who now, and that sent an all-too familiar twinge of guilt sliding around his blood, around his too-old body - had found it on a donated holopad. They’d saved it from the wipe, utterly delighted with the dramatic flairs, never mind that it took up space on the pad. Space that should have been used for plans, or med-evac routes, or… something more important. When had they found it? Early in the war? Middle? He couldn’t remember now - the Seelos sun was bright in his eyes - but the words remained, clear and sharp in his head.
O Captain, my captain! Our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won.
If Rex concentrated, took a breath of the sharp dusty almost-burnt air, he could hear Hardcase’s boisterous laugh ricocheting off of the laarties in the hangar as he called it across the wide durasteel space. The men - his men, brothers - had quickly adopted it as their calling cry for Rex. If they wanted to piss him off, push his buttons, they’d salute him and say it with a laugh under their breaths. It had gotten old, gotten old very quickly. But he’d let them use it, because it had made them laugh. A boost for morale, that’s what he had told himself. Simple, yes. But it had worked. Jesse and Kix, Fives. It had made them laugh.
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
And then, one by one, his men had disappeared.
The last he’d seen of Jesse was on Mandalore - Kix had been declared KIA (because Rex couldn’t, wouldn’t allow himself to think of Kix as a deserter; it was easier to think him dead; but the medic had disappeared without a trace but the war had continued on and so they had to abandon their search for him. Easier to declare him dead that face the other sickening options) a month after Fives had been killed - and Jesse had been the last one of that old guard; the last of Torrent. Tup, Fives, Dogma, Kix, Hardcase - dead, decommissioned, or simply vanished into thin air - it had been Jesse, Rex, and a handful of new-batch shinies on Mandalore, before the order, that damnable order, had gone out.
Rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding.
Jesse hadn’t listened. And at that point, Rex had hardly been able to sleep from the paranoia, the fear, the hollow steady heartbeat where the chip had been since his birth, slipped between the folds of his brain, a mechanical tumor that could wipe him back to a blank slate with a single simple command. His mind had balked at the absence and near tore itself to shreds in an answer to the back-alley surgery, the pierced and tattooed Zabrak woman who’d done it had tried to get him to rest in the back of her shop for a day, just one single day; but he couldn’t, he had work to do, men to lead, a war to win, he’d walked out in the middle of the night and dully deleted her furious messages. But Rex hadn’t let it affect his work. Skywalker might have sensed it, but Rex doubted he could have picked up on what had made Rex’s pain singular, unique; by then it was too late. The countdown had begun. It was too late for all of them.
Rex had finally understood the demons that had tormented Fives in his last hours, the malcontent whispers in the dark; he’d finally understood why Fives’ eyes were wide-eyed in horror, the beads of sweat that had shone under the warehouse lights, why his movements had become erratic and his hands had trembled. Rex had watched as his brother was gunned down by another. He’d watched, and listened, and learned. But Jesse hadn’t.
Good as he was, Rex hadn’t been good enough, hadn’t been skilled or quick enough, to knock the blaster away before Jesse - it hadn’t been Jesse, that was not Jesse - had tried to fire on Ahsoka.
But he’d seen the absolute terror in Jesse’s eyes, beyond the sudden fog. Like some unknown thing had yanked him under the surface of his own mind, with the singular intent to drown him and he could do nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop it, to fight it. It was quick, but it had not been merciless, because Jesse had still been there. The confusion, the realization, silent pleading in Jesse’s once-kind eyes when his hands, his nerves, his head was no longer his own. When his own body began to disobey him, Rex had watched Jesse’s eyes alight with pure primal terror - and then slowly, agonizingly slowly, they’d grown dim.
Jesse hadn’t opened his mouth to scream but Rex had heard it all the same. When he took aim, when her sabers ignited. His memory was muddled and Gregor said that it was the trauma. “It’s your head trying to protect you.” Wolffe nodding, agreeing, not speaking, three super-soldiers with no war to fight crowded around a too-small table in a cramped makeshift kitchen. Three remnants of age already being forgotten - by themselves, by the rest of the galaxy.
What Rex remembered was the awful silence that had followed. The way Ahsoka had stared at Jesse, and then at Rex. Her sabers clutched in her hands. A mounting dread when they realized that time was up.
There had never been time to mourn his brothers. Not with the care they deserved; the farewells that should have said over their bodies. At the time, Rex had made himself content with that there was always another battle to fight. So he could focus on that and not go mad with misery.
And now the fighting had stopped, and now he had all the time in the universe to mourn the ones who’d called the first lines of that damned poem to him.
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won.
Rex hated that poem.
Safe and sound. Banthashit.
Seelos was his exile.
No one had cheered or danced for the Captain of the 501st, no one had welcomed him back home with garlands or ribbons or thankful touches or hugs. He hadn’t received a hero’s welcome. He and Ahsoka had laid the scene, had made it look like they’d killed each other in a final, desperate battle. He’d stripped himself of his old armor - tried to ignore the hollow pang of his guts when that familial blue had disappeared under the white burning earth of Mandalore - and Ahsoka had set her lightsabers down.
And then they’d walked away.
He hated that poem.
His grip on the durasteel railing tightened. His jaw clenched as he watched the lazy dust settle on the hard-packed earth under a scorching unfamiliar sky. He hated that poem, because there had been no victory; only exile.
They were all gone.
He wasn’t supposed to be the last one standing. He wasn’t supposed to be the only surviving member of Torrent Company.
Alive, where the others had fallen. Or been recruited by the Empire.
He wasn’t supposed to be a fugitive, dead-but-not-really; a traitor.
Had he been better, had he been faster, he could have saved Jesse from the wipe.
Rex hated that poem, because he knew how the story should have ended. How his story should have ended.
He’d read the whole thing out of curiosity, after Fives had stood up on one of the tables in the mess and belted out the first line until Dogma had yelled at him to shut up. Rex had swiped the holopad and skimmed it.
Had he been better, acted faster… had he been a better Captain to his men, they would not be dead and gone.
But O heart! heart! Heart!
The words mocked him.
Here Captain! dear father!
He hated that stupid fucking poem.
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
Because they showed him what he should have been, taunted him, berated him for not being good enough, not giving his men the leader, the Captain, that they deserved.
O the bleeding drops of red This arm beneath your head But I with mournful tread-
Rex wanted to scream, wanted to rip the words from his head like he’d ripped that chip from his brain so long ago. He’d saved himself, he’d ironically saved himself but not a single one of his Torrent men, his brothers, his family.
Where on the deck my Captain lies-It is some dream that on the deck-Walk the deck my Captain lies-
O captain, my captain!
He’d saved himself, and watched them fall under the scythe, be cut down by the fate ordained for them since their birth.
Fallen cold and dead.
My captain!
He had been spared.
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
When he should be nothing more than dust next to them.
Fallen cold and dead.
What sort of a fucking Captain were you, then.