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Cleaning carbon scoring off beskar without scraping off the paint was a doomed exercise, but Sabine always tried it anyway. She was sitting in the Ghost’s common room in her undersuit, the pieces of her armor arranged on the table before her, cleaning utensils in hand. There was a blaster burn right on the corner of the pauldron and if she was careful, she could remove it without damaging the surrounding paintjob too much. Precision and focus were crucial, and she had been at it for half an hour already, scraping away at the damage bit by bit.
A gruff voice broke her concentration. “Hey, kid.”
Sabine looked up to see Rex, also in his undersuit, standing in the doorway. He was carrying his breastplate, which he lifted to show off a few fresh blastermarks. “Mind if I join you?”
“Go ahead,” she replied, moving some of her armor from the table down to the bench. Rex sat down in Hera’s usual chair with a heavy sigh. He set his breastplate down, and took his own cleaning equipment out of his toolbelt.
They worked together in silence for a while. Despite Sabine’s best efforts, she eventually scraped her design on the pauldron. “Damn it,” she muttered under her breath.
Rex chuckled. “Yeah, that’ll get you. I knew some boys who’d swear up a storm every time they were doing maintenance because of it. Most of them gave up on not looking like they’d just crawled out of a starship engine after our first couple of battles.”
Sabine looked at his armor more closely for the first time. There were certainly many marks of battle on it, but not as many as you might expect for a war as intense as the Clone War.
“You seem to have taken pretty good care of yours,” she pointed out.
“Oh you know, I tried my best,” he replied. “Some of the boys just requisitioned a new set when their old one got too worn down, but a part of me was stubborn enough to believe I could make it through the whole war with this one if I took good enough care of it. And what do you know, here we are.”
Sabine nodded. “I get that. My mother always told me that if you take care of your armor it’ll take care of you. I can’t imagine just… swapping it.”
Rex chuckled again. “That sounds about right. Those that did though, they just saw it as equipment. Which it is, at the end of the day. And going into battle with your equipment in disrepair puts you and your brothers at risk. So they probably had a point. But it just didn’t feel right to me. Clone armor might have been mass produced, but so were we, and if I saw it as interchangeable like that, maybe...” He trailed off for a few moments. “Anyway, I was one of the lucky ones. My armor’s never let me down.”
“It held up pretty well,” Sabine said. “I mean, I studied stormtrooper armor specs pretty closely and going off that I’d never have guessed it could last for five years, much less twenty.”
“Well it’s no beskar,” he laughed, “but clone armor’s light years better than that Imperial crap. If I have to give stormptroopers credit for one thing it’s that you need some real guts to go into a fight knowing one good hit will crack you like an egg.”
He looked down at his breastplate, deep in thought for a few seconds, then set his cleaning equipment down. “Although lately it’s really been showing its age. This damage isn’t coming off,” he rubbed the blastermark with his finger. “And frankly it doesn’t really fit me anymore,” he laughed, then sighed. “Maybe it’s time to give it a rest. Find it a good retirement spot for it. Maybe that’s part of taking care of it too. Knowing when it’s reached its limits.” He looked at Sabine and gestured at her own armor. “Do Mandalorians do that too? Or does beskar last forever?”
Sabine shook her head. “We reforge it. Sometimes we’ll preserve an old piece that’s important to our clan, but there’s not enough beskar around to just keep making more armor indefinitely. Survival’s the top priority.”
“I see,” said Rex. “So yours wasn’t made from scratch just for you?”
“The helmet was passed down to me, and the rest I reforged from other older pieces.” she told him. “It goes back about 500 years.” Pride tinged her voice at that.
Rex looked suitably impressed. “Half the age of the Republic. I can understand why it’s so important to your people.”
She nodded. “That doesn’t mean we’re hobbled by tradition, either. The electronics are all new, and I update them whenever I can. Not every Mandalorian does it as consistently, but you won’t find one running around with a hundred year old comm or energy harness. Tradition is mostly preserved in the shapes and designs. Although even that’s more fun when you experiment with it a bit.” She patted her colorful helmet affectionately.
“Most of us never had your creativity. Or the time to develop great art skills.” Rex laughed again. “Though I knew some clones whose kits were the envy of their whole legions. Wolffe and his entire squad especially, though some of the boys in the 501st were pretty good too. But I think most of us never really got many examples of art to inspire us growing up on Kamino.”
“Well, maybe, but… I used to look at holos of clones when I was in the Academy,” Sabine admitted. “My clan has some pretty designs, but it was those that really inspired me to start experimenting more. They might not have been very complex for the most part, but I loved all the variations on a theme you all had. I always knew you could express yourself through art, but… I don’t know, it just felt validating seeing people literally wearing that expression at a time when we were all being pressured to conform to a mold.”
“Oh, our instructors on Kamino didn’t like us doing what we did to our armor. We had to wait till we were in the field. You could always spot a newbie because their armor didn’t have a single spot of paint on it. Shinies, we called them.” More than once during their conversation he’d looked absent, as if he were somewhere far away. This time, his expression seemed especially nostalgic, almost pained. Sabine knew how he felt. Talking about the Imperial Academy and her own training brought up painful memories for her, too.
They sat in silence for a while after that, Sabine trying to work on her armor, Rex just staring into space. Eventually, after she scraped the paint again, and then a third time, she sighed and set everything down. “I give up. I’ll just paint over it again. Maybe darker colors this time.”
Rex gave her a sympathetic smile. Then he looked down at his own armor, seemingly deep in thought for a moment, before picking it up. He held out his breastplate to her. “Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t you give mine the Sabine treatment too? I’ve seen those helmets you painted for Ezra and Kanan. I’d love to see what you’d do with this, if you’re willing.”
She looked at him, surprised. “Are you serious? You’ve kept it the same for so long… and it’s just going to get ruined next time you get shot.”
Rex nodded. “I am. And I’m not going to wear it anymore. Like I said, it’s really been showing its age lately, and I don’t want it to be ruined beyond repair. Turning it into a canvas for someone as talented as you seems like the perfect send-off for it.”
At a loss for words, Sabine reached out and slowly took Rex’s armor from him. “Alright,” she said, voice low. She was genuinely moved. “I promise I’ll make this one of my best pieces. It deserves it.”
Rex grinned. “Good. Whatever you come up with, I know it’s going to blow me away.”
He stood up with a groan. “Alright. I’m gonna go raid the armory. I’m sure Massassi Group has something even an old geezer like me can wear lying around. See you around, soldier.” He turned around, saluted her loosely, and left.
Sabine quickly cleared the table of her equipment and set Rex’s down in the centre. She fished a tablet out of one of her pouches, mind already swirling with possible designs. She thought about Rex, Ahsoka, the Clone Wars and her mother’s stories about the Siege, and started sketching.