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The Kaminoan’s are hired, first and foremost, to create weapons.
So they do.
It takes three tests, and subsequently three failed batches, before they succeed in creating clones of Jango Fett with a stable genetic makeup. Clones enhanced to serve their purpose well, as both soldier and weapon, and who will age at double the pace of a normal humanoid.
The first trial batch of these successes is decanted when they are the equivalent of a standard humanoid’s eight months old.
They do not stay successes for long.
Over the course of the next four months, the product’s development halts near completely. There is no reason found for it, each unit receives precisely the amount of nourishment required for a humanoid’s continued survival. Each unit is kept at the optimal temperature necessary.
And yet the units do not gain weight or acknowledge instructions, they do not respond to the scientists’ continued probing. It is infuriating.
Though they do not attempt to cry anymore, not like the first few weeks. It would have been the insult to the injury, a twisting of salt into the wound.
(Good soldiers do not cry for attention, they are simply machines, a small and insignificant part of the collective whole.)
By the end of the fifth month, two have succumbed to malnourishment and the rest have proved too sickly and too addle minded to pass even the laxest of standards.
A defect, every single one of them, and impossible to salvage.
Nala Se seethes.
She studies them, runs test after test, pokes and prods until she's done everything she can think of, and runs out of living subjects completely. The units’ sickly bodies too weak to handle the testing.
She finds nothing wrong with them other than their bodies stopped gaining weight and they were more susceptible to illness, things that should have been impossible.
For all her tests, she has no more knowledge than when she started.
A waste, she decides furiously, a defect they can not cull because they can not find it, the genetic code is still perfectly stable when they test it.
There is no scientific reason for the units to be dead.
And yet, despite the twelve units spread across her tables, there are no answers, no products, no results.
The defective units are disposed of.
She goes back to work.
In 1942, Harry Bakwin researched and investigated the care of infants and toddlers in Bellevue Hospital in New York, where the rate of mortality for small children was high.
The mortality rate was attributed, at first, to infection and malnutrition. And the hospital took care to try and avoid cross infections by replacing an open ward with “small, cubicle rooms in which masked, hooded and scrubbed nurses and physicians move about cautiously.”
But the measures had no effect on the death rate. And, despite the high caloric diets children were placed on, they only gained weight when returned home, leading to the hypothesis that it was the lack of care (or 'mothering') and the sterile environment that was damaging to the children.
Source: Loneliness in Infancy: Harry Harlow, John Bowlby and Issues of Separation
The next batch is decanted at a humanoid's standard two years of age.
The hope is that decanting them older will negate whatever it was that overcame the first batch.
It does not.
Within the next four months a third of the batch is dead and the rest are sickly and unresponsive, hiding faces away and making no move to follow any of the orders they are given.
They do not cry, at least, not until Nala Se begins her tests.
Then they wail, and wail, and wail, grating things that infuriate her the longer they go on.
Partway through the test, their voices give out. The results of the tests remain the same.
Twelve lifeless, useless, creatures on her tables with perfectly stable genetic makeups. The perfect soldiers. Except all twelve sit with bodies completely shut down, having wasted away and grown sickly and under-developed not only physically, but mentally in the time before they failed.
Nala Se seethes once more, and she thinks.
She has a contract to complete and a deadline to make, yes, but more pressingly she is a scientist.
So she does what she does best when her experiment fails, she researches.
Humanoid children, she finds, require warmth and touch to grow and thrive.
It makes her mouth twist into a frown, infuriating in both its simplicity and its direct contradiction to what she is creating them to be.
She digs deeper, but once further research proves only what she first feared, she relents.
The soldiers may not be children, but they are still ruled by flesh and blood, they will still need to be held to make it past their first cycle.
Unfortunate, yes, but necessary for the completion of the Republic’s order.
She adjusts the parameters of the experiment.
It is a success, she acknowledges, when 6 months have passed and the units progress how they should, and the order is on track to being completed once more.
Two months later Jango Fett receives his payment of an unaltered clone and the Alpha Batches are decanted, genome altered to be different from the Nulls; more obedient, shorter, with a few more tests of one gene or another in each different batch. With 10 batches of 10 units this time, there is more room to experiment with what will create the best and most effective product.
Nala Se watches everything come together with a clinical eye and approves the changes to the genome for the next model of the product.
And so it continues.
In the 1940’s and 50’s René Spitz coined the terms ‘hospitalism’ and ‘anaclitic depression’ after spending time studying children in hospitals and foundling homes.
These studies found that within three months of separation from the mother and only the amount of touch and care given that was necessary to survive, the child’s mental abilities diminished and regressed, and they became withdrawn, not smiling or changing their expression often, if they did at all.
In 37.3% of the cases studied, the deterioration eventually led to marasmus (severe undernourishment causing an infant's or child's weight to be significantly low for their age) and death by the second year of life.
Sources: Psychogenic Disease in Infancy, Docu film for Psychogenic Disease in Infancy, and Anaclitic Depression: An Inquiry
The first thing that the clones are meant to remember is that they are meant for the Republic, for the Jedi. Born and bred to be soldiers and expected to die as such, to follow orders.
It is the first thing CC-22241 ever remembers learning.
It is not his first memory.
CC-2224’s first memory is the white, white, white of the cold sterile room and the silence surrounding him, and the warm metal hands that hold him distantly, clinically. It’s hazy, and faded around the edges through a Little’s small eyes and limited information retention.
They were designed to have near perfect recall, that’s something even a First-Cycle like him knows, but he can’t help but wish that it wasn’t quite as good as it is.
It is a guilty wish, they will need that recall to best serve their General’s and the Republic, he knows that but—
It clings, that feeling of something almost right but wrong, wriggles it’s way beneath his skin and latches on tight and the ache in his chest physically hurts in a way CC-2224 will never admit to anyone if he can help it.
Once, he’d caught a glimpse of the Prime and Boba while on his way to his next lesson. Boba was small, so small compared to the Alpha’s, smaller still than even ‘24 and his batch cycle, and he’d stumbled over his own feet and bumped into the Prime’s legs with a giggle. The Prime had picked him up after that, smiled and held Boba gently in his arms like he loved him, like he was good and precious and—
‘24 wraps his arms around himself and squeezes, tight, an itch beneath his skin and an ache in his chest and a longing for something he doesn’t know and can not name.
'241goes down with a grunt and '102 presses the advantage, pins him. ‘24 freezes, skin tingling and breath punching out of his lungs.
He needs to get out of the pin, needs to show the trainer that he’s a good soldier and that he’s a good fighter because this is the first time that any of them are sparring, but getting out of the pin means losing the press of hands and arms around him and the thought makes something sharp wrench in his chest.
‘10’s eyes are wide and his hold is clumsy, fingers clenching and unclenching where he holds ‘24 and suddenly it’s hard to swallow.
‘24 breathes, shaky and desperate, and wriggles out of the pin. Twists fast and hard till his back hits the mat again and wraps an arm a little too low around ‘10’s throat to count as a chokehold, wraps his legs around ‘10’s to keep him from kicking out and his other arm around ‘10’s chest and arms to hold him still. It’s not the best pin, not the most effective, but ‘24’s heart is beating loud in his chest as he holds ‘10 in his arms and ‘10 is just barely shaking, breath rushing out harshly as he holds still in ‘24’s grip.
The trainer calls time when neither one of them is willing to give, and ‘24 swallows down a pathetic sound at the loss of contact, something cold slipping into his chest as he lets go of ‘10 and keeps himself from pressing into that touch.
It’s far harder than it should be. ‘24 grits his teeth and beside him ‘10 clenches trembling fists and evens out his breathing to make up for the way he swayed into ‘24’s side as they stood up.
They step off the mat and the next two cadets step into their places and ‘24 swallows down the ugly thing in his chest that chases after the weight and warmth of ‘10’s hands against his skin, digs fingers deep enough to bruise at the spots of his skin that still buzz from the touch.
It’s one of the first times anyone has ever touched ‘24 in any way that wasn’t distant and clinical and he wants more of it in a way that he has never wanted anything else.
There is a buzz under his skin and an ache in his chest and he digs fingers into his sides that do nothing to soothe it.
He wants, and knows he is not supposed to.
He does anyway.
(The Kaminoan’s were paid to create soldiers, they never thought about the fact that who they were really creating were children to shape into soldiers.)
In the 1950’s, Harry Harlow conducted numerous experiments on infant rhesus monkeys searching for answers on the questions of affection and whether children crave parents for love, or simply as sources of food and survival. In one such experiment, he separated the infants from their real mothers permanently and instead gave them two inanimate surrogate mothers. One made of terrycloth, and one made of wire.
The infants, in every variation, chose the terrycloth mother over the wire one. Even when the terrycloth mother was incapable of feeding them and the wire mother had the only means of food, the infants clung to the terrycloth mothers and only went to the wire mothers when food was necessary, before returning back to the terrycloth mother’s arms.
Children, Harlow concluded, crave affection far more than they crave survival.
Source: Harry Harlow and the Nature of Love and Affection
The night after the CC batches first real contact training, many batches reach out for each other in a way they had never dared to before, gripping tight onto each other and cramming together in the small amount of space they are allowed to sleep, piled together despite the fact they’ll get in trouble if they’re caught.
Getting in trouble, at that moment — with arms wrapped tight around each other and grasping, reaching desperately for more, with hugs and bumped heads and shocky, watery whispers of hysteric joy — seems so far away. They’ve already broken one unspoken rule, under the cover of Kamino’s night cycle, already crossed the high water mark that said to keep your hands to yourself, to never touch, never reach out, never hug. That soldiers were not children in need of coddling or soft things.
Soldiers, the longnecks maintain, do none of that, need none of that. And these groups of second cycles, pressing together until the buzz under their skin and the ache in their chests abate even the slightest bit, do it anyway. Some hesitant, some with a desperation lining their bones and shaking their chests apart, some careful, some gleefully.
Some do not fold together that first night, are slow to ease themselves into this burst of affection they have never known before. Some can’t stand the press of skin and contact. But by the time that first week passes, all of them have come away changed in some way or another, and change itself rolls through Kamino in quiet little undercurrents, unseen but felt all the same.
After all, if this is what connection brings, how could they deprive the First Cycles of it? The Tubies who will be decanted soon and all the other Littles?
Maybe, the treacherous little thought begins, the longnecks are wrong about this one thing.
It starts quietly.
It starts as just a thought first, unspoken. There and present and persistent in a way that niggles at the back of their brains, itches under the skin like that desperate craving for contact that none of them have managed to shake yet.
It starts like this: ‘24 brushes an arm against ‘10’s, '543 knocks heads with '524 after a hard round of training and makes it look like an accident, '045 wraps quick fingers around '266’s wrist and squeezes in reassurance in the quick reprieve after a trainer loses their temper with him and turns away.
It builds, near silent: ‘52 tumbles into the wrong dorm one night after drills and collapses with a groan into ‘10’s tube, curls into the contact with a sigh and ‘10 rolls his eyes and wrangles them into a more comfortable position. ‘54 leans against '167’s side as he teases him over something harmless. '388 reaches steady hands out to a shaking tat doing their best to hide tears Davin doesn’t want or need before the trainer returns, puts their hand to his chest as he breathes for them until they can match it.
(It’s a long, long second before either of them can bring themselves to pull away. The pins and needles feeling left behind settles uncomfortably and ‘38 almost wants to lean into it, can see that the tat is desperate for that contact in a way that ‘38 can’t quite understand. But then, the tat is new and Davin is all ‘38 has ever known, there’s a difference there.
Before he can make a decision, Davin returns, ‘38 pushes away the urge. It will do no good here.)
The thing about pressure building behind something — a wave, a movement, an explosion, a cry, the incubation tubes the littlest of the clones are grown in, the very air — is that, eventually, something gives. Something will burst, split, crack, explode.
Just not from the person anyone expected.
Here’s the thing.
Children, when they are starved of something for long enough, learn how to adapt. They learn or they suffer for it.
Alpha-99 has long learned how to adapt.
He is nothing special, nothing noteworthy, his only use in the eyes of the scientists and the trainers is as maintenance and even then it would be no loss to be rid of him.
He is lucky he knows, 74 was not given the same chance he was.
(74, he remembers, always had a smile for them. 74, he remembers thinking, was one of the best of them.
When the longnecks took 74 away, 99 remembers the way 989 had retreated into himself, the way 7710 and 71 had gone quiet and detached, the way 17 had grown even more snappish.
99 likes to believe none of the others ever held it against him.
Not even he’s sure whether he’s lying to himself or not.)
Here is a secret in two parts.
First.
The rest of the Alpha Batches, the ones deemed up to standard, do not get to interact with the other clone models. Not even the best performing of the CC’s. They have their own training and their own rigorous schedules.
But 99?
99 is different. 99 can interact with any clone in the facility, provided he is careful enough, quiet enough, unnoticeable enough. Maintenance happens everywhere after all, and despite his bent back, his little fingers can reach where the longnecks and trainers often can’t. This will change, he knows, as he gets bigger.
(He tries not to think of what might happen to him then, he knows down that road lies only pain.)
Second.
The Alpha batches learnt the exact same lesson as the CC’s. Though they had far less freedom to use the lesson, to steal those moments of contact. It’s the unfortunate part of being the first true attempt, the ones where the genes had to be modified and shaped and then when it proved stable, tested. There are few enough of them that it’s easy to monitor them. There are hundreds of CC’s, tracking them is always going to be more difficult. So the CC’s are able to steal moments so much easier than the Alpha’s ever could.
The best of them and the ones with the modifications the longnecks are most interested in and the ones too close to failing are the most restricted, eyes always on them. They are the ones with only the occasional press of sides or the nearly silent click of vambraces. Sometimes they are able to steal a night curled together on the ground, but it’s rare and often their own personalities interrupt, make it even harder.
The safe ones though, and the ones able to fade into the background — in no danger of failing but not the bright and obvious source of potential or interest for the longnecks and trainers to focus on — have much more freedom.
Not a lot, not anywhere near what some of the CC’s have been able to manage, but enough.
And in spite of the attention 99 drew from the longnecks, his batch has always managed to remain safe for the most part, they stayed within the parameters and didn’t fall behind or shine too much. Once 99 had been reviewed and was placed in maintenance and the batch had proved to hold no more…. complications, they were monitored more loosely. They were able to steal hugs and nights spent curled up together, poking and teasing each other in near silence.
It shows, 99 thinks. Can see the difference between those of his brothers who are able to steal more contact, more comfort from each other and those who don’t get it as often. They stand a little more apart, shoulders held a little too tight, and accidental touch makes them go rigid. Those are the brothers who throw themselves into sparring with a single minded determination, the ones who spar again and again and again, a little vicious and a little desperate, even if some of them hide it better than others.
Sparring, after all, is one of the few contact activities they are allowed.
So when 99 slips into the nursery for the tubies for all of the time he manages to wrangle, smiles down at them, takes the time to talk to them and pick them up in his arms, he knows what he’s doing.
When he cradles these brothers in his arms, tickles gently at their sides until they giggle, hums nonsense melodies to them until they fall asleep, he knows exactly what it will mean for them.
99 is one of the youngest of the Alpha’s, his batch is the youngest of all of the batches and he is one of the last few uncorked.
He’s only Third-Cycle but even he knows that this is important.
The tubies might weigh heavy in his arms, difficult to carry, but he sets his shoulders in determination and does it anyway, holds them as best as he can, loves them for as long as he can afford to.
They deserve better than to only know this kind of warmth and affection and contact through sparring, they deserve to remember it and have felt it before their first day of contact training.
He despairs at first, because he can only steal so many hours with them before someone will catch on and he can’t risk being caught, he can’t.
There are too many of them, these tiny little cadets with wide eyes and reaching hands and 99 can not help all of them, but he tries, he tries.
He can’t bring the other Alpha’s into this to help him, not only can he not afford to but there just isn’t a feasible way for them to steal time away and out from under the trainer’s eyes.
So 99 thinks and he thinks and he thinks.
Of all the Alpha batches, only 99 can interact with any clone in the facility, if he’s careful enough. And of all the current models of clones, the CC’s are able to steal moments far more easily than the Alpha’s ever could. These are facts, simple and true.
(This is how the pressure breaks. The wave crashes to shore, the tube splits open, the bomb explodes, the air rushes out. This is how the silence explodes, how the hum becomes a roar and the thought becomes a whisper, becomes a cry, becomes a scream.
The Kaminoan’s took genetics and played at a higher power, they molded genetics into a product and a product into a weapon and called it satisfactory.
They never thought to remember other factors.)
99 is maintenance, people forget about him even when he’s standing right in front of them. The longnecks and the trainers both, sometimes even his brothers forget he’s there.
99 doesn’t blame them for it, and here, now, it is to his advantage.
He fades into the background silently, head down and ears open. He listens, and he waits and finally, he sees his chance.
There is a brief lull as the night cycle draws nearer and a group of CC’s are returning from one of the harsher rounds of training. They will be given tomorrow to rest, 99 knows, had listened silently as he cleaned the benches while the trainers talked about it.
99 is good at being forgotten.
He slips silently away from the wall and wraps a gentle hand around the wrist of one of them the minute they get into the blind spot of the cams. They aren’t on in this section, they rarely are, but 99 would rather be safe than sorry.
The cadet tenses up at the touch and around him, his batch does as well. Tired, 99 thinks, all of them look tired. He smiles, tries to make it clear that it’s okay. Quiet, he signs with his free hand, Follow.
He doesn’t let go of the cadet’s wrist, but he loosens his already light hold until it’s more of a suggestion than anything, turns and tugs gently.
They want an explanation he knows, and they want to go back to their bunks and sleep for as long as they will be allowed to, but they are just tired enough, and 99 has timed this just right enough, that their curiosity outweighs their exhaustion and the fear of being caught.
They follow.
He leads them to the quiet, sterile nursery and every one of them straightens up in awe. They’ve never been allowed to see the tubies before.
99 smiles and signs again, quiet, follow.
They do, their eyes wide, shoulders brushing and hands slowly linking together in a movement that 99 can only think of as unconscious.
He grabs the box he’s hidden away in here and places it next to the nearest tubie crate — tray technically, but trays are for the mess, not for tubies, and 99 has never called them what the Kaminoan’s do for that reason.
He smiles at the cadets and beckons them closer, looks down at the little tubie and traces a gentle finger down their little nose before slowly, carefully, picking them up and rocking them.
The cadets watch him closely as he steps down. Careful, always careful with the tubies and their breakable little body and their fragile little neck. Sinks down to the floor and settles the quiet baby in his lap.
He smiles up at them and they waver, one by one, until all of them are sitting beside him. He hums gently under his breath, rocks the tubie from side to side and presses a kiss to soft little curls.
"You have to be really careful when you hold them," he murmurs, meeting all of their eyes.
They nod seriously, eyes locked on the little one’s sleepy yawn.
They're tired after a long and harsh day of training, but they look like they wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now, not even in bed. They're relaxed, leaning against each other, existing in each other's space like it's as easy as breathing while they watch him with the tubie.
99 aches a little bit, something sharp in his chest twisting at the sight.
He swallows, smiles again and shows them how to hold the little ones like he'd watched the nurse droid do over and over until he was sure he could do it right.
They copy him and cadets are near the end of their First-Cycle and so much smaller compared to 99’s batchers that it takes a second for them to be able to hold the little one in their laps safely. 99 watches and helps correct them gently as they fumble with the tubie until every single one of them can do it on their own.
He grins as he settles the tubie back in his lap, "Okay with holding and playing with some of them for a bit?"
“Yes,” one of them whispers, wide-eyed and awed and urgent, a little desperate, a little scared. The cadet swallows, nervous fingers latching onto his batchers as he ducks his head, “I mean, yes please.”
99 nods, reaches out to the little brother’s trembling hand, “Alright then,” he whispers and there is something in his chest that feels too tight and something pressing behind his eyes that burns, “alright.”
("Oh," one of them whispers, a tubie's hand wrapped tight around one of their fingers.
99 hides his smile in tiny little curls, watches as the cadets each settle on the floor with their little tubie held safe in their arms.
This will work, he thinks like truth made real. He'll make it work if he has to.
The tubies babble quietly in the unnatural silence of the nursery and it sounds like hope.)
Affection, it was concluded, is required for babies to thrive. A lack of attention, a lack of love, would make a child wither away.
Sources: Anaclitic Depression: An Inquiry
'241 slips quietly into '102’s bunk, presses close and tucks his face into ‘10’s neck.
“You better not steal the sheet this time,” ‘10 grumbles and ‘24 hums quietly.
The room is quiet, and ‘24 thinks he can see the faint outline of someone, maybe '3611 or '045, curled into '543’s side.
One of the Trainers — ‘24 doesn’t know which, couldn’t find out before curfew and ‘54 wouldn’t say — caught ‘54 hugging one of the Littles today, in the small gap of time it took ‘54 to find the Little crying in one of the supply closets. It took Alpha-17 stepping between them and the trainer to get them to forget about the Little and ‘54 both.
It was weird, having one of the Alpha’s get involved. The CC’s aren’t allowed to see them much, often it’s nothing more than a distant few minutes watching a class before they are ordered away.
The fact that he stepped in at all is unexpected. Though maybe it shouldn’t be. ‘24 can’t help but to be achingly grateful for it.
‘10 is quiet still, and there is a slow glacial rage building there that ‘24 can feel in his bones.
If the trainer had punished ‘54 today, if they’d written him up there is so much that could have been lost. ‘24 breathes, swallows past the knot in his throat and wraps his arms tight around ‘10.
(The Kaminoan’s don’t like proof that their soldiers are still flesh and blood, that they are human and sentient. This thing that they have forged for themselves, stolen under the Kaminoan’s necks, is one of the loudest reminders.)
‘10 had almost punched ‘36 when they all heard, had to stay in their dorms and wait, couldn’t find out if ‘54 was okay, if everything was okay still. ‘24 had ended up sparring with ‘36 enough times to make sleep lick at both of their heels just to take the edge off of the waiting, off of the fear.
‘10 is a warm weight in ‘24’s arms and the quiet breathing that fills the room is relief threaded into his bones.
The ache in his chest and the feeling buzzing under his skin are smaller now, softer, they don’t leave an emptiness in their wake anymore, they don't hold that desperation that floods his mind and his soul and leaves him shaking.
‘24 rests his cheek on ‘10’s shoulder and thinks of the first hand to hand lesson they ever received and the way that the spar left the both of them trembling and a little desperate and buzzing, thinks of ‘52’s lost look afterward and the way he crawled into ‘26’s bunk with that scared determination that didn’t quite hide that shaking.
It’s different now, and ‘24 thinks that if they all had to go back to how it was before, they might die a little inside. They’d survive it maybe, but nothing about it would be okay again.
The night-cycle on Kamino is quiet, and ‘24 tries not to think about the glimpses he got of Boba held gently within Prime’s arms all that time ago.
‘10 flicks at his side, tangles their legs together and whispers, “Sleep.”
‘24 does, eventually, once a quiet conversation between ‘54 and ‘04 ends with them and the others in the room finally laying out sheets and blankets and curling together in the middle of the floor and ‘24 and ‘10 resettle in the pile.
It’s easier to breathe, pressed together with them all, reassuring. And it settles the ache in his chest a little, gentles the fierce anger and fear that have been twisting in his stomach.
(They wake up in the morning and ‘54 is still there, no one came in to check on them or take him and there’s a sense of relief that floods the room, a sudden release of tension.
They wake up in the morning and nothing changes except that now, when they can manage it, the other Alpha’s will sometimes find little ways of helping.
Life continues.)
Here's the thing.
There was no way to keep it secret forever. There are too many of them to track all the time, but trainers see things anyways, see the stumbles the youngest of them make, the things the CT Littles don't realize they need to hide.
How could they? They've grown up surrounded by brothers who sneak little knocks of arms and reassuring touches, who give hugs and love freely when they can. It's important to remain professional during training, they know, but once they are done for the day there is nothing keeping them from knocking tiny shoulders together, wrapping arms around each other and giving love as freely as it's always been given to them.
(It is luck, and only luck, that the first one who catches them is Mij.
He watches tiny children giggle as they wait for their turn for a physical, lean into each other's space and hold hands and it's a stark contrast to everything he has ever seen in the Alpha’s and the CC's.
Mij is a medic, first and foremost. A healer. He knows the importance of care and contact for children. It is this — this slip up from Littles who haven't yet realized they need to be more vigilant, who have grown with more of the care and contact children need in their two years than the Alpha’s had in eight — that brings realization to the forefront.
It is not that he ever forgot they were children. Despite the insistence from the Kaminiise that they weren’t, despite even Fett’s insistence they weren’t when he himself took one and called them his own, knew their name and cared for them like he never did the rest of them. Mij knew they were children, he knew they felt and were just as eager to prove themselves as any other child.
It’s just— easier to know he can do nothing for them, when he ignores the things they let slip. Easier too, when they hide themselves and anything that would prove they weren’t droids.
He isn’t proud of it, carries shame with him, biting at his heels and buried deep in his heart because of it.
It is the most he has ever seen any of them reach out for connection or show their happiness in all the time he’s been here.
Emotion catches in his throat and the shame he has acknowledged and let rest inside him since first understanding what this job meant roars to life with a rage.
Mij breathes as he types up his recommendations for better functioning and he knows that it won't do near enough to absolve him of his guilt, but he hopes that it will be enough to fix something, anything, no matter how small it might be.
He's always been hopelessly optimistic. Maybe this time it won't turn around and stab him in the gut.)
When Priest catches CC-64543 comforting CT-673412 there is no world in which he doesn’t report it immediately and without mercy. Alpha-17 stepping in does nothing but let the two slip away for the moment.
Except, despite the report that is filed, and the particular viciousness Priest holds for the remainder of that tenday, there is never any punishment delivered.
After all, no one has ever accused the Kaminoans of being stupid.
They take the new information they have been given, that a CC was found comforting a CT, and that the CC’s and CT’s have so far proven to be far more stable and less aggressive than many of the Alpha batches, disregarding the squads under certain trainers direct influence and allowing for error room in regards to the genetic tweaking. They take the recommendations of Trainer Gilmar into consideration and they weigh the pros against the cons, the effectiveness of the product against the possibilities of failure sprouting from encouraging attachment to fellow units.
It will make them less willing to leave units behind should the need be, some insist and Nala Se ponders.
In the end, it is decided that it is best to keep things as they are, there is no need to change things, not when the units are functioning perfectly fine as they are.
'54 receives a verbal reprimand and the conversation is shelved, along with Trainer Gilmar’s recommendations.
Things remain the same, at least, in the eyes of the scientists, and in the end that’s all that matters.
Word spreads, quietly, after the fact, until everyone knows they must be more careful. They still bump shoulders and nudge sides, still tap bracers and lean on each other, still slip into quiet vod piles and curl up together. But they’re more aware now, more careful, more thorough.
Until the war starts, until they are deployed, the little things they are able to sneak past the scientists and longnecks are all they will have.
(The war begins with a bang, with 212 dead Jedi and a sandy planet and too many dead vod and—
The war begins and the Jedi come to Kamino.)
Even when they are finally deployed, instinct and habit long ingrained keeps them careful and cautious. Watchful for the moment when the grace of the natborns ceases and the other shoe comes down. And sometimes that caution is well-rewarded, sometimes the CO they serve under is as intolerant of displays of personhood as the scientists are.
(It hurts more, then, when the hope that when the war begins maybe they won’t always have to be afraid of being anything less than perfect, anything other than soldiers is crushed.)
Other times though, there is nothing but encouragement, and that's its own type of battle, though not for the same reasons.
To have the hopes and wishes realized, encouraged even, after so long is strange. And none of them are quite sure whether it's all a trap or not.
(Wolffe pushes and pushes and pushes for weeks, guarded and wary, trying to find the upper limits to his general’s patience, to find the breaking point so his men don’t have to figure it out for themselves. Cody stays guarded, but he’s less desperate to push his general to the breaking point, more willing to wait and watch and pick everything up like that. Bacara is steady and cautious and silent professionalism, the bulwark, where Neyo is the teeth, the vicious twist of quiet defense. Ponds is the same, professional and careful and every so often throwing something out in an attempt to set his general off guard enough to see what will happen. Nothing ever does.
Fox doesn’t have a set CO, but it doesn’t take him long to figure out that Coruscant doesn’t take kindly to their personhood.
Bly is the least cautious of them all, but he isn’t stupid. He’s careful, feels out the edges of the things they are allowed carefully and methodically. He never finds the edge that he’s waiting for; the thorns of the flower, the riptide of the ocean.
Their generals are kind.)
(The first time Kenobi catches a pair of vod curled up together Cody feels like all the air has been punched out of him. Excuses riding like bile up his throat and choking him.
All Kenobi does is smile. There is never any punishment or reprimand, nothing.)
The war begins, and they let themselves hope.