Chapter Text
For centuries, countless writers, entertainers, and historians have recorded and portrayed a moral change of heart at some point in their careers. Whether fictional or based on actual events, it is common enough to be considered cliché in some circles. Hell, I couldn’t even begin to tell you just how many holo-dramas my late father indulged in that featured as much. To some, it was an annoying and repetitive theme that had long outgrown its novelty. To others, it was simply a fact of life that people regularly experienced things from different points of view as they grew both physically and emotionally. To me, for better or worse, I was currently living through my own moral change of heart, and completely understood how so many could grow tired of the trope.
Decades of serving my homeworld of Chylla as a marshal had established my base sense of morality, learning right from wrong as I interacted with both law-abiding citizens and criminals. Through education and personal growth, I was shaped into someone who could tell the difference between a down on their luck civilian and a hardened pirate. Not all who committed crimes were evil, while not all those seemingly innocent were of good intentions either. It took decades of training and experience patrolling my district for me to even begin to grasp these concepts, and for the longest time, I felt like I had a fairly decent understanding of things.
Following the liquidation of my world’s defense forces, all it took was barely a year of serving with the Empire to see my moral compass become skewed…
Despite the best efforts of my sister-turned ISB handler, I found myself questioning right from wrong with increasing regularity as my Imperial service drew on. Where she had expected blind loyalty to the regime and its belief system, I would often times question her on orders and the decisions being made, sometimes aggressively. Where the Chylla marshals had taught me subtlety and trust in my instincts, the Empire attempted to condition me to adorn blinders and only see things through their lenses. Even though this went against everything I knew, on occasion I would try it. Most times, I would quickly recognize the evil and protest against it, yet with others I would find the moral ambiguity too difficult to sort through.
For example, during my Imperial tenure, I had come across several former clone troopers that had been captured by the Empire for one reason or another. Most were just trying to make their way in the Galaxy following what many would describe a particularly violent and pointless war (aren’t they all?). Many, though, were genuinely guilty of committing crimes to varying degrees of severity. Whether it was theft of food so that they and their brothers could eat, illegally transiting checkpoints at transport centers to obtain asylum, or outright piracy, the Empire simply did not care. According to Imperial penal code, all of these men were guilty of high treason and beyond deserving of the death penalty. While I could start to sort of justify the punishment for piracy and accusations of a more violent nature, many of the other crimes were barely misdemeanors under the legal system in which I previously enforced.
While I had never personally taken part in executing clones nor any of the other accused we had seized, I was involved in the apprehension of several. Regardless of my level of participation, however, I was growing to feel more and more complicit in the abuse and excessive punishment carried out by the Empire in which I served. Having grown up with the Republic in the years prior to the Trade Federation invasion of Naboo, I knew that governments were capable of far more compassion and understanding than what I was witnessing now, even with the level of corruption that the old regime was known for. For years I even served as an extension of the Republic’s Judicial Forces, both leading up to and following the Clone Wars, and not once had I come across a citizen deserving of execution.
Yes, I did take part in a few military actions, one even involving Separatist battle droids, but those were always against pirates and soldiers, actual combatants. For decades, I patrolled the city where I was stationed, met the community, and made countless arrests and citations. Even the more severe crimes weren’t close to being punishable by death, and more often than not the lesser ones were almost a waste of time just logging them into the system. But I had a job to do as a marshal, just like I did as a corporal in the Empire, and I always carried out my duty to the best of my abilities and for the benefit of those I served. Or, rather, past tense, I did…
After essentially being a middle man between the government, the population of my world, and the more nefarious forces of the Galaxy for decades, I currently found myself being offered the point of view from the latter. From my years of service as a marshal, I learned how to protect and represent the people. From my year as an Imp, I learned how to subjugate them. Now, though, as I stared into the red eyes of a pirate captain, I found myself presented with the opportunity to see things from the perspective of those I used to defend the public against. I could ponder the irony of it all day, yet at the risk of possibly inviting some cosmic force to exacerbate my current situation, I opted to just write up my present circumstances as a small victory.
You see, after becoming disillusioned with the Empire to the point where I risked a desertion charge over simple curiosity, I ended up facing my own execution at the hands of my aforementioned sibling. Right before being asphyxiated and/or immolated, my sister Sella had admitted that she was simply using me as a tool of the ISB, taking advantage of my morality and physical appearance to draw out and entrap clone deserters. Kitting me out in some fancy second-hand clone ARF armor, she sent me out as a false beacon of hope. Too blind by my own sense of duty to see through the deception, it wasn’t until finding myself on the verge of death that I was able to come to terms with the truth. Just in time for some pirates to come and rescue me, under the incorrect assumption that I myself was a discarded clone…
Again, the irony almost need not be mentioned.
Why the blue man standing before me simply did not shoot me where I sat after I revealed my true identity was beyond me. Sure, I had some inside knowledge of the Empire, but not enough to be kept alive over, never mind worth hiring me for. I almost didn’t believe him when he suggested I work for him, if that even was what he was actually implying. His exact words were “It looks to me that you are in need of a new career,” which could just as easily have meant that I was in a kriffed up spot, which, yeah, no shit. That said, I had come across several pirates throughout the years, none of which were as well-equipped or organized as this Captain Tharo appeared to be. Despite looking a little bruised and exhausted from the skirmish we just escaped, all of the biological and mechanical crew appeared as if they were cared for well-enough. The impression I was receiving was that his outfit was more of a nomadic militia rather than a criminal organization.
If I had learned anything, though, it was that looks could be deceiving…