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That was it. Rex was officially sick of this fucking planet.
The thick purple mist that was everywhere, only lit up by threatening red and blue neons. The carnivorous plants, the thick earth, the nasty inhabitants. He was done, he was over it. Take him far away from Umbara on the next mission please - a star system is too close.
They’d left Krell’s body exactly where he had fallen, in the detention cells. No one wanted to move him, and no one liked the demagolka enough to care about it.
Kenobi could deal with it. Rex was busy comforting his fucking men.
They’d set out a vigil, for all the men they'd lost. There was one on the ship as well, and on Coruscant - every clone battalion had an ongoing vigil for all the men they’d lost over the course of the whole war, and the 501st was no different, especially since they were one of the battalions with the highest casualty rates. But the men had made a specific vigil for Umbara. After all, it was only fair that they carve out some piece of this planet as it carves out so much of them.
One whole wall of the structure they’d taken over (Rex is pretty sure it’s the wall where Fives and Jesse were almost court-martialed and executed, and he had no idea who was behind that idea), names littered the wall from top to bottom, painstakingly carved into the tough material. It was always difficult, seeing a physical manifestation of the losses from a campaign.
There was a memorial to Hardcase, front and centre. A helmet, either his or one painted for him, his name, one of his beloved rotary cannons, small little bits to honour their fallen comrade, who’d saved them all. Lit up from below with a blue light. Rex stood staring for a little while at the dark, empty visor, hearing echoes of laughter in his ears. If he’d made different decisions, if he’d pulled his head out of his shebs earlier, would he still be staring at this memorial?
Rex tries to mourn his brothers without questioning his role as their Commander, the auctioneer of their deaths. It doesn’t always work.
He continued on his path, laying his hand on the occasional brother’s head, or shoulder, from where they are dotted around. Some are doing work, some are kneeling at various memorials, some are looking blankly at their blasters. Rex made a mental note to have Kix, or the other medics, or even their officers, check on those men.
After all, there was only one way out of this war anymore.
He almost tripped over Tup, sitting in the shadows of the building, looking up into the sky, and winced to himself. He knew other brothers, Kix in particular, were worried about him. The campaign had been hell on all of them, but to be the youngest in the whole battalion, a shiny who’d barely gotten his paint, and deal with it all was a lot. And, well, as far as any of them knew, Tup and Dogma had been close. Really close. Inseparable, even. Not quite Fives and Echo close, but there was a certain amount of bonding that happened as shinies.
“How are you doing, kid?”
Tup startled, clearly having been lost in his own thoughts. The fact that he didn’t immediately jump to a salute told Rex what this campaign had been like.
“I’m fine, captain, sir.”
“No, you’re not.” Rex gently laid a hand on Tup’s hair. “No one is alright after that.”
“I guess- I’m not really sure what to do.” The vod confessed gingerly, playing with his fingers and looking down. “I know he did- awful things, to everyone else. I mean, he almost got Fives and Jesse killed! But-”
“But you miss him.” Rex stared up into the sky, and Tup followed his eye line. He almost could imagine still being able to see the vapour trails left by the ship that taken Dogma away.
“It was Krell who was to blame.” Tup had a set to his jaw.
“He did what was right in the end.”
“Will they decommission him?”
“I don’t know.”
He didn’t tell Tup that he’d already drafted up a desperate comm message to Fox asking him to transfer Dogma into the Guard, just in case Kenobi couldn’t do anything to avoid the trooper’s fate. Not that the Jedi for all intents and purposes knew about decommissioning. But even if he was sent to a prison…
Even throughout this whole campaign, there was something about the softness of Dogma’s jaw, the remains of gangliness in the limbs, the hollows of his cheeks, that held Rex back for being too aggressive with the kid. It was the same echoes of youth that he could see in Tup; most vod wouldn’t look at Dogma the same way, but Rex could see past the vicious posturing and desperate clinging to rules and regulations to the scared kid beneath. He’d been the same, once, before Cody, his batch, and Alpha-17 had taken him under their wings.
He would not have Dogma treated the same as Slick.
“Get some sleep, Tup.” He said instead. “Find Jesse, or Kix, or Fives. They could probably do with a nap as well. We’ll be getting off-planet soon enough.”
“Yes, sir.” The kid scrambled up and wandered out of sight. Rex took a breath, mourning those who had died too young, and those who had lived, and then continued on his path.
He knew Kix would be furious with him for doing this. Jesse, too, most likely. But he had to, otherwise it would itch beneath his skin for the rest of his life. This campaign would weigh on his shoulders for a long, long time. And at the end of the day, he was still their commanding officer. This was something he had to do alone.
He popped his helmet off and placed it on the ground, by his feet, before staring into the Umbaran landscape. The fields where his brothers’ bodies lay, slowly rotting and sinking into the earth, if they hadn’t already been eaten by the plants. Rex couldn’t see the remnants of plastoid, of chipped blue paint, but he knew they were there. They’d lost more men here than they had on any other campaign in the whole war, because Rex hadn’t been brave enough to stick to his guns in the face of reckless and endangering leadership.
He’d looked at the casualty lists for Krell’s former battalion. The Umbaran campaign statistics weren’t even out of place.
Of course, they’d never been forced to fire on their own brothers.
Rex hadn’t even seen Boil yet. He didn’t know whether anyone had been in close enough comms range to be able to break the news. Waxer had been one of the longest serving troopers in the 212th. And Rex had to live with the fact that he’d been the one to give the order to fire on them.
“Rex?”
He spun around. “Cody?” His older brother had already taken off the helmet, letting it drop to the ground next to Rex’s own with a clack. “When did you get here?”
“212th arrived at the base a few minutes ago.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. You weren’t at the base, I was worried.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure you are, vod’ika. That’s why you’re crying.” Rex lifted his fingers to his cheek, wiping away the moisture that was sitting there, cold.
“Oh.”
Cody let out a rumbling, soothing hum and hooked a hand around Rex’s neck and folded him into the warmth between his shoulder and his head. Rex’s arms wrapped around his waist, squeezing tightly, and he found himself swallowing down sobs. He was still the 501st’s commanding officer, but Cody would always be his big brother, first and foremost.
Cody’s voice was just a deep mutter, next to his ear.
“This is not your fault, Rex’ika. You did so well.”
They folded down together onto the earth, Rex held tightly in Cody’s embrace, and let themselves fall apart for a moment, in front of nobody’s eyes but the dead.