ᴊᴜᴅɢᴇ Cassandra Anderson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wronganswer) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
barrayar2021-01-01 04:59 pm
wronganswer) wrote in barrayar2021-01-01 04:59 pm
Entry tags:
your first sunlight reaching down
It meant almost nothing in Mega-City One at first.
Anderson had long since realized she'd been naïve to think that she knew the limits of her system, that laws would hold, that she was the law. The laws themselves could be unfair, unjust, and even merciless, but they were clear text, words on a screen she could read and reread and wrestle with. There was no wrestling with the Empire. It was a slow, creeping realization like dread running across her nerves, almost like she was in an unceasing dream, where she knew something was after her but couldn't locate what. Just knew, with a certainty, that it would eventually get her.
For months, she just did her job, same as always. Slowly, the Empire seemed to realize that the United Mega-Cities had a small contingent of well-trained Force-using operatives, and the fact that she was a Judge - that she'd bled, killed, violated people for that privilege - began to stop mattering. The Megs tended to stomp out any psychic that didn't join the Hall of Justice with great prejudice, so it wasn't as if they were about to pose a threat to the Empire. Even the whole concept of 'the Force' was alien and strange to Anderson, who tended to think of that as a religious belief, unnecessary cultural layering on top of innate abilities. She'd had to learn the way the Empire saw her and the other Psi-Judges: highly competent militaristic Force-users with a narrow focus on psychic interrogations, who were above all already slavishly devoted to enforcing fascist rule.
Maybe most of the other Psi-Judges didn't know, or care, that their role was changing. There weren't many of them to start with, and she'd never had friends within the ranks. Maybe Anderson was being singled out because of her ability; she'd always rated top of her class on her interrogations, the sole reason they'd kept her around on the force. She didn't know, because she was being singled out, sent out of the Megs more and more often on special assignments to interrogate difficult prisoners. There was an advantage to sending Anderson, after all - unlike what she'd learned were considered 'dark' Force-users like the Inquisitors, she left their minds wholly intact afterward, not a whisper of damage. She was a scalpel where they were sledgehammers. Anderson could interrogate the same person multiple times, indefinitely.
This is how she found herself stalking down the corridor of another Imperial detention center, not even on the same planet as her city, expression tense with forced apathy. Every day, it felt more and more like a trap was closing in on her, like she was suffocating with the inability to do anything, change anything. But what was she going to change? So she just kept following orders, as best she could without losing herself.
Anderson nods at the guards who promptly salute her at the door, says nothing more, and steps inside. She still has her badge, for whatever it's worth; still has her Lawgiver. Sometimes she feels that's about all she has left of the identity she'd clawed toward her whole life.
"CT-7567," she says with a professional briskness as she enters the cell and the door is locked behind her. "I'm here to question you."
Anderson had long since realized she'd been naïve to think that she knew the limits of her system, that laws would hold, that she was the law. The laws themselves could be unfair, unjust, and even merciless, but they were clear text, words on a screen she could read and reread and wrestle with. There was no wrestling with the Empire. It was a slow, creeping realization like dread running across her nerves, almost like she was in an unceasing dream, where she knew something was after her but couldn't locate what. Just knew, with a certainty, that it would eventually get her.
For months, she just did her job, same as always. Slowly, the Empire seemed to realize that the United Mega-Cities had a small contingent of well-trained Force-using operatives, and the fact that she was a Judge - that she'd bled, killed, violated people for that privilege - began to stop mattering. The Megs tended to stomp out any psychic that didn't join the Hall of Justice with great prejudice, so it wasn't as if they were about to pose a threat to the Empire. Even the whole concept of 'the Force' was alien and strange to Anderson, who tended to think of that as a religious belief, unnecessary cultural layering on top of innate abilities. She'd had to learn the way the Empire saw her and the other Psi-Judges: highly competent militaristic Force-users with a narrow focus on psychic interrogations, who were above all already slavishly devoted to enforcing fascist rule.
Maybe most of the other Psi-Judges didn't know, or care, that their role was changing. There weren't many of them to start with, and she'd never had friends within the ranks. Maybe Anderson was being singled out because of her ability; she'd always rated top of her class on her interrogations, the sole reason they'd kept her around on the force. She didn't know, because she was being singled out, sent out of the Megs more and more often on special assignments to interrogate difficult prisoners. There was an advantage to sending Anderson, after all - unlike what she'd learned were considered 'dark' Force-users like the Inquisitors, she left their minds wholly intact afterward, not a whisper of damage. She was a scalpel where they were sledgehammers. Anderson could interrogate the same person multiple times, indefinitely.
This is how she found herself stalking down the corridor of another Imperial detention center, not even on the same planet as her city, expression tense with forced apathy. Every day, it felt more and more like a trap was closing in on her, like she was suffocating with the inability to do anything, change anything. But what was she going to change? So she just kept following orders, as best she could without losing herself.
Anderson nods at the guards who promptly salute her at the door, says nothing more, and steps inside. She still has her badge, for whatever it's worth; still has her Lawgiver. Sometimes she feels that's about all she has left of the identity she'd clawed toward her whole life.
"CT-7567," she says with a professional briskness as she enters the cell and the door is locked behind her. "I'm here to question you."
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Correction: it had been several stupid moves, made in quick succession, with full knowledge he was making stupid moves. Rex was only tangentially involved with the Rebellion, a fledgling thing as it was, Bail and Mothma gathering their political allies while several other movements grew on other planets, angry and intent upon raining merry hell upon their oppressors. But he was willing to do their dirty work and take on the jobs other people would balk at on the condition that, if possible, he would liberate his brothers. Even so, he normally wouldn't have taken on a job this monumentally stupid and then deal with it so recklessly.
But they told him that there was a chance Cody would be here. So he had gone. He would be hard pressed to win even a one-on-one fight with Cody - Rex had always been inferior to Cody in every way, both through Cody's hard work and through design - but backed up by his men? In enemy territory? There wasn't a chance. If their positions were reversed, Cody would have regretfully accepted that Rex was beyond his reach and would put his mind to doing as much good as he humanly could.
Not Rex, though. He'd always been as good at letting go as his General was, and look at where that got him. Here, bruised and bloodied and cuffed in a tiny Imperial cell. If he's lucky and they don't know who he is, they'll declare him defective after some questioning and kill him. If he's not...
Captain Rex wrote half of the Republic's battle strats. It's his brain, his work, his fingerprints over all of them. If they know it's him, they'll declare him worth the resources to rechip and bend to their will. He sits with that thought for far too long before Anderson enters, tugging fruitlessly at his cuffs, mind buzzing as he tries to figure out how he could possibly get out of this and, if not, how he could convince him that he's not worth the trouble of bringing into their own ranks.
And then the Judge enters the room with his number on her tongue, and even that last hope slips away. He makes no effort to hide the derision on his face when he looks at her, the way his brows furrow and his lip curls. It wasn't so long ago that he was on the other side of a table just like this one. He knows that attitude. Cool. Professional. He has to worry about it a hell of a lot more than he'd have to worry about someone who came in here spoiling for a fight.
"I'm sure you are." He looks at her up and down, slowly, as though trying to pick her apart. "All that fancy intel you've got, and they didn't even bother you telling you that I've got a name?"
He's sure that it's all in the file and it's deliberate. Dehumanizing. None of the lads go by their names anymore anyway. But if this is how he's going down, he's going to damn well make sure that he's going down with his name.
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In short, it freaks her out. She had not been looking forward to interrogating a clone, reluctant to wade into that mental nightmare. And then, she had no idea why one would need to be interrogated in the first place, and knew something was going to be up with this case that they weren't telling her. At least that part wasn't new - the Hall of Justice and particularly her own CO loved to withhold intel in order to continually test her loyalties. Anderson was used to running into situations underinformed and expected to overperform. But she wasn't expecting this.
There's a too-long moment of silence as Anderson blinks at him, and her head tilts slightly, a physical tell that her focus zeroes in and narrows with practiced precision.
She can't help it - she straightens completely, eyes widening. "You're different," she says slowly, because she's trying not to say, You have your own thoughts. Tipping her hand in an interrogation sometimes gets her a leg up on intimidation, but mostly it's just a waste, because then they start guarding their thoughts and she ends up forced to use more direct measures. A lot easier if they don't know she's listening.
"We can start there," she agrees a beat later, recovering her professionalism. "I'm Judge Anderson. You don't use your designation?"
Anderson spares a thought to reflect that neither her own organization nor the Empire had ever figured out that her abilities were only half the reason she's such an effective interrogator. The other half is that she has no problem treating the perps like they're human.
no subject
This woman strikes him as neither. She's just a normal natborn, as far as he's concerned, hidden behind the authority and power that come with her position in the Empire. New position, he thinks. She'd never known clones before as men. She's only known them as shambling flesh-droids. It's almost depressing, that generations of people will die thinking that this is what they've always been.
It's a surprise she's even allowing him the luxury of being called by his name.
"No. Not since I was a kid. None of us did until you people got your hands on us," he spits out. "My name is Rex."
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In any case, she's spent enough time in the heads of true scum to not bat an eyelash at the jumbled trauma flashing beneath his surface thoughts. Keeping her mental touch light for now as she gets started, mostly what she notes is that he's frustrated, angry, and wanting to escape. It's completely normal - which is what's weird for a clone. But in the end, that doesn't matter. She's here to do a job, and it's not to hear another horrible story about galactic injustice. She's sure she'll get that out of this anyway.
"Well, Rex," she replies mildly, reorienting herself, "for someone who wants to lecture me, you made a pretty dumb mistake getting caught." Anderson comes further into the room and casually sits in the empty chair left purposefully for her by the guards. She folds her arms, leans back, raises an eyebrow at Rex. Interrogation tactics are totally different for psychics: make a leading statement, see where their minds go.
no subject
He's hoping to put that in her head now. Go with it, he thinks, make sure that if nobody knows what your name was, then they certainly won't know that he's valuable enough to make into one of their pawns. Make them want to execute him, clean and simple. Surely he can handle that. He would prefer an escape, of course, and will do his damnedest to take advantage of any way out that presents itself to him, but he's a pragmatic man. He knows when he's facing the end of the line. An escape is unlikely, and a rescue even moreso; nobody will be looking for him here. There's nobody alive who knows where he is and cares about him enough to take the risk. He knew that coming here.
His eyes flick over to where a trooper is standing watch. He can't tell if there's a clone under that armour. It doesn't matter. He couldn't get through to them anyway. He almost prefers to think that it's a natborn under there; it still feels wrong to see all of his brothers wearing that shoddy excuse for armour that the Empire's assigned, devoid of any character or personality whatsoever.
He looks back at Anderson. "If you're trying to make me believe you're my friend, you could at least cuff my wrists in front of me."
They were, at one point. He'd made them regret it. Then they cuffed his hands behind his back, and he was the one regretting his rashness. He wants his hands cuffed in front of him because he already knows he'll fight like hell, given the opportunity, but also because after hours of this, the muscles in his shoulders and back are starting to loudly complain. He's not as young as he once was.
no subject
He'd rather die than give her what she wants - more accurately, what the Empire wants. Fair enough, she's felt that from perps plenty of many times before. But he also seems to share some of her discomfort over imagining there's a clone standing guard. (There's not, she doesn't let them hang around while she's performing psi exams, or she spends the whole time fighting off a mental sensation of metal scraping against metal, shrill and piercing.) And there's - something behind that feeling, for him... something that feels almost bottomless?
"I'm not your friend, I just don't need to be an asshole to get what I need out of you," she answers, with no intention of making it easier for him to fight. Anderson's fine in hand-to-hand, but she doesn't like her odds against a clone, and she's always carefully measured in how she lets herself be a bleeding heart.
It isn't what she's here for, but she's never been able to stop herself when she really should, so she asks, suddenly serious and intent, "What were you trying to do that's worth dying for?"
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It's something else. And it's off-putting to realize that, but not know where that train of thought is going. He grunts, flexing his sore shoulders, shifting in the uncomfortable, hard, metal chair. While her attention seems somehow fragmented, Rex's is as sharply honed as a pointer, the weight of all of his attention focused on her, grounded in the physical world.
"The same thing that everyone's been brought in here for. To take down the Empire."
It is. He believes that. But it's something other people think is worth dying for. Rex can't truly say that that's why he's here. Perhaps it would make him a better man, to fight for the greater good when he's got nobody in his life to take advantage of that greater good. No, it's merely a stepping block to take him to who he needs to reach. He would die to save a single brother, and it would be worth it. He thinks about poor Appo on the news marching beside Darth Vader and doing unspeakable things that he'd never in his right mind do. He thinks of Wolffe, and the Wolfpack, shooting down a man that Rex knows they had rightly worshipped. He thinks of dozens upon dozens of men he's loved and known to be nothing less than noble and good, quick and clever, playful and so brimming with personality that he can't imagine anyone not being able to tell them apart, wrestling in the barracks, betting over limmie ball in the rec room, the songs they sing as they march off to war, the way that they clumped together after a hard-won fight, just to listen to each other breathe.
He thinks of Cody, who he'd always looked to when he didn't know where to go next, his hand firm on his shoulder and eyes kind, lips curled in an enigmatic smile not unlike his General's. Now that Rex really needs guidance, Cody is nowhere to be found. It's illogical, irrational; if Cody comes to, he'd be filled with as much regret and despair as Rex, even moreso knowing that he quite possibly killed his Jedi. But somehow, it still feels like if Rex could just find him, then everything else would be all right.
He quirks a brow at her. "We're all just political zealots, aren't we?"
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Love, though. And love of family, in particular, is something that always punctures right through her resistance, unprepared.
Letting out a silent, unsteady breath, Anderson straightens up in her chair, arms falling loose, expression tightened to maintain her professionalism. "My job would be a lot easier if that were true," she replies automatically while her thoughts jump ahead of her.
It's not that this is a big dramatic epiphany - she's felt the unjustness of what the Empire and the Hall of Justice have her do plenty of times before. And it's not that this is the last push over an edge she's been teetering on, though she has been teetering.
Cassandra thinks, hollowly, that she really can't do this one more time. There's finally no other option, no other choices or rationalizations left. She can see it now, where her current path is going to lead her, and there's no room in her soul for abetting turning millions of men into automatons. Not after feeling what that does to them. Suddenly, there's not another step she can take down this path. The bad she'll be doing will outweigh the good. She's made that calculation over and over, a habitual self-soothing ritual, and for the first time the calculation has come out the other way. That's all it takes.
"You know," she says, decision made, getting up to her feet, "I'm only on loan to Imperial service, and they keep underutilizing my skills. Being a Judge isn't just a title or a badge, and it's not about getting information out of political enemies. It's about casting judgment." The Empire has never realized that the first rule of being a Judge is trusting no one else's judgment above your own. Or maybe they have, and they've been waiting for her to break. She'll have to do this carefully.
Anderson walks to the stationed guard. "I need the keys for the prisoner, Private," she says with the implacable steadiness of Judges everywhere. Even Anderson hasn't escaped that part of training, where she can call up an attitude of inevitable obedience.
She's still following the script enough that he hands them over readily. She grabs hold of his wrist instead of taking the code key, throwing him face-first to the floor in a controlled arm-bind. She has to be fast, fast enough that he can't set off a signal on his internal comms, so she grabs the short stun-stick off his belt used for incapacitating prisoners and jams the end between armor panels, setting it off at maximum. The guard seizes violently against her hold and then is out cold on the durasteel floor. Good thing she'd spent all that time studying weak points in stormtrooper armor.
Anderson settles back on her heels with a relieved breath. Then she reaches for the discarded code key.
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He may pride himself on the breadth of his knowledge, but what that knowledge covers is strictly limited. He has an exhaustive knowledge on the planets he'd been dispatched to, on warfare and strategy, on what it takes to run an army. The roles and cultures of planets that he'd never had any reason to be deployed to are lost to him as are, quite frankly, many of the planets that he had been deployed to. He eyes her suspiciously, vaguely aware that she's come to a decision, but he doesn't know what that decision could possibly be.
Nor that the Imperials employed anyone who could have anything but total loyalty to them. He tenses up, planting his feet squarely on the ground, ready to spring up, for what little good that may do. And spring up he does once she suddenly knocks out the guard, knees bent and eyes wide with bewilderment. He hadn't said anything to even remotely convince her of his plight, so what...
"What are you doing?" His eyes dart from the Judge, to the guard, and back to the Judge. "What's going on?"
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Anderson can feel her hands starting to tremble a little. She's been barely treading water for years, and now the press of panic is like an aquatic predator lingering beneath her, waiting for her to give up. Now is not the time, she thinks grimly, and like a thousand times before, she calls on her training to dismiss her feelings, stay focused. Not that this helps her figure out how to explain what's going on to Rex. Maybe the easy parts are the factual pieces about her abilities, because Anderson doesn't even know how to explain to herself the decision she's made.
She climbs to her feat, holding the codestick. Bluntly, "I'm psychic. You'd probably call me a Force user. I can feel--" Anderson cuts herself off, face twisting into a grimace. "I haven't been able to figure out what's going on with the troopers, but I just saw it, because you were thinking about it. And I can't just-- deliver you to someone who might do that to you."
Anderson knows what it feels like to face a perp that the law tells her deserves death, and disagree with it. She'll never forget that it was that moment that made Dredd feel she was ready.
"So we're getting out of here," she finishes, and steps to the side to swipe the codestick and key his cuffs open.
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Well. He's self-sabotaging by nature these days, but he's not self-sabotaging enough to try to dissuade his saviour from helping him. He can hardly believe his luck. Of all people to question him, he got someone attuned to the Force, and more than that, someone willing to see the troopers as people, even in their current condition. She could have done the merciful thing and executed him before handing him over to those monsters to be chipped, and he would thank her for it. Freedom isn't something he'd anticipated her simply giving to him.
He closes his mouth, swallowing past a lump in his throat, moved despite himself. He also clamps down his Force shields, because while it may have helped him in this case, he doesn't feel the urge to advertise what he's feeling or thinking. "Thank you," he croaks, rubbing at his wrists. He's not sure if anything he could say could express the enormity of this, so he doesn't.
"I have a ship, not far from here. You'll want to leave this planet as quickly as you can." He looks around them. He knows some of the layout from being dragged here, but he'd spent half of it addled. "What's the plan?"
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She's not doing this for thanks, but she can't say she doesn't appreciate it, and it takes some of the sting out of the sense of his mind going muffled with the abruptness of a door closing. Anderson visibly startles for a moment before she recovers, proving it had an effect. She's surprised he has that skill; it gives her an uncomfortable reminder of her COs cross-examining her, scary bitches that they are, but Anderson's not going to protest a temporary ally maintaining their privacy. It doesn’t feel disturbing to her senses the way the mind control does.
"Think you can handle pretending to be this guy?" She returns to the unconscious form on the floor and starts prying his helmet off. "I can walk us right out of here."
The uncertainty's bled off now. All that's left is a vicious sense of satisfaction that she's through being used. Good thing there's no one for her to leave behind, and nothing of value. Judges have nothing to lose by design, and she's using it to her advantage here.
"I'll check whether your ship is compromised on the way out."
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"It's a 290-X light freighter. Landed here underneath priority protocol three-three-seven-five. Better to check, but considering everything was going to plan until you had a change of heart, I doubt they've caught on."
That's the kicker, isn't it? Not only did the Judge abandon ship, but she did so as one of the few real capable Imps he's met. Oh, they're good enough to catch him, but that doesn't speak that highly of them, not at the end of the day. All that power, and they used it to nullify their best soldiers, their finest negotiators, their most skilled strategists. He has to admit he's impressed by his new companion, despite the circumstances. She moves quick. He's going to have to keep up. The armour seals with a small hiss and he taps at the visor, fixing the HUD for best visibility.
"Lead the way, Judge Anderson."
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She does spare a thought to be appreciative that he's ready to move as fast as she is. It wouldn't change her determination to get them out of here, but it makes it a lot easier, and she knows all too well what this situation is like with an untrained citizen in tow instead. Her mind's already jumping ahead to the necessary cold calculations for what's coming next.
"One second." Down on one knee, she finishes applying the cuffs to the unconscious guard, and she briefly touches the crown of his head, eyes closing for a long second before she retracts her hand and straightens. "We have a couple hours before he wakes up."
Anderson doesn't need to be a psychic to sense his readiness, so she doesn't ask, but she does give a terse nod and reflexively checks her weapons before she goes out the door. In some ways, it feels like her whole life has prepared her for this moment: pretending to be a better Judge than she is doesn't feel any different than pretending she isn't about to walk out the door with a high-value prisoner. She's kept herself boxed in, squashed as much of herself as she could take in order to fit into the mold she'd needed to.
And she'd signed up to do that to be a Judge, to help citizens, to make a difference, but no one had ever asked her if she agreed to do that for the Empire. This is the best resignation notice she could think of, she reflects grimly.
So there's no shakiness to her as she assures the second guard outside the door that the prisoner should be left alone in her absence; or as she uses her comm to confirm they haven't found the prisoner's vehicle; or as she walks, calm and straight-backed, out the very door she'd come in. There's no shakiness until they're safely on Rex's ship and the hatch is closed behind them, and yes, it makes sense that he'd include her in the flight off the planet as payment for her help, but where is she going to go after this?
Her mouth needs to open and request a destination, but all she can do is close her eyes and try to steady her breathing as she feels all those minds slip away into the distance and then nothingness behind her as they jump to hyperspace.
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He turns to Anderson as he begins to unlatch the plates on his forearms and his greaves, which have begun to pinch something fierce. "We have plenty of fuel, rations, and oxygen to sustain us until we figure out where we're going next. There's a spare bunk too."
Then, looking at her, he realizes that her panic is deeper set than simply a question of where to go next, and what she's going to do. That's likely present, and for good reason, but that's not the whole of it. She'd just left her whole life behind. Rex can't profess to know what the life of a Judge is like. For all he knows, she had left behind some of her closest friends, maybe even family that had been well and truly indoctrinated into Imperial ranks. He hesitates before sliding his chair across from hers. He doesn't know how to deal with people anymore. He knows he doesn't. It had been bad enough figuring out how to go from being surrounded by people at all times, no privacy to be had even when it's all he'd ever wanted, to complete isolation and being driven to distrust anyone in his general vicinity.
It's been a long time since he's been around someone he can trust. At least for now. And he's not inclined to leave her to her visible torment. Not visible to most, certainly; most would break down into hysterical sobbing by now. But she's a professional, like him.
Which means that if she's going to do it, she'll do it later, in the privacy of her own bunk.
"...are you all right?"
It's a stupid question. But it is an opener to a larger conversation, and it's all that he's got.
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She's never liked space, always been a planetbound sort of woman, and having the only company near her muffled and indistinct to her senses makes her feel alone in a way she rarely is. Anderson can turn off her senses when she wants, so it's not disorienting, exactly, but it underscores how much she's just walked away from in a way she can't evade. Mega-City One is like having a crowd press up against her at all times, and solitude in space is... echoing and empty.
Someone being a good person doesn't mean they'll like her, or be kind to her, and Anderson almost doesn't remember what to do with this human sort of concern. "No," she finally answers, simple and composed. "But that's not your fault."
She peels off a glove and rubs at her face, unable to just fall apart, though her speech loses the precise formality of her working voice as she relinquishes that much of her posture. "The only time I've left my planet is to run errands for the Imps. Any suggestions on where to drop me off? I can't go back to the Meg; being a Judge isn't something you can just turn in your badge on."
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Then again, he knows that most people spend their whole lives on a single planet. It's just something he's never been able to wrap his head around. It would be nice, he thinks, if he was living this way because he was pursuing his noble cause and had a place he could go back to anytime he liked, a place free from Imperials, where one could live a humble and fulfilling life. He could drop Anderson off there and allow her to pursue her own fortune as she wished, as all sentients deserve.
That's not the case.
"My ego isn't so great that I think you left for my sake alone," he says slowly. "This must have been a long time coming. But you saved me regardless. I'm not about to abandon you somewhere that might be safe without any resources to your name."
His ego also isn't so great that he thinks Anderson would want to remain with him for the forseeable future. He knows that he doesn't paint a flattering picture of what's left of the Republic. He doesn't have enough possessions for the ship to be considered messy, but what he has has fallen into disarray, and he's keenly aware of the fact that nothing here is as orderly as he'd like for it to be. Maybe it's just that he's accustomed to such a regimented existence that even this disorganization is shameful, but it doesn't paint a picture of a man who has his life together. Nor does, admittedly, being caught.
"We'll have to discuss the possibilities. Do some research. But you can stay here for as long as you need to. You don't have to make that decision so soon after you just left everything behind. At least sleep on it."
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Even so, she swallows before replying. "Thanks," she says roughly, still enough of a slum brat to not say a single word about the relative state of things in the ship. Having less means sharing it means more. For a moment she wants to say, I've been a Judge since I was nine years old, or hilarious irony that I walked out still in my badge and armor and have no other clothes, but the words won't out.
Finally she laughs slightly, instead, more an expelling of pressure than real humor. It's not in her nature to spill her messy emotional guts all over at the first prompting, and she's made a career out of living under duress.
Anderson shakes her head. "You don't need to repay me. But I appreciate it. So - what'd you do that warrants having me assigned to you? They don't sic me on the nobodies." She raises an eyebrow at him, genuinely curious; the instinct to investigate bubbles up while the rest of her is floundering.
"We didn't finish our interrogation."
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He busies himself with unlatching the top half of his armour, grabbing a clean (well, mostly clean) shirt and sliding it on over his head. He supposes he has nothing to hide from her at this point, and she deserves to know just who she's stuck in here with. It will influence her decision. In fact, it should.
"Before the rise of the Empire, I was known as Captain Rex of the five-oh-first. We had some notoriety in the galaxy, or so I was told. You might recognize the name even more these days."
Darth Vader's army. His right-hand men, there to commit whatever atrocities they needed to by his name. Others believe them even more soulless than they had already been considered, willing to slaughter even women and children in their wake. Some even question if they're sophisticated droids. Rex knows better.
"When the Republic fell, Order 66 was declared. Chips in the clones' brains were activated, ensuring blind loyalty." He taps at a scar on his temple, healed to a fine white line. "My Jedi figured out what was happening. Cut mine out on the battlefield. I thought we were both presumed dead, but if not, we're considered traitors at best, and in possession of too many of their secrets at worst. If I had to guess, they wanted you to figure out how much I knew and how much I've been passing onto other rebels -- or to get you to use me to find my Jedi."
He considers that idea, the fact that through his own negligence and weakness, they could have found Ahsoka. He doesn't think it would have come to that; for all of Anderson's apparent skill, it wouldn't have taken him long to catch onto what she was doing, and if he resisted Ventress, he thinks he could resist them as well. It's still a deeply horrifying thought. His own death, he could handle. Ahsoka's is unthinkable.
Frankly, he says, "I'm glad you didn't."
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She listens instead, which is always her preferred activity, and here in a safe place away from the role she has to play, lets her reactions play out openly. Anderson had thought it had to be something major, yet it's somehow still surprising to hear that he's tied up in the 501st, and Jedi. Topics she'd always tried to stay far away from. She'd planned to ask later exactly what was happening to the other clones, but he's preempted her question.
"That's how you learned your mental shielding?" she asks reflexively, because that was also on her list.
She doesn't wait before she goes on, the question mostly rhetorical, and her voice slows, quiets. Anderson isn't ashamed of either her own feelings or anyone else's, but she carries an innate respect and a carefulness for them that means she measures her words. "It's not just blind loyalty. What's been done to them is the most horrifying thing I've ever felt in someone's mind. When there wasn't anything I could do about it, I told myself I could do more good in the position I was in, but when I felt how much you love them--"
She meets his eyes steadily. "There was something I could do, so I did it. I don't care about galactic politics."
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He's glad he still has his up now, so that Anderson can't feel what he feels when she speaks. It is a simple compassion she speaks of, but a rare one, even before the Republic fell. He's able to largely conceal how it touches him, expressed only in the clenching of his jaw, the way that his finger taps idly at his knee, the way that his eyes flick down as he restrains the emotions welling up in his chest. He's too damn emotional these days. He spent his entire life muddying how he really feels, and these days, even this simple admission feels like it would be enough to drive him to tears if not for his self-control. To have someone else feel and value that love, to understand the atrocities done to them -- most who are even aware of the chips are too busy with their own tragedies to muster that sort of thought.
He forces his gaze back to meet hers, unflinching as it is. "I've never known another to do what you did. Not for those reasons." He doesn't think she can understand what that means, not without understanding their lives. He chooses not to elaborate.
"How did you come to the position you're in? I don't know anything about Judges, or about your planet. But they seemed to have trusted you."
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But she's still good at reading people in general, can see something of the effect. She really wasn't looking for accolades, but the truth is, she's spent her whole life sacrificing for others with very little recognition, and she's transparently flustered to have it addressed so directly, needlessly tucking some hair behind an ear. It's such an innocuous question about her background, who she is, but there's something in her that's been waiting years to speak, the words spilling out in an unchecked stream.
"We predate the Empire. I'm from a metropolis the size of most planets' continents called Mega-City One. Judges are taken in as kids, usually orphans, and we spend our entire lives learning to become the law in the city."
Anderson stands as she talks and starts taking her gear off, both physically uncomfortable and feeling like she needs a physical manifestation of her departure. "We're literally judges, not just law enforcement. I sentence perpetrators as I see them. There's so much violent crime in the Megs, we barely touch it; Judges only take on the worst cases. We live communally, we don't have families--"
She's pulling out an almost absurd array of high-tech weaponry that she's depositing on a nearby console. Extra ammo, grenades, smoke bombs, a short vibroblade...
"--We have nothing to lose, and we have absolute authority. For most people, we're boogeymen, but we're also the only protection they have." Anderson pauses, glancing over at him again. In a tighter voice, "When the Empire came in, probably most Judges didn't even notice. There's not a lot of psychics, and we're the only ones they were interested in using. But I noticed. Because before, I had complete discretion over how I use my abilities, and what the sentences were."
She sets down her Lawgiver, a comically large and weighty handgun, with a final thunk on top of the rest, and then she detaches her badge and adds it to the pile with a muted intensity of emotion she can't begin to pick apart.
"I didn't sign up to play the Emperor's puppet," she finishes with palpable disgust. Without pride, fingers curled and knuckles clenched: "I'm the most powerful psychic they've ever seen on the force. I knew there was going to be a day when I couldn't let them use me anymore. That day just happened to be today.
"Lucky you."
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The rest will take time to digest. Rex knows that as she speaks, he's conjuring up an image in his head that can't possibly be accurate. The life she's speaking of is different from anything else he'd ever heard of, somehow even more remote and lonely than the life of a Jedi, even if the basics of it don't sound dissimilar.
"Lucky me," he echoes, watching her kit pile up on the table. It's a good collection. He's terribly jealous. His eyes flick back to her. "You don't have families, but you live with other Judges."
That must make them family, of a sort. Rex can't imagine it any other way.
"Did any of them feel the way you do?"
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Anderson unzips and shrugs off her upper armor, leaving her in a black tank top and practical black sports bra, as she answers. "Who knows?" she asks, almost flippant. "I don't mind-read other Judges unless I have reason to think they're corrupt, and no one likes mutants. I creep them out."
She doesn't exactly like most other Judges either, so there isn't a trace of regret or self-pity in that comment.
Finally she sits back down again with a sigh, having shed all of the traces of the Hall of Justice, looking very much like an edgy spacer. "What I'm saying is I didn't leave anything behind. Or anyone. I don't regret leaving, but I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how to be anything else."
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Perhaps it was easier for Anderson, but it seems a desperately lonely way to live. He gets up to shed the last of the stolen armour, unlatching a storage container above his head to take out an extra set of clothing, plain and dark and worn, and slips it on. They look better to sleep in than to fight in. He then piles the stolen armour neatly, one on top of the other, with quick, practiced movements. It'll come in handy for undercover work at some point.
"I know a thing or two about that," he admits. "I don't know anything other than soldiering. But I wasn't about to soldier for that."
He looks her over. She's smaller than him, naturally, but she's got a decent physique. It's good to note that she's more than just a walking armoury. Less likely to get the both of them killed.
"Even with the galaxy the way it is, you've got options. There are plenty of towns for you to lay low in. Figure out a new line of work. You may be able to get an apprenticeship underneath some sort of tradesperson, or go into farming. No matter who's in charge, there's always a need for that."
Rex had considered it and had dismissed the idea just as quickly. But he needs to at least offer it as an idea.
"Me, I pick up mercenary work and odd jobs at the ports here and there. Enough to keep fuel in the tank and food in the larders." He eyes Anderson curiously. "Do you know what you'd want to do?"
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Automatically, she wants to treat this more like a case, a long-term one she's still assigned to. What she's going to do with herself is impossible to know, but what she wants to do?
"What I want is to abduct one of your brothers and see if I can turn the chip off," she answers, forthright and without hesitation, meeting his gaze evenly. Her chin propped on her hand, elbow on the copilot's armrest, Anderson looks speculative, like she's really considering it. "I don't know if it's possible, and I haven't been through advanced psi training yet, so it might be a waste of time."
But she's often able to do things that don't seem quite possible - the strongest psychic they've ever seen wasn't an idle title - and it's been an itch since the first time she encountered one of them. There's an injustice right in front of her, something she would easily classify as a crime five different ways back in Mega-City One, and without her badge she's free to act solely on her own conscience and acceptable risk levels. There's a freedom to her new status she's never experienced before; Anderson is just starting to feel out her lack of limits, and the instinct to stretch into it is strong.
"It's definitely not going to pay the bills," she thinks to add, wry. Moral crusades are well and good, but her first nine years of abject poverty linger like a spill of ink in water. She never wants to go back to that.
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He and Anderson wouldn't be able to save enough for that to even be an issue but it is how natborns viewed them by and large. They don't have much in the way of a life to save these days. Anderson's efforts, some may argue, would be better spent on the people who are still young and under the thumb of the Empire, their whole lives ahead of them.
"That was my plan. Without the Force - psi - stuff. Grab a brother, get him to a medical droid, get the chip burned out of there for good. It would be much lower risk not to have to find a trustworthy source. I've found one or two, but the galaxy is a vast place."
And his brothers are violent. The trip to a med droid would be very, very long with trained men on his ship who would like nothing better than to kill him -- and to kill Anderson as well, now that she's an enemy of the Empire. He looks Anderson over, trying to imagine what it is to be her, to feel what others are feeling, to be able to make the decision to up and leave everything she'd ever known and her next course of action, all in the same day.
"I'd be grateful for the help," he admits. "Why do you want to do this?"
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"I grew up in a slum on the edge of the Cursed Earth," she admits. "The irradiated wasteland that covers most of our continent. And I'm a mutant -- a Force user, whatever. I saw how bad things get for the people that the system wants to pretend don't exist. It's the reason I became a Judge. I can't change the system itself, I can't fix the galaxy, but I can make a difference for the people in front of me who thought there was no one out there who cared."
She finally turns back to meet his eyes again. More briskly, she says, "No one's going to if we don't, right? It's been killing me to not do anything since the first time I felt it. It's like hearing someone screaming for help and walking by." She's learned how to do that in order to keep her head down and away from scrutiny, but it's still the hardest thing she ever has to do as part of her job.
Anderson shakes her head. "I can't run off and be a farmer, knowing I didn't even try."
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It isn't that the admission means nothing -- just that Rex doesn't have the context to sort out where to put this large, confounding, Anderson-sized piece of the puzzle in with everything else he's learned about her thus far. Regardless, he can understand the sentiment. It's just one he's used to hearing be said out loud, but mean less than nothing. Everyone wants to say they look out for the little guy. Putting it into practice seems like a much more difficult task.
The corner of Rex's lip tugs upward. "I tried the farming life for a couple of weeks. Didn't like it much." It's as good a rationale as he could possibly ask for. And, frankly, he doesn't feel like dissuading Anderson. Even if she changes her mind at some point, he could do with the help -- and, though he's loath to admit it, he could do with some company that isn't a tinny voice burbling out of a vocoder. The droid is all well and good, but he was born and raised surrounded by people. At a certain point, you start to miss organic company.
"It's good to have you aboard, Anderson. But like you said -- doing good doesn't pay the bills. I hope you're ready to take on some other jobs to keep us going until we can get to one of the vode."
He fishes in one of the compartments, takes out a ration bar, and tosses it Anderson's way. He's got some real food too (for a given value of real), but that'll take some rustling together, and it's been a long day for them both.
"Come on. I'll show you around the ship. If you want a change of clothes to sleep in, you can use mine. They'll be too big, but at least they're clean."
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Practical considerations are a welcome relief, and she echoes back a wry smile at Rex's admission that farming didn't suit him. She doesn't think it'd suit her, either. Anderson can barely conceptualize plants outside of desert scrub as a general rule, or as a frivolous pursuit for the extremely rich.
She grabs the ration bar out of the air and gets back to her feet at the invitation, the tiredness hitting her all at once, the pressure gone out of her system. "I'm not about to complain." Either about the ration bar, or the too-big clothes, or anything else; maybe at some point she'll get comfortable enough to tease, but not yet. She wants to say something about how she hadn't at all expected this level of welcome, but it's hard for her to even think how to say it without embarrassing them both.
Sticking to the practical instead, she spares a few thoughts as she follows Rex for what she actually would be good at.
"There must be bounties on some real scum. As long as you're willing to trust my judgment on who I kill and who I let go, that's what I'd be best at."
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"Not that I haven't taken bounty jobs, but it'll get a lot easier when I have someone else around to help judge the situation. Last thing I want is to kill an innocent just because some sleemo wants him dead." As he slides open the door leading to the rest of the ship, a little astromech zips out, shrieking indignantly.
"Settle down, Rhoda!" He says sternly, tapping the side of her body with his foot. She shrieks even louder, buzzing at Anderson, an arm slowly coming out of one of her slots, as though to taze her. "She's an ally. Stop that. You really think that you could fight her off if I couldn't?"
She makes a sound that seems to suggest yes, she rather thinks so but retracts her arm anyway. A little embarrassed, he clears his throat and turns to Anderson. "This is, uh, R0-D4. Don't mind her. She'll warm up to you. Eventually."
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She thinks better of him for wanting to negotiate their moral lines ahead of time, and feels a belated, fierce satisfaction in her decision to save him. Anderson is almost never wrong about someone, but she rarely gets to stick around and see how much she was right.
Right after accepting the sleep shirt, she jerks back in alarm at the shrieking astromech. Of course, she can't feel inorganic minds, so droids can really take her off-guard. Anderson lets out a long breath as she waits for her heartbeat to slow down again.
"Right," she says suspiciously, eyeing the astromech with palpable wariness. "If you say so. Look, I went through a lot to get here -- I'm not going to throw it away now," she adds, in case R0-D4 needs to hear it from her directly. Who knows how droids work? To Anderson, they're an irritating mystery.
To Rex again, she says, "Let's get some rest and talk business tomorrow. I think we both know money's not going to be our only motive."