Chapter Text
Dave steeled himself.
This was the thing about war: no side was clean from the blood on their hands. Even good causes did dirty things, things that kept Dave awake at night, things that he would never tell his Ma about. Not that he could if he wanted to; it was all top secret, and transmissions too easily intercepted between planets.
This had to be done. It didn’t mean he liked it, but it had to be done.
He keyed in the passcode, and entered the room.
It was white. The walls, the floors, even the nailed down table in the centre. As it was, the stormtrooper almost blended in, except for the sharp black lines at the bend of his joints, over the eyes, blank and expressionless. The only sign of life was the way the face twitched towards the opening of the doorway.
Dave sat opposite, keeping his shoulders relaxed, posture confident but not aggressive. It was a hard line to play. “Hi,” he said evenly. “I’m Commander Katz. Can you tell me your name?”
The ‘trooper didn’t respond except for the slightest tilt of his head. Dave couldn’t read it.
“Going for the silent approach, huh? Don’t worry, we can wait,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “And if not, we always have other ways to convince you to talk.”
He thought he saw a slight twitch at that, the ‘troopers shoulders coming up an inch. It was hard to tell, with the armour obscuring them. Dave had always been good at reading people - one of the reasons he was chosen for this job - but he wasn’t familiar enough with stormtroopers to know what those subtle reactions meant.
“This is really going to go much smoother if we can have a nice chat,” said Dave, trying to keep any desperation from bleeding into his voice. He couldn’t show weakness, not if he wanted to control the situation. “In fact, mind taking your helmet off? Talking face to face?”
A pause. “I- my hands are…”
Oh. Of course. “I can remove it for you,” Dave offered quickly.
The stormtroopers hands flexed where they were locked together against the surface of the table - a necessary precaution. “Okay,” he said finally. His voice was flat and robotic through the mask.
Dave stood, movements slow and obvious, rounding the table before he touched the edges of the helmet, letting his fingers hinge under the edges. The stormtrooper held perfectly still. Careful to be gentle, not wishing to harm the ‘trooper any more than necessary, Dave eased the stormtrooper helmet off.
The man underneath blinked up at him.
Retreating back to his side of the table, Dave struggled not to show how shaken he felt by it. Of course, intellectually Dave had been aware that stormtroopers were real people underneath the plastic shell, but it had been hard to believe, watching them move in rigid formation and kill without hesitation.
Except for this one.
The memory of earlier that day flashed behind Dave’s eyelids.
Hot, swampy air. The sun glaring off of the stark white armor. Running, ducking, running again. They had been waiting for them, ready to ambush the moment they set down on the planet. The whole thing was probably a set up; the General herself had said that they couldn’t trust that these potential allies were genuine.
Jungle whipping past as he raced back to his ship.
A short shout from behind. His copilot, or a stormtrooper? He couldn’t stop to check, not with the sound of blasters still loud in his ears.
He ran. He ran. He ran.
A body collided with his.
He shook the memory off, instead focusing on the present, and the man sat in front of him. His face was pale and slender, eyes wide and green and scared. Scared. Dave glanced away, unable to stop the sick sense of guilt pooling in his gut.
“So,” said Dave, folding his arms. “Your name?”
The man opposite licked his lips, eyes cutting between his hands and Dave’s face. The expression wasn’t quite shy, but it was something like it. Eventually, just as he was beginning to think that the ‘trooper wouldn’t crack, he said, “Designation KL-0040… sir.”
Wrongfooted, Dave said, “You don’t have to call me sir.”
“Yes, s- uh.” The man blinked at him, mouth framing words that he didn’t voice.
“Okay, so,” he said, swallowing a laugh, “Sorry, let’s go back a second. What did you say your name is?”
“KL-0040,” repeated the man.
Dave shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t- Is that your rank? Serial number?”
“It’s...” The stormtrooper peaked up from under his lashes, brows drawn together in uncertainty. “Me. I’m KL-0040.”
Realisation hit like a punch to his gut, leaving Dave reeling, lips parted as he sucked in a shocked breath. Words tumbled out before he could stop them. “That’s your name? They gave you a number?”
“Yes?” the man - KL-0040 - said quizzically.
“But- what about before?”
“Before what?”
Dave leaned in, and said, “Before you joined the First Order.”
The stormtrooper was peering openly at Dave by now, eyes wide and guileless. “I was always with the First Order. There was no before.”
“Wha- but, but, you can’t have always been a stormtrooper?”
“No, of course not,” he replied, and Dave had a split second to breathe before he clarified, “They class you as a cadet up until age 12.”
Dave pulled back, taking a ragged breath. “But- where did you come from?”
The ‘trooper tilted his head, and said with open curiosity, “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” Dave blurted. “You’re a person!”
The man gave him a strange look - almost pitying - before saying, “I’m not a person. I’m a stormtrooper.”
Dave felt ill. The way he said it - with absolute certainty - left a bitter taste at the back of his throat. Most of all, he felt sick because he had believed it, too. Up until the moment that he had seen this man, looked him in the eye, he hadn’t really thought of them as people. At best, soldiers, but at worst, they were a scourge to be wiped out.
He stood, knees feeling unsubstantial. “I- Do you need anything? Water? Food?”
The man’s face dropped at that, before he averted his gaze back to his gloved hands. Dave wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he wasn’t willing to stick around and ease an answer out, not when his stomach was threatening mutiny, bile rising in his throat. “Okay,” he croaked, before spilling out of the room.
Outside of the interrogation room, Leia was waiting for him.
“General,” Dave said automatically.
Leia nodded at him, eyes steady on his pale face. She, as always, seemed to know what he was thinking, although whether that was due to the force, or just her, was up for debate.
“Did you know?” he said.
“Come with me,” she said, before striding away, leading him down familiar winding corridors and out to headquarters, and then through to her private office. “Sit,” she said.
Dave collapsed down, legs folding underneath him. The space was familiar; he had been with the resistance for a long time, and Leia had been close friends with his aunt, when she had still been alive. Leia had made a habit of inviting him in for Caf, when she had the time.
“Did you know?” he said, voice hollow edged.
“About what?”
He looked at her, then, and saw the sad pinch of her mouth. “You knew.”
She sighed heavily. “I suspected, yes,” she said, weary. “There were reports. Children going missing. Whole villages of them, sometimes. It was all hushed up, of course, nothing was made public.”
Dave ducked his head, her words feeling like a physical blow. He had trusted her implicitly. They all had. “Why did you let me talk to him? If it was a secret?”
Leia looked away, then. “If you had already known what they were doing to them… would he be able to trust you?”
“Oh,” he said. Sometimes, he forgot that this was war. That Leia was The General, and that she made hard decisions, maybe even wrong decisions, to get the outcome she wanted. It was easy to look at her and see a princess, a mother. Maybe that was on purpose; she was easily underestimated, that way. It was times like this, when Dave looked at her, the grey strands of hair matching the steel in her eyes, that he remembered that this woman had watched her entire homeplanet die in front of her, and still hadn’t broken.
“You understand,” she said then, voice urgent, imploring, “that no one can know. Our people are good people. They’re empathetic, and maybe too kind for their own good. If they knew who they were fighting, who they had to fight-”
“It’s not so easy, is it, when you remember that they’re all people too,” Dave said bitterly.
“No,” said Leia, and he wondered if she had ever forgotten. “No, it’s not.”
“And if everyone knew… knew that the stormtroopers hadn’t had a choice…”
“It would be harder still, yes,” she said.
Dave nodded. His jaw was aching with how tightly he held himself. “I should get back,” he said. “He’ll be wondering where I am.”
Leia reached out then, brushing his hand with her fingertips. “I am sorry. I wish I didn’t have to burden you with this.”
“Are we-” He swallowed tightly, blinking rapidly. “Are we still the good guys?” It was a childish notion, but one he had been clinging to all the same.
Leia dropped her hand. “There are no good sides to a war. There’s a side willing to slaughter to gain power, and a side willing to slaughter to stop them.”
“Then why. Why are we fighting?”
“Because,” she said, “we aren’t the side stealing children to raise for war.”