Rex climbed out onto the deck and looked around, not expecting to see much. Well, not much more than what he normally saw. White desert, lots of white desert. Out of the corner of his eyes, though he caught a glimpse of the kid opening the back of the shuttle the rebels had come in. Seeing as he was the only one who had any optimism about the clones, Rex decided to follow him. Couldn't hurt to talk, right?

He wasn't far from the shuttle when he heard Ezra start talking. "Okay, so you don't trust these clones, but they haven't done anything!"

"You don't understand, they're dangerous."

Great, the Jedi was with him. Rex wondered if he should turn around and wait for a better time, but he didn't for some reason. The Jedi's name was Kanan, right?

"They could-"

"They could what?" Ezra asked. "Rex doesn't seem bad at all. Master Skywalker said to trust him. You trust him, don't you?"

That brought the smallest of smiled onto Rex's face. For some reason, he wasn't sure if their old trust had survived the reign of the Empire. There had been a day where they saw each other more often than not, but those days were long gone. Yet even so, Rex's general still seemed to trust him.

"I've heard the same stories you have, but the Empire told them to us so why should we believe them?"

"I didn't hear these stories, I was in them! You weren't even born!"

"Then what happened?"

"I don't feel like discussing it."

A look crossed Rex's face. That wasn't the way to build trust with your Jedi apprentice, and it usually led to a lack of vulnerability. At least, not in his experience.

Silence followed, and Rex prepared to act as he had just passed by. Right before Ezra left the shuttle, Kanan opened up. "It was at the end, the end of the war. Our fellow soldiers, clones, the ones we Jedi fought side by side with, suddenly turned and betrayed us. I watched them kill my master. She fought beside them for years and they gunned her down in a second. They came for me. No one told us they had chips in their heads that made them do it. It seemed like it was their choice."

"Do you think any of us would have even considered it if the chips didn't exist?" Rex asked, surprising both Jedi but most of all himself. They both turned to look at the clone commander as he went on. "We didn't even know Order 66 existed until it was executed. If we had, we would have said something after Palpatine was assassinated. We all had a choice, most of us just weren't allowed to make it."

He walked away, rubbing the back of his head as he went. He didn't know what good his words had done, but he hoped Kanan believed him. Judging from what he had said earlier, he had been a kid during the Jedi Purge. It had been bad enough for Rex, but he couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Kanan. Padawans had seen death nearly every day during the Clone Wars, but betrayal was different because it never came from an enemy. It came from a friend.

~

When Ezra got back out on the deck, Sabine and Zeb were standing around with Gregor, one of the other clones. Not that Ezra could tell the clones apart yet (except for Rex, the blond hair helped). He walked up as a conversation started.

Gregor was tightening a bolt down while Sabine began questioning him. "So, if you were in the Republic army, what battalion were you with?"

He grinned and looked up at her. "The 212th, under General Kenobi. Ever heard of him?"

"Kenobi? Like, as in Obi-Wan Kenobi?" Ezra asked, remembering the Jedi Master he had seen in Kanan's holocron.

"That's the one. Good man, good general, but always preferred negotiating if he could get away with it."

Zeb scoffed. "Ugh, where the fun in that? Waste of time, if you ask me."

Laughing, Gregor returned to his work. "I like you. I probably would have said the same, but it seemed to work for him. Never quite figured it out myself."

"Hang on, I thought Rex said you were with the 501st," Sabine remembered, confused.

"Well sure, Rex was. So were Jesse and Kix, actually, but we're not all from the same battalion," Gregor explained, standing up and wiping his forehead. "Wolffe is from the 104th."

"Then how'd you all meet?" Zeb asked.

The clone shrugged and looked out over the desert surroundings. "Eh, we just got assigned to the same missions every so often. Then again, the 501st had quite a reputation, so everyone knew Rex."

"Why?"

"Minimal casualties," he answered simply. "General Skywalker was one of the better generals out there. He and his commander used to make sure their men were safe, as much as they could. You can't avoid losses completely, obviously, not when you have a mission, but they did a good job. Better than some, anyway."

Sabine raised an eyebrow. "Some like who?"

"Some like Krell," another clone piped up from above, leaning over a railing on the next level. It was the one with the tattoo on his face. "Believe me, he wasn't worth his weight in bantha dung."

"Sounds like there's a good story behind this," Ezra suggested.

Jesse scowled. "Oh, believe me, there's a story but it isn't a good one. That's a real traitor if I ever saw one."

"I like this one," Gregor announced unprovoked, pointing to Zeb with his wrench.

Apparently, this wasn't unusual behavior for him because Jesse simply gave the Lasat a nod of approval. Sitting down with his legs hanging over the edge, he asked, "So where do you come from, kid? No offense to you," he told Sabine, "but that's Mandalorian armor so I'm not going to bother asking."

She didn't seem very offended. If anything, she looked pleased. Ezra scratched the back of his head. "Well, I'm from Lothal, but we sort of got chased out so I doubt we're going back anytime soon."

"Rex said you had the Force. Is that your lightsaber?"

"Yep!" He pulled it out to show the ARC trooper the blue blade.

He took a good look at it, then glanced down at the hilt. "I don't think I've ever seen one with a handle before."

"Yeah, but have any other lightsabers been able to do this?" he asked, turning the blade off and flipping it around. He pointed the blaster end out across the empty desert and fired it a few times, grinning so none of the others could see.

"Nice!" encouraged Gregor, craning his neck to get another look at the weapon. "I wonder why the old Jedi never came up with that."

Ezra hooked it back on his belt. "Hey, these days, a kid has to be resourceful."

Raising his arms, Jesse conceded, "Hey, whatever works for you, kid. You're not the worst teenager I've ever met."

"Heh heh," Zeb laughed. "I wouldn't be so sure about that. You haven't had to share a cabin with him."

The Padawan glared at him while the others laughed. Next to Jesse, Kix had seen them talking and stood next to his brother to watch.

Curious, Sabine decided to probe further. "Who was the worst teenager?"

A kind of grimace spread over Jesse's face. "Eh, it was this punk kid I met during the beginning of the war. A girl a little younger than you lot, but she was always getting into trouble. She was a pain in the neck, that one. Some of the boys couldn't stand her for the longest time."

Apparently, Kix knew the girl he was talking about. "Always got hurt, too. I saw her more than a few times in the medical bay. If it was anyone else, I'd say she liked staying put in a cot, but I know for a fact that she absolutely did not. She kept trying to sneak out when Skywalker wasn't around."

"Did it ever work?"

"Nah. After the first few times, she gave up," he gloated, grinning to himself. "I tried to keep her entertained, though. We had some tabloids lying around that I hoarded for whenever she needed to stay put."

"Hey, that sounds like Sabine whenever she gets shot," Zeb accused, pointing a finger at her. "Maybe you two should meet, then Hera can chase you both down."

It didn't seem like a bad idea to her. "It sounds like if she was here, I'd have already met her. It's cool to know that you had some women among your ranks, though. I feel sorry for her."

Kix snorted. "As you should. I don't know how she survived those three years on board but I'm sure we drove her insane sometimes. The only girl AND the only kid?" He shook his head. "You should have seen her when Jesse got her drunk for the first time."

"In my defense, I was left unsupervised," Jesse objected, but it only earned him a smack on the head from Kix. The others just laughed, imagining a little girl running around buzzed on vodka or something. It was probably similar to the first time Ezra had been given coffee.

When they had quieted, Ezra let his gaze drift. "It sounds like you guys had a lot of fun during the Clone Wars. Everyone always says it was horrible, but you have all these stories from it."

Gregor leaned up against the side of the walker. "Well yeah, but we aren't talking about the battles now, are we?"

"The in-between moments were good," Jesse admitted, crossing his arms over the railing bar. "A little crazy sometimes, but good. Distracted us from the actual war we were fighting on the job. And it was. It was horrible."

"Then why fight?"

"Because that's what we were made to do," Wolffe, who had snuck up behind Ezra, said. "Rumor has it that Palpatine made the clone army just for the Clone Wars."

As expected, they didn't quite understand. "Sure, but creating an entire army of clones takes time. How do you make an army just in time for a war?"

Wolffe smiled, but it seemed forced. "I'd tell you to ask him, but he's dead. Sith are always up to some shi-"

"Hey," Jesse scolded him, looking pointedly at the kids. Wolffe glared but amended his statement.

"Sith are always up to something horrible. First Palpatine started a war, then Dooku ended it and created his empire. If you want my advice, just steer clear of them. They're never up to any good."

"Good luck with that," Gregor told him sarcastically. "Since when do Jedi just 'steer clear' of Sith? You think Skywalker's steering clear?"

"That's Skywalker."

The clones laughed, but Ezra interjected. "Hey, I'm not trying to run into them, they keep coming after me. It's not my fault."

Jesse looked away. "It's never anyone's fault, kid. Bad things happen to good people and you can't do much about it."

For a moment, no one said anything. Sabine saw a look on Jesse's face that piqued her interest. "Are you good people?"

He hesitated before answering. "Maybe."

The rebels waited for one of the other clones to correct him, but no correction came. It was then more than any other moment that they began to realize just how horrible the Clone Wars might have been for them. They could see the ghost of guilt and regret on each one of their nearly identical faces.

Jesse spoke up one more time. "Remember that kid I was talking about earlier? She was one of the good ones."

Since no one else did, Ezra asked the painfully unnecessary question: "What happened to her?"

"She died."