Kriari would have never thought the day would come when she was glad to see Anakin Skywalker. The man scared her shitless, his ability to completely erase his presence in the Force spoke of an unknown talent and unbelievable potential for danger. But despite all of it, Anakin had done nothing to make her feel so weary of him other than that one time she mentioned their home planet. She should not have been surprised, Kriari was well aware of the relationship between farmers and the Tusken.
So she had decided a while ago to give the man the benefit of the doubt. He was Ahsoka's master and Obi-Wan's padawan after all, so he couldn't be that bad.
She realized it had been the better choice as soon as he started teasing their master with the Duchess. Kriari realized then that even if he was her superior, he still wasn't that much older than her.
They were going to have so much fun.
Kriari realized how foreign that idea had become to her. When was the last time she'd had fun? She could say she enjoyed banter in the frontlines when she competed with the clones to see who had the most droid kills, but was that really fun or just a way for them to cope with the trauma they were going through? She didn't want to know the answer to that.
After introductions were made to the Duchess and the representatives escorting her, Kriari made sure to greet both Rex and Cody in the most affectionate way she was allowed in public: with a strong grip of the forearm.
"Been a while Commander, I was starting to wonder if that yellow stripe in your armor would be gray next time we met." Said Cody in a teasing tone.
"What can I say, Cody, recovering from trauma can be a bit of a pain in the ass, but at least now I get a free pass to make more inappropriate jokes than before."
"Oh brilliant, do we have to worry about the death jokes or the sex jokes? Because I'm sure you'll have content from both..." Said Rex from Cody's side.
Kriari couldn't help but burst out laughing, she would have expected a lot of things from Rex, but not this.
"Oh, not you too, men. I thought I'd only have to worry about Anakin and Kriari this time."
Obi-wan had only heard the tail end of that conversation apparently because his expression was a mixture between grim, annoyed and slightly apprehensive.
"Don't you worry, General, we would never make inappropriate remarks around you or anyone that could take offense to them. Not to mention Higher ranking people and Officers." Rex's attempt to soothe Kriari's master was short-lived.
"Oi, what is that supposed to mean? I outrank you too!"
Kriari's mock offense just earned her an eye roll from Cody and a cheeky grin from Rex, she was about to continue on her rant when the pilot announced they were all ready for takeoff.
"Okay, people, playtime's over. Time to work." Said Anakin who still had a cheeky grin on his face. "We'll have more than enough time to tease Obi-Wan and Kriari on board."
...
They had a little briefing right after takeoff, Kriari would be staying behind with the troopers to patrol and guard the cargo levels while Anakin and Obi-Wan joined the senate dignitaries for dinner. Kriari had been told that if she wanted to behave more like a soldier than an actual peacekeeper then she could stay with the soldiers. She was pretty sure she should have felt chastised by this, and that it was quite low of her master to put it that way when he had agreed with her in the first place. Kriari had learned to distrust politics and those involved in them from Obi-Wan himself, so it was quite rich of him to chastise her on the matter. But because she was being given the chance to avoid the nightmare that would have been speaking to out of touch politicians, she stayed behind gladly. She was also quite sure Obi-Wan was secretly doing her a favor and didn't really mean to make her feel bad for what she had done.
So she stayed back, organizing patrols with Cody and Rex and eating field rations contently with the men.
"I see why you would have needed time off after Geonosis, Commander. The 212th was never told about you being possessed."
Cody and Rex were seated on crates beside her as they all munched on ration bars.
"Well, I don't think the Jedi or the GAR would have wanted the knowledge that a Jedi could be possessed to get out. Even less if said possession could access that Jedi's knowledge." Said Rex, trying to find a reason for General Kenobi not telling him. "I only knew because it was me who answered Ahsoka's call."
"Yeah that makes sense, but still I sometimes feel like our higher ups should be more open with certain information, especially when working with clones, you guys are human after all, you deserve an explanation for what you are being ordered to do. That's why you are different from droids: you make your own decisions but you have to live with them too."
Cody seemed touched by her words, and so did Rex, but there was something else behind their eyes, a deep rooted sadness that came with the knowledge that they would ever really be considered human beings by those who commissioned them. The only thing most saw in the clones was tools, equipment, droid circuits in a suit of flesh.
"Yeah but they don't really believe us to have a conscience, do they? Or individual personality, Force forbid an identity of our own." Said Rex dejectedly to her right.
Kriari took a deep breath in and tried to think of a way to reassure these men that she now called her friends, but was interrupted by Cody's intercom. The men of the 212th had completed their sweep, and so had the 501st, but two of Rex's men had failed to check in, and were not answering comms.
The three of them stood up and quickly headed to the rendezvous point. Every trooper gave the all clear for their sector, except for Redeye and Mixer, who were now missing. Kriari knew better than to think this was just a comm malfunction or a coincidence, she had been in a captured ship before, and it all started the same: something was amiss.
Kriari asked Skywalkers's astromech to pull up the schematics for the cargo hold and to highlight the areas Mixer and Redeye were supposed to be patrolling. She ordered Rex to contact Master Kenobi and sent the rest of the men on a sweep, always in pairs and never by themselves. All comms had to be running on an open channel so that anyone could hear if something went down, they were all ordered to turn on their location devices so that R2 could track everyone's moves.
Once everyone was set, and the Generals had been contacted, the sweep began.
The only thing they could find was a cargo container that seemed to have been toppled over, the contents were missing, but the size of the box made it impossible for someone to have been able to topple it over by themselves.
The container had a capacity for twenty five tons.
As soon as Skywalker made it to where they all had gathered around the container, Kriari debriefed him. There was someone or something in there with them, and there were still two men missing. Kriari made it a point to keep Obi-Wan on the loop, just in case something got past them and to the senators, while Skywalker gave his astromech instructions to scan for anything unusual.
Tension was rising quickly around them, the fact that the cargo hold for some idiotic, unsafe reason, didn't have any overhead lighting made everything creepier, not to mention fighting in the dark could be a real pain. Not that it made a difference to Anakin and Kriari, they had trained blindfolded hundreds of thousands of times, but the clones? they were at a complete disadvantage even with night vision sensors in their HUD.
The entire situation was creepy enough, so when Kriari saw a limping clone walking towards them on unsteady footing, she was immediately worried.
"For fuck's sake, Redeye, could you at least answer your comms? we were getting worried"
The clone continued lmping towards her without so much as acknowledging her, and that's when her guard went up.
Not again.
"Redeye?"
Please, Force, not again.
Nothing.
"Soldier-"
Before Kriari could give one last warning, the glint of metal caught her eye, right where the chest plate met the shoulder pads. Something was holding him up.
Kriari shut the door on the part of her that was begging for this not to happen again -not again-, the part of her that refused to hurt a clone -please not this-, the part of her that didn't want her mind to be under attack again -please for the love of the Force. Kriari shut the door on the impending doom that threatened to choke her -breathe-, on the deep seated fear that came with remembering what happened after Geonosis.
The green light of her lightsaber illuminated the dim corridor as she turned it on and with it, the assassin probe that was holding Redeye's corpse up like a human puppet.
They have suffered enough, we have suffered enough.
The rage of what she saw numbed her even more to what was happening around her. Not even in death could clones rest, their bodies were still being used as meat shields, their minds corrupted by alien hive minds, their entire fates dictated by people who did not consider them worth the rights of sentient beings even though they were very much human.
Kriari was tired. She was tired for herself, she was tired for her friends and she was tired for the man she loved and the men she considered family. And all she could do as one of the most privileged people in the galaxy was watch.
She dodged Redeye's corpse as the assassin probe threw him at her. Thought of him as disposable now that its cover was blown. The rage, the indignation, the complete lack of power to stop it. All these emotions raged within her as she charged the droid. Her resolve to continue fighting in the war but only for the clones hardened. The Jedi did not need protection, the Republic had failed all of them and called it democracy, the Separatists had even less regard for clone lives than the average Coruscanti.
No, they were on their own. But Kriari would be damned if she didn't do something about it.