Meet Pel! Sweet, naive, not-so-shiny-anymore shiny from a whump fic my friend @pandawithawand wrote! He pretty much only exists to experience The Horrors (gut full of shrapnel and serious facial wound) but despite this he has a surprisingly mellow attitude. He’s part of the 501st, and especially close with Kix and Jesse, who literally saved his life with a mild spot of battlefield surgery.
Panda and I now have split custody (co-ownership) of this adorable fella after I filed for adoption (made a joke comment on the fic chapter Pel appears in, and Panda continued the bit). We both adore him :)
Fic chapter is here for those interested, but do mind the tags, seriously. Panda is a true master of whump…
“The Captain should just let us have one more vod in the squad.” trooper Jak says, picking up a blaster from the wall rack “After all, we are stuck with the defective over there”
He points a thumb over his shoulder to Blank, and his squad mates laugh, picking up their weapons as well. This is not new. They often talk about Blank as if the trooper isn’t standing well within earshot; at first, Blank believed they did so because they thought that he was not only mute but deaf.
Recently he had realized that they are well aware that he can hear them. They just don’t care.
The four of them walk past Blank on their way to the shooting range, sneering at the trooper and showing off their blasters. They knew Blank wasn’t allowed to train on the range while it was full, because his temper would shift whenever he held a weapon or felt threatened.
It wasn’t his fault, the medic Kix had assured him after he had woken up in the medbay after being tased unconsious for attacking a vod that thought it would be funny to push him around until he snapped. According to Kix, Blank suffered from a specific traumatic response to the loss of his original squad and being unable to protect them, and it would take the shape of his violent outbursts.
I wish I could help you more, kix had said, sounding upset even under his attempt to keep his tone level; but the republic does not provide us with resources for mental health care. I’m sorry, vod.
Blank watched idly as his squadmates shot at the moving targets, his eyes dull and glassy. Blank, as he had been named after the incident. His mind drifts away, always lost and almost detached from his body. It’s like he can see the entire scene from above - the troopers in the room firing and bragging at each other, the sound of blaster fire, swearing piping up at missed shots; him, Blank, sitting alone at a corner, eyes glazed as a trooper dressed in white-and-blue armor, kama and pauldrons walks up to him.
“Blank?”
He blinks, making a solid effort to drag himself back into his brain. He knows the uniform... this is their captain. He should focus. He should...
He raises his eyes to the helmet tucked under his captain’s arm, focuses on the jaig eyes painted there. Is the best he can manage to. Slowly, very slowly, he raises an open palm to the shell of his ear, sign language for “listening”. Rex gestures at the sit next to him with his free hand.
“May I?”
Blank hesitates for a moment, and his breath hitches. Every time a superior officer demands to speak with him, he wonders if he will be finally set for decommission. He’s too difficult, too dangerous, too reckless, and he knows he’s always hanging by a thread because the army could certainly do without a trooper that can only function properly on the battlefield and presents a risk to his fellow troopers at all times.
He swallows down, then he nods, and Rex sits down next to him, bucket on his lap. Blank’s eyes stare at the distance, his fingers absently rubbing at the edge of his gauntlet, right leg bouncing some.
“I heard your squadmates talking about you.” Rex says, voice low enough so that only Blank will hear him “I will have a talk with them, and if they disrespect you again, you just have to let me know, okay?”
Blank nods, or he thinks he does. He can’t tell. Why is it so hard for him to stay in his body? Rex sighs, moving his hand closer to Blank’s, but not touching it. Blank gingerly moves his hand towards his captain’s, and despite the shooting and talking all around them, the clink of their hand guards meeting seem to echo endlessly in his brain, sending a single, solitary spark of joy into his heart.
Clones are very physically affectionate. They bump their hands together, press their foreheads to one another, hold tight onto each other after a tough mission. Blank misses the contact, but doesn’t trust himself fully to ever ask for it - not that any of his brothers in the 501st would ever give it to him even if he did. They all fear what might happen if the mental stimulus rubs him the wrong way and they have to stun him unconscious before he actually kills someone.
But Rex is different. He was the one to see him in the Kaminoan facility after the crash, to hear the Kaminii’se explain to him that he had developed a selective mutism that made him unable to speak and therefore, a useless soldier; and despite knowing of his unstable condition, despite knowing he would be difficult and most likely not worthy of all the trouble, Rex still took him in to the 501st, refusing to let the Kaminoans decommission him as they intended to.
“No one gets to treat you differently.” Rex assures him now “You are one of us, you’re part of this battallion. You’re not different from any other trooper, understood?”
Blank wants - needs - to thank him. He knits his brows together, concentrating, bringing himself back into his body, no matter how much it aches and burns because he hates himself so much, hates his useless self that is nothing but an imperfect, broken trooper, nothing like his vod’e, nothing like Captain Rex.
He turns to face Rex and draws a shaky breath, drags his teeth over his lower lip and sighs out a word that is more breath than speech, his vocal cords raspy for the lack of use.
“Vod.”
Rex’s expression is one of shock that soon melts into pleased surprise, and he smiles, laughs and nods, bumping his hand plate against Blank’s just as softly as Blank had done before.
“Yeah. We’re vod’e. And I’ll be here for you, brother.”
Blank can’t smile back. He doesn’t remember how to, not after so long. So he nods instead, prying his eyes away from Rex and looking at the floor instead. The feelings are too intense, and he needs to pull himself out of his body before his brain shifts into a defensive state.
Fortunately Rex seems to understand that, because he slowly gets up and excuses himself, walking away towards some shinies that seem to need help. Blank laces and un-laces his fingers together, mouthing the word again without a sound. Vod. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to truly thank Rex for everything he does for him. For now, that would have to do.
Allow me to introduce: the scrungly, the stinky, the one and only Reek!
This guy is an OC I created based on a Black Series 501st Trooper action figure I carry around in my backpack. He’s my emotional support clone trooper, he smells bad (when I first took him out of his packaging he absolutely REEKED of degrading plasticiser, hence the name) and I love him.
Lore-wise, he lost his sense of smell in a head trauma incident very early on in his military service, and has since gained a reputation for a) being willing to do the nasty jobs nobody else wants to because the smell doesn’t bother him and b) stinky smelly bastard man because he can’t tell when he needs to take a shower. Officially, his name comes from the fearsome alien species seen in the Petranaki Arena, but his vode have given it the other meaning…
There are a few additional lore tidbits on his toyhou.se profile here :)
