Is It Worth It?
Fandom: The Clone Wars/Original Character
Collection/Series: N/A
Pairing: Captain Bear (Clone Trooper OC) x Reader (Gender Neutral, there’s a brief mention of future children but it’s vague and could be biological or adopted)
Writer: @writings-of-a-hufflepuff aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long
Rating: T (For angst? IDK)
Warnings: Angsty, Sad, but also comfort
Summary: It’s in those moments where you’re tangled together in soft sheets that you feel able to speak worries into existence, feel able to ask Bear the questions that you’d otherwise be scared to voice.
Notes: Bear is my own own Clone Trooper OC feel free to ask me questions about him, for headcanons etc.
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“Has it been worth it?” You’re lying across Bear’s broad chest, fingers tracing circles and patterns into his pectoral and across his softer stomach, tracing roads over him mindlessly. Your head lifts and falls with his every breath and there’s something so soothing about the warmth of him, the smell of his skin, the sound of his breaths and the beating underneath your ear. Combined with the surprisingly delicate fingers trailing through strands of your hair, massaging knots in your neck and shoulders, tiptoeing across your skin with gentle ease, it is enough to soothe you into speaking your deepest concerns.
“Mmm?” He lifts himself slightly, just enough to look down on you with bewildered brown eyes. His nose scrunches, freckles dancing across brown skin and brows furrowing at your question wondering what you’re talking about. His curls are loose and long, that particularly stubborn curl falling across his forehead where it always finds its resting place.
“Being with me...is it worth it? All those regulations and rules you’re breaking, all the sneaking out and around...is it worth it? Am...am I worth it?” There were at least 5 regulations you could think of, off the top of your head, that Bear broke every single time he chose to continue his relationship with you. From sneaking out of the barracks at night to having a romantic relationship at all.
The Clone Troopers had many rules, many regulations to keep them in line, to keep them working at their best, their most efficient. Those rules did not factor in much for individuality or attachment. You were breaking your own rules too, a Grand Army of the Republic Doctor fraternising with a Clone Trooper captain? It was scandalous, the sort of thing that appeared in romance holos and bad serials.
“Honey Bee, Mesh’la…” He sits up properly now, hauling you up his body with the sort of ease that comes from unnatural strength. You’re pulled into his lap, hips straddling his own as his large hands cup your cheeks easily, stroking across the apples of them with a gentleness that characterised so many of his actions. “I’m a good soldier, but I'm not a perfect one. I would rather break every rule there is and spend what little time I might have left with you, then spend every day denying how I feel and following the regs. I love you, cyare. You are worth it.”
He presses his forehead to yours, nose bumping against yours in an affectionate gesture as he lets out a deep content sigh, “You make my life sunny and sweet, how could I ever regret that?”
“I...I just, I worry that one day you’ll get in trouble, we’ll get in trouble, but you’ll...you’ll wish you never bothered with me, Big.” You twist your fingers in your lap together, eyes shifting away from his gaze, vulnerability filling you as you open up yourself to possible hurt. You had never voiced your worries, that he’d wish he’d been a straight laced soldier, that he’d wished he never met you or that he’d never started your relationship. You loved him, it was one of your biggest fears, being his greatest regret.
He tutts at you, and shakes his head, before pressing a kiss to both of your cheeks, beard soft against your skin. Bear cups the back of your neck gently, thumb pressing into a knot there with gentle easing circles. “Am I worth it? You’re breaking as many regs as me. Am I worth it?”
“Of course!” There’s no hesitation, your voice comes out offended at the proposition, aghast at the thought that he wasn’t worth the rules you were breaking around fraternisation. You couldn’t imagine a world in which you weren’t with Bear, a world in which the large, sweet man wasn’t there to hold you at night.
“Then don’t, for a second, doubt that I would break every rule to be here with you. I would break every rule for a life with you. I’m a good soldier, I'm a terrible clone.” It was implied that he was too much of an individual, that his choices weren’t part of the system of uniformity everyone expected of the clones. From the drawings he allowed every youngling he came across to draw on his armour, to the length of his hair. Everything he did was individually and uniquely him, he wasn’t a clone anymore. He was Bear.
“I love you.” You press your hands to his shoulders, sliding over them to rest your arms around his neck and pull him close. You press soft kisses across his cheeks and the freckles that rest there, the scar that covers the left side of his face, over the bridge of his nose and the lids of his eyes. Reminding him that your love has never been in doubt, that it has never been your love you’d doubted so much as the system which dictated how he should be and how you should act.
“I love you. If I ever make you doubt that, tell me.” He pulls back enough to stare in your eyes, serious, more serious than he ever is as he tells you this. There is a great part of him that worries that he will do something to make you doubt him, that you will suffer in silence. All he wants is for you to know, each day, every second, how much he loves you, how fundamental you are to his life, how seeing you after a tough battle makes everything better. You are the sunny spot in an otherwise dark and cloudy war, a reminder of his worth, his individuality, of the fact that he is not his brothers and they are not him.
“You’ve never made me doubt that. Never.” You insist, carding fingers through the long curls of his hair at the base of his neck, tightening your legs around his hips to drag him closer as if that will make him believe you more. “I’m sorry I ever made you doubt that, Big.” You brush his temples with your finger tips, follow the lines of his brow, over the length of his nose and the bow of his lips.
He presses a quick kiss to your fingertips where they rest against his cupid’s bow. “I’m not. I’m not sorry that you feel you can tell me your worries, and can talk to me like this. I want you to tell me these things, the nasty things, the hurtful things, the worries, the nagging thoughts. I want to know all of you. The good, the bad, the anxious, the silly. I want to know you.” His hands fall to the meat of your hips, a reassuring weight, a comforting presence that says ‘I'm here with you, I am comfortable with you’.
“I want to know you too. You can come to me too, you know that? You don’t have to be the strong and brave one all the time, Bear...sometimes you can let your own worries out too.”
There’s a silence as you stare into each other’s eyes, a comfortable sort of silence that comes from time and knowing someone well, knowing someone enough to feel entirely yourself around them. His fingers rub circles into your hips, in a rhythm only he seems to know as your own stroke across his cheeks in soothing motions. You allow the silence to fall, allow it to envelope the two of you as he presses his forehead against yours again and keeps it there, letting out a heavy breath.
“I worry that I’ll never get to live a life with you, a proper life.” He begins with a shaky voice, one you have rarely heard, but that has you pressing your forehead tighter against his own, that has you nudging his nose comfortingly with your own, “That we’ll never have a little house somewhere, a plot of land. That i’ll never get to marry you, that i’ll never hold our children or wake in the night to little frowns telling me they’ve had a nightmare.”
There are tears that fill his eyes the more he talks of dreams, wishes, things he hopes for but worries will not happen. Your own eyes fill in response, hearing about the life he wishes to live with you, that life he wishes to make with you. The life you worry now, that you too will never see. “I worry that I will wake one day, go on a mission and never come back, that no one will tell you and you will wonder and wonder, until it’s clear I'm gone. I...I worry that our future isn’t a future at all because this war will rob me of the chance.”
There is nothing you can say to that because it is valid and real. There is every possibility that he could be shot down in any battle, any mission, that no one will think to tell you because they don’t know, because you are not supposed to be his and he isn’t supposed to be yours. You cannot say anything, so you don’t.
Instead you roll over and pull him down with you as you lie back into the covers, Bear pulled atop you despite his large size. You run your fingers through his hair and let the tears fall onto your chest, allow him to grieve for a future he might never have, you might never have. Allow the weight of him to press you into the mattress as you try to comfort him and yourself with gentle hands and soft noises.
You tangle your limbs together and hold him close as he cries himself into sleep, hold him tighter even as he falls into a slumber, even as you lie awake thinking of a future you so desperately want that is so utterly worth the risks you take breaking regulations every day.
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