#the hidden enemy

[codywaan]

i fucking love youtube subtitles

[icy-watch]

This is basically that 1 meme.

[spockvarietyhour]

[kamino-coruscant]

Slick's Speech

The Clone Wars S01x16: The Hidden Enemy

[holding-hands-and-hearts]

I love seeing explorations of undeveloped characters, so maybe a little request for written delights with Chopper (the clone, not our devilish droid)?

There’s a noise, from somewhere in the periphery, something just deliberate enough to seem accidental. Chopper snorts into his bunk.

“I was expecting the commander.”

A beat of too-stiff silence passes. He does not look up. “Or the captain.”

The noise shifts, the broken-off sound of a heavy, stifled sigh. There’s only one person who breathes like that, one person with a stupid goatee and an ironclad alibi, who’s so unproblematically average that it’s infuriating. Chopper keeps his face pressed into the bunk’s thin pillow, seething, and mutinous anger gnaws at his stomach.

“Well, you’ve got me,” Gus mutters. He at least has the decency to sound sullen about it.

Just leave it alone, Chopper wants to say. Go away. He doesn’t want to see Gus’s face or his stupid goatee or the bandages wrapping his arm. Gus is a better trooper, Gus is a better brother, whatever.

He sighs. “What do you want, Gus?”

“You can stop sulking, you know,” Gus says, suddenly. He cuts off the phrase, as if he didn’t mean to say it, but nagging Chopper is like poking unexploded ordnance with a long memory.

“Haven’t you done enough?” The pillow muffles his response, but the words snap all the same, and plastoid rattles behind him as if Gus has physically recoiled.

“Haven’t I - ”

“Why are you here, Gus?” Chopper demands, louder. He mushes his face harder into the flimsy pillow, and feels the rigid mattress squash his nose flat.

Gus sighs again, frustrated, and it’s satisfying in a darkly vindictive kind of way, but Chopper can’t be bothered to be guilty about it. “Sorry. I just - I came to say. Sorry. That’s it. I’ll leave you alone.”

Chopper wants to laugh. “For what?”

“For - by all the kriffing stars!” Gus huffs. “You are impossible!”

“I’m impossible! Sure. Just - sure.” Chopper pushes himself up from the bunk. “I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t need to be nitpicked. Either say what you’re going to say and get out or I will!”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Gus slams his fist into the wall, and savagely Chopper hopes it hurt. The deep thud of knuckles against the wall echoes, dark and prideful and sharp-edged anger. “You’re not - you’re not defective. I’m sorry I said what I said. I’m sorry our CO betrayed us and tried to pin it on you. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m just sorry. And now I’m going.” He turns on his heel and marches to the door, and Chopper lets him.

The lock clicks shut, and Chopper sits back on his bunk and runs his hands over his sandy buzz cut. The stupid kriffing necklace of stupid kriffing battle droid fingers is under the bunk.

He throws it against the wall.

*******

Someone clears their throat behind him, and Chopper doesn’t acknowledge it. Anyone who knows him well would take it as acquiescence; anyone who didn’t would probably kark off without an affirmative.

Jester, though, knows him - at least well enough not to be put off by Chopper’s prickly reticence. He drops his tray on the table a little too loudly, and sits down as if he had to steel himself for it. His fingers are shaking.

Jester clears his throat again, and Chopper looks up to stare at him. He drops his fork.

Chopper sighs through his nose. “I don’t bite.”

“I - I know,” Jester says, with just enough indignance that it’s almost funny. He picks up his fork again, and pokes at the flat square of processed protein in front of him.

“Just get it over with,” Chopper advises, dryly. “It’s not as dry as yesterday’s.”

“Great.” Jester pokes the ration bar again. Chopper rolls his eyes.

“Come to say something? Like Gus?”

“No,” Jester says, too quickly. “Well….yes. No.” The fork leaves a mark this time.

Chopper snorts. “Just get it over with,” he says, again, but they both know it’s not about the ration bar anymore.

“I don’t know.” Jester stares at his tray. “I just - I don’t know. I just wanted - you know. To be here.”

It’s sweet, maybe, or at least something approaching it, and Chopper knows perfectly well Jester’s skittish enough that presence is what he can manage. He won’t risk saying what he doesn’t have to, under too much pressure of getting his head bitten off if he sticks out his neck too far.

Jester was always the sweet one, and Chopper was always the standoffish one. But they’re squadmates, whatever that means now. Jester can sit here, and Chopper can let him.

“Thanks.” The word feels odd in Chopper’s mouth, too quiet, strangely shaped.

And Jester looks up at him, and flinches, and nods. He looks down at his ration bar, tears off a piece with his fork, and takes a bite.

“Not as dry as yesterday,” he says.

*******

“Didn’t mean to betray you.”

But that’s not exactly what betrayal means now.

“You didn’t.”

“Fine.” Sketch runs his hand through his hair. “Didn’t mean to….not trust you. In front of everyone.”

Chopper can’t deny that. He doesn’t try.

“Should have stuck up for you.”

“Why? You were right. I lied.” Chopper shrugs. Sketch’s support doesn’t make a difference anyway. They were all looking for someone to blame. Chopper just happened to look in the right place.

“Stop it,” Sketch says, but, ever so slightly, he’s smiling.

Chopper’s still mad. Of course he’s still mad - it’s not like him to not be - but it feels more sullen and recalcitrant now, less volatile. He was always good at pretending he was apathetic.

“You didn’t trust me, did you?” he asks, partially because he’s genuinely curious, and partially because he wants to see Sketch’s reaction. They both know he isn’t above needling at raw bruises.

Sketch bites his lip.

“You didn’t,” Chopper says. “Thanks.”

“No - I did - I - I did.” Sketch sighs, and Chopper resists the urge to tell him he’s as bad as Jester. Sketch could take it, but Punch would probably get all up in arms anyway. They tolerate him, this broken squad, but Sketch is still the only one who doesn’t chafe at Chopper’s sniping.

“I knew you hadn’t gone straight to the mess hall.” Sketch picks at his bodysuit, as if it bothers him. “But of course you weren’t the spy. I’ve seen you sneaking off after missions, and I just figured….you needed your time.”

“Guess you were right.” And a fat lot of good it did him.

“I didn’t believe it. When he got on you.” Sketch drops into silence, and Chopper has nothing to say. It’s just the two of them - no, the three of them, because Punch is still asleep with his head in Sketch’s lap - sitting on their creaky bunks, with their thin mattresses and threadbare pillows.

Absently, Sketch runs his free hand through Punch’s hair. Chopper stares at the floor.

How did it become so easy to lose sight of the person next to you?

The ceiling is leaking, and Chopper listens to the smudged sound of water dripping on the floor until he’s lost count.

Finally, Sketch sighs. “I should have stuck up for you.”

“Yeah,” Chopper says. “You should have.”

Punch shifts. His voice is scratchy from sleep. “We all should have.”

*******

I....wrote this so many times.

And then I hated it.

And then I rewrote it again.

And, in short, this has literally been devouring my spare thoughts for a really really long time. I've got to admit you had me stumped here for a little bit, and I've got to thank you for the challenge. Underdeveloped characters are some of my favorites, and it was so so fabulous to get to know Chopper over the past while - though I hope what I've come up with qualifies as a "delight".

I hope you enjoyed it! 💕

[feltpool]

Clone corruption

Why is it happily accepted that the Republic was corrupt and that the Jedi order had it's corrupt elements, but the clone army is upheld as perfect and inviolate even though we’re specifically shown Slick and his betrayal in closeup?

How he's not only willing to sell the Republic out to the Separatists in return for money and a shot at supposed freedom, but to stab his brothers, his own team, in the back to try to save his own skin before destroying weapons and supplies vital to the clone army and the massive battle that’s about to occur on Christophsis in his bid to escape before he can be apprehended.

And that’s not even going into whatever happened in that missing time between Slick being puched out by Cody, and the next scene when he’s clearly had sufficient time to recover from that because Rex walks him out of the room they’ve been in. But Cody is standing outside in the hallway looking sulky and some Significant Looks pass between him and Rex as Rex escorts Slick over to Obi-Wan and Anakin so he can deliver his speech about the Jedi oppressing the clones in person.

[badly-explained-clone-wars-plots]

(The Hidden Enemy) - they nearly get the wrong guy because Rex couldn't see the traitor clearly had hair

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - “Season 1″ Watchlist

Ordered by Arcs Chronologically 

Arc 1 

2:16 Cat & Mouse 

1:16 The Hidden Enemy 

Arc 2 

“The Clone Wars” feature film 

Arc 3 

3:1 Clone Cadets

3:3 Supply Lines

1:1 Ambush 

Arc 4 

1:2 Rising Malevolence

1:3 Shadow of Malevolence

1:4 Destroy Malevolence

1:5 Rookies 

Arc 5 

1:6 Downfall of a Droid

1:7 Duel of the Droids 

Arc 6 

1:8 Bombad Jedi

1:9 Cloak of Darkness

1:10 Lair of Grievous 

Arc 7 

1:11 Dooku Captured

1:12 The Gungan General 

Arc 8 

1:13 Jedi Crash

1:14 Defenders of Peace

1:15 Trespass 

Arc 9 

1:17 Blue Shadow Virus

1:18 Mystery of a Thousand Moons 

Arc 10 

1:19 Storm over Ryloth

1:20 Innocents of Ryloth

1:21 Liberty on Ryloth