Two Sevens is loyal to the First Order.
He fires his blaster into unarmed crowds. He obeys without question.
He tells nothing but the absolute truth.
“Medium Seven was the loyalest of soldiers,” he says. “He served no other master but the First Order. He would have turned any of us in if he suspected us of treason.” A pause. A weighted pause. In the dorms: Fiver with her strange, blue-frilled eyes; Big Seven with her calm certainty. Others: Sevener, Sevens, Bright — a cruel nickname, for she is anything but — Sharp, Spite, Shiner, Charm. Niner. Fives, Sixes, Thirds, Four-and-half.
This is a eulogy. Eulogies are permitted. Eulogies are not treason — how could they be? All Two Sevens is doing is speaking well of his model comrade. All Two Sevens is doing is highlighting the good of his service.
“And he died,” he says. “He died.”
He doesn’t need to say: Kylo Ren killed him.
He doesn’t need to say: Hux asked me to get rid of that .
He doesn’t need to. They know, they all know, and they raise their alcohol ration in a quiet, solemn toast.
—
“I heard that FN-2187 was a Stormtrooper,” says Fiver to him, three days later.
He could say that is not what I was told . He could say we do not speak of traitors . He could say once upon a time Hux’s speeches were full of bile and hate for that man, and now he is not mentioned at all. He could.
He says, “I heard that too. Who did you hear it from?”
“She’s dead now. Her entire squad as well.”
“I admire your comradeship,” says Two Sevens, “and I appreciate your presence in my squad. And I have heard that too. A lie, of course.”
“Of course.”
“We need to make sure it has not spread. Has the rest of the squad heard it?”
—
They have.
—
“How could they just have vanished? ” Hux shouts.
Phasma shows her teeth. Her helmet is wedged against her hip. “I don’t know,” she admits. Sleek chrome glittering in the sterile lights of the Finalizer. Hux’s fists quivering at his sides. “Three hundred and twenty six,” she says, “we’ve got back a hundred, but the rest –”
“In the scheme of things,” he says, “that’s not much. Right?”
“There are two billion active Stormtroopers in our Empire,” she says.
“Good,” says Hux. “Good.” But there’s a thin thread to his voice, a snag, a catch; the unspoken —
Two billion. And what if they decide that they are not Stormtroopers anymore?
There are fanfics that warm your heart, there are fanfics that make you cry, and there are fanfics that give you goddamn chills because they’re just so powerful. peradi’s have you heard falls into the third category; as soon as I finished reading it I knew I had to tell other people about it as soon as I could.
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