Thanks to Amaryllis Complex for giving me the prompt and for taking a look at this before it went live. The soundtrack (and original prompt) for this story, as a whole, is "Stubborn Love" by the Lumineers.

The cover art is from the amazing Tipsutora from DeviantArt, who kindly let me use it for this story. I recommend you check out more of her fan art. FFN's anti-link protocol makes the addy look weird, but in a nutshell: http colon slash slash tipsutora dot deviantart dot com

Chapter One - My Own

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Light flooded into the small space, almost blinding her. Then Sunny saw him again, standing there as resolutely as always. He looked troubled, his face in terse lines; maybe they were going on a dangerous mission again.

He didn't reach for her though. Instead, he started stacking up the plates of armour, pulling them out from the lower shelves. He wasn't putting them on like usual, but gathering them up and putting them in a cloth bag. Sunny didn't understand. They were clean already; he'd made sure of that after they'd gotten back from the Citadel. He always made sure to clean his armour after every mission, did her Rex. At last his hand came up, stretching out to her, and stopped.

He stared at her for what felt like the longest time. She saw his brow crease, saw him look down, not meeting her eyes.

Take me with you, she cried silently.

"Sorry, old girl," he murmured. "Not this time."

Then he was gone, the door to the locker swinging shut in her face.

It was pitch back again, but that was immaterial to Sunny. She could see just fine with her night vision setting. Fine enough to see that she was all alone in the locker; the rest of the armour was gone.

What was going on? Why had her Rex taken the rest of his armour, but not her? Didn't he know how vulnerable his hearing and vision was without her?

She tried switching to infrared, but the metal sides of the locker were huge purple-black screens hemming her in. There was only a ghostly blue handprint, fading into black, to show where Rex had been. She hoped he wasn't doing anything silly like going into battle without her.

A trooper needed his helmet, and Rex needed his Sunny.

In the beginning, it had waited in darkness amongst dozens of others just like it, white and black, trundling forward on the conveyor belt. Towards what it didn't know. If it switched to night vision, it might be able to see what was going on, but it didn't want to call attention towards itself by powering up fully, didn't want to be labelled as defective and scrapped.

A glimmer of light emerged from the gloom ahead. As it moved forward, it saw the huge metallic arm that swivelled over the belt, sucking them upwards one by one into the light that ringed the hole. The belt carried it inexorably onward, then the arm grabbed it, propelling forward into light. It was on another belt, moving in a circle this time in the middle of a huge room full of light.

It saw lines of beings in brown, white, and black that stepped forward one by one, seizing its comrades from the belt and sliding them over their heads. The brown disappeared, becoming one being of perfect black and white. This was it then, what it was made for. It waited, eager for its turn, but no hands came. It went around once and then again. No hands.

It saw the others in front and behind it taken, yet it remained. Then finally, at last, strong hands gripped it, lifting it away and into a new life. A face appeared in all shades of brown. A pale line ran across the chin. This was its new being then; this was who it was going to belong to.

"Hello there, old girl," the being murmured. "We're going to go far, you and I."

It felt heat as it settled into place on broad shoulders, protecting its new being's head from injury. Its display registered the double-blink of the occupant and flickered into life, interfacing with the rest of the armour systems, including the armour tally.

CT-7567. That was who inhabited the armour. Lieutenant, 501st Legion. It was pleased. No—that wasn't right, it had been called 'old girl'. So it was female then—she was pleased. She belonged to someone now.

She watched as CT-7567 marched away from the lines of helmetless clones that were waiting patiently in the queue, drinking in the details and the data that flickered across her display. Next stop was the armoury, where her clone drew out a DC-15A rifle (10km range and 500 shots per tibanna cartridge according to her database) and two DC-17 hand blasters (50 shots per cartridge).

"Hoi! Lieutenant!"

Another clone, fully armoured, was running towards them. His armour tally showed up as CT-4217; a medic, a corporal.

"Coric," her clone said, inclining his head. She was briefly confused; this clone had two designations? Perhaps it was a special designation.

"You've heard the news then?" Coric asked, falling in step. "About us being assigned to the 501st Legion, Cascade Company?"

"Yes. They're the blue ones right?"

The medic nodded. "That's right."

CT-7567 made an odd noise, halfway between a cough and a sniff. She wondered if he had been contaminated with microbes, but his body suit was registering normal temperature. Not ill then.

"Not sure I really like blue," he said. "Too much like Kamino on a bad day."

"So that would be every day then," Coric quipped. "In any case, we've got to earn our stripes before we can ditch the black and white."

What was wrong with black and white, she wondered. Black and white was good. Black and white was standard, up to specifications, and just like everyone else.

"Catch you back at the barracks, Coric," CT-7567 said.

The other man grinned. "Sure thing, Rex. By the way, the sun bonnet looks good."

CT-7567—Rex—snorted. "Of course it does. Me and my sunny are sex on a stick."

His sunny. He meant her. She had a special designation, just like him. Sunny—she decided she liked it.

Captain Rex sighed. There was a line outside the armoury; a big one too. It looked like today was going to be another of those 'hurry up and wait' days. The queue wound out of the armoury, through the hallway and almost to the turbolift; a processions of men dressed in bodysuits, helmets tucked under their arms and holding onto piles of armour.

A lesser man, or maybe just a more impatient one, would've pulled rank and marched to the head of the crowd. However, Rex figured if his men had to wait in the corridor, so did he. He took a spot in the line behind Jesse and Hardcase.

"Captain Rex, sir!" Jesse saluted.

Rex returned the salute. "We're off-duty at the moment, Jesse. You don't have to salute."

"Sorry, Captain." Jesse grinned. "Force of habit."

They all went back to standing there, waiting patiently as the line crawled forward.

Rex checked his chrono surrepticiously. They'd been here for twenty minutes and moved a grand total of fifteen meters—just around the corner of the corridor.

Jesse had noticed Rex's sneaky chrono check. "If you've got somewhere you need to be, Captain, I can look after it for you," he offered.

Rex waved him off. "Thanks, Jesse, but I'm fine. Just not used to waiting around, that's all."

"Haven't you forgotten something, sir?" Hardcase was looking at the too-small bundle of cloth in Rex's arms. "Like a helmet?"

"No. I've got everything that I plan to turn in right here."

Jesse's eyebrows went up, but he didn't say anything.

"It's gonna be nightmare to repaint everything," Hardcase grumbled, changing the subject with all the subtlety of a freight train. "It took me ages to get those lines straight."

Jesse snorted. "You're struggling with straight lines and dots? Oh, tell me more!"

Next time: Sunny has been replaced.