#Captain Styles

[antianakin]

I like the idea of Kanan at some point opening up to Rex about the clones he'd known in Depa's battalion. He's mourned Depa and the Jedi, he's learned the truth about the chips, he's started to build a better relationship with Rex, but he's never truly allowed himself to mourn the men he'd considered friends and lost during Order 66.

Rex didn't know them, of course, the clones wouldn't all have known each other or anything, but it doesn't really matter. He listens as Kanan talks about Grey, the commander who took him under his wing, or Styles, the captain who liked to tease him. Kanan talks about how different the four survivors of Depa's original battalion had been from the rest of the men, the way that history with each other had defined a part of their relationship to each other that just wasn't there with the rest of the battalion, but how protective they were of the men who'd joined afterwards (including Kanan himself).

Kanan expresses his regret that he never realized the truth or went back to try to find any of the men, and Rex assures him that this would have been a death sentence and not a single one of those men would've wanted him to make that sacrifice for them any more than Depa would've. His men couldn't tell him to run the way Depa did, but if they could've spoken to him, that's what they'd have told him, to run and not look back. Rex says that while he hadn't known Kanan's battalion, he had met other clones who'd ended up with younger padawan commanders and the one thing all of them (including Rex) were able to agree on was how proud they'd been of the padawans and how lucky they all felt to be able to serve alongside them. So he KNOWS Kanan's men loved him and would've wanted him to be safe, even if it meant leaving them behind.

And Kanan finally allows himself to shed tears for his men, for the loss of the friends he'd only just started to get to know. Rex holds him and stays until Kanan cries himself to sleep on Rex's shoulder and that's how Hera finds them hours later.

[gildeddlily]

no thoughts, just kanan as a little commander messing with his big brothers (why did i read this it's not like I needed more clone angst)

[triscribeaucollection]

(Working on the next chapter of Gave My All, thought I'd share the latest section and provide zero context):

Thankfully, the rest of the trip passed with relative peace, although Bly couldn’t help but wince when that same cadet kept popping up in his shadow. Apparently young Stance took ‘any brother who wants the same is welcome to join me’ as permission to constantly keep Bly in his sightlines - possibly genuinely due to his commitment to reuniting with his Jedi, but more likely, Bly suspected, as a passive aggressive kriff you to his older brothers.

Styles continued to glower whenever their paths crossed. Grey just seemed to grow more resigned by the hour.

“Either the captain’s going to stuff his shiny in a sack to keep the kid from going anywhere when we get to Yavin, or I’m going to have both him and the commander tagging along with me, I’m not sure which yet.”

Rex snorted at him over the holocall. “You say that like the Jedi aren’t going to find us first.”

Bly eyed the small blue figure of his little brother for a long, suspicion-filled moment. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Just because we’re keeping a low profile doesn’t mean I haven’t been checking the newsfeeds. Palpatine’s dead.”

“...what?”

“Apparently,” Rex said with visible glee, “Some Jedi operatives did a bit of digging, and Amidala called an emergency session of the Senate to air out his dirty laundry for all to see. Bastard decided to take off, tried to kill her on his way out, but Windu was waiting and got him first.”

A deep, shuddering breath went out of Bly, and he sank back in his seat. “What the kriff?”

“I’m going to take a wild guess, and say several million of our minds getting dumped back in time had an effect on the Force.”

“What, and the Jedi got pulled along too?” But even as he said it, Bly’s mind whirled faster than hyperspeed, considering the implications. The Jedi hadn’t suspected Palpatine the first time around - hadn’t liked him, sure, but distaste for politics and a Chancellor visibly snatching up emergency powers didn’t exactly translate to ‘Sith Lord plotting his total takeover’. But to investigate now- to expose him, to kill him, before the war could even truly get rolling-

Something changed.

The Force is connected to all things, Bly, Aayla told him once. In the same way an atmosphere covers an entire planet, and the slightest flicker in one spot can cause a storm thousands of miles away. Our actions may seem small and inconsequential in this moment, but they can add up, build and grow, until the entire galaxy is changed because of them.

[legomocfodder]

Captain Styles, Caleb Dume, Depa Billaba, and Commander Grey

Grey and Styles aren't perfect, but I tried my best to get close to their appearance in the Kanan comics as I could

[departmentq]

Lawrence H Styles will never sit in the Captain's chair again

RIP James B Sikking (1934-Jul 13, 2024)

[engagemythrusters]

i think a lot about the fact that caleb dume was such good friends with the clones he served with. they were his buddies. his brothers, even. his role models, sometimes.

[spockvarietyhour]

It's Excelsior's Captain Styles, sans riding crop or thin moustache

[vozart]

example of using comms 2 inches apart

quick comic for @forsaire because their tags on this made me cackle

[fwitolei]

Murder On The Mind - Bad Batch Oneshot

Summary: Caleb is forced to go to extreme measures to survive

Word Count: 643

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The snow under his boots crunched with excruciating volume as Caleb raced down the mountain, practically blind to his surroundings. Light reflected off the snow, making everything way too bright. His heavy breathing was all he could hear, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would explode. It almost felt like his body was moving on its own as he tried to process everything that had happened. The clones, Master Billaba… He didn’t understand. Why did they turn on her? Caleb had fought alongside those clones for months, watching each other’s backs, learning each of their quirks, their personalities, their individuality… and they turned on him. They turned on her.

Then there was Clone Force 99. They claimed not to know what was going on, but Caleb didn’t believe it for a second. Crosshair had actively shot at him. There was no way they were trying to help. Hunter had tried to talk some sense into Caleb, tried to tell him that he was on the Padawan’s side, but Caleb didn’t listen. He ran from them, away from the battlefield, over the ravine, and away from harm.

At least, for now.

If the clones turned on Master Billaba, Caleb thought, then does that mean they killed all the Jedi?

Caleb tripped over a root, sending him tumbling down the hill. He clawed at the snow, trying to slow his fall to no avail. He landed at the bottom of the hill, his robes soaked and hair covered in snow, but he picked himself up and kept running. He saw a city in the distance and adjusted his course to head toward it, hoping to find some kind of news blaring on holoprojectors or chatter amongst the people. The trees began to thin out, allowing the sun to reflect off the snow. Caleb kept running, using his eyes to scan the scene, the Force to alert him of any danger.

The spike of awareness in his body signaled him before anything else.

Two blaster bolts whizzed past his head. He ducked and turned on his heels, diving for cover behind a tree. He whipped his lightsaber off his belt, straining his senses for the source of the attack. There was a presence five — no, six meters behind him, and they were getting closer. Definitely a clone.

Damn those traitors.

Without a second thought, Caleb mustered as much strength as he could and charged toward the clone, igniting his saber. He reached out with the Force and tore the clone’s gun away from his hands before jumping up, raising his blade high above his head, and bringing it down on the clone in blind rage.

He would make them pay for killing his Master.

Caleb used the Force to slow his descent, his boots cracking the snow just slightly. The  anger boiling in his chest slowly faded as he inhaled the crisp air, Billaba’s voice echoing in his mind: Breathe, Caleb. Anger only leads to the dark side.

Caleb glanced over his shoulder at the fallen clone as his lightsaber deactivated. The soldier’s chest plate was still smoldering from where Caleb had struck him down, and his helmet seemed to have fallen off. Caleb approached the body, his stomach dropping as he got a closer look at the soldier’s face.

Styles. He killed Styles.

The memories raced through Caleb’s mind, making him weak in the knees. Caleb had spent hours with Styles, Captain Grey’s right-hand man, working up battle plans, goofing around, and sparring under Billaba’s supervision. After Caleb’s friend, Stance, had died in battle, Styles had walked the young Padawan through the grief, helping him bounce back stronger. 

And here he was, dead at Caleb’s own hands.

The sound of more clones snapped Caleb out of his thoughts. Hands clenched and stomach churning, he turned away from Styles and ran for the city.

[revanisadumbass]

Relatedly, the Kanan comics also use the camaraderie between Caleb and Grey/Styles to, in just a few short scenes, portray the aftermath of Order 66 from the clones' perspective.

Commander Grey represses. He moves on, focuses on following orders, because if he doesn't think about Order 66 then he doesn't have to wrestle with how it happened, what it means.

Captain Styles on the other hand, stews in it. He can't question why he followed the order, so instead he focuses on what it led to. On the brothers who died at the end of a Jedi lightsaber.

While Grey moves towards remorse, Styles embraces anger. Caleb is the loose end, the only one left that can be held responsible--not just for the clones that died, but for the whole paradigm shift.

Really though, I want to break down why Kanan: The Last Padawan is the better Order 66 story than the version in TBB: Aftermath, and it starts with the fact that Dave Filoni seems to take the Legends!Luke Skywalker view of the Jedi where they shouldn't/don't kill.

Except at the end of the Clone Wars, it's important that they do. Whether that's a difference gained from war or not, they act. More to the point, it's important that Depa and Caleb kill when cornered.

More than the camaraderie and the color changes, the way the sequence plays out matters. In Kanan, when Depa tells Caleb to run, he doesn't. He freezes, and because of that delay the fight turns deadly. Because he froze watching his master cut down the first few clones, when he acts he must do the same.

He waited, and so when he ignited his lightsaber he had to kill with it. Caleb has killed only once before, and that guy was already going for a murder-suicide. The action is second-nature, but the act is not. The act is haunting. So of course when Depa tells him she'll be right behind him, he knows she's lying and he goes anyway. Obeying her last order, knowing it's her last order, blood on his hands.

That's what haunts Kanan Jarrus. That is why he hesitates to pick up his lightsaber, why he is so certain that anybody else should train Ezra over him. Not just that he watched her die, but that he let her. He was there and he froze and he tried and he killed and even still he failed.

[gomzdrawfr]

Price: You watch your backs.

Price: Alright?

[secretly-a-trekkie]

"Oh good show, sir. For a moment, I was afraid you'd had a rational thought"

[burningvelvet]

jason isaacs as captain hook in peter pan (2003)

[anxietyriddledsquid]

woe, arcane style rex be upon ye

[bkbeemz]

Mouthwashing 🫧 Jimcurly

[departmentq]

Lawrence H Styles will never sit in the Captain's chair again

RIP James B Sikking (1934-July 13, 2024)