#i would apologise but rosebud disapproves of insincerity

[rooksunday]

@/hastalavistabyebye asked about rosebud and his sith’buir and once again i was on a bus so

“dear… sir…”

“no, no, that won’t do at all! how do you know this being identifies as a ‘sir’?” the question echoed as the sith paced back and forth while he spoke. the sith’s ’drawing room’ was bigger than their barracks on kamino. “first impressions count in this galaxy! try again.” the sith suddenly whirled on his—his?—heels. his grey brows furrowed. “your pronouns. what are they?”

rosebud glanced at his second in command, chaff, whose wide eyes certainly mirrored rosebud’s own. there was a wrong answer here and they both knew it. all of the lost battalion knew it.

siths were tricky.

indecision stymied rosebud. he couldn’t kark this up for them. where was the trick?

impatiently, the sith gestured toward chaff and snapped his fingers. “you! have you a name? pronouns? what about the rest of your rabble out there destroying my lawns?”

chaff stuttered, “we’re clones, sir. uh, my lord sith, sir. general—“

the sith pinched the bridge of his nose, muttered something rosebud didn’t catch, then let out a dramatic sigh and sat at the table. chaff scooted their chair to make room, squeaking it across the tiles, and rosebud saw the sith’s eye twitch.

his eye had been twitching a lot. firstly when rosebud and the battalion showed up on serenno, and again when they declared their loyalty to the sith and the destruction—or at least significant inconvenience, there wasn’t quorum yet—of the jedi. then the general twitching had kind of continued until the present moment, when rosebud had failed to address his threatening missive correctly.

the sith sighed again. he sat up very straight.

“my name is dooku. i am not a general. you may call me count dooku in public, or dooku when we are without visitors. i would prefer you be more subtle with my status as a sith. my pronouns are he and him.” he gestured with what rosebud suspected to be exaggeration. “now you.”

“i am cc—“

“no! i have no head for numbers. if you don’t have a name, i will find one for you.”

that made rosebud wrinkle his nose. “but—“

“it’s my prerogative as a sith,” dooku said flatly.

“chaff, sir. my lord count sir. they and them,” chaff said, because they had absolutely no sense of self preservation. that’s why they were XO.

rosebud quickly leant forward to capture dooku’s attention. “rosebud, sir. he and him. i’m the commander of this battalion.” punish me, he thought.

dooku narrowed his eyes and his lips went thin. he slid his reptilian gaze from rosebud to chaff and back again. gold flickered in the depths of his eyes.

then he exhaled and therefore so too could rosebud.

dooku gestured airily. “then already you see the dilemma with your ‘dear sir’.” he cleared his throat. “try, ‘dear gentlebeing, if you don’t meet our demands then we will pull your dependent’s entrails out through their snout. and eat them.’ for some reason it’s nearly always more effective if you add the bit about eating them.”

rosebud nodded and got to work.

thinking about the narrative of clones “being made for the jedi” and there has to be a nonzero number of them that take the idea of ‘okay fine who is the diametric opposite of the jedi because stuff that’ and that’s how the lost battalion become the most fervent sith-sniffer-outerers in the galaxy. just turn up at dooku’s doorstep like, hi hello we’re your army let’s smush those jedi xoxo

and otoh this is playing into his master’s plan! wonderful discord!

otoh now he has two thousand badly socialised ten year olds tromping around his house and gardens what are you— would you put that DOWN— that’s not the right fork would you— okay everybody new plan, it’s time for the fine sith art of sitting very quietly while daddy deals with his headache okay