Joining Young Justice

Chapter Seven: Memories of a Past Life

During the Clone War, I'd taken a blaster shot to the back of my left hand. It was enough to sever my ring finger, which medical droids had replaced with a very life-like bionic replica. I'd never had an issue with it during my stay on Earth--save for a few metal detector issues--but the force of Nightwing's attack was enough to dislodge the appendage, which went flying across the room.

"Aaahhh!" Wally shouted, pointing as the finger arced through the air, landing near the zeta tubes.

Nightwing saw the finger on the floor and started shouting, fully recoiling away. I would have been entertaining if I wasn't completely mortified.

I was too shocked to react, until Wally started shaking my shoulders, asking if I was alright.

"Calm down! I'm fine!" I finally shouted.

I shoved Wally off and marched across the room, picking up the finger. The two boys cringed.

"It's fake!" I explained, trying to calm them down. "I lost finger during a mission. This is just a prosthetic."

"But it bends like a real finger. It looks exactly like a real finger. We don't have the tech for that," Nightwing said, quickly reconstructing his stony exterior.

"But the Republic does," I replied, popping the finger back into place and experimentally flexing my hand. "This is a small scale replacement. When people are unable to regrow body parts, they can get pretty intricate bionic replacements that function as if they were normal. We saw it all the time during the Clone Wars."

That caught Nightwing's attention. He must have missed the first time around.

"You fought in a war?" His head cocked to the side.

"Yeah. Alongside my master and our troops. I helped identify tactical opportunities but wasn't old enough to do too much fighting or planning, especially after I lost my finger. Master Zalz a-Bara didn't think I was ready. It was more of a learning experience than battle experience, but I was still at war. I still watched the troops fall, saw innocent civilians killed in the crossfire, and saw the damage and destruction we were causing across the galaxy."

"Who was fighting?"

"The entire galaxy was drawn into it. It started with a Separatists movement that opposed the Republic. Then we discovered that one of the past Jedi Masters had ordered a clone army."

Wally scoffed and muttered, "As one does."

"We used the clones to fight the droid armies of the Separatists. Things were getting bigger and more complicated. There were neutral planets, more people joined the Separatists, and groups started Rebelling against the war in general. It was huge mess."

"How old were you?" Nightwing asked.

"That's the thing. It's hard to keep track of time when you're bouncing between planets, but I spent most of my time on Coruscant where the years a little longer than they are here on Earth. Engelmann and I decided that I would tell people I was ten, but I was probably older than that in Earth terms."

I don't think Nightwing could quite wrap his head around the concept of a youngling going to war.

"But the war over now?" Wally asked.

"I'm assuming so. Based on what the Lantern told me, the leader of the Galactic Republic was actually part of the Separatists the entire time and an enemy of the Jedi. He slowly started accumulating more and more executive power until he basically became the emperor--that was one of the last pieces of news I heard before the Order came out. Palpatine told the clone troops to turn on the Jedi, the only group that was stopping him from having ultimate power. They killed thousands of Jedi--younglings and masters alike. They slaughtered them where they stood."