![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelav[ see this post for explanation & the masterlist of this meta series ]
[Sergeant] Vau had never been a chatty man at the best of times; maybe this was the private Vau, the one his squads rarely saw.
- Order 66
One of the biggest sources of tension between Vau and his commandos - including Delta - is the misaligned idea between parent and mentor, and what his role is with them. They desperately want him to be their father like Kal is for Omega - loving, accepting, and all-guiding.
He has not, and will never view the clones as his children*.
( … in many ways, that’s a good thing.)
I realize this is not a … popular view of their dynamic. RepComm is all about found families and finding kinship among a group of rag-tag misfits - and so rarely do the clones have a happy ending to their story, much less finding a beloved parent figure that welcomes them with open arms. (God knows they deserve it.)
Much ink was spilled about Kal as the beloved father figure to the whole clan, and to every single one of his commandos (despite his laundry list of issues that rival’s Vau’s own). Subconsciously, we all want happy uncomplicated stories of reunited family - I get it.
However, it … is my view that it is a horrifically tasteless mistake to associate that same story with Vau and his commandos.
Vau is a child abuser.
Let me repeat that again: vau is a child abuser.
> Yes, black ops military training is often an ugly thing by nature - there’s a reason why it’s a closely guarded secret and why it breeds hard men, and there’s so many very decent soldiers who don’t make the cut.
> Yes, he pushed them to their limits in hellish courses to guarantee their survival. (It works, too - less of a death toll in his squads vs Kal’s, as he so helpfully mentions.)
> Yes, he didn’t do a thing to them otherwise - and made sure they were all alive and breathing and learned something valuable, between the holo-lessons that the Kaminoans forced on them.
> Yes, it’s not like the clones had a choice anyway between that and guaranteed extermination at the hands of the Kaminoans, or even worse treatment by the likes of truly sadistic sergeants like Priest/Reau -
- that still does not change a god damn thing that he laid a hand on them, repeatedly. As biologically-six-year-old children and under.
Let that sink in a little.
.
*
not so briefsidenote:’whoa krad,’ you say, ’there’s a line where he specifically says they are!’
Let’s pull it up -
__________________
Etain checked that Skirata’s jacket with its lethal array of blades was still hanging over the back of the chair. Skirata shook his head, slow and deliberate. Vau was much taller and a few kilos heavier but Skirata never seemed to worry about that kind of detail. She turned to Vau. “Do you see your men as your sons?”
“Of course I do. I have no others. It’s why I made them into survivors. Don’t think I don’t love them just because I don’t spoil them like kids.”
“Here we go,” Skirata said, all contempt. “He’s going to tell you that his father beat the osik out of him and it made a man of him. Never did him any harm, no sir.”
“I’ve lost just three men out of my batch, Kal. That tells me a lot about my methods.”- Triple Zero
_____________
Several things:
- Keep in mind the entire context of this conversation - children. It’s a pretty loaded topic to begin with, even if we weren’t talking about mando’ade. Etain had been discussing family with Kal, trying to feel out why these supposedly amoral mercenaries (as she’s always been taught, not through any fault of her own) do what they do, and why these two stuck their necks out for the clones. Kal’s reasoning is pretty obvious - he considers his *only* saving grace to be the fact that he loves them so much, and Etain for now seems to be agreeing.
- Keep in mind the way conversations flow - Vau says that line a lil’ quickly there - more like a reaction than a standalone statement. (At the risk of sounding pedantic, Etain was the one that said sons, not Vau.)
- Keep in mind also, that he already has issues convincing the others see him as relatively benign/not defective; and that children are such a big deal in mando’ade culture that it tends to eclipse other virtues (or wrongs). For all that Kal views Vau as someone right on the line unforgivable sin, later on, it’s pretty apparent that he considers the fact that Vau cared at all for the clones to be a more redeeming factor than not.
- Lastly, ‘children’ means a subtly different thing to mandalorians than what they would do our cultural norm of western kids, with it being so steeped in military life. Their purpose is legacy, the ones you train to follow in your footsteps - more like a blend of how we think of children and a mentor/apprentice role.
The better question is: Does Vau’s mentality wrt Delta and his commandos line up with the SW civilian equivalent of having children?
… Yes and no.
- Every interaction we see between Vau and Delta is in a military context (flashbacks or not). He doesn’t blend ’parental life’ and ’military life’ like what Kal does with the Nulls - there’s a contrast.
- (Note that Rav and Mij are coded more to assume a parental role like Kal; Vau seems to be the outlier here.)
- Vau doesn’t drop his plate to go after Delta when they’re stuck in the Empire, like what you would expect Kal to do with Omega or the Nulls. (in all fairness: that’s probably the right call. They’d be endangered with that kind of attention, at least early on.)
- Vau takes a remarkably hands-off approach to Delta’s private life as the books goes on - only giving advice when they approach him, and when it’s military matters.
tldr; it’s complicated. I’m not saying that he doesn’t care for them at all. I’m sayin’ that mando ideas of kids - and especially with a dynamic so steeped in military life - tend to mean something different than what we as civilians think of a traditional loving parent-child dynamic.
That being said, his commandos can’t help but view him as the only parental figure around. It’s an instinct thing, since they’re kids. They need him and Kal and the other sergeants - they’re socially conditioned to trust superiors (the command chain is a hell of a thing), and implicitly trust him and crave as much emotional attention and care that any young kid needs. (Needs, not just wants: there’s been a hell of a lot of studies showing emotional neglect can do a number on someone’s psyche when they’re young.)
Thing is, Vau is not only unwilling but completely unable to give that kind of support.
Vau has his own skeletons in the closet. We get the very distinct implication that his own father beat him as a child (I don’t even need to list the quotes), and that long-term PTSD, survivor’s guilt and a whole mixed bundle of other neurosis did a number on his capacity for empathy.
Now, Vau does has empathy (contrary to what Kal thinks) -
Scorch is about twelve years old. He’s also twenty-four, measured in how far along that path to death he actually is, which is the only definition I care about. He’s running out of time faster than me. The Kaminoans designed the Republic’s clone commandos to age fast, and when I think of them as the tiny kids I first knew, it’s heartbreaking - yes, even for me. My father didn’t quite kill the last bit of feeling in me.
- True Colors
- but it’s an extremely guarded amount. Guarded, rationed, and compartmentalized. Vau loves his commandos as a mentor would, that’s fairly obvious (and on some days he’s feeling particularly sentimental - as what could’ve been).
Now, hold that thought.
I’m going to take a side tangent real quick to go on about -
>> mental compartmentalization
“How do you lie to a Jedi Master?” Laseema asked. “Without him sensing it, that is?”
“I didn’t,” said Vau. “I said I’d tell him if I found Kal doing anything to help the enemy. The minute that this little shabuire opens a comlink to any former Death Watch personnel, I shall gladly turn him in.”
Skirata paused for a moment, then managed to laugh. “Do I know any?”
“No, but they’re the only group I’d really call my enemy. So I didn’t lie, and I was genuinely emotional enough for him to believe what his Force senses told him he wanted to believe.”
Laseema applauded politely. “That’s a very clever technique.”
“Thank you, my dear. Mando'ade are trained to acquire certain states of mind for battle, so it’s an easy switch.”- Order 66
This - and the quote at the top - paint a decent picture of someone who’s been explicitly trained to compartmentalize emotions and thoughts (and who later, gratefully seized into that as a coping mechanism to shut out traumas.)
One of Vau’s particularly blatant neurosis is his need for privacy. "business" and “private life” are two completely different worlds, which is a polar opposite of how Kal and all the others operate. He’s had to learn that by trial and error through survival - trust people, and they tend to be taken out, or rat you out. Or you have to go after them anyway for business. (He’s had all of those happen.)
It’s a hell of an emotional crutch - one that bites him in the ass later on - but he neatly severs those two worlds, and seals them off - (sometimes permanently, like Galidraan and his own bottled-up grief over his comrades) - and uses that mentality to see through messy situations with a clear and decisive mind.
This mentality solidifies into razor sharp boundaries in his mind - live wires that he practically defies anyone else to cross. It’s a barrier that works both ways - keeps everyone else out, and to keep him safe.
It’s his commandos - Delta - who are the first to (unintentionally) try to rip open that door again.
They’re children dumped in the lap of a military-industrial complex built to churn them out as soldiers, and the first living being that gives a damn about them is an emotionally crippled man who was brought on by money to teach them how to survive. They reach out with open arms, craving love, affection, self-worth and some semblance of a normal life with a precious naivety-
- and Vau being Vau, inwardly obsessed with control and boundaries - reacts to that naked trust and need as well as you’d expect.
(They’ve learned the hard way - don’t ask Old Psycho certain kinds of questions. They learn (after too much) where the truce-line is between him and then. Ask him anything about military life, and he’d be more than happy to guide you through the intricacies of assassination and who knows what else. More than happy to show you skills to survive for a better day. More than happy to explain mando'ade tenants and history. Happy to even complement on a finely-executed display of skills, even. But certain areas are always and forever off limits, even after the war.)
Sidenote: Where Vau puts that dividing line between 'private’ and 'business’ spheres is tricky - much of it is based on a purely emotional knee-jerk reaction, like when he instantly deflected Etain away from asking about family, and yet he’s surprisingly open with her afterwards.
(… this is terrible, but I’d place him in ‘team instinct’ in PokeGo without hesitation. :P )
In fact, you can see that it’s this that starts most of Kal and Vau’s arguments - Vau can’t understand why the man would hamstring himself by taking on so many emotional liabilities with non-combatants + people he can’t trust and vet. Kal is too blinkered to see beyond his view of Vau as a sadistic martinet to understand that Vau presses on that because he doesn’t want to loose yet another goddamn decent person to stupidity.
The mere idea idea of children is a liability in his world. a weakness. Something painfully raw and sacred that was robbed from his own life and is replaced with a bitter black-red ocean of resentment and envy.
- Envy?
oh yes.
“All yours, son. High time you owned something nice.”
Vau was usually immune to Skirata’s polar extremes of emotion, but for a few seconds the old chakaar and his surrogate son simply looked at each other as if there was nothing else that mattered in the galaxy, and Vau felt genuine envy.
It wasn’t Skirata he envied. It was Mereel, for having a father who doted on him so much that he could do no wrong. Like time, it was something his wealth had never bought him.- True Colors
>> Conclusion
Vau’s not unaware of his violent tendencies. The shred of conscience in himself is the same thing that pushes him to separate personal/business lives regarding his training of the commandos.
After all,
Surely It’s not as seemingly ugly if there’s a reason why he’s doing that, yes? Purely military training, nothing personal. Of course we’re doing it for their own good, they’ll be survivors. They’ll live a better life, once when they’re out of the system, yes?
… It’s the unsaid question that haunts him every day once when the war is over.
