This is beautiful but I’m crying

batdad:

Ok, so I know I’m probably not the first one to theorize this, and there’s probably some canon nuggets tucked away in some source book I’ve never even heard of that would either back me up or tear my idea apart because this is Star Wars and it’s just like that, but I’ve gotten very little sleep thanks to a particularly bad bout of TMJ pain so here we go. Some headcanon about the Clones:

So attachment disorders are a thing yes? And I would assume that if the Kaminoans know enough about humans to use magic science genetically make them more loyal or some shit, then they know enough about humans to know that we learn a lot of our trust from being cared for as babies and that institutionally raised kiddos are one of the big risk groups for attachment disorders. Now the last thing you want in your hyperloyal genetically modified super soldiers is a kerfuckled sense of trust, so they would have needed to make sure that baby clones got a chance to feel attached to their caregivers.

At first they probably hired some folks. I mean maybe they did it themselves, but given that they were the sort of immoral fuckos who were willing to make genetically modified super soldiers and train kids from a super young age to do nothing else but fight and die for others? Cuddling babies probably not on their to do list.

But I think as soon as there was a batch of clones even close enough to being responsible enough for the task they would have had the clones start working to raise each other. I mean, we do know that the Kaminoans were super keen on installing a sense of group loyalty, and what better way to say you are responsible for other clones than to have them be quite literally responsible for the physical care of their baby brethren. Also it would teach said baby brethren to see other clones as a source of comfort and safety, so win/win. (It would also get any employees who started to care maybe a bit too much about the babies that were getting turned into soldiers at an alarmingly young age out of the picture before the worst of it really got going).

I suspect that nursery duty would quickly become a favorite task. Certainly better than other chores on the rota like cleaning the freshers. Ok so both involved cleaning poop, but at least the babies don’t know any better. So offering to switch duties with someone becomes a bargaining tool. Need a big favor? Offer to swap your nursery shift with whatever they have to do during that time.

So it would follow that most clones are surprisingly (to outsiders) good with babies. They have plenty experience with rubbing oragel on teething gums, changing diapers, and soothing a cranky overstimulated baby to sleep. Inevitably some war orphan comes under the care of the GAR for a brief period of time and the Jedi in charge is stunned to see a squad turn themselves into ten remarkably efficient nurse maids. Before they even have a chance to wonder where this skill set came from, the clones have found clean diapers, a bottle of formula, and someone’s turned some scrap cloth into a sling so they can easily carry the baby with them.

This would also feed into the idea that I know I’ve seen from a few other people and which a like myself of clones having an idioglossia or clone specific language. Having access to younger brothers during their language development would help older clones pass on their language and help it make the jump from being a more transient twinspeak sort of thing to a more codified language that they all share.