Niner going spare over Sull’s whole deal in True Colors made way more sense when I was forcibly reminded of Niner’s abandonment issues.
I think part of why he communicates like this is that he is internally very conscious of his role as squad leader and the responsibilities that come with that. It’s a fundamental part of his identity and is not something he can just turn off. Omega is his family and the people he cares most deeply about, but he’s also their sergeant, and he has to negotiate how those roles and relationships meet and interact, so dealing with all of that comes out in how he communicates with others. (This isn’t about whatever constitutes “good” behavior between ranks– this is about what Niner sees as his responsibility to provide for Omega.)
InHard Contact, there’s a part where Niner is having some doubts about whether they’ll be able to pull off their plan. This is internal–the verbal part is framed as him asking if Etain has doubts. The narrative makes the observation for us that Niner can’t even let his doubts show through body language or his facial expressions because the rest of Omega will pick up on how he’s actually feeling. If Niner openly says he’s not confident about something or at least shows it on his face, that reads differently coming from him as squad leader than it does from anyone else. He knows that his attitude and how he approaches whatever Omega is trying to accomplish is significant in that it can affect the mindset of the others. Kind of an abstract example, but if you’re about to do something risky and difficult, would you rather go into that with a leader who shows a lot of confidence and trust in your ability to accomplish the task, or with somebody who obviously has a lot of doubts and who, for whatever reason, doesn’t think you collectively have what it takes? When Niner choses not to show doubt or anxiety, I think it’s because he wants to be an achor or steady compass that points north for the benefit of the people he cares the most about, people whose lives he’s directly responsible for.
You can see this in True Colors too when he reassures Darman about Fi’s injuries both verbally and physically (with his arm over the shoulder.) Apart from what he explicitly says, I think another part of him showing up right after Darman does twice is indicative of a good level of emotional perceptiveness on Niner’s part; he doesn’t want Darman to stay isolated and alone in the medbay, marinating in his fears and anxieties with none of his brothers around him, especially when they’ve done all that’s practical to do for Fi at the moment and there’s no other concrete action to take. There’s no way Niner isn’tworried about Fi and his prospects either, but he tries to be the person to reassure others and make sure they can get through this. Maybe he thinks that’s what Darman needs to hear, and it’s in line with Niner wanting to be a source of confidence for the rest of the squad, somebody they can always rely on for things like that.
When you say he has a hard time processing and talking about negative emotions relating to things outside of his control but still needs to talk about them, I think that’s an intersection of the Niner he sees it as his responsibility to outwardly be with the Niner who lost his original squad on Geonosis and, as a leader, is the one ultimately responsible for managing and dealing with uncertainty and things outside his control in a ‘the buck stops here’ kind of way. Geonosis was a clusterfuck with, what? 50% RC casualties? Not to mention intel that may have only been marginally better than whatever was on their version of Wikipedia. So Niner’s first operation was an introduction to what happens when there’s a lot of blank space on the map, and some of what’s filled in isn’t even correct to begin with. He’s well acquainted with uncertainty and things he can’t control, and the first time he really faced that, the call he made ended up with his brothers being killed.
So Niner has this big internal concept of the person he needs to be for Omega, and that’s why he doesn’t communicate as freely or easily about certain things and sometimes just comes out with certain kinds of comments. At times he also expresses frustration with leadership decisions and the management of the war, so while I think he definitely has Opinions™ that he trusts his brothers with but obviously wouldn’t voice in front of, say, Zey, comments like the one you noted at the beginning of Hard Contact also stand in for deeper worries like you said, just couched in professional-soldier-type commentary (which he would still have valid reason to make even without any deeper emotional reasons.)
In the scene you posted a screenshot of, what’s also interesting is that when Darman notices that Niner isn’t doing great, he explicitly approaches Niner as a concerned brother by using vod'ika, not Niner’s rank or anything else. That was a perceptive choice, this time from Darman, to subconsciously reassure Niner that he can talk about things that bother him, because he may be Omega’s NCO but he’s also their brother.
Niner is completely committed to the idea of bringing Omega through the war together to the point where that’s a major part of who he is and that’s what keeps him going. That’s why he’s so affronted by the idea that Sull can just walk away when nobody else can, and when doing so is tantamount to leaving behind his brothers and the people depending on him in literally life or death situations. It goes against the core of who he is and how he understands his duty to people, and when he brings up GAR procedure and regulations at the very beginning of the conversation that leads up to all this, I think that despite Niner being more on the Lawful side of things, he’s mostly defaulting to regs as a device he can use to push back on something that violates his principles deeply enough that we see him so genuinely angry that he breaks out a Mando ‘fuck you’ and has to walk away to stop himself from using some kinetic persuasion to get A’den to shut his mouth.
But he also decides not to turn Sull in, and I think a big part of that is because he sees how the others in Omega have made connections to a world outside of the very limited, brutal life assigned to them when Jango first signed on a dotted line somewhere. He’s drawing parallels between Sull and Darman, and that’s what precipitates this screenshotted conversation. Niner takes responsibility and duty very seriously, directly feeding into his feelings about abandonment and leaving people behind, but I think he may also be a little confused or conflicted by Darman (and Atin) having a girlfriend and Fi wanting much more out of life too, and Niner also wouldn’t want a better life to be taken away from any of them, knowing it’s something they may never get the chance to have.
His duty is inextricably linked to his abandonment fears. Without his brothers he has no duty. Niner doesn’t exist without them AND his role in relation to them — ? He’s been a sergeant probably nearly as long as he’s been alive.
This comes to a climax in Impcomm when Darman is the only one he has left. Darman is his whole world at that point. Niner wants to desert and start a new life at Kyrimorut, but I think he would die before leaving Darman behind. Niner is a pro at holding back his feelings and deflecting with duty, as you pointed out before. But sometimes they break through, like when he fought with Boss over his old squad. He was deflecting quite well again while trying to convince Darman to leave Coruscant with the Nulls. Problem was he couldn’t use duty to convince Darman to leave — Darman had his own perspective on what his duty was. Leaves me wondering if Niner had used a more honest, personal approach, Dar might have listened. (? Probably not? But worth thinking about.) Niner had (practically) stopped filling that role as Sergeant by that point in their relationship but he couldn’t let go of it in that moment. Thing was he needed Darman as much as Darman needed him. Saying so would have made it all too much to deal with.
Image ID: on left side standing, clone commando Darman in black armor holding a female Jedi in his arms. Female Jedi name Etain standing on a stool to be tall enough to share a kiss with Darman. On the right side squatting down , another clone commando name Fi holding a cup in hand looking at the couple.
Times have been tough I don’t want to go into too much detail, but one of my goals is to buy in all in one tablet and finish school but with how things are going at home, I could use the help. Thank you
