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Things would never be the same for Tech.
Agony slithered down his limbs, into his hands, into his fingers, and cascaded down into his soul. The pain is more than just physical. It’s more than just his body, his stomach, his spine, and his hands, it became his everything. The silent lover that he can never be apart from. It’s in his waking thoughts, his bedtime weariness, his daily routine, and it’s crushed down into every decision he makes, and every waking part of his life. His brothers may be free. Free from the shackles of an empire that took everything from them - their childhood, their innocence, their comfort, their joy, and twisted their livelihood into something that could be used for their gain—bred for war. A tool for destruction, doomed to a destiny of early death. In many ways, Tech never got that freedom. He never got that chance, and he isn’t free. He didn’t get that peaceful, or rather un-peaceful, moment of liberation that his brothers silently and secretly were relieved to have. The empire took everything from him. It stripped him bare, lying him still and cold on the battlefield, chest heaving with the effort of breath, blood quickly exiting his body. His faith in his brothers, and the empire they once stood for, shattered in a singular heartbeat. His faith left him sooner than the blood did.
His life was wrenched from himself, spinning out of control. There wasn’t a moment of relief. There wasn’t a moment of pause so he could breathe, collect his thoughts and feelings, and continue on. There wasn’t anything else he could do except move forward and be the trooper that he was always trained to be. Accept the pain. Move on. You deserve the pain. Move forward. The shattering reality that things would never be the same hit him almost as hard as the bullet did. His mind never stopped, unlike his body, which hit the ground with a force unrivaled by anything he’d ever felt before. The blood started immediately. The pain took longer to kick in.
Pain was the only thing he really felt now. It was the front focus of everything that existed in his life. Projects, people, emotions, dreams, and goals were all something that seemed to stay stuck in the past. They left him, truly left him, as he lay on the ship’s dining table, his brothers crowding around him, their frantic voices faint and muffled, as if 1,000ft deep underwater. His vision was blurred, and the only thing he could pick out was the fluorescent lights above him, streaked and blurred into shining stars that, had he been a weaker man, would have given him hope. Stars that continued to shine despite the situation he was in, but it was only his tired brain giving him the only excuse it could in order to make things feel better. Too bad he knew better than his brain. Too bad he knew that the chances of him surviving were low, and the chances of him coming out without significant damage were even lower. The room was muggy. His skin was pale, and the texture sweaty. His breaths left him in a flurry of quick heaving, hyperventilating, through the agony that seared his everything.
Shivers raked through his body, pushing more blood through the gaping wound in his stomach. With each beat of his heart, his life source diminished, as did his hope. They were wasting too much time. Had he been the one doing the operation, with his brilliant mind, vast knowledge, and steady hands, things would have already been done. Leave it to his brothers to panic. They could never shut their emotions off quite like he could. Logically, he knew that their state of panic came from seeing him nearly dead, as well as having Crosshair be the reason behind it all. Tech’s eyelids fluttered once, twice, and then shut, squeezing them as tight as he could, brow furrowing into an expression of anguish as he felt them truly begin to work on his gaping wound. Somewhere deep in his mind, he thought about how much of a mess he was leaving behind on his ship, and how much of a pain getting blood off of the durasteel would be. Somewhere even deeper, he wished that he had bled out quicker. The feeling of tweezers plunging into his intestines, the sharp metal stabbing its way along, attempting to locate the bullet that lodged itself into him was something unexplainable. Distantly, he heard a shrill, bone-chilling scream. He came to the conclusion that it must have been himself.
It had been almost a year since the incident, and remembering all the gritty details was something that happened often. He couldn’t ever forget the sound of his own screams, the smell of his own blood, and the feel of his intestines being ripped open. Most days he lay in bed or walked around in small circles in the Marauder, his head unable to be in the present moment. He could only handle small repairs now. Anything longer than 20 minutes, and fine motor function, he couldn’t handle. Holding his arms up for that long was agony. Every muscle in his body would tense in response to the pain, and he was stuck with it for weeks, unable to relax or get his body to unknot itself, and no amount of baths, massage, or medicine dulled the ache. The ache physically, or emotionally. There was never a reprieve. And now? He could no longer do what he loved.
Suffocating. His life no longer lived in the essence of freedom, or the effort for it. Stuck in the moment where things all went wrong, and stuck in a body that will never work the same. They say you only really live once, but when things like this happen, what becomes the motivation to live? It’s not the ideal of getting better. There is no getting better. No amount of bacta, band-aids or physical therapy could fix something like this. He’s broken. Unrepairable. The stifling consequences of actions that he didn’t make. The illusion of a happy ending for him and his brothers. Because at least they aren’t being hunted anymore, right? At least not by the Empire. They don’t care enough to come after them, but Crosshair sure did. It was Crosshair’s mission to end them and hunt them down to the ends of the earth.
As much as he tries, Tech is always going to be hunted. Not by the cursed Empire, or even necessarily by the determined sniper that was once part of their team but by the pain that surrounds his life every second, every minute, every hour of every day, awake or asleep. His dreams are haunted by the feeling and thought of the one moment that ruined everything.
How he should have ducked lower so that the shot hit his armor. How he should have retreated quicker, so Crosshair wouldn’t have had time to get the shot. How Crosshair’s chip activated, while the rest of the Batch’s remained dormant. How the chips existed in the first place. How the Kaminoans, senators, Jedi, and civilians alike regarded the Clones as nothing. How they all turned a blind eye to the blatant corruption, child abuse, and grooming that occurred within the Republic that raised good men to be even better killers. How the armor they received was more of a visual trick because the plastoid didn’t protect them from much. Certainly not from blaster bolts, and certainly not from themselves. How the conditioning they went through should have prepared him better for this moment and this outcome.
He should have steeled himself for a gruesome end like this. But when you’re part of a squad that has a 100% success rate and dodging death is a daily, you tend to lose some of the fear that comes along with battle, They weren’t shinies anymore. They were experienced. They should have known better. Fear is a healthy thing to have in war. A sense of invincibility shrouds the mind and gives a false sense of confidence. He regrets that now. He never realized how much he had taken for granted. All the little things that he wouldn’t have thought twice about are now the struggle that plagued his every movement. It consumes and consumes and consumes. It’s never-ending, thrumming with him in every heartbeat. The heartbeat that keeps going despite every other part of himself that wishes it would all just stop (please stop, please, please, please). The heartbeat that wishes things could be different.
Things would never be the same for Tech.