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weyrwolfen · 6 months

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Eidola: Chapter 17 - CT-25-9102 Sketch

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Clone Trooper OCs, Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, and other canon members of the 501st/332nd

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm, injuries, and substance abuse; PTSD; it’s post-Order 66 and nobody is having a good time (but they’re all working on it)

Summary: The mission was never to bring down the Empire. Not really. The mission was to save every single one of their chipped brothers. But if doing do helped break the Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy? Well, that was just a bonus.

“Sketch! Sketch!”

Sketch, who’d been walking down the Scythe’s ramp, overfilled rucksack dragging at his sore shoulders, looked up to see Pry running full-tilt across the hanger bay, grinning like a loon. The other Reapers had stopped whatever they were doing to watch Pry’s progress, no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about.

“What?” Sketch called back, nudging the brother in front of him, Knots, to try to get him to start moving again.

“The bacta everybody brought back from Wadj was enough,” Pry gasped as he skidded to a stop at the edge of the ramp, panting like he’d just outrun a pack of commando droids. “The Captain’s lifting the rationing.”

Oh! Well, maybe that was news worth sprinting across base to deliver. “Does Canvas know?” Sketch asked, grinning wide enough to match Pry’s ebullient expression.

“He’s taken over one of the empty bunks. Come on!”

“I thought they were blue.”

“They were, but they were green before that.”

“How does that even work?”

“No idea. Some kind of Force osik.”

“What’re you thinking about getting?” That last question came from Pry, distractingly close to Sketch’s ear.

Sketch looked up from his flimsipad and found Pry peeking over his shoulder. They were both sitting on the floor, outside of the room Canvas had commandeered. It was in the section of the residential floors that had been given over to natborns and brothers with natborn families, but most all of them had already shipped out to Wadj, leaving the smaller, private rooms temporarily unclaimed. Sketch assumed that wouldn’t last for long, not with all the new Mandos arriving on base, but for now, this part of the base should be safe enough. Besides, Weaver had apparently signed off on the whole thing, so it wasn’t like anyone with any authority was going to come tell them they had to move.

Nano was inside with Canvas now, which meant that it was Sketch’s turn next. He had a lot of ideas, designs he’d been working on for ages, but he needed to choose one. Just one, to start. The rest could come later.

The brothers behind Sketch and Pry in line – Midge, Rancor, Vista, and a freshly cleared brother from the latest rescued batch whose name Sketch hadn’t caught quite yet – kept up their conversation in the background.

Sketch was only half-listening, letting their words wash over him, but Pry was still waiting for an answer, so he finally admitted, “I’m having some trouble deciding.”

“I heard Vader did it. Changed them,” the conversation continued, further down the hall.

“You’re serious.”

“Yeah. I mean, he wasn’t Vader then. It was before.”

“Huh. That’s karked up.”

“Understatement.”

Pry was eyeing the page in Sketch’s book. “That one would be pretty wizard,” he said, pointing at one of the smaller doodles in the lower, lefthand corner of the page. It was a drawing of a chipped stone knife, cutting edge crude and scalloped, with a handle wrapped in intricately-knotted cording.

In the second year of the war, Sketch had been stationed on a moon so remote it didn’t even have a formal name, just a number. XR-33-419 had been pretty boring, in all honesty. They’d been tasked with guarding a small base with a stockpile of supplies nobody had seemed interested in either deploying or stealing. It had been nice at first. He could draw whenever he wanted, and nobody was actively shooting at him, but after a while, the boredom had started getting to him.

Their CO, Sergeant Ellis, had been stationed there since the beginning of the war. Nobody knew who he’d pissed off, to get stuck with such a jerkwater assignment for so long. Sketch had liked him well enough, but he had to admit that their CO had come across as more than a little weird. The Sergeant had cultivated all sorts of obscure hobbies he’d picked up from watching holonet videos on a contraband datapad.

One of them was chipping primitive stone tools out of the surrounding volcanic rocks. Sketch hadn’t really seen the appeal at first, but after a while, he’d gotten bored enough with endless, uneventful patrols to give it a try. He’d never quite gotten the hang of it. The Sergeant had never stopped trying to teach Sketch, had actually been way more patient than Sketch himself had been, the couple of times brothers had asked him to teach them how to draw.

In the end, Sergeant Ellis had ended up making so many blades during those doomed demonstrations that he’d started handing them out to the other brothers on base. Sketch had carried his for the rest of the war, even after he’d been transferred back into a front-line battalion. It had even gotten him out of a tight spot once, when he’d been grabbed by one of the giant, semi-sentient plants on Felucia. Apparently, if you knew how to work it correctly, natural volcanic glass could be pretty kriffing sharp.

Force only knew where that knife was now. He had no memory of what he’d done with it, once his chip had activated. Probably chucked it in a trash receptacle somewhere, seeing as how it had been decidedly non-regulation.

He also didn’t know what had happened to Sergeant Ellis. He’d asked some of his brothers in the control center to check, but they’d never found anything. The designation number he’d known had been attached to a brother who’d died at the First Battle of Geonosis.

Maybe Sketch had remembered the number wrong.

Maybe the Sergeant was still stationed on XR-33-419, making his rock knives, except apparently Sketch had remembered the moon’s stupid designation incorrectly too. They couldn’t find any record of the place.

Maybe Sketch had knocked more than a few screws loose, during the chip or after. Maybe none of that had ever happened.

Kriff, he was going to have to sit down and chat with Sling again, wasn’t he?

“Yeah,” he’d said to Pry noncommittally, not wanting to talk about it. He flipped to the next page in his book.

Their brothers continued their conversation, which seemed to be annoying Pry, assuming Sketch was interpreting the glower his brother threw over his shoulder correctly. “So, now they’re green again.”

“Obviously.”

“Okay, but why are they green?”

“Maybe she changed them back?”

“How does that even work?”

“I don’t know. Whatever he did to them, but in reverse?”

“I’m going to get Commander Tano’s markings on my shoulder,” Pry finally said, turning his attention back to Sketch’s book. Some of the art wasn’t really appropriate for Canvas to use, detailed studies of ships or buildings or people Sketch had seen, so he flipped past those pages quickly. “Maybe in 44th silver? I think Canvas said the machine they found can do the fancy metallic stuff.”

Pry’s plan wasn’t exactly surprising, especially now that the Commander had given everyone her blessing to use her markings as a semi-official symbol of their operation. Or at least that was what Jesse had said on the flight back from Wadj.

Sketch had come up with a couple of designs incorporating her mirrored marks too, but he wasn’t happy with any of them just yet. It felt wrong, to only credit her for their work here and not the Captain, but referencing Rex was a little harder to pin down, graphically speaking. There were his jaig eyes, of course, but those had a kind of cultural weight Sketch wasn’t comfortable claiming for his own. Not without doing something to actually earn them. He’d been playing around with incorporating a pair of DC-17s, but it was all very much a work in progress.

But Pry’s comment about metallic inks did give him an idea. Sketch turned a couple more pages, looking for another half-completed design he’d been playing with, off and on, for weeks.

It didn’t take long to find it: a pair of crossed scythes, shorter-bladed and longer-handled than the purely agricultural variant. He’d first seen them on the belts of some local farmers on a few of the Mid-Rim agriworlds. That style of blade had apparently worked just as well on grain as pirates, and Sketch had figured they’d make just about the perfect symbol for the Reapers.

He’d only mentioned it to a couple of the others, but they’d all like it. Feathers had been enthusiastic enough that he’d insisted on renaming their ship. Sketch was supposed to float the design past Jesse and Ridge for approval, whenever he got around to finishing it.

He hadn’t realized they’d be able to get metallic tattoos. It got him thinking about the design again.

Maybe if he added a couple mirrored slashes, near where the handles crossed. That would be kind of reminiscent of the Captain’s jaig eyes without actually being them, and adding in the top half of the commander’s markings above that sort of filled in the visual dead space nicely. Oh, and he could continue her paired lines below the crossed scythes too. Now that was an idea…

The door next to Sketch swished open and Nano stepped out, a bacta patch peeking out from under the high collar of his blacks on the side of his neck. “You’re up,” he said, smiling down at Sketch, who was still sitting on the floor.

Osik! Maybe he’d have time to rough out the design for Canvas? He’d heard something about sanitizing the equipment in between uses. Or maybe he should just stick with one of his other designs, so he could finish working up this one?

“What does it feel like?” Pry asked while Sketch started to push himself to his feet, turning the question around and around in his head.

“It tingled some,” Nano admitted, starting to reach up to maybe rub at his neck, but he arrested the gesture before he’d actually made contact. “The improvised stuff we had on the Fearless used needles instead of lasers and stung a whole lot more.”

That was interesting. In the privacy of his own mind, Sketch could confess that he hadn’t realized there would be a difference. He bent over to pick up his helmet.

“Quartz said they used to be two different greens. Like, regular green and kind of yellow green.”

“Shouldn’t they have matched? I thought the colors meant something. You know, like spiritually.”

“I don’t think they do.”

“I mean, red means something pretty kriffing specific.”

“Yeah, okay fair. But I think that’s an exception.”

“Sith-flavored Force osik.”

“Exactly.”

“I swear some of the 91st said purple meant something about balance.”

“She got new crystals,” Pry said loudly, interrupting the ongoing debate which had continued, unabated, further down the line in the hallway. “She went into that Force temple and brought out a big chunk of kyber. So did everyone else on that–”

Sketch, who’d actually heard all of that straight from Jesse, didn’t stick around to listen to the rest. He just stepped into Canvas’s improvised studio and let the door whisk shut behind him, muffling the rest of Pry’s lecture.

Canvas looked up from whatever he’d been doing to the device in his hands, the intricate, geometric lines of his own facial tattoos crinkling at the corners of both eyes. “Got a design ready for me?”

“Uh, more like too many designs, and I’m leaning towards one I haven’t even finished,” Sketch admitted awkwardly.

“Well, let me take a look,” Canvas said, gesturing for Sketch to sit down on the stool next to him. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

The bacta patch pulled at the skin across the back of Sketch’s neck and down onto his upper back. It itched, but beneath his armor, there wasn’t a kriffing thing he could do about that right now. Honestly, he should have taken the stupid thing off hours ago, but he’d gotten a little waylaid.

The Martez sisters had arrived earlier in the shift to drop off their latest shipment and pick up the gold-plated pleasure craft which had been junking up the base’s exterior. Apparently there’d been some kind of haggling to be done with the chop shop owner who’d agreed to take the thing, because while he was very much in favor of earning credits and sabotaging slavers, the craft itself was well-enough known in certain circles to be a liability if it was recognized. Also, there’d been news of some sort, way too sensitive to discuss out in the hanger, amongst the rank and file. Commander Tano, Captain Rex, and both of their remaining Corries had disappeared off with the sisters to deal with whatever that situation was shaping up to be.

And that had left the hanger bay unusually light on clones this shift.

Which was bad news for Sketch, because firstly, he’d been saddled with doing an inventory of everything the Martezes had delivered, and secondly, one of the Mandalorians had cornered him in a dead end made by the walls of newly delivered crates.

Granted, she was a very small Mandalorian, but still.

“Do clones take foundlings?” the girl was asking, all sharp, bright-eyed curiosity.

“Uh…” Sketch said, sounding like a complete idiot, but in all fairness, he was kind of panicking on the inside. He wasn’t entirely sure what a ‘foundling’ was, but he was absolutely sure that Weaver would skin him as a warning to their other brothers if he did something to offend their guests. “What’s a foundling?”

The girl looked at him like he’d lost his mind. She was a tiny little thing, maybe three or four years old if Sketch guessed right. Or, what, seven or so, given that she was a natborn? In any case, she was wearing barely any armor, just a couple bracers and one spaulder over a utilitarian, blue-gray jumpsuit. It’d be cute, if she had been one of Sketch’s younger siblings.

But she wasn’t.

“Like, kids who don’t have any clan to take care of them, so an adult takes them in?” the kid said, sounding like it was entirely possible that Sketch was the stupidest sentient she’d ever had the misfortune of meeting.

“Uh, yes?” Sketch said, because that sounded like half a dozen examples on base, where clones had adopted natborn kids.

“Hmm,” the kid said consideringly, like he’d said something far more interesting that Sketch thought he had. “Do you have an Armorer? Because Lira says you do, but Rian says you don’t, because plastoid doesn’t count.”

Kriff, kriff, kriff. He had a better idea of what the kid meant by that, beyond the obvious. Armorers were like religious leaders, or something. Ori had sent around a memo, once a couple weird interactions had started going down between the Mandalorians and Buckler’s team.

Sketch punched a button on his vambrace, again, hoping someone on his squad would see his distress signal and come save him. He didn’t even care that this obviously wasn’t a combat situation. He needed kriffing exfil before he accidentally started some kind of diplomatic incident because he couldn’t figure out how to escape from a kriffing natborn kid without offending her, her natborn parents, who really should be watching their kid better, and whoever else fell in this cadet’s direct chain of command.

His brothers weren’t ever going to let him hear the end of this.

At the moment, Sketch didn’t really care. He didn’t see another way out, short of shoulder-checking the kid out of the way. She was planted right in the middle of his only exit, which was a complete shiny mistake on his part, except this was his base, his home, and he shouldn’t be getting ambushed by tiny Mandalorians here anyway.

“We have brothers who make our armor,” he hedged, taking another step backwards, but he was hemmed in on all sides by crates from the Silver Angel.

“Do you speak Mando’a?” the kid asked, crossing her arms across her chest and glaring at Sketch significantly.

Yes, yes Sketch did, a little. A very, very little. And he wasn’t about to demonstrate any of the words he used most often in front of a political timebomb of a natborn child who he absolutely could not offend.

“Sora! Where did you get to?” another voice cut in, and maybe that might have made Sketch relax a little if he’d recognized them, but he didn’t.

The kid’s face scrunched up, like she very badly wanted to stomp her foot or throw some other kind of tantrum, but she did turn halfway around and reply, “I’m over here!”

The voice’s owner appeared at the end of the row of crates, and of course it was another Mandalorian, except this one was an adult woman, fully-armored in green and blue plate. “I told you not to leave the ship!” she said, storming down the aisle between the crates, headed straight for the kid.

Headed straight for Sketch.

The back of his cuirass clacked against the crates as he took another involuntary step backwards.

A voice, which sounded an awful lot like Sling, was saying in the back of Sketch’s head, ‘Breathe. You’re safe. Just breathe with me.’

Sketch breathed, or tried to, as the Mandalorian woman stomped closer.

He hated this. He hadn’t been like this before. General Talmani had been kind. The natborn officers on the Synchronicity had been professional. Most of the civilians he’d interacted with had been fine. Some had even been nice.

But then his chip had activated, and then the nature of his interactions with natborns had taken a definite turn.

You’re safe. Breathe. You do not answer to them. They haven’t done anything, and if they do, you have the right to defend yourself now. Just breathe.

Kark every last square centimeter of all of this. He was not going to have his first panic attack in a kriffing year because he’d let himself get cornered by an overly-curious if overbearing natborn child and her parent? Sibling? Guardian?

Didn’t matter. She could be Lady Kryze herself, and she still wouldn’t be in Sketch’s chain of command. He was safe. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

He must have fuzzed out for a second, because it took him a minute to realize that the Mandalorian woman was lecturing the kid, not him. Unless he was really misjudging the angle of her helmet’s T-visor, she wasn’t even looking at him.

“… going to apologize to him. Right now,” she was saying, sounding very annoyed.

Which, what? That seemed like a trap.

“That’s not necessary, ma’am,” he found himself saying mechanically.

Both of the Mandalorians were looking at him now. The kid was pouting, and the adult’s helmet was tipped to one side at an angle Sketch might have called ‘assessing’ if he’d seen it on one of his brothers.

The datapad in Sketch’s hands was starting to creak in protest of how hard he was gripping it.

After a very long, very awkward silence, the woman reached up to remove her helmet, revealing what was, in all fairness, a very attractive, seemingly human face. Close-cropped brown hair, high cheekbones, rich brown eyes, and lips that seemed more prone to smiles than their current, small frown.

Sketch didn’t relax even a little, still every bit as tripwire tense as he’d been since the woman had first appeared.

She opened her mouth to say something, but the sound of heavy boot treads behind her drew her attention instead.

The choking, smothering feeling of panic loosened its hold inside Sketch’s chest when he saw the Republic cog on his brother’s helmet.

Jesse.

Thank kriff. Jesse would know how to handle this.

“What seems to be the problem?” Jesse said, sounding perfectly cordial. His stance was anything but.

Sketch didn’t miss the way the woman angled herself, where the slightest twist would put her armored body in between the child and either one of the troopers who were now surrounding her, but her voice sounded utterly calm, even casual when she said, “I’m afraid my little sister cornered one of your troopers with, I’m sure, a large number of highly nosy questions. For which she was just about to apologize.”

The child’s pout intensified, but she did look up at Sketch and mumble, “Sorry.”

Sketch jerked a small nod. “No harm done, ma’am,” he said in the same mechanical tone.

If anything, that made Jesse’s posture go even more tense, but none of that was obvious in his voice when he said, “That’s good to hear. Brother, could you join me?”

Something occurred to the woman then. Unhappy surprise flashed across her features before her eyes shuttered. She put a hand on her sister’s shoulder and turned, backing them both against the long line of crates, opening an obvious escape route for Sketch.

One foot in front of the next, measured and perfect. Above reproach. He even managed a marginal nod, conveying appropriate gratitude as he passed the two Mandalorians. He hated to give them his back, but Jesse was here. His brother, his team leader was here, watching over the situation. Sketch was safe enough, with an ARC as his backup.

When he got in range, Jesse took him by the elbow, his gloved and gauntleted hand solid and grounding.

Sketch took a shaky breath in the privacy of his own helmet.

“I hear you’ve finally come up with a design for a Reaper logo,” Jesse said as they started walking swiftly away, still sounding supremely casual. Sketch was grateful for the distraction.

The Mandalorians weren’t following them. Sketch looked back to check.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, sounding humiliatingly unsteady. “Canvas just finished up the coloring earlier this shift.”

“I hear he does good work,” Jesse said, steering them both towards the bay’s side door rather than the main exit. That led towards the medics’ area rather than the main part of the base, which wasn’t exactly surprising. Sketch didn’t have it in him to protest. He was having a bad reaction, way out of proportion with the severity of the actual situation. He knew that. Knowing didn’t make his heart stop pounding though. “We’ll have to compare notes, after you chat with Kix.”

Kriff, that was right. Kix had accompanied them back from Wadj. It was looking like their Reaper team had picked up a dedicated medic. Kind of a step down from being the functional CMO of their little operation, but Kix had insisted. Jesse certainly wasn’t about to tell his closest brother no, and apparently, neither were his former COs.

Sketch still winced a little. Kix could be kind of intense. “I was going to talk to Sling,” he said, sounding as sulky as the kid had.

Something about that seemed to amuse Jesse, given the angle of his bucket. “You can do that too, but you’re still seeing Kix.”

Kark.

Jesse liked the tattoo. So did all of the others.

Canvas had some kind of personal rule about not copying the same tattoos between brothers without explicit permission, but Sketch was happy to share. That was sort of the whole point of the design, after all.

Smaller versions showed up on Quartz’s shoulder and Mirror’s chest. List added a version to his armor. Feathers wanted Sketch to paint a bigger version on the side of the Scythe. Apparently some of Ridge’s team had gotten wind of it too, not that Sketch had seen what they’d done yet.

Kix surprisingly hadn’t insisted on benching Sketch, but it didn’t escape anyone’s attention that Sketch was always assigned a partner, when he was given any task which might bring him into contact with the Mandalorians on base. He might have protested being coddled like that if it hadn’t been such a relief.

When word of their next mission came down, a major raid on some kind of independent pirate enclave, Kix still didn’t flag Sketch’s file.

When pressed, their way-too-senior team medic had sourly pointed out that Sketch had proven time and again that he was perfectly capable of keeping it together when his mission involved shooting natborns. He just couldn’t kriffing talk to them.

“It’s not ideal, but what is these days?” Kix had said, which was abrasive as all kriff, but also weirdly comforting. If Sketch was a basket case, then at least he was in good company.

For an osik’la, independent pirate base on the shebs-end of Mandalorian space, their target apparently had some unexpected perimeter defenses.

“Hold on!” Feathers yelled over the ship’s comms even as the ship swerved to miss… whatever the kriff had just hit them. Not a missile. Missiles didn’t clang against the hull like that and not explode. Not unless something had gone badly wrong with their internal mechanisms, and clones just didn’t get that lucky.

They were already in atmo, which was a karking good thing, because all of them could hear the whistling howl of air ripping across a new hole somewhere in the ship. Whatever had happened had better not have cut across the Scythe’s new nose art. Sketch had worked hard getting it just right.

His absurdly misplaced priorities almost made him laugh out loud, but he knew it would come out sounding a little hysterical, so he swallowed the reaction back down.

On the other hand, they were already in atmo, which also meant that Dive’s rapid, irregular maneuvers were hitting Sketch’s stomach in a way they just didn’t in zero-G. He had a pretty solid stomach, as such things went, but there were limits. Oof.

“Coming in hot!” Feathers shouted again, which was the only warning any of them got before

the ship rolled to one side, dropped abruptly, and impacted the ground, metal screaming in protest as they skidded across whatever surface Feathers had picked as his emergency landing area.

Sketch must have hit his head, or something, because the next thing he knew, he was staggering out of the half-deployed loading ramp, blaster rifle in hand. The ship was tilted at an awkward angle, wedged up against a wall and listing over what looked like a drain culvert for a massively polluted stream. There was a Kom’rk fighter downed on the other side of the courtyard, burning ferociously and bristling with what looked like four giant, metal spears.

What the kriff? Is that what had been hitting them?

His vision swam a little when he jumped down to the flagstones, staggering to get into formation behind Jesse and the others. Definitely a head injury then. Great.

The only good news was that the base’s defenses got a whole lot squishier now that they were past the automated aerial systems. Pirates were, on the whole, a sloppy, undisciplined lot; and this group was shaping up to fit with that pattern.

Didn’t mean the whole mission went off without a hitch though.

Sketch was starting to feel pretty rough, maybe thirty minutes later when Jesse’s Reapers had reached the base’s large mess hall or cantina. Whatever was served here, alcohol was clearly a major component of it, given the round bar area which dominated the center of the room. Quad’s Raiders had already cleared the space, so the room should have been clear. This should have been mop-up, on the way to back up Ridge’s team, who had run into some pockets of resistance in the base’s brig.

Sketch’s vision was getting worse by the second, and his head was starting to pound, but he just happened to be angled the right direction to see the scrawny weequay peek over the edge of the bar.

A lot of things happened in very rapid succession.

Sketch shouted out a warning.

The weequay pointed something at Torque. It wasn’t a blaster, or at least it wasn’t any model Sketch recognized, but it was clearly some kind of projectile weapon.

His brothers swung around, pivoting their blasters towards the perceived threat.

Torque was raising his blaster too, but he wasn’t going to get it up in time.

Sketch was already moving, throwing himself at his brother.

A shot rang out, a loud crack instead of a sharp sizzle.

Something slammed into Sketch’s back, right as he collided with Torque.

The two of them went down in a heap.

Rings of blue light, stunning blasts in preparation for the possibility of civilians on base, flew over Sketch’s head, in the direction of the bar.

Sketch rolled off of Torque, trying to get his own blaster up, even from this awkward position. Nothing hurt, but something was definitely wrong. His arm wasn’t working right.

Oh.

Oh wait.

Now he hurt.

Right, because shock was still a thing.

There was a lot of shouting happening, but Sketch was having trouble following most of it, especially when Kix appeared in his field of vision and started tearing at the releases on his cuirass.

The inside of his chest plate, as Kix lifted it away, was red. That wasn’t right.

“Slug thrower,” Kix barked to somebody off to Sketch’s left. “Hold still,” he said, obviously to Sketch himself.

Sketch wanted to say something, maybe a joking, ‘Sir, yes sir,’ but all he managed to do was half-raise one hand. To do what, exactly, he wasn’t sure. Everything was hurting now.

Kix pulled something out of his belt, tugged the high collar of Sketch’s blacks down, and jabbed something into the side of his neck.

It was cold.

Everything went dark.

Waking up was a process.

Sketch’s head felt like it was stuffed with fluff. He was lying on his front, face pressed into a soft surface. It was unreasonably comfortable. Maybe he didn’t need to wake up just yet.

The next time he drifted back towards consciousness, he heard voices nearby.

“… Commander’s great,” someone was slurring. A brother. “’S her marks, see? Sort of. She lets us wear ‘em.”

“Is that so?” another voice asked, and even though it sounded soft and kind, it decidedly wasn’t a brother.

Sketch tensed, and something started beeping. He was still face-down on a cot, he couldn’t see what was going on. He tried to push himself up, needing to see where he was, needing to assess the current threat, when a hand landed in the middle of his back.

“Yeah, no,” another brother, apparently the hand’s owner, said. “You’re not going anywhere.” His tone was sharp, but the hand on Sketch’s back was gentle, even as it inexorably pressed him back down. “Mirror, I’m gonna need you to stop talking.”

“Sure thing, Kix,” Sketch’s brother, Mirror, said, still sounding very drugged.

Kix. Their medic. The medic.

Kriff, Sketch had been injured, hadn’t he? It was hard to remember.

The weight of Kix’s hand disappeared from Sketch’s back and the beeping sound stopped abruptly. “Mel, could you go check on Chat and Rico?” the medic asked, but the tone of voice made it very obvious to everyone that it wasn’t really a request.

“Of course,” the natborn, this ‘Mel,’ said. Sketch could hear footsteps retreating and a door opening and closing.

“Come on back down, Sketch,” Kix said, hand returning to the back of Sketch’s neck, heavy and grounding. “It’s just Mirror and me in here with you now.”

Okay. Okay, that was good.

“What happened?” Sketch mumbled into his… pillow? It was thicker than the ones he was used to. Softer.

“You got shot in the back,” Kix said dryly. “The slug just missed your subclavian artery, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. Don’t worry, we managed to dig it out and patch you back together well enough.”

The haze of the lingering drugs was fading just enough that Sketch was able to think through that information, at least a little. “Who’s ‘we’?” he asked. He didn’t think they’d brought any other medics on this mission. Maybe Kipp? He’d been training with the real medics lately, hadn’t he?

Kix was silent for a long moment, but he did answer when Sketch managed to turn his head to look up at his brother. “Mel has medical training,” he admitted, expression very serious. “You were never alone with them. I promise.”

Sketch couldn’t help the shudder that inched up his spine.

“Right,” he said, brain sluggishly working through the implications. At the moment, Kix was here, and that was enough. Sketch let himself relax, just a little.

Now that he’d had his attention drawn to it, he could feel the bandage across his upper back and shoulders. That… wasn’t great.

“Did it mess up my tattoo?” he asked, because that would be just about typical. He’d only just gotten the kriffing thing.

Kix snorted. “Nothing Canvas won’t be able to fix,” he said, sounding more than a little sardonic. “And we took the base, by the way.”

Right. The base. Yeah, that was probably a little more important. “Casualties?”

“Light, all things considered. Kryze’s people got the worst of it,” Kix admitted. “But we can go over that later, when you’re more likely to remember the conversation.”

“Yeah,” Sketch said, rolling his face back into the pillow. He was feeling awfully groggy again. “Okay.”

“I need to go check on my other patients,” Kix said, almost sounding apologetic, but he huffed a small laugh when Sketch managed to flap one hand in permission or agreement or something. “If you need anything, tell Mirror to call me.”

“S’that mean I can talk again?” Mirror asked, still sounding at least twice as out of it as Sketch felt. And he was getting sleepier by the second.

“Yeah, I guess it does,” Kix said with an audible sigh. “Try not to talk Sketch’s ear off though. He could use some more sleep.”

Wasn’t that the truth?

The admonition didn’t slow Mirror down for long though. Kix had barely left when he said, “Mel’s alright. The pirates apparently bought them off some Hutts. I know you’ve got issues with…” he paused, apparently recognizing that he was verging into dangerous territory, even in his highly drugged state. “Uh, the point is, they’re one of the good ones.”

Sketch wasn’t in the mood to unpack any of that. “What’d Kix give you?” he asked instead, because even in his own drugged state, he still wasn’t half as karked up as Mirror sounded.

“Dunno, Kix said they’d burned through the regular stuff on you and some of the Mandos,” Mirror said cheerfully. “I got some of the good osik from the pirates’ supplies.”

“Lucky,” Sketch grumbled into his pillow.

“But seriously, you don’t have to worry about Mel.”

Sketch didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer. If he thought about it too much, he was going to tense up all over again, and what he really wanted was sleep.

“They liked your tattoo design,” Mirror tried again, sounding almost hopeful.

That… wasn’t actually very comforting, but Sketch was having trouble pinning down why exactly. Other than his blanket aversion to natborns he didn’t know.

“Going to try to sleep some more,” he mumbled, hoping Mirror would take the hint.

“Right, you do that,” Mirror said cheerfully. “I’ve got the watch.”

That also wasn’t half as comforting as Mirror clearly meant for it to be.

AN: Apologies for the delay with this one. This chapter fought me tooth and nail. I did write a little vignette in the interim, just to try to kick myself out of wy writing funk though. It's called Lazarus and it's from Rex's POV during Echo's rescue on Skako Minor, in case you're interested.

I know that canonically there is already a clone named Sketch. I remembered him pretty early on while writing this chapter, but the other names I tried out just didn't fit. So no, they're not the same person, but also meh, my guess is in an army of millions, there are at least a few clones running around with duplicate names.

Other chapters are available here.

Dividers by freesia-writes using helmets by lornaka. More designs available here.

#eidola tcw fanfic #star wars #tcw #clone wars #the clone wars #star wars the clone wars #tcw fanfic #clone wars fanfic #the clone wars fanfic #star wars the clone wars fanfic #clone troopers #original clone trooper

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