#poor shaeeah has no idea shes dredging up crippling trauma

[nobody-expects-the-inquisitorius]

The children have scars too, Crosshair realises, and wishes he could un-realise it an instant later. Scars from rocks, and misjudged leaps, and deceptively sturdy-looking low branches. Accidents. The kind that they’d be disappointed to see fade. Their scars are a memento of adventure, a prop for storytelling. Like the one that Shaeeah has on her right knee from pitching headlong down a hillock in pursuit of a nuna, as she had told him in great detail no less than three times (once over breakfast, a second time after realising he hadn’t been listening to a word of it, and a third just for the sake of it). And Crosshair had tightened his jaw, and made a vague noise of acknowledgement, and triple-checked that his collar was pulled up high enough over his neck. 

She wouldn’t be smiling quite so bright if she could see just what he had to hide. And as much as it stings him to think of letting his secrets loose, a part of him wants her to see the horror, wants to wipe that stupid grin off her little face. CT-9904 had never been afforded the luxury to smile like that. 

It’s not their fault. 

That’s what the others would tell him. That’s what he’s sure Suu’s thinking, behind the unreadable glances that she casts him every time his nails bite into his palms as her daughter chatters. Not their fault. They don’t know of the labyrinth that lurks beneath carefully positioned fabric, the phantom craters of needles that he can still feel the sting of, latticed slashes of a surgeon’s blade branded onto a body that would never truly be his. 

It’s not my fucking fault either.

#🎶IIIIIIIIIII'M BACK ON MY BULLSHIT🎶 #not gonna publish the thing this is from for a while but anyways i love this passage #SEE #SEE HOW HE CALLS HIMSELF CT-9904 WHEN HE’S THINKING ABOUT HIS CHILDHOOD #BECAUSE ONE OF THE BIGGEST REASONS HE HATES HIS SCARS SO BADLY IS BECAUSE THEY’RE A SYMBOL OF KAMINOAN OWNERSHIP #this was so much fun to write i’m buzzing #i love making crosshair’s voice bleed into my writing style #free indirect discourse babyyyyyy #sorry gl i point blank refuse to use kriff for serious moments #best bit is where he just straight up goes hmmmm. i could traumatise this kid for life and show him exactly what the longnecks did to me bu #he’s not an angel and that’s why i love him #he’s VINDICTIVE #and everybody around him has to suffer for that because he can’t take it out on the kaminoans themselves #even the little kid who just wanted to show him a cool scar #(i did that to people all the time btw) #poor shaeeah has no idea shes dredging up crippling trauma #wip #tbb crosshair #the bad batch #tbb