#i’m OBSESSED with the insane large smile and the blood oozing out of the the stitches + HOLDING THE SKIN??? MHMMMMMM

[gothsuguru]

@rinachains

2 more days till we close shop!

[letitrainathousandflames-archive]

And It Echoes

Rating: Mature

Warnings: medical horror, torture, violence, blood, mutilation (tagging it like this to be safe - it is a darker fic)

Characters: ARC-0408 | Echo, CT-7567 | Rex,  ARC-5555 | Fives (mentioned)

Additional Tags: Echo didn’t die did he? :)) of course not :))) and why again this isn’t exactly good? :)))))

He needed to secure the shuttle for them. For once, Fives was the one to scream for him not to go. For once, Fives obeyed protocol. But Echo needed to secure that shuttle. It was their only way out, and those clankers would explode it if he didn’t do something.

The gunfire was deafening. Echo keept shooting at any clanker on sight. He aimed at that metallic little bastard at the cannon. If he got that shot right, everything would be fine. He  fired several times against the droid, but the thick plating of the tank held any damage he’d try to inflict. The canon turned it’s aim towards the shuttle, towards Echo. He drew in a deep breath.

Fives… Brother…

The impact of the blast knocked Echo back into the shuttle with such violence his helmet slipped out of his head; his body hit the back wall hard, so hard all the air left his lungs as the explosion rang in his ears loud enough for him to believe he’d never hear anything again. There was pain, and then, suddenly there was darkness.

Echo woke up in so much pain he thought he was dead. Even if he wasn’t, he was sure he was dying. He heard the faint voice of a droid. Everything sounded distant, as if he were underwater. The blast must’ve really damaged his hearing.

“…won’t survive, boss.”

Then he heard an equally metallic-sounding voice but deeper; a voice that carried a certain darkness within itself. He’d heard that voice in person only once, in a mission with general Skywalker, but he’d heard it many times in transmissions and datapads. That was General Grievous:

“I survived with less. He will make it. Prep him for surgery and get rid of these meat stumps before they get infected. We need this clone alive.”

“Roger roger.”

Echo tried to talk, but it was like his tongue was made of lead. Everything hurt so much. He opened his eyes, flinching at the bright white light coming from the ceiling and he blinked a few times to adjust his sight. Clankers all around him, plus two… No, three medical droids. What was going on? Had he been captured? But why would the enemy be concerned about a clone’s health? Why was he still alive?

He tried to piece everything together in his head. There had been the ambush, and the shuttle, and then an explosion, bright like a sun and almost as hot. There had been the taste of blood in his mouth, and the flames all around him…

Echo tried to move his arm, but agony ran all over his body and he gasped at the pain. He could feel straps restraining him to the table, over his chest and torso. In an effort that had almost made him faint again at the pain, he lifted his head up to see the extent of the damage he’d sustained at the blast. Breathing was very painful, and he believed at least two of his ribs to be broken.

When his gaze fell on the bloody, mutilated stump of his right arm, he gasped and his eyes went wide. His breathing grew ragged, and he coughed on his own spit. He looked further, at his kicking legs—No. There were… There were no legs. He could feel himself kicking but… His right leg had been crushed into a nauseating sight of exposed bones, scorched flesh and blood, while his left one… there was nothing below the knee.

Echo’s head fell back violently against the table, a ragged scream ripping through his throat into a long, horrifying sound. He trashed and screamed, no matter how much it would hurt him even further. That was a nightmare, had to be… He should be back at the GAR with Fives, should be safe, not with these goddamn clankers, mutilated and almost dead. It couldn’t be real. No.

Four large metallic fingers held his head down in place, and the upside-down vision of Grievous’ yellow eyes came into sight, adding to the nightmarish atmosphere.

“No anesthesia.” the General said “I handled it just fine back in my time. I’m sure you clones are tough enough to handle a little cutting and burning, aren’t you?”

Echo didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Not as he heard the electrical saw powering up and filling the room with a sound similar to a drill’s. He was breathing so fast his vision was getting cloudy.

“What are you gonna do to me?” he gasped

Grievous’ eyes lit up with excitement.

“Oh, clone trooper. We are going to turn you into a fine machine of our own.”

Echo wanted to spit at Grievous’ face, to throw every single curse he knew in Mando’ and Basic (and a few others he knew in Huttan and Twi’lek, because he was Echo from the 501st, he knew a little bit of everything he’d ever came across), but when the saw touched the skin of his right thigh, all he could do was scream between his clenched teeth.

He held Grievous’ gaze. He wouldn’t go down whining and crying, he was a ARC trooper, a 501st, he was a decorated soldier of the Republic. He was Echo of Kamino, he was the Rishi Moon survivor, he was Fives’ brother, he was…

“Aaaah” he coughed, gasping between his screams “AaaaAAAAAH!”

Griveous was laughing. Laughing in delighted amusement, his hand holding Echo’s head down in place and almost breaking the skin of his forehead with its sharp metallic digits. By the time they had seared a prosthetic leg in place, Echo wasn’t feeling much coherent anymore. He wanted – needed – to rest. That was when Grievous said:

“The left one now. Hurry up. He’s bleeding out, and this clone is worth fifty of you. Move on.”

“No…” Echo huffed out, and he hated the begging in his own voice “No… No, please…!”

The electric saw was powered on again, and he swallowed hard, tears welling up in his eyes to then run down the sides of his face, into his still-ringing ears. He had believed he was numb to the pain after the first procedure. He had believed his senses would be unable to process any new discomfort. Kix had told him something like that before, that the human brain could only process so much pain.

Echo had always hated being wrong, but he’d never hated it so much as he did now. He stopped putting up a brave face. He sobbed and cried and begged for them to stop. He felt faint and weak and wished he’d bleed out enough to faint or die – neither happened. When the smell of burning flesh subsided after the connections to another prosthetic leg were made, Grievous ordered absently:

“The arm now.”

Droll was oozing free out of Echo’s half-open mouth, as were the fluids out of his nose and the urine wetting his blacks. He raised his brown eyes to Grievous’ cold, yellow irises and he whispered weakly:

“You have… no use for me… I won’t say a word… so you might as well just kill me… kill me now… kill me…”

Grievous blinked lazily to then pet Echo’s head almost kindly.

“Oh, but you will say it. You will tell us everything. I wouldn’t discard an ARC trooper, not with all the strategies and schematics this little head of yours must hold.”

The electric saw started to buzz again, and Echo turned his head away not to face whatever they would do to his right arm. The tears out of his wide-open eyes were now running over the bridge of his nose and he held back a sob.

“Kill me. I’m begging you, kill me. Strike a victory to the Separatists, kill me now.”

Grievous was still petting Echo’s head.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” he purred “Becoming one with a machine?”

He grabbed hold of Echo’s head in a vicious grip, forcing him to look at the saw diving into the flesh of his mutilated, bleeding arm. And as Echo screamed in agony, Grievous’ continued:

“I will enjoy witnessing a prized clone of the republic becoming no more than a machine, with his mind wide open for me to explore, to ravish. And when all your friends are dead, I will wake your mind from its slumber just to show you what’s left of their corpses. Ah, yes, do imagine… Kenobi and Skywalker’s  lightsabers as part of my collection, and all thanks to you.”

By the time the medical droid cut off the broken, charred stump of flesh out of him, Echo felt suddenly very distant of himself, as if he were out of his body and yet tethered to it. The pain subsided and his eyes rolled to the back of his head. He gasped one last time as unconsciousness wrapped its hands on him and he begged, as his mind shut down, for this to be the end of him.

-

It wasn’t. he couldn’t understand exactly how, but he could feel them. Probing and digging through his mind, through his knowledge. There was nothing he could to. The pain and fear of the many previous surgeries had nothing similar to the disgusting sense of violation as they scavenged through the data in his head. He hated himself. Hated himself for being such an obsessed idiot – he knew more than the average clone, and for that, he could provide the separatists with so much more than any other would; schematics, strategies, codes, all out in the open for them to use, and there was nothing Echo could do as they invaded his mind over and over, much like Grievous himself had said, ravishing him. He wanted to die, all he wanted was to die and not even that they would give him. Instead, he’d float in that forgotten tank, losing sense of time and digging deeper into insanity. And then it came to him - a plan. A way out.

But they wouldn’t come for him. Nobody would, except… Fives. Fives would come back to him.

And he did, Echo thought as he woke up on the arms of a brother, a clone trooper. He blinked several times until Rex’s face came into focus and for the first time in… he didn’t actually have a clue of how long, but he smiled, and it felt like his face hadn’t done this in forever.

“You came for me, Rex…”

“Of course I did.” Rex’s eyes ran over his broken body, a reflection of his mind too “We���ll take you home, Echo. You’ll be fine.”

Relief washed over Echo and he curled up closer to the captain despite the pain in his body, unused to moving around out of the tank. He had missed seeing a brother’s face. He had missed the white armor. He had missed it all so much. And he missed…

“Fives.” he mumbled as tranquility lured him into sleep faster than any drug could “I can’t wait to see… Fives…”