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colehasapen · 4 years ago

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(ONE SHOT) kyr'yc STAR WARS

Kix had been frozen for fifty years.

Everything he had loved, everything he had fought for - it was all gone. Everything had been destroyed because Kix had failed. He had failed Fives, failed Jesse and Rec - he had failed the Republic and the Jedi, and now it had all been ruined. His brothers had been brainwashed and killed all the while Kix slept on in stasis, unaware of it all happening, not even knowing that he wasn’t still sleeping in his office, desperately following the trail Fives had left behind and being driven mad by it.

He must not have been careful enough, because he had been taken before he could bring his information to the High Generals. Taken and frozen and lost for fifty years.

He’s the last clone alive. He had missed Rex by almost thirty years - Rex who, according to records, had lived beyond the fall of the Republic and the slaughter of the Jedi. Rex had survived to be an old man and had helped the Rebellion overthrow the Empire. He had died in his sleep almost thirty years ago, believing himself to be the last, and unaware that Kix had been stolen and frozen the whole time. Rex had died as an old man, and Kix was alone before he had even been aware of it.

Kix moves through life in a haze after he wakes up, untethered and alone and without a reason to continue on, but still he moves, unable to stop. He’s living in a galaxy not his own, lost and trying to find anything that could make him feel whole again. He’s a clone alone in a galaxy that never wanted him, without the brothers that had surrounded him from the moment he had been decanted. Even when he was lonely, he had never been alone, but now - now he has nothing and no one.

Clones were never never made to be alone; they were made to operate in teams, they were designed to work in cohesive units. They never coped well by themselves, it was something even the Kaminoans had known, and had stopped forcing them into solitary after the massive rise in suicides that they had had to deal with. Clones preferred death to being alone, they fell into depressive, self-destructive spirals if removed from their networks, and the massive number of deaths that had followed the introduction of one-man survival missions had convinced even the Kaminoans to stop separating clones from each other when it had gotten too costly.

It’s hard, not eating his own blaster now, especially on bad days when he wants nothing more than to go see his brothers once more. He sees Rex and Jesse when he closes his eyes, he hears Hardcase’s laugh, Fives’ voice, and Echo’s bad jokes. He imagines sitting in their bunkroom on the Resolute, eating snacks that Jesse had smuggled onto the ship, watching Dogma braid Tup’s long hair while Jesse and Hardcase wrestle at his feet and Fives and Echo bicker about the most ridiculous of subjects. Rex would have watched from a distance, needing to keep up the image of their strict Captain, but eventually they’d manage to wheedle him into joining them. They would sleep in a clone pile, surrounded by warmth and brothers and the feeling of safety and home. Kix would always wake up alone though, reality sinking in once more, and - Force, he wants that again.

He wants to be surrounded by his brothers again, to be with people who understand him on levels no one else does. But he can never do it, not matter how much he wants to. He can’t bring himself to pull the trigger because he sees Coric’s sad eyes every time they’d have to lie on another form after another body had been found with a hole through their heads, he sees Rex’s desperation as he talks brothers away from the edge. He remembers Fives’ shaking hands after Lola Sayu when they’d had to wrestle a syringe out of his grasp, and the broken, wailing noises he’d made afterwards.

They’d want Kix to keep moving, so that’s what he does. He stays with Ithano and his crew for a time, enjoying wild jaunts across the Galaxy hunting for treasure and adventure, but he doesn’t stay with the pirates and they don’t force him to. He drifts for a time, and gets lost once or twice. He finds the remains of the 332nd’s crashed ship and cries in front of Jesse’s grave, holding the cracked, weathered helmet in his hands as if it were his brother, apologizing to the thousands of beings he had failed and the brothers who had died because of him. He doesn’t want to imagine Jesse’s last moments, but it’s hard not to when he sees the jagged cracks in the helmet Jesse had oh-so lovingly painted after making it to ARC, promising to do Fives’ memory proud. He would have been forcibly turned against their Captain and Commander because Kix had failed to honour Fives’ last request. He would have died when the ship went down, and Kix hopes it was on impact. He hopes Jesse hadn’t been in too much pain.

Kix keeps moving, he owes that much to his brothers. He continues living for them, and when he hears of a wanna-be Empire trying to gain a foothold in the Galaxy, Kix goes to the Resistance. No one recognizes him as a clone, not as a relic of an age long past, instead he’s just Kix, a combat medic who wants to help. He knows how to fight and is a good teacher for anyone Command throws at him, and the Resistance needs whoever they can take.

He flourishes in war - he would have never thought he’d miss having to stitch people back together, but somehow he had. Kix is a clone, he had been made to fight. It gives him a purpose again, to protect the New Republic.

It also gives him the chance to build a new network.

Kix finds a young man in the medical bay one night as he finishes some paperwork for General Organa, and the kid who had been supposed to be heavily drugged stirs. He’s young with dark skin and doe eyes that remind Kix of his youngest brothers after their first battles, wearing a pair of loose sleep pants and a back-full of bacta wraps. He’s trying to sit up in the bed, struggling against the wires and machines around him as he gasps through his panic.

Kix is at his side within seconds, carefully taking the boy by his shoulder, avoiding the thick bandages around his torso, “Hey, no. Stay down kid.” He advises, and large dark eyes turn to him in surprise and groggy confusion. “My name is Kix, I’m a Resistance medic. You’re safe.” He soothes.

“I - the - Starkiller base?” He croaks, and Kix tilts his head, offering the boy a comforting smile that doesn’t feel as fake as it normally does.

“Destroyed, kid.”

The young man lets out a breath of relief, and lets Kix push him back into the bed to lay on his stomach once more, “That’s good.” He murmurs, before alarm sparks in his eyes again. “Rey?”

“Well,” Kix starts, moving to fuss with the kid’s bandages so that he could inspect the injury. “We don’t have any casualty reports on a Rey, so I can say that they’re not in the medbay.” The boy relaxes, “You, on the other hand, have been in bacta for the last week and a half.” He finally manages to wrestle the wrappings off of the kid, and he lets out a shocked hiss at the sight of the massive injury twisting across his spine. “How did you get a lightsaber burn?” He demands - there hadn’t been any notes about lightsaber burns in any files he had read. But then again, who the hell would know what they were looking at with the Jedi reduced to nothing but a legend and a scary story to tell misbehaving children.

The young man blinks lethargically, the cocktail of drugs in his system probably taking effect again with the drop of his adrenaline levels. “Tried to fight Kylo Ren.” He grunts, “Lost.”

“Got some balls on you then. But that was a stupid thing to do” He had seen what lightsabers could do - he had stared at brothers hacked apart too often not to. “You’re lucky to be alive, kid.”

“Not a kid.” The kid mumbles, watching sleepily as Kix starts reapplying bacta to the wound. His cheek is smushed into the pillow, much like how Tup had once slept, his short curls a mess that reminded Kix way too much of Dogma’s before the younger trooper managed to slick it back in the morning.

It makes his heart hurt to look at him, but it’s nice to see his brothers somewhere in this messed up Galaxy.

Kix shakes himself, letting out a sardonic snort, “Well, you haven’t exactly told me your name, kid.”

He pouts sleepily, enough Fives in his expression that it aches, “FN-2187.”

Kix freezes, horror washing over him and a sick feeling in his stomach; he thought there wouldn’t be anymore children with numbers instead of names with the destruction of Kamino, but apparently that was too much to hope for. The kid - because Kix can’t even bring himself to call another person by a number, not again - flinches under his hands, like he was bracing for a blow.

If there was even more of a reason to hate Imperials, Kix was looking at it.

Dark eyes dart away from him nervously, and the kid licks his lips. “Finn.” He says quietly, a little desperate, “My name is Finn. And I’m not a number.”

Kix swallows. He stills the shaking in his hands and keeps working, “It’s nice to meet you, Finn.” He tells him honestly, and watches, a little heartbroken, as shock blooms in Finn’s wide eyes. “I’m CT-6116, but my name is Kix.” Finn’s breath catches, “I’m not a number either.”

“You’re like me.” Finn whispers in awe, voice cracking. “I’m not alone.”

“Not anymore, vod’ika.” Kix promises, throat thick and eyes burning, and he means it.

Finn wouldn’t be alone, not if he had anything to say about it.

#cole writes #fanfiction #star wars #whumptober 2020 #no.20 toto i have a feeling we're not in kansas anymore #clone trooper kix #finn (star wars)

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the-blue-fairie · 6 years ago

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Skyclad

Inspired by @nudistrachelberry

Overwhelmed by her situation after finding Luke, Rey seeks peace through meditation and introspection.

On Jakku, the elements were her enemy and so Rey armored herself against them.

She learned from a young age how the sun could sear the flesh, how the winds could tear it, how the sands could sting.

She saw scavengers with backs of mottled purple, their skin stripped away as though by a tyrant’s bloody scourge.

Yet, the tyrant was not some overlord. It was the planet itself. Stories of the emperor, his rise and fall, of the Republic’s spires, of any masters from on high were fairy tales.

Not even Unkar Plutt was as fearsome as Jakku. Unkar Plutt was a creature of meat and bone. You knew what was within his power, you didn’t want to cross him or incur his anger, but he was not the heat of the day. He was not the ice of the night. He was not the shifting sands that could suck you down and leave you half-buried like the hulks you sought to scavenge.

The wrath of Unkar Plutt was terrible, but Rey felt more terror the first time she saw a sandstorm swallow an encampment whole.

She was tiny then. She did not see much. An old woman shielded her eyes. Still, she remembered flashes. The sand like a great wave, towering to heaven, on the horizon. The sounds of fumbling, scrambling. No screams. She did not remember screams. The sand engulfed everything too fast for screams, it must have. She remembered the sting of sand tumbling from the cowl the old woman wrapped around her. Remembered the feeling of keeping her eyes clenched shut, lest the grains of sand burrow in their corners…

Unkar Plutt did not like to be argued with, but it was possible to argue with him. Even if the consequences were brutal, it was possible.

You could not argue with Jakku.

Jakku had no mind to reason with, no beating heart to move. It simply was, in all its sightless, lifeless barbarity.

That was what Rey taught herself. And so, she fitted herself to fight against an implacable enemy.

She bound her body tightly with wrappings to keep out the sun and sand. She swathed herself like an already mummified husk. One tear in the wrappings and Rey knew the result. Her eyes took in the livid scars and blotches on other scavengers’ skin, the bleeding welts and blisters. She saw the way Jakku ate you to the bone if you let it.

Rey would not let it.

She shrouded herself, hooded herself, gloved herself.

Her goggles, she fashioned from an old stormtrooper helmet.

These garments were her weapons against the elements, weapons as formidable as her quarterstaff.

On Jakku, she could never conceive of nature as anything but hostile.

Leaving that planet opened her eyes.

The stars sprawled before her, celestial marvels.

The lush green of Takodana flooded her view. It was almost beyond her imagining, a world you did not need to arm yourself against.

It was there Rey heard the call first, felt the vision wheeling around her – but she resisted then. She threw down Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber and fled. She had built walls around herself on Jakku. She had bound herself tight so that she might let nothing in.

Strength had always come from masks, from shields, from armor of cloth that always kept the world at bay.

Yet, another form of strength presented itself to her, a Force beyond her comprehension. It sought to break down her defenses, to flow through her, but it was not like the forces with which she had so long waged war.

It was cool and placid as the surface of a lake, soothing as the shade of green trees.

When she opened her heart to it for the first time, she felt that.

The snow was cold, the earth shattering around her when Rey drew Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber to her hands.

Yet, when she shut her eyes and felt, she felt as she never had before.

“The belonging you seek is not behind you… It is ahead…” Maz Kanata had said.

The past clung to her like her clothing. She cocooned herself in the past for the same reason she wrapped gauze around her face in the desert. For protection. Memories wound around her like cloth over her body, like the wrappings over her mouth, her head. Memories of a small child gazing up at the blue, screaming, “Come back!” Memories as coarse and rough as the feeling of the mask against her face when she scavenged through the broken monstrosities on Jakku. Like the mask, the memories were uncomfortable. But like the mask, they shielded her.

You already know the truth… Whomever you’re waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back…

The memories gave her a reason to stay.

Hope for her family…

They would come back for her…

She had to wait…

Years of waiting…

Like the mask, the memories shielded her from what she dared not face.

Or did they suffocate her?

All those years…

(Barely able to breathe…)

Waiting…

(The heat of her breath against the cloth of a mask…)

Immobile…

(The mask protects you from the sand, but there is so much more than the sand…)

Unable to rise from the dust…

(What good is protection if…)

Never coming back…

(…it protects you from all that you can be?)

Breathe. Just breathe. Reach out with your feelings. What do you see?

Now she was here, on this island, the birthplace of the Jedi Order. Its trees were as green as the trees she had seen on Takodana. Its rocks were as old as any. The rocks and trees were far older than the ruins scattered amongst them. The Jedi must have known this when they built their first temple. Nevertheless, it was the temple that made the air there seem heavy with history, the ruins that entangled with the green and became one with it, the ruins that the Caretakers sought to guard for they carried a sense of sacredness.

She felt the Force within her, burning and persistent, like the flow of lava over a volcano’s black slopes.

Yet, she could not partake in the sacredness. Though something stirred inside her, she could do little more than give it name. Skywalker refused to teach her more. She had come so far only to be met at the end by the stubbornness of an old man.

Now she was alone in darkness, in the midst of a storm. Somewhere, Skywalker was holed up in his hovel. She did not know where. She had stormed away in frustration and, looking back, she realized she had lost sight of the flicker of fire at his window.

She almost wanted to scream.

The island was screaming around her already. The rain roared as it pelted her ceaselessly. The sea bellowed as its grey waves crashed upon the rocks. The wind shrieked in her ears and kept on shrieking. Porgs squawked from their nests. From elsewhere, the cries of other beasts of the isle rang in chorus.

She trampled through the grass, over rocks. Where was she going?

Was she wandering blind?

No, not blind, but…

Exhausted.

(She had seen so much.)

She pushed on through the rain.

(Seen families wither and die on Jakku.)

Upward, she felt herself moving upward.

(Seen Han Solo’s body tumbling, lifeless, into the abyss. Lifeless. Bereft of all that made him who he was…)

Her clothes hung heavy about her, soaked by the deluge.

(Seen Finn struck down.)

Heavy like her gear on Jakku. Weighing her down.

(We will see each other again. I promise.)

Heavy like memories. Heavy like responsibility. Heavy like disappointment. Like the shock of seeing a hero fallen from grace.

(Luke Skywalker. She had grown up hearing stories of his adventures.)

All this… weight…

(Her family, gone. Han Solo, gone. Luke Skywalker…)

She found herself tearing off the sopping rags clinging to her.

Tearing them off as she staggered upward, a great cliff rising before her.

Casting them behind her, casting them to the ground.

It felt surreal at first, standing nude on the edge of a cliff. She was used to having some covering, some protection.

But this was not Jakku.

And, even on Jakku, some forms of protection merely shadowed her eyes, stifled her, kept her in place…

Nude, she stood upon the brink, gazing down at the whirling waves bristling with foam. The waves cascaded upon the rock of the cliffside below her, the rock that seemed indomitable but that let itself be worn away as it had always been worn away, as it always would be worn away…

Here was a place to scream, to cry out to the heavens.

But Rey did not scream.

Rey shut her eyes.

Water droplets splashed upon her body by the hundreds, but unencumbered by her garb, Rey did not feel a weight. She felt as smooth as sheer stone… as though she, like the rock face beneath her, might dissolve away…

Yet, this dissolution was not an annihilation.

Rey thought of something Luke had told her: “And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanity. Can you feel that?”

He had spoken in bitterness, to discourage another generation of Jedi, but there was something beautiful that she now felt in his words, whether he realized that beauty or not – something that shone like rays of sunlight through the cracks in the walls of a darkened temple. She did not need Luke’s teaching simply to partake in the sacredness. She did not need the training to feel the exultation of the Light. The training was meant to hone one’s skills, to shape the unmolded clay… but there were so many ways to shape unmolded clay, each more wondrous and unique than the last.

What did it mean to be a Jedi? Did it mean the dogma, the rules and regulations, the strictures? No. It meant accepting the embrace of the Light.

The way of the Jedi could grow and change, change like the island rock reshaped by the waves. The dogma could be chipped away and washed out to sea. The structures set in place eons ago by those long dead could be worn down to the finest powder. As long as the Light remained, the Jedi remained.

The rock of the island had been reshaped for millennia. Worn down. Swept away. Built up. New rock took its place alongside the old. Caverns collapsed inward or were sculpted by the water. The coastline was always transforming and yet always was itself. The island did not die with change. It did not fall into disorder. Change was its natural order. It could be so with the Jedi, for it was vanity to think a change in the structure of a thing could dilute the essence of the Light. The Light was ever-guiding…

At the same time, the Light was ever-changing – like the island, like nature itself. She felt the Force within her, the Force that before had burbled in her chest like magma deep beneath the earth, that had burned like the spout of lava. It had cooled, but not congealed like lava into rock. No, it flowed through her still. Now its flow was like the river, rich with new-melted snow. The Force was like one of the raindrops sliding down her back. In the sky, it took one form. It was a droplet. But the instant it struck her shoulder it took a new form, gliding down her body in a shimmer of silver whilst remaining itself. Other raindrops took other forms, some clinging to her skin and slipping, some splintering like distant stars and glistening in their multiplicity. They were individual. They were a multitude. The Force, like them, was ever-shifting and transformative. It could not be circumscribed.

Trying to bind the Force to dogma was a fool’s errand. Even the temple on this island, the hallowed ruin, seemed a monument to hubris behind Rey’s closed eyes. It held wisdom, yes, but Rey felt a greater wisdom in the wind that beat down its walls, in the ooze that trickled into its cracks, in the moss that flourished on its broken remnants…

Through the darkness of her eyelids, Rey felt a flash of light. Sightless, she saw the pale lightning fork across the sky more clearly than with her eyes open. Then she heard the roll of thunder from afar, but there was no trembling in her heart. These things were like the sandstorms of Jakku, mighty and unyielding, but in meditation she understood they all had their place within the Force. Even the sandstorms of Jakku. The sandstorms swallowed up souls, but they were not evil. They were not the Darkness. Shadows grew in hearts and minds. Beings who sought to oppress the galaxy, they were evil. The First Order was evil. But the sands… were the sands. The Light shone over them the same way it did bodies rotting in the earth. Death and decay, in themselves, were not cruel. They were part of the great cycle…

(All things fall away, but nothing falls away.)

The island no longer screamed at her. Its myriad voices flowed together and yet it was not as if they all became one voice. Each voice retained its individuality, its uniqueness. From the howl of the wind to the reverberating thunder, from the groans of the thalla sirens on the rocks to the rumble of the serpents in the sea, from the cries of the birds to the weeping of the rain – no voice drowned out another. And yet they all came together in unity, in a haunting and harmonious song…

From her place on the edge of the precipice, Rey kept her eyes closed and listened.

***

When she awoke, the storm had passed.

The dawn was painting the clouds with rosy fingers. The suns had not yet crested the waves on the horizon. Still, their dim glow spread art across the firmament, art that met Rey’s eyes as they fluttered open.

She rose, taking in the pastel warmth surrounding her. The sea shone a pale crimson, its foam the softest pink. Rich plumes of red billowed above the surface of the waters. Turning her head, she saw her clothes strewn behind her like debris that had been tossed ashore.

She might have gathered up her garments, but she did not.

Instead, she kept on walking.

The suns rose higher, bathing the world in orange and gold. Their rays felt gentle on her skin.

There was a tranquility in being nude. Nude, she could feel things better. She felt the way the warmth of the suns mingled with the cool morning air. It felt pleasant. She felt the blades of grass bending beneath her feet. She felt the drizzle of water that dripped from arches of stone as she wandered under them. Stretching out her arm, she felt cold stone against her palm, felt its texture. There were so many small things, sensations, that she missed while wearing clothes. There were so many things too that she took for granted. She had felt the warmth of the suns every day since landing here, but now their warmth felt different as she let it wash all over her body. More special somehow. Transcendent. She felt blessed to have such lights in the sky. It was like she was coming to understand the world anew.

She found a green place in the valley and sat down. The grass tickled her buttocks. A few porgs waddled by. She smiled at them. They cooed in return. Some Caretakers passed her and wagged disapproving fingers at her, but she paid them no mind. The smile that spread across her face upon seeing the porgs spread into her heart. She fixed her gaze ahead, where the mountains glistened in a halo of gold.

She knew that in time she would have to pick up her clothes like clumps of brown seaweed and put them on again. But here and now, she focused on the serenity of things.

The Force was all around her.

#star wars #rey #sw fanfiction #star wars fanfiction

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