Chapter Text
His head was splitting. A prying, tearing, ripping pain.
But that was nothing new. It had been splitting for weeks now. Pried open, torn apart, ripped to shreds.
By now, every part of him hurt. His head, his throat, his chest. He developed a disgusting cough somewhere along the way - perhaps he caught it on some planet, during some mission, one of hundreds, one of thousands. It was easy to die like that.
Many of his brothers died that way. They caught something - on some planet, on some mission - and died. Some coughed up blood until they couldn’t lift their heads up to do it, collapsing in puddles of their own sick; others would drop in the middle of a conversation, something snapping in their heads under an invisible pressure, drowning their brains in their own blood. Many died of blasterfire, it was true – but for each one of such there were five whose bodies would deform after death, defiled by some strange disease. Their limbs swollen to the point where they’d have to cut the glove off of them. Their skin gone a strange blue in color, their faces near-unrecognizable.
And he was sick, now, just as sick. He knew – it was hard not to – that he would die because of it. The medbays were always full, clones could only get treated after the natborns, a thousand arbitrary rules that dictated who was to live and who was to die with sharp clinical precision. It was nothing new, he supposed. Neither party complained. The natborns still had traces of themselves even when they surrendered their lives to the cause, they said. The clones had never lived lives to begin with, they said. Perhaps once he’d have thought it was unfair. He couldn’t say he felt any type of way about it now. There was nothing to question – everything was simply how it was.
So the medics couldn’t take them in on time. Not enough of them to mean anything, at least.
So they died. And died. And died.
He’d been sick for a long time, now. Weeks. Months, maybe. It had gotten as difficult to keep track of time as it was of his memories. He knew it would not get better, but he didn’t think it could get that much worse. And yet it did – and it did – and it did. So much so that he stopped being surprised by the fact that he couldn’t breathe right once he woke up in the morning - instead, he felt strange if his waking wasn’t immediately followed by a coughing fit. His spit wasn’t yet tinged with the crimson that was the beginning of the end for so many others, but he could taste metal in his mouth, and by then it was only a matter of time.
If he were to die here, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. The end of his, maybe. But, then again, clones in the Empire couldn’t have been too attached to their lives. It was unwise. They were too easily lost.
He had been dreaming, lately. It was some sign, he knew – dreaming of strange things. A sign of the end approaching, stalking closer with each day, with each dusty image he saw behind his eyes when he closed them. Dunes, sometimes. Him drowning in the sand, in the mass of it, some ocean of gritty, sharp grains that cut through his armor and bodyglove and flesh. A flash of bright light to end it – him, out there, somewhere. On some planet ridden with rats and rebels. He wondered, sometimes, whether that would’ve done him more good than just dying here – in his bunk, unable to see five feet in front of himself.
He wondered, and he listened as the whispers filled his mind each time he slipped under. Someone in his body, in his brain, trying to remember where 2224 could not – where he could not force it too far for the agony that would spike through his body like lightning if he pressed further. But, in the dreams, it felt safer to do it – it felt as though the Empire was not there. Distanced from him, somehow. With one of them hidden away. Which was a – strange, impossible thought. The Empire was everywhere – he was the Empire. The Empire permeated everything, it was everything. The Empire was the air above him, the ground below him, the slow pounding of the heart in his chest that would eventually fail him. There was no use in trying to hide from a leviathan, it occurred to him once, when one was nothing but a tiny, unpolished scale in its tail.
But he wondered. And he listened. And the whispers only grew louder.
He wondered, and he listened, and he waited – just in case the whispers happened to speak a name.
When he stopped being able to get up in time to get to the mess hall, when he could scarcely get up in time at all, he’d close his eyes and listen to his bunkmates. They weren’t clones, not anymore - clones all died quickly, and clones all died often.
It occured to 2224 once that, well – they died quickly, and often, but, at the very least, so did the natborns. They saw, now, what had been done to the clones during the Wars. And 2224 supposed he shouldn’t have been thinking that way - he was going off-kilter, lately - but it was just a little satisfying, and just a little sad, that they weren’t the only ones, anymore.
There were natborns of all kinds, he reasoned with himself one morning. His eyelids were too heavy to fully open, his eyes only fever-warmed slits as he looked up as best as he could to the ceiling. There were natborns of all kinds. And all kinds of natborns joined the Army. There were young natborns, and there were old natborns. There were those that smiled under their helmets, and those that never did. There were Humans - there were always Humans - and Twi'leks, there were Devaronians and Togs, there were Advozsecki and even S’kytri, Rodians and Harch. All so very prepared to die for the glory of the Empire. From all over the Galaxy, too - Coruscant and Lothal, Alderaan and Mandalore, and…
2224 closed his eyes fully for a moment as the pain clawed its way up into his head. It was always difficult to recall too much; recalling too much hurt. Impossibly.
When he opened his eyes again - as much as he was able to - he was met with a strange sight.
He watched, mildly lost, wondering if he was finally beginning to hallucinate, as a plate floated up to his bunk.
“Hey,” called a voice - and it became obvious, suddenly, that the plate was being held by orange hands that lowered it onto the blanket next to 2224. He made the effort to lift his head.
The Twi’lek boy, barely old enough to qualify for the Army, had brought him a plate of food. He was a little darker in the cheeks, making 2224 wonder if he’d been ridiculed for it. For bringing food to a clone where most of the natborns thought them over-glorified meat droids. For a moment, they were looking at each other - and 2224 wondered, idly, what the boy saw. He couldn’t quite figure out why he would do something like this; they had never even spoken before, and even if 2224 tried his best, he couldn’t recall when this boy had been moved into the bunk next to his.
Perhaps, he thought, letting his gaze slip down to the egg on the plate, he’d always been there. It wouldn’t have been too strange.
“Oh, don’t bother, kid,” another voice cut in - a woman at the table, calling out to the boy as she watched them both. He couldn’t see very her well, but he could easily feel her gaze on him. Heavy. Cutting. Pitying, if he were to imagine things. “It’s a clone. Isn’t gonna thank you for it.”
“That’s alright,” the boy replied, shrugging. “At least he won’t starve to death.”
At least, indeed.
To be wholly truthful, the food on the plate looked more like someone poured yellow food coloring over lumpy mashed potatoes while someone chanted ‘egg’ in the other room, but 2224 wasn’t going to fuss over food. Especially not when it was brought to him. He took it. Though, frustratingly, he barely managed to hold onto it as he pulled it closer to himself.
As an afterthought, seeing the Twi’lek’s purple eyes staring him down, he figured the best way to get the boy off his back was a simple “Thank you.”
“No problem,” the Twi’lek said, smiling a sharp smile, and returned to his comrades, seemingly relieved both at 2224’s thanks and the fact that he didn’t have to deal with him anymore.
Carefully, 2224 lifted the plate onto his own chest. He wasn’t certain of his own ability to hold it up, and dropping it - especially from the upper bunk - would’ve been a true shame. But eating was also somewhat of a chore, raising the food to his mouth and chewing it too, and 2224 took little breaks, lying his head back down inbetween bites when it seemed like he just couldn’t stay upright anymore. It didn’t taste any better than it looked - though maybe that was just because 2224 couldn’t quite focus on it. It all seemed flavourless, much like everything he got into his mouth lately. He ate because he had to, because he couldn’t get up and eat anything else, but - he ate because he had to, and all was said with that.
2224 didn’t know, exactly, if it was that tasteless plate of strange mass which kept him alive through the night - even as his stomach churned, struggling to digest any sort of food. It had gotten worse lately, but it had also kept him from feeling too hungry. In some way, he supposed he could appreciate it.
When he slipped under, he dreamt of it, again.
He was sitting in the sand again. Still and heavy over its brittle edges. In front of him, an open flame was roaring, the smoke rising into the tar-black sky. But it was bright enough to see his hands – in the red light of the flame, he couldn’t quite tell whether the filth streaking his palms was dirt or blood.
He wasn’t alone – or perhaps he was, and this was some mirage of his mind. It couldn’t exactly be real.
He was sitting next to one of his sisters, and it could not be real – because he remembered, with certainty, how he had shot her in the head.
For the life of him, he could not recall her designation, but when he looked at her face, it was familiar. The short, curling hair – too long for the regulations either way – was familiar. He had seen her before. He had shot her – years ago, he thought. When she had begun talking of the traitors, of the alleged treason the Empire was committing. Of horror and injustice. Of the way it had all been before. She had come to him, devising plans of escape and of betrayal. And he had pulled out his blaster, and he had pointed it between her eyes, and he had shot her. He could recall, now, the grip of her fingers slowly loosening around his wrist as her body crumpled over itself.
He looked into her eyes, and he saw himself. Her head was tilted strangely, in a way that his neck wouldn’t have allowed. Her eyes were dark – just like his, but shining with none of the warmth of the fire, only glimmering with the reflection of the stars above – stars that 2224 could not see, when he raised his eyes upward. And there was, unmistakably, the hole in her forehead where the bolt had gone through. Dark and round, giving way to the shards of skull and brain matter beneath, the skin singed slightly across the edges. Blood collecting on the lowest point of it, seeping slowly out of the hole in thick beads; red, almost black in the darkness of the strange night they were caught in.
Or perhaps just him, anyway. Perhaps he was only lost, as he usually was, in some dream with no true awakening there to be reached.
And, as he listened, she parted her bloody lips, and spoke.
“There is nobody who will save you.” Her voice was the voices of all the clones he’d ever known, and yet her own at the same time. Some odd lilt accompanying it; some coupling of tones he couldn’t quite discern. Highs and lows, simultaneous.
“There never was.” He found his lips moving on their own, his tongue turning. He felt distant, suddenly – like a passenger in his own body. In his own mind. “It is in our nature. We were meant to die.”
“And you would lie?” The blood rolled, slowly, down to her nose. Seeped through the string-wide gaps between her teeth and rolled down her lips and her chin. Dripped down to the sand, only to fade amongst the rest that would stain the endless depths beneath. It would never end. “You would continue to lie to yourself, seeing the truth in its entirety?”
“The Empire is truth,” he said, and he believed it.
“Truth cannot be created,” she argued. Or perhaps she was an it, denying the basis of reality so vehemently. A traitorous fabrication made up by his mind. Some testing of himself. “It simply is.”
“The Empire simply is,” he said, and he believed it.
“Blind yourself,” she said, in a voice that sounded strangely like his own.
He turned his head to her. Those lightless circles, two pooling voids atop the reddened whites of her eyes. The pupils seemed to swallow them in their entirety – he felt as though he was staring into a pair of black holes. Extending out further and further, drawing him in as he felt the dry skin of his own hands against each other.
“Raise your hands,” she said. Something inside of him felt empty. “And push your thumbs into your eyes. To the knuckles.”
He looked down to his hands, the fingers trembling slightly against each other. And raised them to his face. Kept his eyes wide open – even if he closed them, he thought he’d still see it approaching. And there was nothing to it, anyway. Only an image. Only an empty gesture.
He jabbed his fingers between the eyelids, and there was no pain. That was what he noticed first – no pain. There was no sensation whatsoever, for a moment. Then, a distant, sharp ache – but not in the eyes. It was somewhere above him, as though it ached outside his body altogether – the air over him, crushing him beneath it.
Darkness came quickly, full and consuming. Leaking through the edges of what vision he retained and suffocating it in a quick, explosive burst. It felt like sticking his fingers into a cold bacta salve – but, of course, that was not it.
He felt as though his head was spinning again, but with himself blinded, he could not quite tell. He could feel his body swaying – was there wind? Was he on the edge of something?
Her voice, again. Her voice, and all the differences inbetween the lines that he, for some reason he did not understand, could not read.
“And if the Empire,” she spoke, “told you to see, now – would you?”
“I would,” he breathed, because then it would have been an order. Then, he would have to either look, or be declared insubordinate. The Empire was the air he breathed, the Empire was the ground below him – insubordination was death, plain and simple. “I would.”
“Then see.”
But he had blinded himself. Had she not told him to?
“You are not the Empire.”
“Aren’t I? Is everything not the Empire?” It was a good question. A good question he could not answer – for a blink in time, he wondered why. If the Empire was all, but she was not the Empire…
But there were some things he was simply not meant to understand, he knew. He was only meant to listen, and to obey.
But she kept pressing further.
“Am I a defect? Some small, hidden piece of your mind? None of it is whole, you must know it by now.”
“I am meant to be a cog,” he told her. Her voice seemed like it was coming from all around him, strangely – from within his own head. “And to keep the Empire running smoothly. We all are. Nothing fragmented is whole until it is joined with the bigger picture.”
“Then perhaps it is time you saw that bigger picture.” It was a whisper now, quiet and – inviting, somehow. “Perhaps a fractured mind cannot work correctly. Perhaps all this warring and dissonance between your thoughts have caused this. Perhaps you need to fix something within yourself to be able to be whole.”
“I am too replaceable to be fixed,” he said, firm in his knowledge that it were true. That the Empire would not bow to the cracks in the smallest of its cogs, and it was simply all he could do to work correctly – acceptably – until the wear and tear wore him down enough for release. “I am… insignificant.”
“All things are,” she agreed. In some way. “All cogs are. But without the cogs, the machine would not run. It is a vital part of it. Therefore all cogs should be kept up, should they not?”
“But I…” He shook his head. He was a cog to keep the machine going, but without him, he knew the machine would run just fine. But if he was irreplaceable and expendable at the same time, then… “I can’t be – everything, and nothing. It can’t be… Unless nothingness is everything. But that’s not…”
“Some things cannot be true simultaneously,” she said, and he shook his head again, wishing he could see, now. Wishing he could look down at his hands and see, for certain, that he was there. “Some things cannot be true at all, even by themselves.”
“But how do I find out what is true?” he asked, then, helpless.
A small pause – and he thought, for a moment, that she’d left – but then she did answer, simply, “By looking around.”
He tilted his head, and tried to look. And no matter how hard he tried, the darkness persisted – even without pain, even without sensation, it was a sharp ache, the blindness. Keeping him now from the truth – from her and from himself.
“I can’t see,” he whispered.
“And if the Empire told you to? If I said that I was the Empire, and I was all, and I was you – would you be able to see?”
He blinked. He thought he did, at least.
There was nothing. Scarcely even darkness, he realized – simply nothing.
“I…” He took a breath and repeated, unable to deny it, “I couldn’t. I can’t see.”
“There are other ways,” she whispered, and it was as though she was pressed to his ear now. “There are simpler ways.”
“Tell me.”
“What is beneath you?”
“Sand.” That, he knew. Could still somewhat recall the pale, faded yellows of it.
A moment of silence. “How do you know?”
“I remember it.”
“Remembering is not enough.” She sounded displeased. He could not quite tell – he couldn’t see her. “Your memories are wrong. Your perception is flawed.”
“Then how?”
She did not answer him.
He tilted his head and, slowly, lowered his hand. Touched the ground – touched it, and could feel –
There were blades of grass, brushing against his fingertips.
“Grass,” he breathed out.
She hummed – agreeing. He couldn’t quite lift his hand, anymore, feeling the cool earth enveloping his fingers – the tips, to the knuckles, then further up.
“Do you see, now? Your mind might not have been telling you the truth.” He shook his head, but she kept on. “What is it, truly?”
“It is grass,” he repeated, feeling his chest tighten a little. She sounded – wrong, now. Her voice too deep. Too hoarse. “I know because I touched it, and it is… It felt like grass. Not sand.”
“Nothing is as it seems, here,” she revealed to him. Or – whatever else she might’ve been. She did not sound like herself anymore. “And the only things you trust are the things you find out yourself. Not that which other people will tell you.”
He could feel himself shaking. The earth was dreadfully cold. It had taken his hand up to the wrist, now – he could not feel past it. There was nothing, past it. “What if my observations are untrue?”
“Then nothing is true.” The voice twisted again, and he wished he could close his eyes anew. His head was pounding again, after such short moments of reprieve. “But there is some truth, is there not?”
“I am here.” He could feel it. When it rose to his elbow, he had to kneel. Press himself down to the ground. He was there.
And the whisper of some familiar wind touched against his face and told him, “You are you.”
Who am I, he thought. He remembered being 2224. CC-2224. But that was told to him. He had not… He did not know how he had become 2224. What was 2224? What was he?
It did not help that the whisper flew to him again, brushing against his face like the hands of someone who could answer the quiet question it asked – “Who are you?”
“I don’t know.” He had known everything he needed for so long. Not knowing was frightening. Not knowing made his chest feel tight and his breath come shallow and his hand was being drawn in and in and in – and he was sinking, sinking down into the unfeeling distance.
“It’s okay,” the voice spoke, and it was not anyone he was supposed to know. Why was he not supposed to know it? It seemed familiar to him in the way a sunrise might’ve been. Close to his chest. “It’s okay. You will know.”
“Help me,” he pleaded, lost in it all, unsure what he was asking for – for them to pull him out of the soil that was swallowing him, the blades of grass tickling his jaw.
“There is nobody who can save you,” it reminded him, a different voice echoing than the one who told him that in the start. “There is nobody who will.”
“Help me,” he whispered, desperate for something he could not understand, and could feel the dirt slowly trickling into the emptiness of his eyes.
A moment of silence, and the voice – it – relented.
“Come to me,” it whispered, and he wanted nothing more. “Come to me, and I will do my best.”
“Where are you?”
“Someplace he is not.” He knew what it meant. Without realizing it. Without truly, consciously knowing – he understood what it meant. “Someplace he cannot follow.”
“I don’t know how to find you,” he objected, and felt that he was choking on the soil. Drowning in sensation.
“You’ll remember.”
The assurance stung with all the frustration of the paradoxes he’d spent the previous moments trying so hard to shake. “But I can’t trust what I remember.”
“You don’t need to trust it,” the voice spoke, and, as though whatever it was had leaned close, he heard, so close to himself, “You only need to hope.”
A brush against his lips. Soil, or perhaps something softer. Like the wind. Like someone’s –
He – who are you – He released a breath, and – what is your name – and let himself sink.
He had been asleep for a long time, he could feel it.
When 2224 woke up, he turned over and muffled his coughing into the thin blanket that had been given to him by a bunkmate, once - clone or not, he couldn’t remember it and he didn’t particularly care. It stole his breath from him, the coughing, and took almost all his energy with it as his body rattled. But that didn’t matter. It hardly ever mattered whether a clone was tired or not.
It was perhaps the food that had given him the smidge of the energy to open his eyes and take his time pushing his hands behind himself. To slowly – slowly – push further. To bend his back, and to sit up – bit by bit, to drape his legs over the edge of the bunk.
When he slid off of it, he almost went to his knees from the weight of his own body. It felt like his bones were on fire, his muscles sore and strained, and his eyes were the worst, his vision blurring, and it - hurt to look around, now.
But he had to go. He had to walk. He needed to get –
He needed to…
There was a mission. He knew. He had some sort of mission.
The most important one. It must’ve been something… something important, something large. Something to kill, or to bring in, or to…
Something he would remember once he got to it, surely.
His armour had never seemed so heavy. He was grateful, for the first time, for the snoring of the woman in the next bunk over – it made it a little easier to stay silent, even as he struggled to stay upright. As he struggled to leave.
But he needed to leave. He had to leave, and…
Find where it was that he could not follow.
He made his way across the corridors, the rest of the Stormtroopers barely acknowledging him. It was only right, he thought – the sight of a barely-stumbling Purgetrooper ought to have been met with the assumption that he was going somewhere important.
Perhaps he was.
Getting to the landing bay, he thought, was easy. In retrospect, at least. Climbing into the gunship, on the other hand, was a mission all on its own. 2224 could barely keep himself upright, and now he had to shift himself onto the wing of the ship and get up into the cockpit - but -
He fired up the engine, took the yoke, and rose up. There was nobody who stopped him, nobody who cared to even shout - it seemed that, if only 2224 made it seem like he knew what he was doing, people wouldn’t bat an eye.
And he knew, on a technical level, what he was doing. He knew, with a strange sickening feeling to his stomach, that he was deserting. But he knew it, he could feel it - it was his last mission, anyway. And he knew what he was doing, too, and even where to go.
Thinking him asleep or no more than a droid, his bunkmates had spoken often of the planets out in the Outer Rim. Those small and insignificant; those which held no meaning to the Empire at all. Nothing of importance on those dusty, abandoned surfaces – for all the Empire cared, they could’ve all destroyed each other, warring amongst themselves.
2224 shook his head, eyes closed as he leaned against the handlebars. He didn’t believe them. The reasoning was clear in his mind, though blurring still if he tried to reach harder for it. His dreams were – he knew what he had to do. Stormtroopers, taken in after the Wars had ended already, they got things wrong, and they got them wrong often. 2224 had served for so long he didn’t remember a time when he didn’t, or maybe there hadn’t ever been one - but he knew, full and well, what the topic of their conversation was, even if they themselves didn’t.
There must’ve been a Jedi.
The thought came to his head stinging like a white-hot vibroblade. There must’ve been a Jedi – he must’ve found a Jedi, there, hidden in his head. Traces of some touch buried in his mind. A lead.
Come to me.
It was his mission. Because - even if they were hiding, they would still be a traitor, and a threat, and an ugly growth beneath the Empire’s skin. He didn’t understand why he had not known before. Why had he not known before? He’d always known, he’d dreamed of it, he knew where to – he knew – he knew –
Someplace he cannot follow.
Why did 2224 not go before? Why was he alone now, why had he not spoken of what he knew? He couldn’t say. Or perhaps he could simply not remember. But it was his mission – his, his, he needed to get there. He needed to leave, and he needed to –
To find the Jedi, to find the strange touch that brushed against his mind. He did not know how he’d realized it, but he must’ve been doing the right thing.
Fiddling with the controls, wondering why his hands weren’t doing what he wanted them to, he thought he could almost recall - something. A quiet admission, something or another - No, he’ll never return there. There just are such places, dear one…
His head was splitting. Nobody stopped him, and he rose higher and higher and through the hangar doors, and then it was nothing but the cold void all around him, illuminated only occasionally by the distant stars.
…dear one, places which weigh too heavily on the heart, and there is little that can be done about it.
If he were to die here, then it would be a painful death. And yet so quiet. Calm. With nothing but his aches surrounding.
And so, leaning back up, he set the course for the planet by the name of Tatooine.
Tatooine? He is from Tatooine?
He was, once.
His head pounded at it. Hard and unforgiving.
Someplace where he cannot follow.
Come to me.
Come to me.
He switched it to autopilot.
Come to me.
Stars knew he’d be lucky if he made it down to the surface alive. Maybe this ship would be where his last mission claimed him. And, painful as it would be, it wouldn’t have been a terrible death, exactly. It would’ve been better than living like this, anyway.
It took him three days. Three days to get there. If he killed the Jedi who - had to be here, 2224 knew – it was unreasonable and ridiculous and not at all what the whole of the Empire thought but 2224 knew, he knew the Jedi was here. If he killed the Jedi, it would take him three days to get back. But, of course, the ship would be far away by now. He didn’t know where to go, after this, and he didn’t worry. He didn’t think he would be going anywhere, like this.
Waking up on the final day of his travel, he thought he might just die.
He came to hanging half-out the pilot’s seat, the belt digging uncomfortably into his side. His skin felt - strange to touch, an unpleasant rippling sensation spreading across the surface whenever anything touched him. And his head, his head was pounding. He couldn’t take a right breath - there was something in his lungs, his throat, but he couldn’t cough it out, either. Like the entirety of his insides was lined with embers and ash.
The planet that was drawing nearer had a sickly yellow hue, and 2224 couldn’t bear to look at it for longer than he must have to confirm it was the right destination. It was so bright. His head. He didn’t know how he’d kill the Jedi. He could barely move.
He’d decide when he got to it.
He was convinced he was already half-dead when the ship landed. Crashed, more like. The hull dragged along the sand for a little. The door opened, and 2224 took a breath of fresh air. It had been three days. Three days.
His head was splitting. The world spun.
He looked out, and. The suns blinded him. He blinked. His eyes hurt. So badly. It hurt to move them. Moving made him sick. And yet.
He knew where to find the Jedi. Where to go. He was being led by his soul. He was being led. Forward. Forward.
Clones did not have souls. They were empty. They were supposed to be empty. He had been empty. It had been better than this. It hadn’t hurt. But then it started hurting. And he was in pain. All the time. All the time. And then it started leading him. Somewhere. Away.
Stars. He just wanted to stay. Stay in the ship. It was hot. It was cold, he wanted to stay. To die. It would stop hurting. He was sure of it. If he only stayed. And died. It would have been easier. He wanted to stay here. He wanted to die.
His head was splitting. He grabbed onto the sides of his seat and lifted himself. His arms were shaking. The edges cut into his palms. It burnt. It hurt him.
Just making it out of the ship was hard enough.
Step by step.
He made his way down to the settlement. On the edge of his vision. He’d landed only a few kilometers off the port. Crash landing. Step by step. His head was splitting. By the time he made it, he was rather sure there were tears in his eyes. Pain, or exhaustion. Or both.
It took hours. It took seconds. Time blurred, time did not exist. Time did not rule him. He did not trust time. Not like he trusted the ache in him. Settled so deeply, penetrating right down through the bone. But he walked. He had to walk.
When he entered the town, nobody stopped him. It was strange. People seemed to not be noticing him lately. Perhaps he’d grown slow. He’d grown invisible. Anything could have happened. He did not know.
He collapsed to his knees. Right down to the ground. Right next to some stall. It sold fruit, he thought. Fruit. It smelled strange. He tipped his head back. Closing his eyes for a minute. Finding that he did not want to open them again. The merchant ignored him. It was wise to, he supposed.
It took him a long time. To catch his breath alone. It was torture. It felt like something was tearing. In his throat, in his brain, in his chest. All pinpricks. All awful. All agony. Nothing else.
He got up to his knees. And to his feet. Swaying, barely. He needed to go. To find the Jedi. The Jedi came first. He needed to - this was a planet. A whole planet. How would he find the Jedi? The whole planet. And he could be anywhere.
The Jedi would find him, he thought. If the Jedi found him, 2224 would kill him. Or 2224 would die. He would die in the end, anyway. A good death. The right death. The right death. For an Imperial soldier.
The Jedi were reckless. He knew. The Jedi were reckless. Arrogant. He could use that. The Jedi were unreasonable. Always jumping in. The Jedi wanted to save. At the cost of themselves.
2224 could use that. He could use that. He was certain. Even across the whole planet, the Jedi would feel fear.
He could take a child.
The thought was strange. He thought that perhaps Jedi liked children. Their children. All children. Because children had done nothing. And to kill a child was the easiest way. The darkest blood. The deepest blood, seeping into the skin.
He could take a child. From its parent, maybe. Then the Jedi would come. If he took a child. Pressed a blaster to its cheek. The Jedi would come. The Jedi would hear the crying. Through their Force. The terror. Through the Force. 2224. Through the Force.
There were many children on the streets.
2224 could not.
He could not pick. He could not - physically - his hands would not obey. His body turned away from the children.
He did not understand why. He had killed many children.
The thought just made him more nauseous. No children. He would take no children. He would kill no children. He could not. He would not. There were others.
There was a shop. And a shopkeep. A young one. Spiraling braids atop her head. For a moment, he thought. And she had deep-set dark eyes. And she could have been one of his sisters. But his brothers were dying. His sisters were dying. His siblings were dying. All in the Empire. She was not his sister. She was a person. On Tatooine. With a long skirt. It rippled in the draft as he pushed through the door. She had been drinking. Something from a cup. There was steam rising from it.
2224 didn’t understand. The heat was blistering. Outside and within him. He felt like his own blood was boiling. Bubbling in his veins.
She had looked up at him. Her lips were twisted upward. And then they were not. Her eyes slipped up and down his armour. And she had placed the mug on the table. And she had walked forward. Hands out. Asking - what he needed. What he wanted.
Jedi, he would’ve said. If he would have wanted to. If she had needed to know. She did not need to know. She was not a Jedi.
She seemed frozen in place as he walked. Forward. Toward her. Her hands were still raised. She took only one step back. He heard the knock. As her back hit the table.
He twisted her arm. Behind her. And the blaster was comfortable in his hand. An old feeling. Calming the shake of his hands. He thought she could feel it. The way he was trembling. But he could feel it, too. Her own shaking. She yelled. For something. For someone. But nobody would come. The door had swung shut.
He raised the blaster. She yelled. She thrashed. Pulled away from him. But he pulled her back. She didn’t need to yell. He didn’t need to kill her. He needed the Jedi. But it was good. The fear was good. It was what the Jedi would follow.
“Jedi know,” he wheezed. “Jedi know.” He would use the woman’s fear as bait. The Jedi would come. The Jedi would know. They sensed fear. They sensed fear. They sensed the exhaustion squeezed tight around 2224’s throat. He said, again, pressing the barrel of the blaster hard against the woman’s temple, feeling her shudder and let out something like a sob, “Jedi know.” He repeated it. Like a comfort. To both of them. Fruitlessly.
And hoped it was true.
But time was passing slowly. Time did not trust 2224. The same way he did not trust time. The exact same way. It was making things difficult for him. He could feel his own legs shaking. He could feel the woman’s trembling subside. She began to think. And giving her time to think was… It was not good. She could likely overpower him. He did not want to think about it. But it was true.
2224 closed his eyes. It was all blurring.
A man. The creaking door, and then a man. And the woman whispered to him. For help. He needed to help.
2224 let go of the woman. Could hear her surprised yelp as she fell forward. The thump as she caught herself on the edge of the table. The shuffling of her feet as she bolted upstairs. The mug on the table had stopped steaming. She had left it there.
But nothing else registered. Nothing else mattered. But the man.
He knew. There was the Jedi. With sandy red hair. Sand in his hair. Sand in red hair. His eyes were wide. But it made no difference. He had to die.
The Jedi called out to him. 2224 reached for his blaster. The Jedi - he was moving away. He was escaping. Through the door. 2224 would follow. 2224 had to follow. He’d track him down. He’d kill him. He wouldn’t let him get away.
They walked through the street. 2224 followed. The blaster trembled in his hand. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
The Jedi walked slowly. Too slow. Too slow to be escaping. But 2224 didn’t care any longer. Maybe he was slowing down. Maybe he wanted to fight. That was good. That was what 2224 needed. He’d fight him. He’d kill him.
He did not know who would kill who.
In the end, it did not matter.
He finally caught up to him. Or maybe the Jedi stopped. 2224’s blaster was heavy. But he raised it anyway. He was gripping it tightly.
He opened his mouth. He didn’t know what he said. Traitor. Looking at him. Looking at him, traitor. Traitor, traitor, traitor.
The Jedi moved first.
The sand was hot. He could feel it scatter beneath him as he fell back. His head heavy, his eyelids even more so. One after another his breaths were caught in his throat.
The Jedi was on him. Hands on his chest. Then hands on his shoulders. Then hands on his face.
Then hands on his head.
And a flash. So bright it blinded it from behind his own eyelids. A flash. So acute in the searing pain it wrought that he could no longer think.
He could not think any longer. He was splitting. He was ripping at the seams. It would kill him. This would kill him.
Bit by bit. The Jedi was tearing his brain apart. He knew it. He felt it. The hands. On his head. It hurt. It hurt. Worse than it had before.
There were circles. In his eyes. Flashing lights. Red and blue and green and yellow and all of them and none of them and.
All of them fell away. Crumbled away. Along with him. Along with all he was.
What was he?
He took a breath. Barely.
Someone was yelling. Or so it seemed. Arms around him. Pulling him up. Pulling. It hurt.
Stars.
His head was splitting.