Archive of Our Own ^beta

The lesson that their trainers have come up with to teach them to resist torture is an almost comical farce of an affair.  After all.  They’re the experimental program.  Almost everything that they’ve gone through just to get here could be classified as worse than what the trainers are doing now.

Tech is readjusting his goggles next to him.  CT-9904 is double checking his kit, eyes raking over it, paranoia still in his brain. 

9901 is still inside, waiting on Wrecker to get out of the room.  His pacing had been driving Tech insane. 

“I don’t understand,” 04 says, biting.  “How is it that he’s still in there?”

“Wrecker, as you might have guessed is more physically capable of withstanding great feats of physical pain.”  He remarks, glancing to 04, and 04 tenses.  “They will not break him.  That is above their paygrade.  It likely means that they used another tactic on him than was used on us.”

04’s eyes narrow.  Tech sighs.  “Surely you did not think that they were going avoid keeping our enhancements in mind when they came up with our lessons?  They want to know that we will be a successful squad.  If that comes at the same time they are able to test our abilities, then they have taken down two mynocks with one blaster bolt.”

9904’s interrogation and torture had been largely contained to the physical.  Given Tech’s shakes, the way his foot and leg are bouncing, he’d imagined that Tech had been the same.

“Besides.” Tech continued after a moment, getting his uniform back on.  “These interrogation and torture are long since disproven methods of meaningfully gaining information out of a subject.  They cannot be used in any known legal court as evidence.”

04 blanches.  “If that’s the case, then why are they doing this?”

“For starters, just because the methods do not work, that does not mean others won’t still use them on us in the event of one or more of us being captured anyways.  And further, simply because they do not give accurate information, that doesn’t mean that they’re not useful in other ways, it does not mean that others won’t believe they’ll work.  Those methods are more or less about training the mind to follow directions, to do what the interrogator wants them to do.  All beings have a breaking point somewhere.  This training is simply about learning to survive the ordeal, to not fall for their attempts to sculpt your mind into something more useful to them.”

He glances up at 9904, his brown eyes starting to come back to life; part of why he’d not cut Tech off in his explanation.  “I imagine that it’s not something you struggle with.”

9904 stares blankly.

“It’s simply your nature.  You buck against others more than any of us.” Tech shrugs, and while the flat tone suggests an insult, 04 doesn’t give rise; it’s Tech, he’s not trying to be rude.  “You’re obstinate— stubborn.  Someone telling you what to do, to train you in that way, they may as well be banging their head against the walls of this facility.  Wrecker’s a bit softer than that. He very badly wants to do things the right way, most sentients do.  It is that instinct that this training is meant to help protect you from.” 

Goodie.  Maybe his squad would learn that 9904 was right about more things than.

Before he can say as much, Tech continues, his blue uniform and lanky build seeming a hair too still, perturbed.  His bruises are already a sickly color and 04 knows that even though Tech may not feel them the same as he or 01 might, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel them at all.  “But, as I mentioned, there are breaking points for everyone, and everyone will break at some point; no matter how well trained you are.  Different stimuli triggers different responses— even I struggle in the face of the correct one.”

He turns, goggles glinting in the bright lights of Kamino.  “I imagine you’d hang on better, though, you’re not one to give into what others want.  No one can change that about you.  Not even you, and I doubt we could either.”

9904 doesn’t like that tone.  He turns more fully, rounding on Tech, about to ask him what he even means by that, that he can’t speak for 04 like that.

There’s a whistle, and they both stiffen, straighten.

There’s an interloper.  99 is supposed to be the one to pick them up, but he’s not here— it’s a batcher of his he recognizes.

Spar is a big clone, he’s a generation one– an Alpha, like 99 was supposed to be.  He’s starting to fill out, and he fills most the doorway.  “Heavy subject matter there, Technician,” he notes, 04 bristling at the formal name.  “They teaching you boys resistance techniques, then?”

Tech nods, always a little quieter around 99’s batch.

Spar sends 9904 a heavy look.  “He sayin’ that you’re like me then, kid?  It’s not a bad thing.  Sometimes we’re the only ones who can look out for ourselves.  Doesn’t mean we don’t care about our batch.  But we’re the only ones who know us.  We’ll do things our way, on our time, damn everyone else.”

“Where’s 99?” 04 asks, glaring away from Spar, lips in a snarl.  The older trooper’s look is too familiar, and 04 hates it.  This trooper doesn’t know them. He’s hardly around them.  He certainly doesn’t know anything about 9904, or what he feels.  04’s glower, his snarl, it’s all ignored by Spar, like he’s just some child having a tantrum.

“99 got caught up with some work.” Spar sighs. “Sent me to nab you lot.  Either you’re missing two though, or that last round of recon’s made me forget how to count.”

“Wrecker is still in his lesson.”  Tech explains.  “Our squad leader is waiting for him to be released.”

Spar makes a knowing sound in the back of his throat.  “Well.  I can get you two to your next appointment, and then I’ll swing back for the other two.  Vau’s a psycho, but you’re still all pretty little.”

That makes 04 bristle even more.  Tech gathers up both their things, though, effectively answering on behalf of 9904.  “That is acceptable.”  He agrees, too easily, always too easily, always too willing to just move on when 9904 wants to dig in his heels, and cling to what is.

“I’m waiting for the others.” 9904 refuses.

Spar looks at him, dark eyes like the Prime’s, like Tech’s, like 04’s own.

Tech just nods, looking to Spar as though this had always would have been the outcome.

Their footsteps leaving him behind are just as loud in Crosshair’s ears as they’d been back then, trudging the brightly lit halls of Kamino, just as they are now.  The glass beneath their feet is louder than his heart, louder than his hurt.

It cracks around him, the water’s pressure on it like the pressure in his veins. 

“We need to go back,” Crosshair tells them, in spite of how he feels they won’t even listen to him, picking up their rear.  “There must be another way.”

What have you done?  He’d asked, and Hunter had said, We weren’t gonna leave you behind, but they already had, they’d already left him and he’d stayed and asked for them to come back anyway, to go back to how things were before, and they’re refused, and everything was in ruins, and they were all going to die here, like this, the pressure of it all going to collapse it all around them.

“That would be unwise,” The Droid says, quiet. “I am afraid this is our best option.”

He just wants them to go back to how things were, why had they made this so much harder than it had to be?  They were trained their entire lives for this, and now a kid and her droid are calling the shots?

We made a choice, and so did you.

Crosshair’s chest constricts further.  The pressure from them, the pressure of their lives, he doesn’t know where to even put the anger anymore. 

Our best option, and it meant all of them were on the cusp of death.

“You done complainin?” Wrecker asks, irritated.  “You know, if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Something on your tiny mind, Wrecker?” He taunts, his glower fierce, not wanting to hear it from him, the confrontation making everyone else look to where him and Wrecker were getting up in each other’s faces.

“All that time, you didn’t even try to come back.”  Wrecker says, and Echo and Tech look to each other, expressions unreadable beneath helmets, and in the dark, the girl’s face looking to Hunter, of all people.

Wrecker’s face softens, his posture dropping its aggressive stance, letting out his anger with a breath.  “We still would have taken ya.”

His eyes are cast to the floor, his batchmate who was too soft and who took twice as long to come out of interrogation training as the rest of them, broken and upset and hurting.  Crosshair hates that look on his face, but it’s Tech who comes to comfort him, grabbing him by the shoulder, the motion of it a bit too strong, pulling Wrecker down sideways to look at Tech as he says, “Let it go, Wrecker.”

Tech is small as he looks up to Wrecker and has his back partly to Crosshair.  “Crosshair has always been severe and unyielding.  It is his nature.”  He lifts up his hand, points at Wrecker.  “You cannot change that.”

He turns his head, looks at Crosshair, and is certain in his delivery as he gestures to him with his chin, “Hecannot change that.”

Wrecker looks away, lips pursed, before he turns fully, to keep walking away.

“Why are you defending me?” He asks Tech, surprised.

Tech moves towards him, Echo sliding out of the way as Wrecker stomps forward, Echo’s gaze still on Tech and Crosshair, as though making sure no punches were thrown, even though everyone was pulling their punches.

“I am not.” Tech’s answer is simple, Echo turning to give them privacy, eyes following Wrecker.  “Understanding you does not mean that I agree with you.”

Tech stares at him longer than perhaps he needs to, before he turns his back again, eyes focused down on his datapad, the long cracks in the glass expanding as the pressure around them and inside him grows. 

He hates their assessment, bucks against it.  He can’t?  He wants to argue with Tech, but he doesn’t have the words, his bitterness like something in his mouth, just behind his teeth, glower intense as he remains steadfast, but they cannot stay here. 

Everything has a breaking point, and nothing is safe anymore. Nothing is the same anymore, and they cannot go back, and he cannot go back.  Nothing can be changed, and he will not change, cannot change.

Or so he thought.

Crosshair moves forward, his hand trembling against his Firepuncher.

Luckily, he has a target for his ire, for his anxiety.

Rampart is slowing down, trying to hold onto some shred of dignity.  Crosshair pushes him forward, vicious in his enjoyment of the turning of their tables.

“You fall behind, you get left behind.”

“You used to believe good soldiers followed orders.”  The phrase, the reminder of the chip, and the fracture in his squad that the Empire left behind is like bile in his throat.

“Depends on who’s giving them,” Crosshair avoids the matter entirely.  “The Empire betrayed us both.”

“And…you think you can fight them?” Rampart asks, a little softer, more vulnerable.  Shared moments between the pair of them, when they’d both been at the top of their power, the height of their achievements in the Empire…before it cut them down.

“That’s,” He shakes his head, “Not you.  You’re like me. Loyal to no one but yourself.”  He stops in his tracks, his confusion evident, and Crosshair moves past him.  He turns slightly towards him, before he looks to him over one shoulder.

Rampart’s face is stuck in an unflatteringly lost expression, eyes searching Crosshair for the man he knew back then.  He looks forward, towards Hunter, and Wrecker, to where Echo and Omega are and need their help now.

“I’ve changed.”  He says, voice thick, choosing to keep moving forward.

Rampart’s scoff has shaken him.  He doesn’t want to admit it.

I’ve changed, he’d said, curt, wanting to put as much difference between him and Rampart as he possibly can now, physically, emotionally.  His hand trembles, on their approach to Tantiss, for the little girl who’d never given up on him, for his little big sister, Omega. 

Tech had always held the belief that he’d never be able to change.  That they couldn’t change his mind, he couldn’t change himself.

“Sure you have,” Rampart’s refusal to accept that stings.

His hand trembles even as he presses on. 

Spar returns not too long later.  “I’ve been asked by your trainers to see about sending you and 9901 along.”  He folds his arms, trying to puff himself up.  He looks more and more like the prime every day.

9904 stares at him, irritation clear.

“You don’t want to get in trouble, 04.”  Spar says.  “There’s nothing you can do about it now.  He’ll be out when he’s out.  I know you don’t even want to be here anyway.”

9904’s hands ball up, digging his heels in.

“Everyone will break at some point,” Tech had said to him, that day, his eyes not quite meeting 9904’s.  “No matter how well trained you are.  Different stimuli triggers different responses— even I struggle in the face of the correct one.”

“I’ve changed,” Crosshair says to this ghost.

“It is his nature.  You cannot change it, he cannot change it.”

“I’ve changed.”  Crosshair says again, trying to be more sure about, to tell him back then he was wrong, because Tech is now— because Tech is—

“Is there nothing I can do?” The clone cadet, 9904 asks Spar now, after everything has been done.  “I don’t want to be like you.”

Spar had abandoned all of them, became a Separatist, had tried to fill the traitorous shoes of prime.  Had abandoned his big little brother, left him to die, had never even said so much as goodbye, 99’s corpse so small in death.

Spar looks at him with a too familiar smile, the look burning Crosshair every bit as much as the assassin’s black dead eyes hidden by darkness and by his helmet cover what he fears most, the reflection of himself in it.

“You had your chance to be one of us,” the dark figure had said, and Crosshair had not had the bandwidth to respond. “You chose the wrong side.”

They're the unspoken words after Tech's speech to him and Wrecker in the underwater gloom of Kamino.  The things Tech did not say when he finished his speech with Just because I understand you does not mean I agree with you.  

They’d fought and he’d lost and then he’d been on top of him, domineering, and Crosshair had been trapped under the water, reality fracturing around him, his hand on the other’s shoulder and begging him to stop and the figure’s hands had trembled as he took heavy breaths, and then he’d fallen off him, shot at by Howzer.

And Crosshair had reached back for him anyway because— because, and he’d not been able to reach him in time, body falling away from all of them, over the waterfall, Crosshair only just managing to cling on, because he was always able to hold on just that much longer, just like Tech had said he’d be able to, sitting through so many of those torture sessions as they’d tried to break him down, all over again, not knowing his ability to resist was always in his nature.

Spar, as he had back then, the pair walking to their next classes anyway…he’d laughed at the heavy question, asking under his breath where 99’s boys got all the dramatics from.

“Don’t worry, kid,” He’d said.  “It’s not like we’re droids, it’s not programming, much as it irritates the Kaminoans when it doesn’t stick to me.  We choose what our nature means.  We choose how to use it.  That’s how we’re raised.  How you choose to be.  You don’t want to be like me, fine.  I don’t want to be like Prime, and I’m not gonna be.  I’m choosing to be better.”

Had he succeeded, had he failed?  Had their breaking points been reached?  Could he change?

He pushes these questions out of his mind, the guilt, the sorrow, the loss— he focuses on the task at hand; Tantiss, above him, Omega, inside it. 

His hand trembles, the hand that had tried to catch the clone X trooper and had failed. 

He wonders what Tech’s breaking point was.