Cold Embrace - A Clone Wars Short Fic
Author’s Note: Prepare to fucking weep bitches. (or feel a mild bit of sadness, I’m not picky)
CT-6231, aka Boots, heard it before he felt it. A shot from directly to his left. The pain came next. Good non-existent gods, it hurt. Everything hurt. It was like being set on fire and frozen all at once. The sky, he noted as he lost the feeling in his legs and tumbled backwards, was a clearer blue than the incubation liquid he’d been born in. When his head hit the ground, he heard the sound it made. It was a sickening noise. If he wasn’t seconds from death he’d probably have had nightmares about it the rest of his life.
Boots wasn’t stupid, contrary to popular belief. He knew the moment he stopped feeling the pain, he was dead. Maybe not immediately. But he was.
He remembered, suddenly, every moment that had ever made him happy. The violent but depressingly small flood of memories almost pushed his last breath from his lungs, but not quite. Not quite.
Rex, his brother, was only a few years older, but had this horrible look in his eyes when he dropped to Boots’ side. His mouth opened and closed. As if he wanted to tell him some comforting lie.
But Boots wasn’t stupid. “S'okay, Rex,” he whispers, and a panicked feeling sharpens his dulling senses as he realizes the corners of his sight are… smudging. He schools his face, so his brother doesn’t see his fear. “I’m a clone.”
“We’ll get you to a medic, Boots, don’t talk,” Rex finds his words a little too late to comfort.
Boots shakes his head a little. “I can’t feel my toes, Rex, but damn if the sky isn’t beautiful.”
His brother doesn’t bother looking up. “Shh, don't… don’t talk, please,” he says, eyes shattered.
Boots smiles and closes his eyes. “Do you think clones go to heaven?” He whispers. “Do you think we have souls?” He shudders his last breath. “Maybe heaven isn’t real,” He wonders softly. The last thing he feels is an icy chill enveloping him- similar to an embrace. “I hope-”
The first brother Rex ever lost in battle was a shiny named Boots, and he would’ve turned 10 the following week. Boots had got his name after losing his issued boots over ten times in one week. Being the shiny’s first real battle outside simulation, Rex had promised to keep an eye on him.
And even when the alcohol had burned any sort of feeling from his face, Rex saw the nervous smile of that brother reflected in the liquor. He heard the laughter and the screams. But mostly he just saw the blood streaked on the shiny’s armor. He saw the gaping hole in the breastplate. The empty look in the golden eyes he shared.
Not a day went by that Rex didn’t whisper his fallen brother’s name. Not as a prayer, but as an apology. As if saying the word would summon some sort of release from the guilt. It never did.
His eyes had begun to blur years ago. Rex knew this day was far overdue. As a soldier, a clone, some days he was surprised he’d lived even this long. Yes, he mused, this day was far overdue.
His hands had begun shaking more recently, something that had become more of a nuisance than he’d have expected. He missed the steadiness of his fingers, the old precision in his movements. But things were slower now. Harder to remember. Harder to think…
Rex appreciated his life. How long he had with his friends. Wolffe, Ahsoka, Ezra… But he also knew he didn’t deserve it.
Now he lay in a bed, in a small house, in a field, so like the one he’d taken refuge in very long ago. He lay in the bed with the window to his left, the curtains pulled back. Outside he could see the sky. A beautiful clear blue. A strange, almost foreign thought occurs to him. “Like the incubation liquid in a birthing tank,” he whispers to himself.
He could feel it coming. The darkness. Rex knew soon that he’d go. “Boots,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry Boots,” Tears leak from the corners of his eyes. Eyes like the sun, tears like the sky. “I’m so sorry.”
“Damn, you got old,” a voice startles him.
Rex takes a second for his eyes to adjust. A shock ripples beneath his graying skin. “Fives?” He breathes.
The young Arc Trooper leans in his armor against the doorway, not a second older than the moment he’d died. His grin, wide and mischievous as ever, stretched over his cheeks. “Look at you, you’re practically ancient,” his brother jokes.
“You… you’re dead,” Rex whispers, forcing himself to sit up.
Fives pushes off the wall and shakes his head, raising his hand. “Take it easy Gramps, wouldn’t want you to have a heart attack,” he winks.
Fives laughs. “The world is a mysterious place,” he answers with a shrug.
“Am I hallucinating?” He can’t help the slightly suspicious tone in his voice.
Fives shrugs. “Maybe. Who knows?” He sits on the end of the bed, rubs his goatee. “There are worse hallucinations than my handsome self.”
Rex shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Fives. For everything. I should have-”
His old friend raises a hand. “Don’t do that to yourself, Rex. If you think for a second that I regret your life, you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” a wry smile and he continues, “Mostly… I wish I could have… had something similar. A life, I mean.”
“I know. You were just a kid,” Rex whispers guiltily.
Fives shrugs. “We all were.”
Rex hesitates. “Are the others… are they with you?”
Fives smiles widely again. And this is a smile of true happiness. “All of them. Every one of our brothers. They’re here. You can see them if you try hard enough,” He promises.
Rex blinks a few times, eyes straining. And slowly they appear. Tup, Hardcase, Wolffe, Echo, Fox, Dogma, Cody, Jesse… all of them. Each smiling as brightly as the next. Happiness seems to fill the room with a golden light.
Tears fill Rex’s eyes. “You’re here.”
“We never left, brother,” Cody smiles.
“Not once,” Tup agrees softly.
“Is this heaven?” Rex asks, the tears spilling over. He reaches out. “Could it be heaven?”
A voice breaks the silence following his question. “Not yet, Rex,” The owner of the voice pushes through the rest of his brothers.
A choked sob escapes the old man’s lips. “Boots.”
The young man, younger than all of them, smiles. “It’s been a long time,” he says.
“I’m so sorry,” Rex attempts to blink away his tears in vain. “I failed you above them all,” He buries his face in hands bent with arthritis and age.
Boots shakes his head. “You didn’t. You failed not one of us. Not one.”
Sobs shake the old man’s shoulders. “I’m so so sorry, forgive me, brothers.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Boots smiles. “Look at us. We might not have lived but clones have a soul, and heaven is real, even for us.”
“Even for us,” Rex repeats weakly. His energy seemed to drain, frighteningly and fast.
Boots nods. “Come on, Rex. You’ve spent your whole life fighting wars. It’s time to rest.”
“It’s not the same without you brother,” Fives smiles. “We’ve waited a helluva long time to see you again.”
“I’ve missed you all so much,” Rex says, laying back.
Boots lays a hand on his shoulder, and instead of cold, it’s warm. Like a fire on a winter night. Like the tea Ahsoka would brew when he came over. Like Ezra’s childish grin. “It’s time to come home, brother. It’s time to rest.”
Each of his fallen brothers rest their hands on his shoulders. It’s here that Rex closes his eyes forever, and slips into a warm embrace.
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