Dreaming had become a warped coping mechanism over the past several rotations. At first, it had started in attempt to put an end to the endless thoughts that whirled through his brain, a computer truly in overdrive, out of control and heading for a crash when sleep finally overtook Echo's exhausted body... and then came the nightmares.
Maybe that was too kind of a word for what they were, recalling terror, pain, and streams of numbers spilling through the forced connections anchored in his psyche... Brothers dead because of him. Fives was dead now, too. Echo didn't know too much about how his twin had passed, though it made bile stain his throat thinking he could have had a hand in that, as well.
When it all began, Echo would force his eyes shut, willing phantom limbs to unclench and relent in their aches, imagining a better location, a better time that didn't seem very long ago, curled up in Torrent's barracks with Fives' snoring keeping his mind just awake enough to find it annoying. If he pretended hard enough, the nightmare could be the one Echo had found himself in presently.
Visions of his brothers, laughter and easy banter guided his steps to sleep, easing the way into slumber as gently as one would coax a scared cadet from a broom closet on Kamino. In his dreams, Fives' arm never left his shoulders, Hardcase effortlessly evoked laughter even in the worst of moments, and even Kix would find himself pulled into their collective nonsense through Jesse's involvement. In those imaginary moments, he was alive again. In his dreams, the good ones, Echo could remember who he was, who he strived to be, what he liked, who he loved, and how to just exist. Eventually, falling into the fantasy of what reality once was became easier, and Echo could find himself drifting into a world he wanted to be a part of...
Until the night came when the dreams turned dark. His brother's faces warped, cold durasteel and wiring etching over their bodies, stripping his vode of their humanity, until all that was left were hardened, twisted forms that slunk towards his own tortured form, fixed in place on the operating table back with the Techno Union. The one place they had allowed a semblance of consciousness - needing their subject to be cognizant enough for intricate probing and delicate surgical interfacing to show the desired results, forming the connection between the biological anatomy and technological alterations.
Screams fell on deaf ears. Thrashing against the restraints did nothing but bruise and break his already weak body. Pain flooded through neurons, sparked every sense, wrapped around his soul like fire and burned until there couldn't possibly be anything left of whoever CT-1409, ARC trooper Echo, was. Drenched in sweat, lungs heaving as if Alpha 17 had been drilling troopers in PT, Echo would wake. And wake. And wake.
The nightmare truly was never over. The endless dream, the one they all seemed to have before things fell apart, had been replaced with a cruel punishment of reality.
Brothers dead, and Echo left behind. Brothers dead, and Echo's fault. Brothers dead, and maybe whoever Echo used to be, had died too, somewhere along the way. Brothers dead. Fives, dead.
Sometimes, Echo felt dead too.
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