Chapter Text
Needle survives to graduation. His entire batch does, which should be a cause for celebration, but:
The usual elation, the joy at having lived, at shipping out together, lasts only until their assignments come in and they realize what has happened. They are a batch of a dozen, assigned to their battalions in pairs and triplets. Three are assigned to the 104th, two to the 327th…and one to the 212th.
It is rare for batches to be broken up into more than two groups for deployment, but it does happen. They all know why it has happened to them, and Needle draws his knees up to his chest and waits for the hammer of their anger to fall.
It doesn’t. Tower (assigned to the 327th) sighs heavily.
“Well. It’s over, then.”
And Cass (assigned to the 104th) says only: “It is.”
They do not apologize to Needle for the last two years, nor do they wish him well. He doesn’t expect them to, even though he is the first scheduled to ship out.
On the morning of his deployment, Bact’s pod slides open as Needle shoulders his pack, ready to step out of the barracks for the last time.
They don’t say anything to each other, but Needle will remember forever how Bact’s gaze follows him as he leaves. In that moment, Needle thinks of everything that could have been, if he were like his brothers. He imagines, as he walks to his transport, a world where they ship out together. How desirable would they have been, rare batch-brother medics, trained together since decanting?
The clones reserve the title “twins” for those remarkable pairs of brothers who can communicate without words, who, when allowed to work as part of a pair, achieve things that others could not. It is believed that clone twins are always batch-brothers, but this is, in fact, not always the case.
If Needle had none of the ARC trooper’s memories, he would not know this, nor would he care. (If Needle had none of the ARC trooper’s memories, he might have had a chance at a twin-bond like that of the ARC and his partner.)
The transport clears Kamino’s atmosphere. There is no viewport where they sit, but Needle can feel it all the same: the tension that ebbs away from all the troopers in the transport as their mockery of a homeworld recedes into the distance.
He’s seated at the end of a row, listening to the troopers around him come alive. They whisper to the brothers next to them: their batchers, almost certainly. Needle was the only one to arrive at the transport alone.
When no one hushes them, the whispers grow louder, turning into jubilant if restrained conversation. Needle feels the urge to slouch, as if to hide his loneliness. He sits up straighter in his seat instead. This is nothing he has not already endured. This is nothing he cannot survive (until the transport docks, until they settle with their new battalion, until he has a chance-)
The trooper next to Needle turns to him, slim hand tapping Needle’s wrist.
“You’re Cass’ batcher, isn’t that right?” He draws out the ‘s’ a little too long, Needle notes.
Needle nods, bracing himself for a punch he hopes the brother isn’t stupid enough to throw. It would be a shame for him to have a black mark on his record straight out of Kamino, let alone on account of someone like Needle.
To his surprise, the other trooper smiles.
“Thought I recognized you. My batch bunked two barracks down the hall.”
He offers a hand, and Needle realizes with some shock that he’s supposed to shake it.
“The name’s Slither,” the other trooper says, and adds, ducking his head with embarrassment, “can’t say I’ve ever heard yours.”
Needle takes a deep breath.
“I’m Needle.”
“That’s a good name for a medic.”
Needle lets the breath back out again as Slither introduces him to his batchmates. Around him, other brothers chime in, sharing their names, their specialties, the inside jokes that led to their names. And for a moment Needle lets himself think, maybe now I can have a family.
(But the explosion rocks the landing platform, but the small hand in his goes limp, but the blaster bolt punctures his armor.
He has done nothing to deserve a family.)
Their orientation is long and overwhelming, and Needle sticks close to the other shinies until a vod with a ponytail arrives. Like Needle, his shoulder plate bears the medical crest, and he grumbles under his breath as he approaches.
His name is Helix, Chief Medical Officer of the 212th Attack Battalion. The officer in charge of orientation greets him with teasing that is begrudgingly returned, and then dismisses the group: all but Needle. Needle, he says, is to go with Helix, to see the medbay. So Needle follows Helix through the corridors of the Negotiator, trying to ignore the anxious lump in his chest.
Helix doesn’t really speak, except to point out which corridors lead to places Needle will need to go later, until they reach the medbay. Empty of patients (“for now,” Helix grouses), the medbay is neat in most of the ways Needle is used to from Kamino, but there are certain things, like the rag bin in the supply closet, that are a comforting, sensible sort of untidy. No reason to fold the rags, no reason to put away the bucket that will inevitably need to be fetched again in a rush.
Needle takes it all in, nodding, and doesn’t realize until nearly the end that Helix has been watching his reactions.
“You’ll do,” the CMO says, and it sounds almost like a compliment to Needle’s praise-starved ears. “Come here; there’s one more thing.”
There is, in a corner of the medbay, a small chiller. Helix opens it and pulls out two objects: one a rectangular box, the other, some sort of cup shape.
“Juice, and pudding cups,” he says, as if Needle knows what either of those things are. “For the patients, when we have them, and for us, on the rough days.”
He hands the objects over to Needle, turns to dig in a drawer, then turns back to proffer a spoon. That, at least, Needle recognizes.
“Those are for you to eat now,” Helix says. He’s rummaging through the chiller again. “I remember what the food was like on Kamino.”
He pulls out one of the ‘pudding cups’ for himself. Needle tries to be subtle about having to watch how he opens it, but-
It’s amazing. It tastes like nothing he’s ever had, nothing he could have imagined. He can’t even begin to think how he would describe it, if asked, but- It feels smooth, it feels cool, it sits nicely in his mouth.
He must be making some kind of face, because Helix smiles at him in satisfaction.
“You’ll fit in just fine,” he says, lifting the spoon to his mouth.
Needle tries to let himself hope that Helix is right – and it’s almost easy to hope, here. He adores Helix, grumpy bastard that he is (and who wouldn’t love someone who cares so much about all his brothers, even if he pretends not to show it?). He likes the 212th, likes their fierce Commander who breaks his knuckles punching battle droids, likes their kind, odd Jedi General who makes a point to take a meal with every new shiny at least once.
It feels like everyone belongs, here. Even Needle, who came here with no one, is welcomed into groups at meals by Helix or Slither and the other shinies.
They call him by name, and no matter how long he waits after the officers leave the barracks at night, the accusations and punches never come. No one here knows what he did, he realizes quickly. None of them know he stole a dead vod’s name.
Days pass. He survives his first engagement with the 212th.
Not all of them do. An unexpected landmine takes Slither’s legs, and there’s nothing Needle can do. There’s a moment, before Slither hits the ground, that he just stands there, feeling the heat on his face, outside the danger of the blast.
He doesn’t scream. He hears Slither’s curses turn to sobs.
He’s on his knees in the dirt and Slither grabs his hand.
His helmet’s still on. Blackened, unpainted. He’ll never paint it now.
“Needle, please,” Slither hisses. He still holds the ‘s’ out too long.
Needle is a medic.
He takes Slither’s helmet off. There’s blood on his face. With the hand not holding Needle’s, he’s groping for his gun.
Needle is still shiny, but he knows what he has to do.
(Wasn’t there someone he couldn’t do this for, once?)
Slither is shaking too badly. Needle has to pull the trigger.
And then he goes back to the fight and there’s no blood on his armor, because they’re just fighting clankers today, but there should be, right? There should be blood, and it should be his fault.
It passes in a blur. He shoots apart more droids than he thought possible. When it’s over, he and Helix do what they can for the wounded they can locate. They don’t return to the spot where Slither died.
Needle is a good medic. His hands do not shake no matter how many brothers he sees to. He does not cry. More than once, he hears himself laughing as he tells a brother they’ll be good as new by tomorrow.
Then it’s over, no one left in medbay except him and Helix and those too wounded to be mobile or even particularly lucid yet.
They’ve done everything they can.
Needle has time to think about all the dead brothers he saw today. Slither wasn’t the only shiny among them – and this was just one battle, not a series of engagements or a campaign as is so much more common in these wars they fight.
He wonders if his batchers have had their first engagements yet. He imagines Bright’s eyes going dull as a blaster bolt punches through his chest, imagines Cass disappearing in a cloud of smoke and sparks.
Helix is ready with the bucket, holding Needle’s hair out of his face as he vomits. Now he’s sobbing, sobbing and retching until he has nothing left in his stomach. He can feel Helix rubbing circles into his back, and if he had anything left in him he’d be sick all over again from the kindness.
He doesn’t deserve it. He shouldn’t be here. He needs to tell Helix, needs to tell him that the Kaminoans made a mistake and assigned him a recon as his second, that he should have died on that battlefield in place of Slither or some other vod.
No matter how he tries, he can’t force the words out. He needs to confess, he needs to, and he can’t.
Eventually he picks himself up and goes to the fresher to rinse his mouth out. The face that stares back at him in the mirror is identical to the one he expects to see, and not the same at all.
In some ways, the older clones are louder, more full of life than ever, in the days after Needle’s first battle with the 212th. They fill the mess with laughter and the corridors of the Negotiator with rowdiness, arms slung around the brothers next to them.
In other ways, they are quieter. Those shinies whose batchers died on that battlefield are pulled aside by the older brothers they’ve formed bonds with, to air their grief with those who understand it from experience.
Needle came here alone, and so is never pulled aside, but Helix’s voice is a little gentler, those first few days, and his praise a bit more forthcoming.
The third day back on the Negotiator, Needle returns to his barracks to find the bunks pushed back against the walls, old sheets spread out on the floors. Brothers congregate in small groups, each with one or more shinies at the center. Most everyone is in their blacks, or at least mostly stripped out of their armor. Cans of gold paint sit beside some brothers, who stick their tongues out or furrow their eyebrows in concentration as they trace and paint careful lines onto their armor.
Helix, who does not bunk in the same barracks as Needle, pushes off the wall when Needle notices him, scooping up an abandoned paint can as he passes it.
“Everyone’s painting their armor,” he says, brandishing a paintbrush in Needle’s direction. “Might as well join them.”
He can’t just refuse an offer like that – not when he sees the other shinies surrounded by the older brothers they’ve started to become close to, not when he knows that Helix is offering this as a show of brotherhood, of belonging.
And yet, when he’s seated on the floor of the barracks, armor laid out in front of him, paintbrush in his hand-
He can’t think of a single thing that belongs on his armor.
(The ARC trooper’s paint was designed to honor his fallen squadmates.)
One of the other shinies asks to borrow his can of gold paint. He gives it up happily.
(The ARC trooper’s paint was deep, deep blue.)
His paint can is returned to him. He picks up the paintbrush, but doesn’t dip it into the paint.
(The ARC trooper’s paint isn’t his. He stole Needle’s name. He can’t steal from the ARC too.)
“Needle. Hey, Needle? Are you even still in there?”
He doesn’t know how long Helix has been calling the name that shouldn’t be his. Something must show on his face, because the older man’s voice softens just a little.
“You don’t have to paint it now,” Helix says. “You have time, you can wait.”
He can’t. There’s no guarantee he has any time at all. Slither never got to paint his armor. (The ARC’s squadmates didn’t either.)
And even if he does wake up tomorrow, there’s no guarantee that he’ll still be him.
“I need to paint it,” he says, as he reaches down to pick up his helmet and begins stowing his armor away.
After Needle’s second engagement, he and Helix stay the night in the medbay with the wounded. Needle is the only one from his group of shinies who still has no paint except his medic’s insignia, and he wants to belong, so he asks Helix for the paint, and they lay out a sheet in a corner of the medbay.
And then Needle gets stuck again, in a sea of shattered memories where he places his hand over a blue-painted handprint and promises never to leave the brother wearing it behind.
How can he paint his armor when all he has to call his own are the stolen fragments of other people’s lives?
Helix huffs a sigh, and holds something out to him. One of his shoulder plates, the one that doesn’t carry the medic’s insignia. It’s blank white, unpainted – Helix, unlike most clones, is minimalist when it comes to his paint.
“Practice,” Helix commands, and, well, Needle may not have anything to call his own, but doing things for the people he loves is easy.
He tries to paint a double helix on the shoulder plate. It turns out terrible, lacks the proper depth and curvature. But Helix smiles when Needle holds it up for inspection.
“Good job,” he says, and: “It’s getting late. Let’s paint yours another time.”
And Needle is still the only one without paint, and this makes him different, again. But Helix doesn’t chip the atrocious paint job back off his shoulder plate, and every time Needle catches a glimpse of it, he feels like Helix is welcoming him home just by wearing Needle’s design on his armor.
The third time, as it turns out, is in fact the charm – at least when it comes to Needle’s paint. Not so much for Trapper, whose blood sprays everywhere as he screams and scrabbles against Needle’s hold. But Needle ties off the tourniquet and laughs because Trapper will survive, he’ll be there tomorrow, because Needle was here today to save him.
Then he’s on to the next wounded brother – so many wounded brothers, so many he and even Helix can’t save. But even so at the end of the day he stands from where he’s been sat telling jokes to a brother who came into the 212th with him. He walks into the medbay fresher, bone-weary, and sees-
He’d known some of Trapper’s blood had to have gotten on him, but he hadn’t expected this much, all across his breastplate, a little even on his helmet.
He walks back out of the fresher and goes to strip his armor off in the supply closet instead. Helix pokes his head in before long, frowning at him.
“You ever heard of a fresher, Needle? Maybe you should try it with your armor on, looks like it needs the wash more than-“
Needle stands, nabs the pen from the pocket of Helix’s scrubs before he can protest or even blink, and then plops back down on the floor of the supply closet with his armor.
“The hell?” Helix demands. Needle ignores him.
He can do this, he can, he can.
If he has nothing else, he has this: the solid physical proof of a life saved by his hands alone, dyed onto his armor in blood.
(Obviously, the blood will flake off eventually. He remembers a flaking blue handprint, a brother tracing around its edges with reverent concentration.)
He finishes tracing the edges of the bloodstains, looks up to find Helix watching him with an expression somewhere between frustration, curiosity, and amusement.
“Help me make a mess?” he asks, wheedling, because if he’s going to paint it, finally, Helix has to be there.
“We have patients-“
“Who are all asleep right now, and will be for hours,” Needle counters.
Helix sighs, but soon they’re both sitting cross-legged on the floor of the supply closet, Needle flicking paint at Helix, laughing as his older brother scowls and fails to wipe the flecks of paint off his scrubs. It’s hardly a sterile environment, with the bloody rags they’d used to clean his armor off, and all the paint, and neither of them have had a chance to use the sonic yet, but-
There will be time for that later, Needle thinks. If nothing else, there will be a tomorrow – for Trapper, for Helix, and for him.
Anything beyond tomorrow’s dawn has no guarantees attached to it. But Needle looks down at his newly painted armor and smiles. No one can ever say this armor belonged to the ARC trooper, or to the first Needle.
This is all him. Knowing that, the nightmare – of not waking up tomorrow, or of not being him when he does wake up – feels a little more distant.
Maybe he doesn’t have to lose himself anymore.