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They come for him shortly after he’s been exercised, which means it must be afternoon. It’s stupid, keeping him on a regular schedule. The guard rotations, other aspects of security, his sessions with Hemlock, those are all randomized, but the predictability of his meals and exercise allows him to maintain some sense of time. It’s an unnecessary risk. So is the exercise itself, as much as what’s done to him can be called exercise. Daily, he’s taken to a small room with a man-sized pod which he is placed inside. Stimulator pads descend on his arms and legs and he’s made to convulse until he feels like he’s run ten klicks in full kit before doing Wrecker’s strength circuit. At the conclusion of this humiliation, which lasts roughly ten minutes, he’s removed and dragged back to his cell. It’s deeply unpleasant, and it’s risky allowing someone like him to maintain even a fraction of his muscle tone. The alternative, though, is to allow him to atrophy into nothingness before Hemlock is done with him. So, in the name of science, Crosshair is exercised.
Presumably it’s also in the name of science that he’s removed from his cell again so soon after being thrown back inside. The guards drag him upright and out into the hall. He hardly needs the direction, but they give it to him in shoves and muzzles in the back anyway. His arrival at the small room where the worst hours of his stay have been spent is as unsurprising as the presence of Hemlock and the clone doctor.
“Ah, CT-9904. How good of you to join us,” Hemlock says as Crosshair is arranged on the low table. Karr straps him down and injects him with a hypo. “We’re just waiting on another guest.”
The identity of the guest and how long they spend waiting on them are facts irrelevant to Crosshair, who closes his eyes and fights the desire to drift off into the growing haze of whatever Karr dosed him with. He comes back to himself at the sound of Hemlock’s voice. "It hurts, doesn't it?" He’s right beside him, crouched by his head, breath ghosting over the fresh injection site on his neck. "That 9901 chose the girl over you. That after so long at his side, you meant less to him than a child he'd known for hours. And now..." A sigh. "You'll be punished for her insubordination." Oh, fantastic. More pain. It doesn't matter. None of it matters.
He jerks at the sudden drum of boots on durasteel and a desperate cry. "No! He didn't do anything!" The kid's voice is shrill and terrified and entirely too close and Crosshair's eyes fly open to find her just beyond the ray shield, restrained by a pair of commandos. Another guest. "He didn't do anything! It's not fair! I'm the one who should be punished." She thrashes. He wonders what she did. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Hemlock chuckles softly. "As I said, Omega, actions have consequences. Should you find this one unpleasant, I suggest you try to learn from it." Then, to Karr, "Commence the treatment."
"No! It's not fair! Crosshair!" She kicks, catches a commando in the knee, gets nowhere. "Crosshair!"
It doesn't matter.
He's waiting for the needle, addled by the drugs, so when Karr takes his hand in her gloved one, he's so startled he gasps. The hand prying his fingers away from his palms is cold and gloved and surprisingly strong. Or maybe he's just getting weak after all. There is no needle, no click of a hypo uncapping. There is only hesitation, and his hand in hers. Dizzy, he finds her face. She's glancing back and forth between Hemlock and Omega. "Doctor..."
"This is a teaching moment, Doctor Karr. Proceed."
Metal clinks against metal as Karr retrieves something from the table beside Crosshair. Whatever it is makes Omega's eyes widen, flashing red in the light of the shield. He closes his own. Karr shifts her grip on his hand to isolate one finger and Crosshair understands what is about to happen the moment before it begins. It gives him time to brace himself: when she begins removing the nail of his trigger finger, he does not scream.
It hurts. Of course it does. Everything that’s happened to him since Kaller has hurt. Everything going forward will hurt, too, and will feel as gratingly wrong as his fingernail slowly tearing free of its bed. It doesn't matter.
He thinks Karr is trying to be quick, but it's clear she's never done this before, has no taste for it. Her mouth is a thin hard line as she tugs and tugs and tugs until finally, the nail comes loose. Crosshair exhales through his nose, inhales through his mouth. Doesn't scream. Hears the kid. She's panting, breath catching on every inhale just like Tech when he's trying with everything he's got not to cry. Just like Tech, who's dead and will never cry about anything again.
It doesn't matter.
"Stop," Omega pleads. "Just stop! I'm the one who broke the rules!"
"Yes," Hemlock says matter-of-factly. "You are. Continue, Doctor Karr."
And continue she does. She removes three more nails, gets better at it every time, gets no reaction from Crosshair. Nothing verbal, at least. He lost control of his facial expressions months ago, around the time the kid showed up. He can't even turn his head away from Hemlock's relentless pale gaze. He closes his eyes. It doesn't matter. He can still see it.
Another nail, more protestation from the kid. Hemlock makes a noise of consideration. "Administer the second serum," he instructs Karr, and moments later, another prick in Crosshair's neck. Another rush of cold. He can hardly feel it anymore and it doesn't matter.
Whatever is in the second serum is... disorienting. The room tilts, Crosshair gags, and he is so cold. Shaking. Fuck. Fuck, when Karr gets to work on the fifth nail it's the only solid thing he can feel and he grabs onto it and it explodes through him like a thermal detonator or a fucked up orgasm. He moves; a sound crawls up his throat. He grabs it, strangles it, beats it into the shape of his CT number before it can get away.
"Crosshair! Crosshair!" Omega's voice knifes through his head with startling clarity. Everything that had been distant is now immediate and intense and it all registers as pain. He wonders if this is how Hunter feels all the time. It doesn't matter. Another nail, this time on his left hand. The kid is sobbing. "Please," she begs. "Just stop! What do you want? I'll do anything, just stop!"
Thank the stars this isn't an interrogation. Can't have been more than... however long it's been, and she's already broken. No training in interrogation resistance, nothing to fall back on because Hunter would never harm a hair on her head even if it meant leaving her vulnerable. Of course he wouldn't. Wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't leave her behind. She's a child.
Aim for the kid.
Another nail, and Crosshair digs his teeth into his lower lip. "What do you want?" Omega wails.
He'd been used against Hunter like this once, by a group of Separatist extremists on Lotho Minor. Hunter hadn't broken. He'd spit in one of their captor's faces and laughed when they turned their attention to him.
"When one has made a mistake, one generally begins with an apology. I know you clones weren't bred with civility in mind, but surely you know that much."
Wrecker had carried Crosshair out of that cell, and Tech had wrapped his broken ribs.
"I'm sorry!"
Hunter had cleaned the blood from his face and kissed the top of his head and called him little brother, told him he'd done well.
"I'm sorry, please, I won't do it again. Just stop hurting him!"
Another fingernail. He can't stop the noises he’s making, can't force them into anything but the thousand proofs of weakness they are, can't do anything but struggle and scream and listen to Omega cry.
"Have you learned your lesson?"
"Yes!"
Cry about Crosshair, for Crosshair, because she can't see him for what he is, is too naive to understand that some defects run too deep to fix or hide.
"You understand your place? That you are Imperial property, and every breath you take is at my leisure?"
No, Crosshair wants to say, scream, can't make his tongue work right.
Another fingernail—
He's not worth it, not now and not ever and not to her and not to Hunter and it hurts, it's always hurt and he's scared and Hunter said he would protect him protect Crosshair even though Crosshair is a failed experiment said he would protect him Hunter—!
—tears loose.
"I understand!"
"Say it."
But it’s true, isn’t it? No matter how hard they fight it, how many orders they disobey, how special they think themselves, this is what they are. Lab scrappers for sadists playing scientist, begging to be allowed to exist another day. Republic, Empire, what’s the difference? It doesn’t matter.
"I—I'm Imperial property. I know my place."
"Good. Now, was that really so difficult?"
She's sobbing harder now, choking on her own breath. He doesn’t want to hear it. “I’m sorry, Crosshair.”
Hunter had said that, too, after Lotho Minor.
"Take her back to her quarters." The clatter of armor as the commandos escort her away. Still too loud, too much just like everything is right now. Hopefully, it’ll wear off.
Hemlock's hand on his face is freezing and bile rises in Crosshair's throat as he wipes tears from his cheek with his thumb. "Oh, Crosshair," he says in that half-whisper. Crosshair has always despised his CT number but somehow, from Hemlock's mouth, his name is worse. "How cruel of them to create you to feel so much when your purpose begets pain. I could take it away from you. All of it. The agony, the memories, the torture of hope. I could perfect you if only you would allow it."
Crosshair opens his eyes. Hemlock's face is inches from his own, brows furrowed in a mockery of sympathy. Summoning every last scrap of will and all the moisture left in his withering body, Crosshair spits.
Every trace of emotion drops from Hemlock's face to concentrate in his eyes, burning ion engine blue. Rage. Hate. Crosshair's longtime friends. Hemlock breathes shallowly and for a moment, Crosshair allows himself to entertain the hope of impending death. Then, Hemlock huffs a laugh, wipes his face, smiles. "Then again," he says evenly. "Perhaps not. Loathe as I am to admit it, some things are too broken to be fixed. Some clones are simply... defective." He straightens, moving out of Crosshair's line of sight. "See to it that 9904 is returned to its cell," he orders Karr. Then, he leaves.
Karr bandages his fingers in silence. It hurts. She unfastens the straps pinning him to the table and helps him sit up. It hurts. "I'm sorry," she says.
"It doesn't matter."
The kid comes back to his cell the next afternoon. He’s facing the hall when she arrives, so he gets to watch as she falters against his unyielding silence. "I can go,” she says eventually. “If you don’t want to see me.”
Sith fucking hells. “It doesn’t—do whatever you want.” He’s going soft. The entire purpose of allowing her these visits, he knows. Just another experiment.
She settles a bit. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“Are you—“
“I’m fine.”
She relents. “I’m really sorry, Crosshair. I didn’t know Hemlock would do that. I wasn’t thinking.”
“The only thing you should be sorry for is how quickly you broke. You have to be stronger than that.”
She balls her hands into fists at her sides, stubborn as any Batcher ever was. She’s one of us. “I wasn’t just going to keep letting them hurt you!”
”You should have,” he hisses.
“I won’t!” She bangs both fists against the grate. “You’re my brother.”
”Hah.”
“You are,” she insists. Hesitates. “You said Hunter’s name. When they were hurting you.”
“I changed my mind. Go away.”
Of course, despite her earlier concern, she doesn’t listen. “They would still take you back, you know. If you left with me. I know they would.”
”Leave.”
She’s crying again. “Crosshair…”
And of course, after months of torture, merciless cruelty and pointless humiliation, it’s the kid who finally drags the word from him. “Please.”
“…Okay.” She lingers a moment longer. Then she’s gone, and he’s alone.
It doesn’t matter.