#clone shuffling

Ooohhh angsty.

Please enjoy.

———

The war was over, everything was different now, and if he was entirely honest, Toast had no idea how to handle it.

He and his vode in the Guard were already at odds with the rest of the GAR, because, well, if nothing else they still had shifts. The war was over, the prisons and Senate still needed guarding, Coruscant still had crime, so they still had to work.

And Toast had little interest in going anywhere but his station in the prison or the barracks. His batch had been gone for years, lost in battlefields on distant planets and it wasn't like he had anywhere else to go, he had enough people throwing things and insults at him when he was on shift anyway.

The biggest issue with their barracks at the moment was all the other vode coming in to try to reconnect, trying to find their batch mates after suddenly developing a conscience and realising they'd remorselessly cut the Guard out of their lives two years before. They were everywhere, and it was chaos.

Chaos because there were so many vode trying to find batchmates, and chaos because the Guard's safeguards against the murder of their vode often included, well, things the rest of the GAR would no doubt consider to be immoral and evil.

Still, some things stayed the same, the food was abysmal, Skillet still couldn't make toast properly, and Squash still couldn't dance.

He laughed with Bubblegum about it on the way back to the barracks, her impression of his movies as they walked bringing a much needed smile to both their faces, but he froze at the door.

There were three clones at his bunk, white armour with sage and beige and maroon. At his bunk, checking the number.

Looking for their batchmate.

Their batchmate, he was not.

He had no idea how he was supposed to approach the situation, Bubblegum had already joined a few other vode, regaining them with the tale of Squash's dancing, and with courage he wasn't sure he had, he walked over and stepped through them to put his cap in his footlocker and lie back on his bunk.

"Can I help you?"

"We're looking for our vod, his number is on this bunk. Do the Guard not care about that sort of thing, about the regulations, just lie in any bunk?"

"No, this is my bunk. And you know us in the Guard, the paper pushing meat droids, we follow every regulation. The bunk is mine."

Realisation crossed their faces, clearly they'd already heard at least rumours about what had been happening in the Guard, the way numbers had been switched, that vode like himself had taken the numbers of the dead.

“You’re not our brother!”

Toast flinched, because no, he was not, not the way they were thinking, because grief did weird things to people.

Because he wasn't their batchmate.

"You're Shudder's batch."

"We are, so, who the hells are you? In his bed, where... who...?"

He could see their resolve breaking, one by one, the understanding that Shudder was gone, that his number had been used, could see the grief overriding the confusion and anger.

He steeled himself, because part of him had been certain he wouldn't even survive to meet the batch of the vod who's number he'd been offered to save him from Decommissioning after the false accusations that would have condemned him. Remembered Shudder in medbay, dying, battered and bruised with too much blood lost from the wounds to his side, remembered being snuck out so Shudder could give his number over personally. Most vode simply added their numbers to the list, so should they die they'd be up for grabs, but he and Shudder had been close.

Shudder had found out about his predicament just before he'd gone on his last patrol. Shudder had held his hand and given his number over with wet rasping breaths.

It was a great honour in the Guard, to be given a new number personally, instead of randomly assigned one from the list. Most weren't lucky enough to experience the handover with both parties, to honour the loss of one life and the start of the other under a single number.

He'd held Shudder as he'd left them, marched away, and then started his new life in the Guard, honouring the brother that had left it behind.

Who was he?

There were so many answers to that, he was CT-8781, he was CT-7746, he was a Senatorial guard, he was a prison guard... he was a soldier of the Coruscant Guard.

"I'm Toast. If you'd like, I... I can tell you what happened to Shudder."

———

Thanks for the ask, and thanks for reading.