Warnings: Angst, self depreciation, implied of experimentation, implied euthanization, mistreatment and dehumanization of clone troopers, blood, brief mention of being paralyzed, brief mention of Asajj Ventress [she is her own warning considering the past her and Alpha-17 have and what she did to Commander Colt], medbay setting, brief mention of General Grievous [He is also a warning in and of himself especially in 2003 Clone Wars]
Alpha-17 had been through a lot of things in his very short life, things that would be considered traumatic to most civvies and he considered that for once they might be right. His helmet's internal HUD flashed behind his clenched eyelids, pain blossoming in his spine to shoot fiery hot and sharp all through his nerves. Everything hurt. Unlike anything he could ever image. Unlike anything he had ever felt before.
No amount of grueling training Jango put him through as a cadet, or the torture that pale bald headed demon inflicted upon him in the secret Separatist prison on Rattatak could have prepared him for what he felt now. All of that was uj'alayi compared to this. He couldn't move from the waist down, he started to feel numb and underneath the pain he could feel the underlying warm, sticky feeling of blood— his blood— soaking into his blacks and onto his armor. Seeping into the crevices and soaking onto the cot he was currently being moved on. No breathing techniques or mental trick could distract him from the pain, or the quiet fear creeping into his gut at being useless.
If he couldn't be fixed then he would simply be discarded— euthanized like a insignificant beast of burden. Replaced. Thrown aside like trash. His parts used to help some poor other vod in need if the Republic didn't want to shell out the necessary credits to try and fix him, or worse— be through with him all together and send him back to Kamino. Broken and battered, back to the Kaminii, back to the factory from which he came from.
"Focus vod, we're almost there." One of the shinies said beside him, his breathing had come out in harsh wheezing pants, the interface flashing bright, blaring notifications on his decreasing health and composure.
Warning. Hyperventilation warning.
Alpha tried everything to calm himself and nothing was working. It was just all too much. Too many variables. Too much pain. Too much stimulation.
'Warning. Elevated heart-rate.'
'Warning. Blood pressure decrease.'
He clenched his gloved fists into the cot, the leather of his gloves creaking under the pressure. His teeth were clenched tightly he subconsciously thought he would shatrer them with the pressure.
'Warning. Loss of conciousness imminent.'
"Stay with us, Captain." He was having a hard time focusing, his eyes felt heavy. The voices were deep and distorted, muddled and more distant by the second. He could see through his visors blaring warning flashes the helmets of his vode but their words weren't reaching him. The rushing of blood through his ears deafened him, his vision blurring, he felt dizzy.
He couldn't focus through the haze. Shadows flickered and bled into the sides of his vision, shortening his peripheral. Any slight movement made his head spin, the bright overhead florescent lights overhead blinded him. Sweat trickled from his forehead down the sides of his temple into his hairline dampening his short curls. His face was hot, but the rest of him was beginning to feel cold.
The once tight grip he had on the cot loosened until his hands just hung limp. Cool air rushed in his face snapping him back from the brink, his head snapping around, his eyes landing on his vode plastered abnormally against a wall unable to move. His eyes traced around until they landed on the source. Alpha's heart could have stopped. He wasn't a scary man by no means but the sight before him shook him to his core.
He felt acute fear shoot up his damaged spine like ice, it was as if someone splashed cold water on him. She couldn't be here. Alpha thought almost calmly, a small moment of clarity before it was swept away by the overwhelming fear he had towards to woman. Causing his next thought to be frantic and uncharacteristic of him. Why was she here?!
Even in his less than stellar state he knew that bald head and pale ash white skin anywhere. Ventress. A weak shift of his head to the side and he saw his helmet on the ground. "You seem familiar clone, do I know you?" She spoke calmly, taking him in. Her eyes roamed his form.
He couldn't move to grab his side-arm. He could faintly hear the sound of her walking closer. His pulse spiked as terror overtook him fully as it began to set in, binding his body in invisible chains, preventing him from even willing himself to action. Scrambling to reach for a weapon, fire-arm or vibroblade, anything to keep that witch away from him. The scars on his face and those running up the length and width of his body tingled and ached in discomfort in rememberance of what she was capable of.
What she had done to him. This time there were no restraints keeping him in place. He was able to move then, even though his movements were heavily restricted, he still had options for the pain, but now he was frozen. And he hated that. He could barely wiggle his fingers, all his scrambling turned out to be pathetic squirming.
Every bit of training went out the airlock as she stopped right in front of him. Looking down on him, he felt powerless— no— he was powerless. Not that he stood any chance before but now he was truly at her mercy and he didn't like that. Couldn't stand it. Fear wasn't good, but it could keep him alive.
He was experiencing too much of it. He couldn't contain it all, it was like seeing her again burst a dam he didn't even know existed within him. The pressure building until it exploded out seemingly with no end. It was like every fear, regret, and failure came crashing down on him all at once. Was this what it felt like to have your life flash before your eyes?
Alpha always thought you would experience good and bad things at once not just the bad. But to his credit he didn't have very good or happy moments. His life from start to here was suffering, conformity, restraint, and the knowledge that he didn't matter. He would die unloved, he wouldn't be missed, he would never be thanked, just tossed to the side and forgotten. Nothing more than a tool, a cog in the machine that was the Republic.
Sent back to Kamino to be euthanized, if not put to work until he withered away to dust if he didn't die on the battlefield first. A fate he loathed in the back of his mind. A fate he knew he had no say in. But that was cut short now. She would surely end him this time.
There were no jetii to save him this time. Not that many of them cared what happened to him, to them he was disposable. Obi-Wan was off far away, Anakin too. No miracles would be granted for him today. These were his final moments and he for the life of himself couldn't muster up the strength to do anything but just lay there pitifully.
He didn't want to just roll over and die, that wasn't his style. He had Mando'ade blood, he was Mando and yet here he was just useless. That was all he had to hold onto, the culture Jango instilled in them. He didn't like the clones very much, aside from the Alpha— Boba— the one he had claimed as his son. The one he made sure to flaunt around in his and the other Alpha ARC's faces as a reminder of what they would never have.
Further hardening them and strengthening the resolve that they were products, tools, cannon fodder and nothing more. Jango made sure they knew what he thought of them, but for as much of a heartless and selfish shabuir Fett was, he shared a modicum of kindness to them. Teaching them their heritage, that was about all he gave them. He guessed even cannon fodder deserved to know it's culture, it basic roots, anything past that was di'kutla. He could feel the beginning wellings of water at the corners of his eyes —he didn't cry— he wasn't wired to after everything that happened.
Alpha hadn't cried since he was a tubie, when he was first beginning to walk and learning to feel and control his emotions. A lie. A blatant one at that. Alpha would sit up some nights in his quarters on Kamino and drink his failures and memories away. The liquor burning his throat and taking his mind off the tears that would stream down his face at the nightmares, the fallen brothers he'd lost.
The one's he'd personally trained that weren't good enough and died during their first mission as ARC's. "Alpha." Ventress spoke while leaning down to be eye level with him. "You've seen better days." She continued, eyes focusing on the cauterized light-saber hole singed black into his white plastoid armor.
"Ventress." He finally managed to grit out with extreme difficulty. "Just get it over with." He spat with as much vitriol as he could muster— which wasn't much. There was something in her eyes in that moment.
Something different that he couldn't quite place. "Fortunately, my dear Alpha, I'm not here to kill you. I have no ill will towards you or the other clones aboard this ship." Rising up she turned away from him, the clones pinned to the wall dropped unceremoniously to the floor. The men scrambling to their feet only to have their blasters forcibly yanked from their hands and out of reach.
"Why?" Alpha croaked out, he didn't believe the woman for a second but he couldn't help but to ask the burning question in his mind. She didn't answer. Alpha wasn't sure she even had one. He flicked his gaze to the medical droid coming towards him.
"Stabilize him. Do not let him die." With that she turned and walked out of the medbay. For the first time since he was pulled out of the line of fire, away from the battlefield he took in his surroundings. He couldn't for the life of himself remember when he had arrived at the medbay. The droids soulless optics were the last thing he saw before darkness overtook his vision.
Something wasn't right. Floating in the darkness was neither pleasant nor painful for Alpha. But then there was a shift. He couldn't recall what it was that started the chain reaction. The twitch of a finger, the aching in his chest, the pain blooming just underneath the haze but Alpha shot up with a shout, his body screaming for him to stop but he was reared and ready.
Frenzied and bleary eyes darted across the room frantically, searching for any threat, any sort of movement for which he could take his pain and frustration out on. The bright florescent lights blinding him and causing his arm to raise up and block it out. His head was pounding underneath the haziness. Then it came crashing down, Grievous. Ventress.
He should be dead— but he wasn't. He shouldn't be able to move— but he was able to. The heart-rate monitor that was blaring rapidly before was slowing down now as he inhaled deeply and began to calm down with breath techniques he'd been trained to use. His stomach and back hurt. Everything still hurt just not as overwhelming as before.
He could actually think clearly instead of his thoughts jumping from one place to the next a mile a minute. There was a knock on the doorway to his room, his head snapped sharply to it, enough that the joints popped and crackled menacingly. A fierce scowl and bared teeth met whoever was either brave or foolish enough to disturb him. "It's nice to see you up finally, although you shouldn't be sat up like that. The last dose of painkillers you were given is beginning to wear off, you're going to be in a world of pain soon."
Alpha took in the woman before him. She was short, shorter than him, smaller than him. With a disarmingly friendly smile that he was not fond of, it wasn't working and he could sense she could tell by his unwavering stare and tense silence. His lips uncurled to rest in a thin line, more relaxed but still showing his displeasure. She took a measured step forward and his eyes followed her closely, even the slightest flicker of emotion or response didn't go unnoticed.
"You're safe here, I promise. No one is going to hurt you. The men that accompanied you should have been waiting here for you to wake up. I guess the food in the mess was too good for them to pass up once they were patched up enough to go by themselves." She began to ramble and then— as if to bother him further— she flashed him that same sweet smile, the smile he was beginning to hate vehemently.
"Not much of a talker are you?" She asked moving closer to him without a single care for her own safety and the dark impulses threatening to take hold. If she just came a little closer he could grab her and make her tell him just what in the haran was going on. Her lips were moving but Alpha heard nothing, he was razor focused— just a little closer. There!
When she wandered closer Alpha's hand shot out, taking her wrist in a vice and yanking her towards his bed, pulling her down onto it. She yelped loudly in surprise— the startled noise being cut short when she twisted around on the mattress and attempted to get up. Alpha used a powerful hand and pinned her down, before his entire back and body erupted in a seizing pain that knocked the wind out of him and he collapsed on top of her, crushing the woman under the full weight of his bulk. She yelped and all the air was shoved from her lungs as six feet, fifteen stones of heavily muscled ARC trooper flopped down on her like a sack of bricks. "I told you not to move!"
She was panicking, attempting to remove herself from under the him. Alpha in his breathless and tormented state managed to tilt his head down to see the red flush of color that had taken to her cheeks. He couldn't move. That single move sapped him of any and all strength, perhaps he should have thought that out more thoroughly before he took action. But at least she couldn't move either and she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon so long as he didn't move.
She was at his mercy and that was enough of a relief for him at the moment. Even the feeling of the cool air against his back and bare shebs couldn't sour his mood at this small triumph. All he wanted to do now was go back to sleep and rest. She tensed under him and he watched her process her predicament in full. And as she registered what was happening that annoyingly disarming smile left her face.
Good. He much preferred the bantha caught in the speederlights look, it meant she would be easier to intimidate. And dare Alpha say it made her look cute, yes, he much preferred this look to the other. "Get off." She panted sucking in a deep breath through his stiffling heat and bulk.
"Can't." Alpha replied gruffly, the word casually rolling off his tongue. He swore he saw her face flush a deeper shade when he spoke, the deep baritone rumbling through her. "Can't? What do you mean you can't?!" She squawked trying with renewed effort to get from underneath him.
"I can't breathe!" She protest weakly, arms trapped underneath his large mass so she couldn't call for help or wiggle out from under him. In the few seconds he had flopped unceremoniously on top of her Alpha came to a conclusion. She was soft. Unbearable soft. She was no threat to him.
A tiny thing that probably couldn't fight. Anyone with enough skill a finesse could have gotten from underneath him. He'd be at their mercy and yet it was the opposite with her. She was at his mercy. Her softness was so ..... distracting, to say the least.
"You're crushing me!" She squeaked, the futile shifting of her limbs and the bucking of her hips did nothing to remove him from his position on top of her and at that point he felt her go limp. Clearly giving up on her attempts to escape. Alpha took satisfaction in that. That was for annoying him with that dikut smile.
Serves her right. Her breath brushed against his chest, rustling the thin fabric of his hospital gown, puffing hot air against him, it had to be stiffling for her down there and he didn't care one bit. "Why couldn't you have just stayed still and laid down? Now I can't administer the pain meds on time, you're going to be in a lot of pain." She sighed defeatedly.
Alpha gave a simple grunt at that, trying to regain his strength to no avail. Her face was still that amusing red color, that caused his lips to twitch up in a barely visible smirk. Yes. You absolutely we're no threat to him. With that understood Alpha allowed his muscles to fully go slack and his eyes fluttered shut, the fatigue he was fighting finally winning over him.
Authors Note: A continuation of my other post about Alpha not being cannon and disappearing to never be heard of again. In the comments someone said I could crwate my own headcannon about it and I immediately started before they said anything. 😭😭 However. Whether this will be a series I am unsure. If anyone wants more let me know. But considering I have a story on Ao3 that I have not updated in a year Idk. And I legit have 5 to 6 Chapters queued up. I just don't know which one I want to happen first and I don't like how some of them end fr. Plus 2025 was a horrible year for me. And I do mean horrible. I'm still suffering the affects. The Orange Tyrant got into the pffice and my life went to shit. I try and stat away from political posts cause I use this and ao3 as an escapism away from all the bs in real life. But that's neither here nor there if you want a continuation let me know and I'll see what I can do. As for my other story. I'm jot sure if I want to cross post it here or not. I might go bsck amd change some things. It started off as a smutty one shot that turned into a story. I may cross post it but I'm not exactly sure if it will be recieved well. Or it Tumblr will flag it with the first part being smut and all. Also if there are any spelling mistakes I proofread this a while ago and haven't checked it since. So I have no looked for mistakes and am hoping for the best. I'm trying to be productive yall. 😭😭😭
@dreamie411 I promised you clone content even though it isn't Fordo a promise is a promise. I'm working on Fordo as we speak as well. You're new Fordo fic was the best. Keep up the fire posts.
