Cejanr (A Rexsoka SWTCW Fanfic)

5

"Really?" He yelled into the abyss. If there was a solid floor beneath him, Rex would stamp his foot. "Now you pull me back? Look, remembering is important, I know, but at least wait until I'm indisposed to prepare for passing out." The black maelstrom made no acknowledgement of his yells and curses. His head was still pounding in time, pain dancing in electric pulses from the back of his neck to the tips of his fingers and the heels of his feet. 

Rex was no stranger to pain, or at least that's what he got from his broken memories.

He pushed it down as hard as he could, looking at the swirling blackness. "What? What do you need to show me?" He was getting a little worried, now that the annoyance was fading. The water swirled faster around him, closing in. For the first time he could remember, it battered against him. He was tossed around, struggling through the water as he struggled through a sudden torrent of memories. 

His head pounded harder. The water was almost burning to the touch now, scalding him as he struggled. He gasped in pain. Dimly, he wondered if it was possible to pass out if he was already unconscious. 

He gave up, the water blistering and painful against his skin. There was no escape from the onslaught. Everything burned. He struggled until he was too weak to continue, then the current swept him away. Memories flashed by him, too fast to keep track of. Lights, sounds, agonizing pain all engraving itself deep into his mind. It seemed to never end, the sheer power burning nearly burning him to ashes. The voices were a blurred and garbled mess. Lights and colors baked themselves into his eyes, making him close his eyes and try to turn his head away. He couldn't seem to escape the onslaught. 

Even in the darkness there was something missing, like a gaping maw where something important should go but wasn't there. He only got a glimpse of it before the water pulled him away. He noticed, that after an eternity and a half, it was lessening. Slowly, but lessening. His headache was still terrible, and his throat was dryer than Geonosis. But at least he could localize the pain instead of the all encompassing cocoon of agony.

His breathing was becoming more labored, each breath rattling in his chest as he choked on nothing. He shivered as he bounced from too hot to freezing cold. He tried to curl up on himself, but his limbs wouldn't obey properly. 

He gasped as he struggled to breath through his rapidly constricting airway, the choked breath turning into a hacking cough. The maelstrom receded farther, some light peeking through. It might have even been completely gone, but Rex wouldn't know. The pain was still there.

Still too strong to do much more than hope that it ended. His lungs were fire. His blood was ice. His head pounded in time to his heartbeat. His skin felt raw and ached with every brush against it. His stomach was tied in knots, and every muscle in his body felt like it had been shredded and stitched back together by a toddler with a plasma scalpel and twine. 

There was a sharp stinging in his left arm, and he almost sobbed in relief as some of the pain faded. He felt distant and floaty. It was a definite improvement to the agony. Little by little, he felt himself start to regain a weak grasp on consciousness. 

He was lying in a bed, the sheets coarse and rough. There was bright light around him. Where was he? The med bay on the Resolute?  Why would he be in the medbay, unless something happened and-

He mentally cut himself off. He could remember. He knew who he was. He knew who his wife was, who his brothers and friends were. He was almost giddy with joy. He knew! He remembered! The joy was almost immediately overcome by anxiety. What had happened?

He tried to open his eyes, but was blinded by the light. He gave a hoarse groan of pain. The pain was back again, and there was the pressing need to slip back into the depths of unconsciousness. But he was a clone, and an officer at that. They tended to run a special kind of stubborn. He forced his eyes open, laboriously using his trembling and sore arms to ease himself up into a sitting position. 

He gave a cursory glance around, having to blink and strain to see from the weight in his eyelids. His vision doubled and blurred, and he teetered on the edge of blacking out several times. He gasped and panted, already exhausted from that small movement. There was somebody sitting next to him, and because of his blurry vision, it took him a second to identify the clone. 

It was Kix, slumped over a medical tray containing various implements and datapads. A dozen half empty caf cups were littered around the floor by his chair. It was a wonder that none of them had spilled or that he hadn't cut his face on the medical instruments. Rex smiled slightly, but his endearing exasperation for the medic was cut off as a coughing fit came over him.

Kix jerked upright, raising a syringe threateningly as he looked around. A scalpel was stuck to his cheek from his odd sleeping position. It had the blade guard on, thankfully. He saw Rex sitting up and coughing and he looked at him anxiously. 

"Trooper, what in the kriffing haran are you doing sitting up?" He asked. The coughing fit subsided to a mere ache in the pit of his chest as he glanced at Kix. 

"That's sir to you, Kix." He rasped weakly. Kix's face lit up in pure joy, and the scalpel came unglued from his face as he lurched to his feet, almost knocking over several of his collection of cold caf mugs. 

"Not when it comes to your health, sir, when it comes to your health I outrank you." He forced Rex to lay back down with a groan and hefted his syringe. Tears were threatening to spill over as he injected the contents of the hypodermic needle into the IV in Rex's left arm. He sniffed and wiped at his eyes. 

"I don't think I've ever been so happy to sedate somebody in my life, sir." He wiped at his eyes with the back of his palm. Rex just muttered a weak 'Kriff you' before the drugs took effect and he slipped away into a dreamless sleep. 

The next time he awoke, Kix and Skywalker were there, having an avid conversation. His head throbbed and his chest rattled, but he felt much, much better. He coughed once, then a second time to try to get the jedi and medic's attention. They paid him no mind, still talking too fast for Rex to understand. He slumped against the pillows in exasperation.

"Can one of you tell me what the kriff happened to me?" He asked hoarsely, putting all his strength into a shout. It still was quieter that his normal voice, but at least it got the pair's attention. They whipped around to look at him. He stared back, resisting the urge to blink sleepily. 

"Rex?" Anakin asked hesitantly. Rex sighed, a grating sound in his chest. 

"Yeah, that's me, Skywalker." He said in fake annoyance. "What the hell happened, again?" Anakin blinked, and looked at Kix. His jaw worked as he tried to put his thoughts to words. 

"Our theory," He said quietly, "Is that they replaced your inhibitor chip, which is what is used to wipe the mind in the first place. The force wanted you to remember, but the chip was preventing you from remembering. Then you had a seizure, and were taken aboard the Resolute for Kix to treat you. We couldn't remove the chip, the tissue around it is still healing and we didn't want to risk brain damage. We settled for a middle ground, in simply deactivating the active functions of it for now, and then everything tried to slam back at once. That lead to one of the worst cases of force burn I've seen." Anakin explained. Rex blinked, trying to comprehend the words for a long second.

"Why... ok." Rex coughed again, the pain in his chest spiking again. Anakin sat next to him, and put a hand on his shoulder as he struggled for breath. Rex felt a tingle from the force, and the tightness in his chest eased a little. Rex relaxed slightly before jerking and trying to sit up. Anakin held him down. "Ahsoka-" he gasped, coughing again. Anakin looked up at Kix and nodded. 

"She's alive. On Corascant." Anakin muttered soothingly as Kix put another dose of the sedative into the IV. 

"Have you seen her?" Rex asked weakly, panic showing behind his eyes. Anakin shook his head.

"She disappeared after her trial. After we left for Kamino, I got an untraceable transmission with an address from Corascant marked Fulcrum." Anakin said gently. "She's strong. We'll get you back to her soon. Just heal up for now." He insisted, layering the force into his words as the sedative took affect. Rex realized what was happening and struggled against the jedi holding him down as he began to loose consciousness. 

His last thought was of fear for his wife and fury for his general.