#k9 trooper bumblebee

[mwolf0epsilon]

Exhale the Paint Fumes

Summary: Olly's spiraling smells a little like paint...

Recommended Song: Slow Walk

Canon Characters: Commander Fox, Clone Trooper Dogma, Sargent Hound, Grizzer the Massiff

Original Characters: Riot Trooper Olly Olly Oxenfree, Clone Trooper Lichtenberg Clone Trooper Pretty Boy, K9 Trooper Redacted, Communications Corrie Rhythm(@british-hero) Riot Trooper Red Alert(@british-hero), K9 Trooper Bumblebee(@british-hero), Clone Medic Remedy(@kkrazy256), Drift(@calamity-aims), Clone Medic Croissant(@gaeasun), Clone Medic Nocte(@purgetrooperfox).

[This story is heavily inspired by @calamity-aims 's fic "To Unexplain the Unforgivable", and @gaeasun 's fic "The Two Hundred". I would suggest giving those a read beforehand.]

THIS STORY IS ALSO ON AO3

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Fox's office smells like fresh paint. The unpleasant smelling vapors cling to the walls, furniture and nostrils, even if the coat itself is not present on them. Because whenever the marshal commander of the Guard breaks out the paint, usually it's to add another name to his vambrace.

If Olly were the kind of clone to wax needless poetics, he'd likely akin both the scent and effects of the fumes to be what loss physically smelled and felt like. Seeing as he's no bard, and Fox is certainly no philosophical major, he never words such absurdity. There's just no point in trying to make a tragedy into art.

It was 200 this time...

200 names delicately etched on a piece of armour that had seen far too much in far too little time. 200 names that make the eyes water and the nose itch. 200 men erased and replaced like glitched software. 200 brothers that Olly has lost. That were stolen from Fox's attentive and caring hands because of something well outside of his control.

Neither of them speak. There really isn't any need for that. Not much either of them could say that would ease the pain or guilt, nor do they particularly feel like breaking the somber silence.

It's a minute of remembrance, honoring the not quite dead.

If Olly focuses hard enough he could almost hear the voices of the past. Each carefully caligraphed letter of a name so full of the impression of memories, that both gave him the drive to go on, and a newfound crack his already quite broken heart. A crack that threatens to finally shatter it into a million pieces.

He wonders what is going through Fox's mind as he completes his 109th name. What tormenting horrors poke and prod at his brain as he tries not to quake and quiver with each one he catalogs into somewhere so private and close. Probably the same kind of monsters that are gnawing at Olly's own gray matter. Monsters that remind him that he's lost everything and everyone to the cruelty of the galaxy. The indifference of Kamino, Coruscant and the GAR.

His unnamed ori'vode and vod'ika, spirited away by the demagolka that haunted his nightmares. Lich, lost and very likely devoured by the all-consuming shadows of Umbara's unending darkness. Pretty Boy, a traitorous defector that turned-tail and saved himself instead of coming back to help him grieve their brother. Rhythm, wiped clean like he was nothing more than a stubborn stain that needed to be removed from a fancy carpet.

Hell hath no fury like a vod who's got nothing left to lose. And yet... Olly can't bring himself to be angry anymore.

At least not right now.

156 names on a singular vambrace. Some older than the ones Fox has just added to the ever growing list. The other will no longer be bare. Each addition kills another piece of both of their souls.

Everyone knew riot troopers never got decommissioned nor reconditioned. There's no need because they're "mindless brutes". Why "fix" something that exists only to push back a crowd and deliver a violent beating? It would defeat the purpose of such a henously glamour-less position.

It also meant that those who'd endured the horrors of their hard to survive job, were left to sit around idly and helplessly watch their brothers be taken away from them. Sometimes never to return. Other times being brought back wrong and never the same.

Red Alert always told the Shiny Turtles not to get too attached, even if he himself failed to follow his own rule. Olly simply told them to hold on to the memories they'd made, and to look after the broken shells that came back from Kamino.

Not all of them took it well. It was hard on the heart. He'd caught so many kih'vode hanging from the drafters that at this point the idea of suicide within the barracks was not a novelty.

Telling Fox of these incidents always meant more paint smell. More fumes. More headaches. More stinging eyes and noses. More guilt, retching and dry-heaving over a dirty toilet bowl in some dingy establishment's bathroom.

Never a good idea to throw up in the Coruscant Guard barracks, their plumbing was and forever would be quite shitty.

Olly doesn't really know why he bothers to stick around to watch Fox whenever that happens. There's no point to him watching his commanding officer, his Guard ori'vod, adding the names to his armour.

It's not like the commander would ever dare to skip over a name.

Once, before Remedy got wiped that is, the bespectacled medic had suggested the methodical way Fox wrote the names might simply help the riot trooper to relax. Each line and curve forcing him to focus and take deeper even breaths.

Maybe he'd been right.

Time always seemed to slow down and make more sense when he sat by the marshal commander in these moments of sorrow.

200 names spread between two vambraces. Fox isn't bothering to conceal the hitch of his breath or the tears running down his face. Olly squeezes his shoulder once before leaving him to grieve in peace. Force gods only knew he was hanging by the fraying thread of what little dignity he still had remaining.

The veteran riot trooper refused to be the one to take that from him.

Olly's unofficial patrols start the moment he leaves the marshal commander's office. They're self-imposed. A personal mission he'd given himself the first time something like this had transpired. A way to reassure his weakened mind and broken heart, despite it doing exactly the opposite on most cases.

The outliers gave him hope. The hopeless causes took it away.

He takes a deep breath, inhales the "clean air" and the exhales the paint fumes he'd been breathing in all morning. Exhales his nerves and tries not to cough up a lung in the process. The stinging in his nasal cavity and throat are still there from the light chemical burns. And then he makes his way towards his various destinations.

His first stop is down in Storage where '22 can always be found.

Even after a full mind-scrub, Dogma's quirks hadn't quite left him. They likely never would, no matter how many times he got reconditioned, considering he'd always just been wired differently from the great majority of the rest of them. He still liked order and organization. Thrived doing inventory work.

He just doesn't respond the his old name anymore.

That's fine. He seems to like it when Olly calls him D22. Never asks why Olly walks in with his right first bandaged, just accepts the treat he forcefully pilfered from a vending machine that was located on one of the various blind-spots of Coruscant. The larger trooper used to hate stealing, now it was a necessity if he wanted to offer something his siblings were more inclined to eat.

'22 loved cupcakes just as much as Dogma. Olly can't bring back his kih'vod, but he can bring '22 a cupcake.

His second stop is the medbay, even if he hates going in there.

Seeing what used to be Remedy walking around with cropped hair and no glasses is very jarring. Not only to him but to the medics that hadn't been wiped yet. He could see it in Croissant's and Nocte's eyes whenever they thought he wasn't watching. Knew they feared what might befall them if the chancellor got upset at Fox anytime soon.

The CMO had always been a frowner, which hadn't changed. None of the reconned clones ever really smiled much.

8847 always zeroes in on his injured hand before anyone else could register the riot trooper's presence in the medbay. Before any of this happened, Olly would have shied away from his touch. Refusing to show weakness even to the kindly medics. A couple of glass shards in his hand were nothing compared with his full body pains after all.

Now he lets '47 do as he pleases with the injuries.

He's taken up whittling. He's pretty crap at it. Laughably so. There's always some shitty wooden figurine in one of his pouches to offer to the medic as a "gesture of gratitude" for the medical care. 8847 doesn't seem to understand why he gives them to him but, according to Nocte, he hasn't thrown any away.

Olly can't tell if he's just trying to be polite or if he's trying to figure out why anyone would make and keep tiny wooden trash. Sith-hells, maybe '47 is just trying to figure out what the hell any of the figurines are meant to be. The little tooka he'd tried to carve was so bad it kind of looked like a malformed star fighter.

His third stop is the kennels.

Olly is absolutely terrified of the massiffs kept there, but he forces himself to swallows his fear like a hard pill. He'd never really seen eye to eye with Hound, but he was still a vod. And he'd been Rhythm's friend. Now he didn't even seem to acknowledge the massiff he'd bonded with prior to being reconned. Something which registered with the creature, if the way it now behaved so sadly was anything to go by.

He'd taken a hard hit. That much was obvious from the way he looked at people and animals so vacantly. Olly mostly came to make sure he ate something at least once or twice per day. With shaky hands he also made sure to refill the bowls in the kennels, even though the movements of the caged little beasts made him recoil like he'd been burned.

The riot trooper was ashamed to admit he often didn't stick around to even have an attempted conversation with the K9 trooper. He left that up to Redacted who had taken on the majority of the work in the kennels since Hound and Bumblebee got wiped.

His fourth stop takes him straight to Drift.

6147 greets him stiffly as usual. He'd been an arc trooper once, and also one of very few vode that ever dared to spar with a turtle that stood at 6 feet tall and was as built as Alpha karking 17.

Everyone knew Olly's strength was abnormal. Alarmingly so.

Another factor which adds to his chronic aches. Human muscle was never meant to be used at the same capacity as a woolamander would use it. Adrenaline was thus the key to unlock such power. Olly had learned early on to control the lack of restraints Sulu Ra's serum had cursed him with, but he couldn't mend what the strain did to him. No one could.

He'd likely end up permanently disabled one day.

Despite the danger of real injury being an accidental likelihood of facing him on the mat, Drift had never feared him as an opponent in the slightest. Seemed fond of the challenge.

Drift had fought him like he'd fought any other brother. The ARC had even beat him on several occasions by being perceptive, quick and witty. Only one of those things hadn't left him. The lack of fear.

6147 hadn't beat him yet.

He was slower, less coordinated, less aware of his surroundings. Olly barely did much in their spars. Just let the vod burn the energy. Eventually the former ARC would just fall on his shebs on his own and listlessly sit there, seeming almost at a loss for why all of this felt wrong. It wasn't right to see him life this.

His stops took him everywhere around the Coruscant Guard HQ. Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth... ...Two hundreth. His final stop was always Rhythm.

It was also the one that hurt him the most.

There was just nothing there. Nothing left of the clumsy but highly spirited vod'ika that reminded him so much of his own batchmates. Kamino had completely ruined him, from cutting the locks he'd so proudly styled, to removing the very light in those rich dark eyes of his. The only recognizable aspects were the freckles and scars. Fractured constellations.

Croissant had called him insane for putting himself through this. Nocte had just looked at him with such pity. He knows both of them mean well, but honestly kark them both for getting into his business. There was already so much that had been taken from him, he'd be damned if he lost this as well.

Torturous an ordeal or not, Olly would never abandon Rhythm. He can't let him go, even if the healthier option would be to do so. 2895 isn't Rhythm but that doesn't change the fact he used to be.

Maybe... Impossible as it may seem... He could be again...? If Olly tried hard enough...?

With a purpose he lets go of letting go. Just like a turtle Olly slow walks towards that one particularly unfeasable goal.

Even if it means indulging in things he honest to gods hated.

Like playing Rhythm's dumb little playlists full of songs that make his brain hurt. Or practicing twice as hard on his guitar playing skills even when he's too tired to lift it up properly. Sometimes he overturns the little box where he keeps the kids's little gifts, hoping '95 might recognize Agi's finger paints or Vite's handwriting. He has holopics of Lenta, from the few nights they'd all gone out together for some not quite cheap caf. He even holds the turtle plush Rhythm got him once as an apology gift for getting up to shenanigans...

The indifference behind '95's eyes never deters him. He tolerates Olly's company but doesn't seem curious at all about any of the memorabilia. Just seems interested in meticulously retouching his standard-painted shock trooper armour.

Olly's continuously dashed and renewed hopes smell like fresh paint.