Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Echo of Domino Squad, reborn,” General Shaak Ti greets him. He stumbles off of the Marauder with a broken gait, his hips and lower back protesting the long flight. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You as well, General,” Echo reciprocates, his voice wavering only slightly. Reborn, he thinks, packing the thought away for later. The word leaves an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

“Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair.” General Ti nods towards them as they disembark behind Echo. “It’s good to see you all in one piece as well.”

“General,” Hunter regards, stepping up beside Echo.

“What’s the occasion?” Crosshair drawls. Echo stiffens; his tone is not exactly appropriate for addressing a Jedi General, but she seems unbothered. “We don’t usually get a welcoming committee.”

General Ti smiles warmly. “I heard the news and had to see for myself! I’ve known Echo since he was a cadet, you know. I’m certainly glad to see Domino Squad isn’t completely lost.”

“Got any embarrassing stories?” Crosshair asks. Echo can hear the smirk curling around his words, but he can’t force himself to care. He’s drifting. He’s far away, he’s somewhere else entirely. He’s a cadet again, he’s nine years old and doesn’t have his name yet and CT-27-5555 is gushing about how pretty General Ti’s eyes are. 

Reborn, reborn, reborn, it echoes in his head and he still doesn’t know why it bothers him. It tastes bitter. It feels thick.

He’s unceremoniously sucked back into his body when a hand lands on his shoulder. Echo just barely restrains himself from elbowing Hunter’s throat.

“You alright?” Hunter asks, one eyebrow raised. Echo nods, perhaps unconvincingly, and follows as they leave the hangar. He’s not sure when General Ti left. It doesn’t really matter, he tries to tell himself.

They march on towards Clone Force 99’s barracks, Echo’s pain only worsening as he walks.

These bare, characterless white hallways bring the word home to his mind. It’s not really accurate—home is a people, not a place. 

But he grew up here. He trained here. He fought here. He became an ARC here. 

His home was here, for a very long time. Right by his side. 

Fives.

He would give anything to have Fives to lean on right now, because he’s not sure he can keep walking.

Fives wouldn’t mind being leaned on. He had always been a very tactile person, and it only got worse after Rishi. Echo had never been quite as touchy, but he didn’t mind it, not when it was Fives. 

Echo doubts any of the Bad Batch would tolerate having to shoulder their new teammate all the way to the barracks on his first trip back to Kamino.

He can’t just stop and sit down here, out in the open, either. That’s a one-way ticket to medical if anyone sees. 

And Echo is not going to end up in medical. Not while he’s on Kamino. That’s dangerous.

But he’s in so much pain. 

His nerves are on fire, stinging and hot, little tendrils of flame licking up his thighs and hips. A bolt like lightning shoots down to the soles of his feet every time he takes a step—his feet that he doesn’t have, because instead he has durasteel lumps with no touch receptors.

Crosshair, perpetually observant with that enhanced eyesight of his, slows his steps to match Echo’s fitful stride. 

At first, he dosn’t say anything. 

Echo resists the urge to lean on him, to ask for help, to just sit on the floor Force damn it—

“Stop it,” Crosshair says. 

“What.” Echo responds, though it comes out so breathless and choked that it’s hardly a word. 

“Acting like you’re okay when you look like you’re about to collapse,” Crosshair says. He grips Echo’s shoulder, bringing them both to a stop, and Echo flinches. 

Don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me

“The walk’s not that long,” Echo says through gritted teeth. “I’ll collapse when we get to the barracks. Happy?”

“No,” Crosshair says. 

“Hey!” Hunter calls from further up ahead. “What’s going on back there?”

“Echo is going to sit down for a little while,” Crosshair says. Roughly, he shoves Echo towards the wall. 

“Fuck off,” Echo spits. He jerks his arm to try and shake Crosshair away, but it’s futile. Crosshair isn’t some malnourished pile of spare parts like Echo is. His grip on Echo’s shoulder doesn’t waver even slightly.

“No,” Crosshair drawls. He shoves Echo down, forcing him to sit, and with how weak and shaky Echo finds himself, he can’t resist. His knees buckle. He falls to the floor. 

The barely present logical part of his brain knows that Crosshair is trying to help him, even if he’s being an asshole about it.

The rest of his brain doesn’t know that. The rest of his brain only knows pain. Being forced around by rough hands. Cold, hard surfaces.

Echo wouldn’t talk.

Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, not really. Not beyond strained rasps. They’d implanted an artificial respiration system in him; his old one had apparently called it quits. His body wasn’t adjusting well. He could hardly breathe. It felt like a cargo shuttle had parked itself on his chest.

But still, he wouldn’t talk. Not when his lungs had healed. Not when they tortured him. Not ever.

He wouldn’t do that to his brothers.

As long as he kept quiet, the Seppies holding him captive were denying him adequate care. No food, no water, no medical assistance. He’d been allowed just enough time in a bacta tank to keep him alive, but then it was stitches and skin grafts for the rest of the way. 

This was only going to net them an emaciated corpse, Echo knew. He wished they were smart enough to realize and stop wasting their resources; he was really craving a blaster bolt to the brain right about then.

His cell was cold, the air pricking at his skin like ice.

The floor was hard, every small shift of his muscles sending jolts of blinding pain through his hips and spine.

He wasn’t restrained, but he couldn’t move. Not anything beyond a pathetic one-armed crawl. 

Alone with nothing but his thoughts and his pain, Echo wondered if there was any way to make himself die faster.

“You can’t,” Tech’s voice. “His implants could have been damaged, which may have caused the issue in the first place. He’s still recovering from the surgeries he had on Anaxes.”

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Wrecker’s voice. Too loud.

“Call for medical assistance,” Crosshair’s voice.

“No, we can’t do that, either,” Hunter’s. 

“Why not?” Crosshair again. “He’s a reg. He’ll be fine.”

“Not if any Kaminoans see him,” Hunter says.

“He’s medically and scientifically significant,” Tech says. “They’ll want to dissect him.”

Crosshair’s responding silence speaks volumes.

Slowly, Echo blinks up at Wrecker, who is kneeling in front of him. Wrecker offers him the slightest of smiles. “Hey, buddy. You back with us?”

Finding his tongue to be nonfunctional, Echo simply nods. 

“We could at least get him a hoverchair,” Hunter says. 

Echo shakes his head so quickly he gets dizzy. No. I don’t need a fucking hoverchair. He makes the ARC sign for let’s go and tries to push himself up.

Tries. 

He falls, disgracefully, back on his ass. 

They all look at him with so much pity in their eyes that he wants to puke. He can’t stand it. He can’t stand, period, and it’s humiliating.

They’re all watching him. Their gazes burn.

“Hoverchair,” Hunter says. “That’s an order. Tech, Crosshair, go fetch one. Wrecker and I will stay here. Be quick about it.”

Crosshair and Tech scurry away. Wrecker sits on the floor. Hunter leans on the wall. 

Echo signs: I’m okay. One minute. 

“What’d he say?” Wrecker asks. 

“He said he’s okay,” Hunter answers. “And I think he’s lying.”

Hunter looks down at him, his eyes intense and intolerable. Echo looks at the floor. 

“You wanna tell us what’s wrong?” Wrecker asks. 

No, Echo thinks. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t think he can. He used to have episodes like this pretty often, but Fives was always around to speak on his behalf. Twins. They were twins. Some people, especially natborns, thought it was creepy. Fives could almost read his mind. 

None of the Batch knows what he’s thinking, and he can’t tell them.

“You gonna cooperate when Tech and Crosshair get back?” Hunter asks. 

Echo doesn’t know the answer. 

He doesn’t want to be touched. He doesn’t want to be helped.

He wants to go home.

Reborn. Reborn. Reborn. 

He’s not reborn. He’s a fucking corpse. 

“Hey,” Wrecker tries to get his attention, “we just wanna help you, alright? Get you battle-ready. But we can’t help if you don’t let us.”

He wants to cry. I don’t want help. I don’t want to NEED help.

Slowly, he holds up his hand and signs affirmative. 

Like it or not, he does need help. And he’s just going to have to be okay with that.

Tech and Crosshair return with a hoverchair…and a medic.

Some sort of silent conversation passes between all four members of the Bad Batch as the medic crouches down in front of Echo. “Hey, I’m Jasper. You’re the Hero of Anaxes, aren’t you?”

Echo nods. “Yeah,” he croaks. 

“Your files still have you listed as killed in action, so I don’t have much to go off of,” Jasper explains. “What seems to be the problem?”

Jasper pulls out a scanner. Echo feels a tremor run through his body—what’s left of his body, at least. He shuts his eyes so he won’t have to look at it. 

“Hurts,” he says. 

“What hurts?”

Can’t he just tell from the scanner? “Back. Hips. Legs.”

“Phantom pains?”

“Partly.”

“Scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain imaginable, one being none at all, how would you rate your pain?”

Echo pauses. 

This is bad, sure, but it’s not the worst pain he can imagine, not by a long shot. That honor goes to being blown up, or tortured, or undergoing surgery without sedation. Compared to all that? “Four.”

“It’s only a four, but you can’t walk?” Jasper inquires. Echo can practically hear their eyebrows rise incredulously. 

“I got blown up. This is nothing.”

“Okay…” Jasper says. “Let me rephrase: one is no pain, ten is so much pain you can’t move.”

“Hm. Nine, then,” Echo corrects. 

“Alright,” Jasper says, sounding satisfied. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna give you a hypo with a painkiller. It should kick in pretty quick, and then we can get you into the hoverchair. I already sent a request to the Anaxes base for your medical records—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Tech interrupts, “I have all of his records already.”

“—mm-hm. Fine,” Jasper says, a hint of annoyance creeping into their voice. “After I have your records, I’ll conduct a few scans, prescribe you some meds, and hook you up with a physical therapist. How’s that sound?”

Bad, Echo thinks. “Fine,” he says.

He’s shaking.

The thought of being in a medbay, alone, without Kix or Rex, is petrifying. Especially after that comment Tech made about dissection.

He’s right, Echo knows.

The Kaminoans won’t want to keep him alive. The cost of his medical care could be used to grow, what, three or four brand-new clones? All he’s useful as is a science experiment. He died and became one, was resurrected and will become one again. Maybe it’s all he’s ever been destined to be. Maybe in the next life he’ll be one too.

Someone slips their hand into his.

He wishes they’d asked first, but the shaking lessens, so he doesn’t complain. Based on the size compared to his own hand, he has to assume it’s Wrecker’s.

He squeezes, just a little, as a silent thanks.

“Ready for the hypo?” Jasper asks. Echo takes a deep breath and nods. “Just a little pinch…”

Echo holds his breath as the medication slides into his veins. He wishes it would numb his emotions as well as his pain, because he feels nothing but unsettled and scared.

“I will accompany Echo to the medbay,” Tech says, out of nowhere. “I have his records, and I assisted with the treatment of his cybernetics on Anaxes. Besides, he had multiple severe trauma responses during his first round in the medbay and having someone there who was with him at first might help to mitigate that. This is not up for debate. I am going with.”

Echo wants to feel annoyed, but in actuality, he feels relieved.

“Whoa, whoa,” Jasper says, “I’ll allow it, but I’m in charge here, and that’s a warning. Understand?”

“Tech,” Hunter says, his tone a warning of its own.

“I understand,” Tech says, “but that doesn’t change anything.”

After a few more minutes, the meds kick in. They don’t help too much with his legs, but it’s the good stuff, so he’s high enough to not care. Hunter and Wrecker help him into the hoverchair. Jasper pushes him down the hallway. Tech stares at his datapad as they walk.

“I am sending Echo’s medical records to your personal datapad,” Tech says to Jasper. “There may be issues integrating them with the wider system if he is still listed as killed in action. I would not be surprised if his file was completely locked.”

“Thought Rex had dealt with that,” Echo mumbles.

“I don’t think a brother has ever been brought back from the dead before,” Jasper chimes in. “It might not even be possible without a system rework.”

“Perhaps not a clone, but a member of the GAR has,” Tech says. “Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi orchestrated his own death and was listed as killed in action in his file for three weeks. Once the ruse was uncovered, his file returned to normal almost immediately. However, his death was planned ahead of time, and he is of a significantly higher rank than you.”

“Kenobi did what? ” Echo twists his head to look at Tech, who glances down at him with narrowed eyes. 

“I just told you. Do I need to repeat myself?”

“No, no, I’m just…surprised,” Echo says. “Doesn’t really sound like something he’d do.”

They arrive at the medbay, and under Tech’s watchful eyes, Jasper conducts a few scans. Echo drifts, feeling like he’s not really inside his own body. It’s terrifying. He just wants to go home. 

But he can’t, because his home is dead.

Because Echo wasn’t around to watch his back.

Echo remembered being unable to sleep in that cell.

He’d passed out a few times, but that hardly counted.

He kept having frightening half-dreams that blended too closely with reality for comfort.

Rex, barreling down the hallway with his dual DC-17s, turning them towards Echo in mercy when he saw what state he was in. His captors, returning to him with a gurney and electro-prods. Ahsoka, sitting next to him, telling him it would all be okay, before his captors dragged her away.

Fives, trapped there with him.

The hallucination of Fives—because he had to be a hallucination, they wouldn’t just let him stay in the same cell as Echo, wouldn’t let him keep his armor, wouldn’t leave his face unblemished—was lying on the floor next to Echo, tracing some kind of pattern on the wall absently. 

Fives was ever-moving. Always tactile. Got bored faster than anyone Echo had ever met.

He would hate it here.

“You know,” Fives said, “you could rip the stitches out. Even if you don’t bleed to death you’ll waste their resources.”

Which was not something Fives would ever suggest in reality. Not a chance. It was a stupid idea and it would hurt like hell. The stumps remaining of his limbs might’ve even healed enough to prevent him from bleeding out by now.

But he listened anyway.

And ripped out the stitches.

They leave the medbay with an array of new medications for Echo to try and a physical therapy appointment slated for the next morning.

Echo doesn’t want any of it.

There’s a med for nerve pain, an anti-inflammatory, an immunosuppressant, a muscle relaxant, a variety of vitamin supplements, an antidepressant (“Just in case!”), and a stronger, potentially addictive pain medication that he is given a stern lecture about—and then, pulled away to just outside the door, Tech is also given a stern lecture about. Echo finds that to be a little strange, since Tech was in the room with him during the first lecture, but he doesn’t question it. He doesn’t really have the mental capacity to, not with the way his panic is eating up his mind, not with the way the medications cloud it.

Jasper assures him it won’t be like that day-to-day, that it’s just them interacting with the medication from the hypo he’d been given earlier.

After all of it, he’s got a headache. The pain meds won’t touch it.

“It is most likely psychosomatic,” Tech says as they walk towards the barracks. 

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know what that means.”

“Originating psychologically,” Tech clarifies.

“So it’s not real,” Echo grumbles.

“Incorrect,” Tech says. “It’s very real. It simply has its origin in the brain instead of the body. Then again, it could be a side effect of the medications, but it should’ve hit you sooner if that was the case. Your trauma responses were subdued, this time, but I imagine you’re still quite stressed.”

“I…yeah,” Echo doesn’t even try to deny it. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

“For now? Not much. Try and relax,” Tech answers. “I will clean off my bunk for you if you want to use it, and someone can bring you food from the mess later on if you don’t want to do more walking. How’s that sound?”

Clean it off? Is he using it as storage? “That sounds good.”

“Good.”

Echo rests for the remainder of the day.

The headache lessens.

Before lights-out, Tech and Wrecker leave the barracks on some kind of top-secret expedition. When they return, they’re acquired a hammock from somewhere.

“We were searching for a spare mattress,” Tech explains, “but this was all we could get.”

It’s plenty. It’s more than plenty. It’s more than Echo could’ve asked for—he’s already barged in on their squad, he didn’t dare ask to encroach on their space, as well. He would’ve slept on the floor and not been angry about it.

They set it up near Tech’s bunk, giving Echo his own little space in their barracks—and even if the whole place is scarily nonregulation, it makes him feel something close to happy.

His tiredness runs so bone-deep that when he goes to bed, he doesn’t dream at all.

Chapter Text

Physical therapy fucking sucks.

The therapist is a clone named Luca, who, despite her niceties, seems absolutely bent on making Echo suffer. The stretches hurt. The exercises hurt. Everything hurts. And it’s not the good kind of hurt that usually comes from a long fight or an intense training session; it just hurts.

He tells Luca as much. She says: “No pain, no gain,” and starts him on another rep.

Afterwards, he stumbles back to the barracks and collapses into his hammock immediately.

“You should take your afternoon medications,” Tech says absently. He’s tinkering with something at the worktable—Echo didn’t get a good look at it when he arrived, but he thinks it might be a pair of headphones. 

“Give me half an hour,” Echo says.

“You’ll feel better sooner if you take them now.”

“Twenty minutes,” Echo negotiates.

Tech doesn’t say anything, and for a blissful moment, Echo thinks he’s won. He rolls over to face the wall, and it’s only after he’s shut his eyes that Tech’s footsteps stalk over to him.

He’s light enough on his feet that had Echo turned off his hearing aids, he would’ve been startled by the pill bottle dropped on top of him. “Hey—”

“Take them first,” Tech says, “and then you may rest. But I need your assistance with something as soon as you’re able, and that will be sooner if you take them now. ”

“I outrank you, y’know,” Echo grumbles, though he sits up just enough to swallow the pills with a swish of water from the canteen Tech passes him. “What do you need my help for?”

“A couple of things, actually,” Tech says, returning to the worktable. He holds up the headphones he’d been tinkering with. “This is a specialized headset I’ve been designing to integrate with your cybernetics. Additionally, we need to special order a new set of armor for you.”

Suddenly, Echo is more interested in the headset than getting rest. “What’s the headset for?”

He swears he sees Tech smile, just slightly. “Its primary function is to replace your current hearing aids. Those are generic, flimsy, and unintended for battle, let alone to be used by a cyborg with brain implants. Additionally, I was hoping to relieve some of the strain on your cerebral interface when you use your scomp. It seemed somewhat… uncomfortable for you to use it during the battle of Anaxes.”

“Yeah,” Echo mused. “You really think you can make it do all that?”

“With your consent and cooperation, yes,” Tech says. 

“Alright, fifteen minutes,” Echo says. “Then let’s do it.”

It’s just Tech and Echo in the room. Crosshair had left for the shooting range some time ago. Hunter and Wrecker are off sparring and getting food. 

Echo’s glad the others are gone; he doesn’t want to be made a spectacle out of. But all the same, he’s finding it a little awkward to be alone with Tech.

Echo finds it easier to trust Tech than the rest of the Batch. Despite Tech’s initial suspicions of him, Tech had unhooked him from the computer in the Purkoll facility and upgraded his cybernetics on Anaxes. This doesn’t, however, prevent some broken part of Echo’s brain from associating Tech’s cold, clinical demeanor and bespectacled eyes with Skakoans.

He pushes it to the back of his mind as best as he can.

He learns the details of what the headset is meant to do and how it will function. “It will connect to the ports on the back of your head,” Tech explains, “ideally, my software will integrate with your firmware seamlessly, but I make no promises—Techno Union equipment is notoriously incompatible with third-party modifications.”

“What happens if it doesn’t integrate properly?” Echo asks. 

“Likely, your firmware will simply not recognize the headset,” Tech says. “And then I make adjustments and we try again until it does.”

He further explains its functions: hearing aids with noise-filtering features for battlefield scenarios; connection to their comm channels; data storage for intel-based missions; and extra support for his cerebral interface while he uses his scomp, among other, smaller features. 

He feels a little bit like a thing, with the way that Tech speaks about his cybernetics. He doesn’t think Tech is doing it on purpose, but a tremor spreads through his chest and into his limbs— limb —regardless.

And then he’s somewhere else entirely.

The Separatists got sick of waiting for him to talk.

And instead of just killing him, they were going to sell him.

Like a farm animal. Like a droid. Like a product. Like a thing.

Behind the rayshield of his cell, appraising him, stood Foreman Emir Wat Tambor of the Techno Union.

So much for corporate neutrality.

If Echo ever escaped, he was going to kill Tambor and all his lackeys with his bare fucking hands…hand, consequences be damned. 

Credits were passed between Tambor and one of the Separatists.

The rayshield was lowered. 

A hypo was pressed to his neck.

And then, nothing.

Reborn, Echo thinks, rapidly tapping his fingers against the band where his scomp meets his arm. The word’s been stuck in his head since General Ti welcomed him onto Kamino. He’s not really sure why, but if it doesn’t get unstuck soon, he’s going to have to start saying it out loud.

“Echo?” Tech asks, his voice gentle. “Do you need a break?”

Echo shakes his head, not because he doesn’t need a break, but because he doesn’t actually know what he needs.

He keeps tapping. Tap tap tap tap tap

He needs someone else who knows, instinctively, what he needs. He needs Fives.

Tap tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap

“You need a break,” Tech concludes. “If you want to talk, I am open to it, though Wrecker and Hunter are better at these sorts of things.”

Echo looks up at him. He’s tidying his tools. 

Tap tap tap tap tap

When he’s done tidying, Tech looks at him quizzically, staring at his tapping hand. “Would you like a stim toy?”

“A…what?” 

“Here,” Tech says, crossing to the other side of the room. “I’ll bring you our box of them.”

He returns to the worktable with a flimsy brown box in both of his hands. Echo peers inside. It’s halfway filled with brightly colored toys, though Echo isn’t sure how many of them are intended to be played with.

He glances up at Tech, who snatches a little cube with buttons and do-dads on each face out of the box. “This one’s mine. You can try any of the rest of them. Wrecker and Hunter don’t mind sharing, and Crosshair doesn’t usually use them.”

“This is contraband,” Echo observes, digging through the box. Several of the things he touches are an unpleasant squishy texture that makes him cringe. 

“Commander Cody smuggled them in for us,” Tech says absently, and Echo balks at such an accusation. “Take it up with him if you have an issue.”

“The Commander smuggled contraband onto Kamino for you? ”

“That is what I said, yes.” 

Echo pulls out something shaped like a circle, with lots of smaller circles arranged in lines across the brightly-colored, flexible material. “Why?”

“Evidently, General Kenobi’s padawan requires stim toys to function,” Tech explains. “Having met him, I definitely agree with such an assessment. He’s like us, in many ways.” 

“Huh,” Echo remarks. He pushes on one of the circles, and it inverts, making a satisfying pop.

He pushes on another, and another, and another. Pop, pop, pop.

Thinking about it, he remembers General Skywalker in meetings with a cube of his own—not like Tech’s, but with nine brightly colored squares on each face. Skywalker would rearrange the squares so that all the colors matched, and then scramble it up, and then do it all over again. The few times Echo had seen him without it he seemed…agitated.

Pop pop pop pop pop

He plays with the thing for a few minutes in silence, aside from the pops of his toy and the clicks of Tech’s.

Fives would love this, Echo thinks. He would probably like the squishy toys. He would probably throw them at Echo to taunt him.

Eventually, Tech speaks.

“Echo,” he says, looking hesitant.

“Hm?” Echo hums.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Earlier,” Tech says, “when you had a…a trauma response. Was it triggered by something I did?”

“It was a flashback,” Echo clarifies, “I was…somewhere else. And yeah, it was you, but it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t really get it, but you’re… nice to me.”

“You’re one of us, now,” Tech says, like it’s obvious. “Even if it wasn’t my fault, I would like to know what in particular caused it. You deserve to feel safe around us, even if it means changing our behaviors.”

“No, no, I don’t want you to change for me.” Pop pop pop pop pop. “You just…remind me of the Skakoans, a little bit.”

Tech tilts his head curiously. “How so?”

“The goggles,” Echo explains. “The way you talk about my cybernetics. That’s all. I’d like it if we stopped talking about it, now.”

“That’s fine,” Tech says. “Let me know when you’re ready to continue working on the headset.”

By the time he’s ready, Crosshair, Hunter, and Wrecker have returned—and Hunter has goaded Echo into eating something. The food sits unpleasantly in his stomach, and he thinks he should’ve refused more adamantly.

Tech makes a few finishing touches onto the first draft of the headset, and then it’s time to test it.

Echo isn’t looking forward to this part.

He’s not even afraid of what might happen if it fails. He’s afraid of what might happen if it doesn’t.

What will it feel like? What will it sound like? Will it intrude into his thoughts? Will it be comfortable to wear? Is he going to have to suck it up and deal with it if it isn’t?

Before they attach it to his ports and fit it around his ears, he has to remove his hearing aids. He can, technically, hear without them, but not well—even Wrecker would be able to sneak up on him in this state. Despite only having them for a few days, Echo had gotten used to the hearing aids; without them he feels fidgety and nervous and a little bit lost.

He grabs the popping toy again. Pop pop pop pop pop. He can feel the vibrations, but can’t really hear the pops.

Tech slots the headset onto his ports and over his ears.

Click.

Involuntarily, his eyes go wide and he sucks in a breath.

He remembered waking up. He remembered he couldn’t feel anything.

“Echo,” Tech says from behind him, “how do you feel?”

His voice is crisp and clear beyond what Echo had ever thought he would be able to hear again. He had completely forgotten what the world sounded like. His other hearing aids don’t compare in the slightest.

He remembered feeling groggy. Disoriented. Drugged.

“Fine,” Echo says. He clenches his left hand into a fist. “Do you guys have a radio?”

“A radio?” Tech asks.

He remembered an electronically modulated voice asking him questions. A droid? No, a Skakoan. 

The questions didn’t make any sense. This wasn’t an interrogation, apparently.

“Yeah, a radio,” Echo repeats. “I want a radio.”

“I’ve got one!” Wrecker shouts from somewhere out of Echo’s range of sight. Echo winces. Too loud.  

“We’re not done with the test,” Tech says. “Why do you want a radio?”

The questions were stupid.

Count to ten. Wiggle your fingers. Read this line of text.

He did as he was asked, too drug-addled to really care.

It wasn’t until later that he realized what had been happening.

“The Skakoans didn’t listen to music,” Echo says. “At least, not within earshot of me.”

“Ah,” Tech says. He steps out from behind Echo and sits down next to him. “Are you doing alright?”

He remembered waking up.

He remembered wishing he hadn’t.

It felt like his skull had been split open.

“I’ll be okay,” Echo says, smiling, just slightly, in Tech’s direction. He uncurls his fist and reaches for the popping toy again. 

Pop. 

His smile grows wider. What a nice sound!

“If you need to stop, let me know,” Tech says. “I would prefer to get this done in a timely manner, but your wellbeing is infinitely more important.”

Pop pop pop pop pop

He realized, belatedly, that his skull had been split open.

Or, more accurately, cut open. Deliberately.

What the fuck were they doing to him?

“It’s okay, I promise,” Echo says, continuing to play with the toy. The sound of it satiates something deep within his chest that he didn’t know needed satiating. It feels good. It feels satisfying. “Radio, though.”

“Got it!” Wrecker exclaims. He slams it down on the worktable and turns it on. The music comes through a little staticky—but Echo marvels at being able to hear the low buzz at all.

With the music as their backdrop, Tech conducts a diagnostic, asks Echo a series of questions about how it feels, and has him scomp into a port on the wall. 

Everything goes smoothly, until Echo scomps in.

It’s fine, at first. Before, using his scomp would give him a massive headache; his mechanical parts putting strain on his gray matter, he always thought. But now, there’s nothing. Just the code; the ones and zeros floating behind his eyes; the folder of junk data Tech has instructed him to copy.

He begins to copy it.

And then the nausea hits.

He screws his eyes shut and breathes, slowly, through his nose. Focus, focus, focus…

Halfway. The data is halfway downloaded.

The sour taste of bile hits his tongue. He swallows hard. Focus.

He breathes, breathes, breathes, his heart in his ears, his mouth unpleasantly wet.

The nanosecond the data finishes, he rips his scomp out of the wall and darts to the ‘fresher.

Hunter’s beside him in an instant. Tech stands at the door, eyes wide and worried.

“I’m sorry,” Tech says.

“Tech, shh,” Hunter shushes. 

When the contents of Echo’s stomach have all been emptied, Hunter frets over him—gets him tissues, water, rubs his shoulder gently. What a mother tooka.

“Echo,” Tech says softly, kneeling beside the two of them. “I would like to remove the headset and run a thorough diagnostic. This should not have happened.”

“No,” Echo croaks, “ I would like to keep it on.”

“But it could be interfering with the processes of your inner ear, or perhaps—”

“Tech,” Echo grumbles, “I think I just ate too much, that’s all. And then I got nervous while scomping in, which made it worse. The headset is fine. It felt good. And I quite like being able to hear, thank you.”

“Oh,” Tech says, sounding bewildered, “alright.”

Before lights-out, Hunter hounds Echo with apologies: I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard to eat, I thought the medications had it covered, I won’t push you next time, you should still be eating though, et cetera. After waving him off with a crooked smile, Echo settles into his hammock for bed—though he doesn’t sleep.

He’s not the only one awake, either. Tech is still up, sitting with a small lamp at the worktable, his tools casting eerie shadows onto the walls.

Eventually, Echo gets up, toeing his way across the room as quietly as he can on his metal legs. He sits down next to Tech, who doesn’t even bother to look up.

“What’re you doing?” Echo speaks lowly.

“I am modifying my datapad so that it will be able to wirelessly receive full diagnostic information from your headset,” Tech explains.

“You don’t have to do that,” Echo says.

“I do,” Tech contrasts, “and besides that, I want to.”

They lapse into silence. Echo doesn’t find it to be uncomfortable at all, which is a nice change of pace from earlier. 

He watches Tech’s hands as they do the precise work of modifying the internal transceiver of the datapad.

He realizes, solemnly, that even if he wanted to, he’ll never be able to do any sort of work like that. It requires two hands.

On Anaxes, they tried to see if they could give Echo a prosthetic hand, much like General Skywalker’s. But his scomp is too well-entangled with his neural system. It could cause permanent damage if they so much as attempt it.

There’s a certain amount of grief that comes with the thought.

He’s always thought of grief as something that comes with losing a person. He’d never considered that it might come with losing a limb (or three).

“Echo,” Tech speaks out of nowhere, “have you ever heard of C-PTSD?”

“C?” Echo asks. He knows very well what PTSD is. He knows very well clones aren’t supposed to have it. He knows very well that plenty of them have it anyway.

Including him, apparently.

“Complex,” Tech answers. “PTSD usually occurs from a single or a few traumatic events. C-PTSD usually occurs when an individual experiences a traumatic situation long-term.”

“Oh,” Echo says. He drums his fingers on the table. Tap tap tap tap tap.

Without comment, Tech passes him the popping toy. Pop pop pop pop pop. 

“You will not mention this to any medics or commanding officers you do not explicitly trust,” Tech warns. “But you seem to have a quite severe case of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Echo says. “I know it’s causing problems.”

“What? Don’t apologize,” Tech finally looks up at him. In the low light, Echo thinks he looks very, very young. A shiny. A cadet.

“Why not? I’m right. I shouldn’t be here at all, honestly. I should be dead in a Kaminoan lab. I should be a charred body on Lola Sayu. But I’m here, and it’s screwing everything up.” Reborn, he thinks. “How am I ever supposed to hold my own in a combat scenario? It’s just unrealistic, Tech.”

Tech blinks, eyes wide. “But you already have,” he says. “You’re the Hero of Anaxes.”

“I got myself electrocuted and was only half-conscious for most of the actual fighting,” Echo argues.

“You are majorly discounting your accomplishments,” Tech counters. “May I finish speaking, please? I had more to say about C-PTSD.”

“Yeah,” Echo says. “Sorry.”

“The brains of most sentients, humans especially, are naturally pattern-seeking,” Tech explains, turning back to his work. “Pre-civilization, this was very important for survival. Finding food, avoiding predators, et cetera. It is completely ingrained within our biology.”

“And?” Echo asks. 

“And,” Tech says, “brains in a prolonged traumatic scenario are still seeking patterns. You’re safe now, but your brain is still associating certain stimuli with danger.”

“So I’m like this because my brain’s pattern-detection is faulty.”

“No. Not faulty,” Tech explains. “It’s working exactly as it’s supposed to. Your mind worked overtime to protect you while you were being held captive. I would be very concerned if this was not the case—your brain has been physically altered, after all. You are triggered by certain stimuli because your mind, rightfully, associates it with danger and pain. This is not a flaw.”

“Certainly feels like one,” Echo grumbles.

“Well,” Tech says, sounding grim, “the pattern-seeking works as intended. It’s the memory storage that doesn’t.”

“I could’ve told you that,” Echo says. “Sometimes it feels like I’m still there.”

“Exactly,” Tech says. “In PTSD, memory tends to be stored incorrectly. This tricks the brain into thinking the traumatic event or events aren’t over. Your mind has no idea that you’re safe.”

“And…?” Echo asks. “How do I fix it?”

Tech presses his lips into a thin line. “Ideally, with years of therapy,” he says. “But in this scenario, we will all do our best to help you feel safe and accommodate you. We’re…used to it.”

It takes Echo a moment to register the last phrase. “What?”

“Our upbringing was nonstandard, even as far as clones go,” Tech says. “Though I am not qualified to diagnose, I would safely assume all of us have a form of C-PTSD—though a slightly milder form than yours. I would prefer not to discuss the details. But keep in mind that you’re not the only one with a malfunctioning memory bank around here.”

“Oh,” Echo says.

Echo brings the popping toy to his hammock with him.

Something for his hand to do while his mind runs wild with his and Tech’s conversation. His thoughts absolutely will not shut up.

He doesn’t sleep at all.

Chapter Text

“Reg,” Crosshair calls to Echo, early one morning, tossing him a ration bar (that he doesn’t manage to catch). “Come shooting with me.”

Echo picks up the ration bar from the floor and points it accusingly at Crosshair. “Don’t call me that.”

Cadets, he thinks, remembering his own time on Kamino—back when Echo wasn’t his name, it was just a stupid joke. They’re all cadets, I swear.

“He means it as a term of endearment!” Wrecker says helpfully.

“No, I don’t,” Crosshair protests, gnawing on a ration bar of his own.

“Yes, he does,” Hunter adds flatly. Echo smirks.

“Well,” Echo says, struggling to open the ration bar’s wrapper one-handed, “I appreciate the offer, but I have PT.”

He doesn’t want to go to physical therapy today; his body hasn’t been happy, not since he got up. Not since before he got up. 

“Unless she suddenly started scheduling you for full-day appointments, I don’t see how that makes a difference.”

Echo frowns.

Wordlessly, Tech takes the ration bar so he can open it for him.

“I just don’t want to pass out in the middle of the shooting range, thanks,” Echo says.

“Oh, come on, you’re not that frail,” Crosshair goads. “Isn’t that what the medications are for?”

“Yeah…” Echo mumbles.

Tech hands the opened ration bar back to him. “It would be wise to refine your aim with your non-dominant hand, seeing as you cannot shoot with your scomp.”

“Exactly,” Crosshair says. Echo thinks his voice sounds a little snakelike.

“Fine,” Echo concedes, taking one, two bites of his ration bar and then shoving it in his bag for later. “Meet me after PT.”

“Mind over matter!” Luca exclaims, sitting on the floor in front of him while he struggles in a modified plank. His thighs hurt more than his abs do, and he thinks this isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. “Your body isn’t going to adjust if you don’t force it to. Don’t think about the pain. Think about breathing.”

It would be easier if you hadn’t pointed the pain out, Echo thinks. Regardless, he breathes through it, focuses on the air entering his artificial lungs, until that’s almost painful too. And then he collapses to the mat. And then after a minute of rest, Luca has him go again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

“Try again.”

Echo woke up and he was standing.

On a shiny new pair of legs.

“Its mind is resisting, sir.”

“Do I look like I care? Try again.”

> CALIBRATING…

What? What the hell was that?

> CALIBRATING…

Get out of my fucking head.

> CALIBRATING…

“GET OUT!” Echo screamed. He twitched his fingers. It was difficult to move. “GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HEAD!”

> ERROR

“It’s awake!”

> RECALIBRATING…

“Should I give it another dose?”

“No. Keep it awake. Monitor its brain activity. And try again.”

> CALIBRATING…

Echo scrambles away from the figure in front of him until his back hits the wall. He falls to the floor, chest heaving.

“Whoa, hey, easy,” the figure says, arms held out in a placating gesture. “It’s just me, Corporal. Just Luca.”

Just Luca. Echo swallows thickly, closing his eyes against the harsh lights of the gym. “I-I’m sorry. I just…I thought…”

“It’s alright,” Luca says, kneeling down in front of him, her eyes soft. “Not the first time someone’s freaked out on my watch. You’re safe now, got it?”

Echo nods vigorously. The action leaves him seeing stars.

“Let’s be done for today, yeah?” Luca says. Echo tries not to be too eager in his agreement.

After downing a healthy amount of water, Echo stands, wobbly, on his prosthetics. Everything hurts worse than normal today. Not to mention the residual shaking from his flashback.

He’s not going to forego the shooting range with Crosshair, but he damn well wants to.

Reborn, he thinks, repeatedly, to the uneven cadence of his footsteps down the hallway. Reborn. Reborn. Reborn. 

How can someone who was never born in the first place be re born?

He came out of a tube in a lab once, and then twice.

He thinks about natborns, and how when they’re born, they’re apparently these perfect little bundles of light. Echo has never been anything close to that—but he was certainly closer the first time he was decanted than the second time. 

The first time he was just a kid, wide-eyed and ready for the world, the twin he wasn’t supposed to have bouncing at his side. Made of the Kaminoan desire to create perfect, infallible things, and errored from the moment he came into existence all the same.

The second time he was a monstrous tangle of wires. A mangled, fragile body, coaxed back to life by scientists who seeked to destroy for profit. The beautiful, miracle imagery he’s learned to associate with the term “birth” is the antithesis of what happened there. 

Reborn. More like undead.

“You’re back early,” Crosshair remarks upon his return. 

“She decided we were done,” Echo says. Per Fives’ logic, a lie by omission isn’t a lie at all. “We going shooting?”

“Take your meds first,” Crosshair says. 

“Already did. Took them with me to PT,” Echo lies. White lies don’t count either, the voice of Fives in his head supplies. 

Crosshair frowns, but doesn’t question him. 

They head to the ARC shooting range. Echo’s credentials still don’t work; his status in the system is continually being worked on. But Crosshair, despite not being an ARC, has special access to the range anyway, apparently. 

It’s just the two of them here. As they prep their weapons—their real weapons, not training weapons, which is the benefit of the ARC range—Crosshair speaks. “How was PT?”

“Why do you care?” Echo grumbles, struggling to load his DC-17 one-handed. Everything’s meant for people with two hands, he’s been realizing. 

“You were limping on the way here.”

“Shit hurts.” Echo really isn’t sure why Crosshair cares. The man seems reluctantly tolerant of him at best and outright resentful of him at worst. 

Echo gets it. He’s an invader into Crosshair’s perfect little clique of a family. He just wishes Crosshair would realize that Echo’s not all that happy to be here either. Echo’s family is mostly dead, and the rest of them didn’t want him back. 

He doesn’t blame them. 

After finally loading his blaster, Echo steps up for his first round of target practice. Crosshair watches with those piercing shriek-hawk eyes. It’s unsettling. 

It’s what he blames for the fact that he misses every target. 

“Don’t you have shooting of your own to practice?” Echo accuses, not even daring to look back at Crosshair as he starts another round. 

“I don’t need practice,” Crosshair says. “They just let anyone become an ARC nowadays, don’t they?”

“I haven’t been an ARC in over a year,” Echo retaliates. “You try aiming with severe brain damage and one side of your body impaired.”

“Wrecker shoots just fine.”

Echo grits his teeth and keeps shooting. 

One shot. He hits one target. 

“Congratulations,” Crosshair says dryly. 

“Fuck off,” Echo grumbles. Again. He summons more targets. 

“You’re too worked up,” Crosshair observes. “How do you expect to hit anything when you’re shaking?”

“I’m fine,” Echo lies. 

“You’re an idiot if you think this is fine.”

“Or,” Echo says, missing three more targets, “I’m just lying to you.”

Crosshair narrows his eyes. “You don’t belong here,” he whispers. He hisses. 

Echo slams his gun down. Suddenly he can’t breathe. “Fuck off.”

“If you’d let me finish—”

“Fuck OFF!”  

Echo doesn’t want to hear it.

His chest hurts. His everything hurts.

He holsters his blaster and leaves before Crosshair can stop him.

They were stupid to not restrain him.

Whatever they were doing inside his head made it difficult to control his body, but definitely not impossible. As the days passed, he cataloged every necessary piece of information he could: where all the tools were kept, the schedules they followed, the locations of doors, the sacred 30-second intervals where no pairs of eyes bothered to pay attention to him.

Escape would be near-impossible. He didn’t even dare to hope for it.

When the moment lined up just right, he forced his arm to obey, reaching out to the tray of sharp instruments beside him.

His trembling fingers curled around the handle of a scalpel.

And with it, he slit his throat.

It doesn’t take Crosshair very long to find him.

When the door to his supply-closet-haven opens, light spilling over his face, Echo has the barrel of his DC-17 pressed underneath his chin.

He used to sit in these supply closets as a cadet, when he got overwhelmed. Fives or sometimes Droidbait would find him first, sitting silently next to him. 99 would find him next, and he always knew how to make everything better.

He wishes 99 was here now.

Crosshair’s eyes widen to the size of moons the moment he sees the blaster, and Echo smiles, just a little, looking grim.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Crosshair exclaims.

“Did you want the itemized list or just a summary?” Echo says, the cold metal of the blaster pushing into his skin, into his scar tissue. 

“Give it to me,” Crosshair says, crouching down in front of Echo, holding out his hand for the blaster. 

“No,” Echo replies, petulant, his trigger finger shaking almost violently. “You said it yourself: I don’t belong here. And I don’t belong anywhere else, either. I’m supposed to be dead. I was supposed to die a year and a half ago, but I did a shit job of it, apparently.”

Undead, he thinks. 

“Give it to me,” Crosshair repeats, slower this time. 

Undead. Hevy had gotten his hands on this stupid book when they were on Rishi. About people who died and came back all wrong. With brains that didn’t work and bodies that were mangled and uncontrolled. Undead.

Echo feels a pang of jealousy at the memory of his long-dead brother.

 Hevy went out in a ball of fire, just like Echo did.

Hevy didn’t come back wrong.

“Are you going to force me to call your dear Captain Rex and let him know that we had to scrape your brains off the wall? Give it to me.”

“He’ll be glad I’m gone,” Echo whispers. “I’m not the cadet he raised. I’m a monster that took his place.”

“Are you insane? He’ll kill me if I let you die,” Crosshair snaps. 

“You don’t give a shit about me,” Echo says. “You just care about what will happen to you.”

“Do you want to know what I was going to say? After you don’t belong here?” Crosshair says, aggressive, and he continues before Echo can protest: “You don’t belong here, because you belong in one of those cushy civilian rehab centers where they wait on you hand and foot. And I’m sorry you got stuck with us instead.”

Echo takes a shuddering breath. 

All the fight leaves him at once.

His whole body shakes. His heart jumps, like it wants to force its way out of his throat.

He holds the blaster out, handle-first, for Crosshair to take.

When he does, Crosshair’s eyes go wide and worried once again. “You’re burning up!”

Echo slumps backwards, his headset knocking against the wall. 

Crosshair’s calloused hand presses against his forehead. “You have a fever, dumbass! You’re sick.”

“Mmhm,” Echo hums. He’s very tired.

“We’ve got to get you to the medbay, you’re on immunosuppressants!” Crosshair exclaims. 

“No,” Echo protests weakly.

“I’ll tell them to sedate you if that’s what it takes—”

“No, I meant,” Echo mumbles, “the meds. I’m not on any.”

“You’re delirious,” Crosshair says, and Echo thinks this is the most emotion he’s ever heard out of the sniper. “You’re on dozens.”

“No,” Echo says. “I haven’t been taking them.”

Crosshair freezes.

“They were making me sick,” Echo continues. “A-and they made the dreams get worse.”

“Was it worth it, dipshit?” Crosshair snaps. He digs for his comm. “I need a medical team at the supply closet near the ARC shooting range immediately.”

“I can’t go to the medbay,” Echo says. “They’re going to dissect me.”

“Not on my watch,” Crosshair assures. Somehow, Echo believes him.

The medical team arrives.

Someone presses a hypo to his neck.

For the first time in three days, he sleeps.

He wakes up on scratchy sheets and hears several voices, all talking about him, a litany of beeping machines as their backdrop.

He knows he’s in the medbay, but he doesn’t panic. He knows those voices. And he’s too tired, besides. 

“…effected him? Is he going to be alright?” That’s Rex’s voice, through the staticky filter of a holocall. 

“Well,” and that’s Kix, through the same filter. “His body probably started attacking his implants. His immune system doesn’t know he won’t survive without them, it just knows that they’re foreign objects.”

“That’s exactly what Jasper said.” Hunter’s here too, apparently. “His blood pressure and heart rate are also all out of whack. He’s going to be here for a few days.”

“He won’t like that,” Crosshair chimes in. 

“It’s either that, or he could die,” Kix says. “I think I know which one he’ll prefer.”

Internally, Echo winces. 

He waits, tense, for Crosshair to explain what happened, for him to expose what sort of broken droid Hunter inadvertently accepted into his squad. 

But Crosshair doesn’t say a thing. 

Eventually, after the call has ended, Echo stirs. He clutches the blanket with his left hand—his only hand—and tries to speak, but he just coughs instead. 

“Hey, hey,” Hunter says gently, rushing to his side. “You’re okay. Don’t try to talk right now.”

“Your lungs are fucked,” Crosshair explains. “You’ll probably be fine in a few hours, once the bacta infusion works its magic.”

Echo graciously accepts the cup of water Hunter holds out to him, but when he goes to prop himself up on his scomp, he slips. 

Because his scomp isn’t there. 

And neither are his legs. 

He chokes on his breath as he tries to speak again. He wants his limbs back. He can’t breathe. Without his limbs, he’s not safe. Can’t escape. Can’t move. 

“Hey, hey, hey! Look at me,” Hunter says. Echo shakes his head, keeping his eyes trained on the ceiling. Plain white. Kaminoan, not Skakoan. “Echo, look at me.”

Echo holds up his left hand and signs: can’t. 

“You’re on Kamino. You’re safe,” Hunter says. Echo shakes his head again. No, no, I’m not safe. “Echo, you’re safe, you hear me? At least one of us is going to stay with you at all times. Jasper’s been assigned to you, and we trust them more than the other medics. You’re going to be okay, understand?”

Again, Echo shakes his head. 

Crosshair steps up beside Hunter. “You get to have your limbs back as soon as your immune system stops fucking attacking them,” he says. “They were a pain for the medics to remove, by the way. Tech is going to have a field day improving that.”

Echo shakes his head again. He doesn’t want them to be easy to remove. He wants to keep them on all the time. 

“Breathe,” Hunter commands. “Breathe, slowly. In, two, three, four…”

Echo follows as Hunter counts. 

Once he’s calmed down enough for it, Hunter helps him sit up and drink the water. It soothes his scratchy throat. 

He lays back down, eyes drooping, and falls asleep again. 

He wakes up and thinks he’s somewhere else. 

He flails, the beeping of the machines an incessant pounding against his eardrums. He can’t breathe. They’re going to cut him open, they’re going to—

“Reg,” a familiar, snakey voice beside him says, “you’re not there. You’re on Kamino. Echo.”

“Fuck,” Echo rasps. “I’m sorry.”

He lets himself go lax against the scratchy sheets. 

A hand reaches out towards his. Boney and calloused. He grips it like a lifeline. 

“Don’t apologize,” Crosshair says lowly. “I almost watched you kill yourself in front of me. This is a breath of fresh air by comparison.”

“Gods, I’m so fucking sorry,” Echo chokes out. “Just let them dissect me, at this point. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I’m not giving up on you that easily.” He squeezes Echo’s hand. Echo squeezes back. 

“I bet Hunter’s furious with me,” Echo mumbles. 

“He is,” Crosshair confirms. “But just about the meds. I didn’t tell him about anything else.”

“You’re supposed to report shit like that to your commanding officer. It’s in the reg manuals. That way the Kaminoans know who needs to be fixed.”

“I don’t care,” Crosshair deadpans. “If you promise me you won’t try again, I promise I won’t tell anyone. Our little secret.”

“You think Hunter would tell the Kaminoans?”

“No, of course not,” Crosshair says, “but he won’t let you so much as take a piss without supervision for the next year at minimum.”

“You don’t know that,” Echo says. 

“Don’t I?” Crosshair says, oddly quiet. 

Echo turns to look at him. He’s staring off at the wall, gnawing shakily at his toothpick, his all-seeing eyes looking at nothing. 

Echo squeezes his hand. Crosshair squeezes back. 

“I’m sorry if I…” Echo trails off, looking for the right words. “I’m sorry if I made you relive anything unpleasant.”

“At least I’m here to relive it,” Crosshair whispers. He takes the toothpick out of his mouth and points it squarely at Echo’s chest. “Promise you won’t try again, and then I’ll stop hounding you and let you get more rest.”

Echo takes a deep breath. 

He thinks about Droidbait, Cutup, Hevy. About 99. About Fives. They’re all marching somewhere far off, waiting for him. 

They’ll probably all be pissed at him if he shows up now, after he was given a second chance to keep living and they weren’t. 

He has to live, not in spite of them, but for them. Echo of Domino Squad, reborn. 

“I promise,” he says. 

“Good,” Crosshair replies, a smile curling across his face. “Get some more sleep, idiot. You need it.”

Chapter Text

“Hey,” Wrecker says, sitting at Echo’s bedside two days later, “why did you stop taking the meds, anyway? I know you said they made you sick, but you got even sicker without ‘em, right?”

“Because I’m a stupid idiot, Wrecker,” Echo says, picking at the blanket. 

Wrecker frowns. “No,” he says. “You’re not. You’re really smart. I think there’s somethin’ else going on.”

Echo huffs a breath, pointedly avoiding Wrecker’s painfully soft gaze. “I-I don’t really know. I’m kinda fucked in the head.”

“Ha! Welcome to the club!” Wrecker exclaims. “You don’t have to answer, but how did they make you sick? I’ve got some meds that made me sick at first, but it went away pretty fast after I started ‘em. And you’re on a lot more than me, so it’s probably different, yeah?”

“You’re on meds?”

“Yeah,” Wrecker says, frowning just slightly. “All of us are. You’re like us, now.”

“What do you guys take?” Echo asks, looking away. “You don’t have to answer.”

“Well, I won’t answer for everyone else, ’cuz it’s sensitive info n’ all,” Wrecker begins, “and besides, I can’t remember ‘em all anyway. My memory’s not so good. But I take one that relaxes my muscles, ‘cuz I get all tense all the time. And another one that helps with headaches.”

He gestures, almost absently, to the scarred side of his head. It’s not at nasty as Echo’s burns and surgical scars—at least in Echo’s opinion—but it definitely looks like it hurts.

“Oh,” Echo says dumbly.

“Yeah, n’ they made me feel worse at first. Stomach issues n’ I got really tired n’ dizzy. Wasn’t fun, but now I feel better, n’ I feel like shit if I don’t take ‘em.”

“I get it, I get it, I’ll take mine like I’m supposed to,” Echo says. “I’m just not used to it, that’s all.”

“Well of course you’re not. You took ‘em for like two days n’ then stopped. Didn’t give your body a chance.”

“No, I meant…” Echo crunches the blanket up in his fist. “I’m not used to taking meds. I’ve never had to before.”

“Huh,” Wrecker remarked, “I keep forgetting you were a reg before all this.”

“Well,” Echo mumbles, “I don’t.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Wrecker says gently, “just give yourself time.”

At dinnertime, Jasper arrives with a plate of nutritious mush, a bottle of water, and a little paper cup filled to the brim with pills.

“Take them all,” they warn, “or I might have to shackle you to this bed.”

They mean it as a joke, and as Echo breathes, breathes, breathes, he tries to remind himself that. He grips the blanket for dear life, the scratchy texture doing him no favors, and tries not to remember. Tries to forget. 

Tries to forget screaming until his teeth were bloody. The feeling of cotton stuffed into his mouth. The reasons he was screaming in the first place.

“Poor choice of words,” Jasper says with a wince, apparently aware of Echo’s discomfort. “I just meant we’d have to keep you in the medbay for further observation. If you take all your pills, and your vitals are fine when you wake up in the morning, you’ll be free to go.”

“Awesome!” Wrecker exclaims. Echo flinches. Wrecker’s enthusiasm is appreciated, even if it’s too loud. “Sorry,” he amends, quieter.

“With food!” Jasper adds. “You could end up with internal bleeding if you don’t take them with food.”

“I know,” Echo mumbles.

“Just making sure,” Jasper says. “Eat, take your pills, get some rest. I’ll be back around in the morning, alright?”

“Mm-hm.”

Jasper leaves.

“Hey! That’s great news!” Wrecker exclaims, once again too loud, knuckling Echo’s bicep as lightly as Echo thinks he’s able. He flinches. “Oops, sorry. But it is! We’ll be running sims with you in no time!”

Echo smiles, just slightly.

As he takes tiny little bites of the mush, he says: “Hey, Wrecker? Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, sure,” Wrecker says, eyes wide and curious.

“When I first woke up in the medbay,” Echo says, “Hunter said you guys trust Jasper more than the other medics. Um…why’s that?”

“Oh,” Wrecker says, his facial expression suddenly unreadable. It’s a little startling. Wrecker, for the short time Echo has known him, is usually an open book. “They were assigned to me when I, uh…”

He again gestures vaguely to the side of his face. Echo nods. “Ah.”

“They’re on Kamino because they used to be CMO of a battalion, but then they had a bad head injury,” Wrecker explains. “N’ they understood, y’know? When I couldn’t remember shit or had trouble with my emotions out of nowhere.”

“Mm,” Echo hums.

“All the other regs treated me like some big dumb baby,” Wrecker says, brows furrowing. “Jasper treated me like I was just a person who was healing.”

“You’re not dumb,” Echo says. “I’ve never met anyone who knows more about demolitions than you. It’s a little scary, actually.”

“Haha, yeah,” Wrecker says. “But even if I was dumb, I’d still want people to be nice to me. And as far as a lot of the regs care, if you’re dumb you’re a free punching bag.”

Echo thinks about his squad, when they were still on Kamino, or even still on Rishi. How he would always clash with them, because he was different. He was a twin. He repeated things. The regulations were his favorite thing in the world.

They worked out their differences eventually, but Echo still found himself the butt of the joke more times than he would’ve liked.

“Yeah,” Echo muses, “funny enough, I know exactly what you mean. But you’re a good soldier, and that’s what matters, right?”

Wrecker frowns. “I’m a good person,” he says, “or, at least, I try to be. We’re not just soldiers, Echo. We’re people. And every person is worth somethin’, no matter how smart they are or where they came from or…whatever.”

Echo has to let that stew in his brain for a moment.

He grew up with threats held over his head. If you’re not worth it, we’ll get rid of you. The sentiment is ingrained in him; carved into his bones; the building blocks of his cells. If he’s not useful, he doesn’t know who he is at all.

Clones don’t get to be people. Natborns get to be people.

Echo doesn’t feel like a person. He’s a soldier, a tool, a droid, a thing.

A meat droid, remade into a half-meat droid. 

Remade. Reborn?

“You alright?” Wrecker asks, gently laying a hand on his shoulder. Echo shakes himself out of his thoughts and nods. “Um, you’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Echo says. “Just thinking.”

“About what I said?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, okay. Thought you might be havin’ a flashback,” Wrecker says meekly. “I, uh, didn’t say anything wrong, did I?”

“No, no,” Echo assures. “I’m just not really used to thinking of myself as a person, I guess.”

Wrecker nods. “That makes sense. They tried to turn you into a droid, and then when that didn’t work, they locked you away. S’ gotta be hard.”

Echo’s gaze bores deep holes into his tray of food. If he focuses hard enough, he might be able to see the fabric of the universe. Learn the answers to life. “How did you know that?” He croaks.

“Doesn’t make much sense givin’ new legs to someone you’re just gonna lock up forever,” Wrecker says gently. “Sorry. Should’a kept my mouth shut.”

“It’s okay,” Echo says. It’s not okay, not really, because that’s what happened. They gave him legs and a scomp and repaired his body until it worked. They fucked with his brain, tried to find which spots they could zap and which spots would kill him if they tried. They gave him commands and zapped him some more when he wouldn’t listen.

The human brain has no pain receptors. The surrounding bone and tissues aren’t so lucky.

Echo finishes an astonishing two-thirds of his meal before swallowing his pills. Wrecker takes out a datapad and shows Echo adorable videos of tooka kittens for the next two hours, until it’s lights-out for the medbay. It’s a real nice distraction from Echo’s worries, but now he’s got something else to worry about: sleep.

“Hunter’s gonna take over for me ‘bout halfway through the night,” Wrecker whispers, “we’ll try not to wake you up. Not like when I took over for Tech last night, heh.”

“It’s alright,” Echo says. “I wasn’t really sleeping anyway. You guys don’t have to babysit me, by the way. I’ll be fine.”

Wrecker frowns. “Hunter was worried about the Kaminoans snatchin’ you up in the middle of the night,” he explains. “And you should be sleeping. Your body ain’t gonna heal right otherwise.”

“Easier said than done.”

“You havin’ trouble gettin’ to sleep?” Wrecker asks. Echo nods. “D’you know why?”

“Pain,” Echo says, picking at the blanket. “Nightmares.”

“The meds don’t help the pain?” Wrecker tilts his head. 

“Not the phantom pain,” Echo grumbles. “And they make the nightmares worse, which was part of why I stopped taking them.”

“Oh,” Wrecker says. “That happened to Crosshair when he first went on meds. It got better, but it sucked in the meantime. And they weren’t even nightmares, they were just real vivid dreams that didn’t make any damn sense and he complained about them every morning.”

Antidepressants. It’s the antidepressants. “Yeah? I bet they sucked less than mine.”

“It was the same shit every night,” Wrecker says. “In his dream the Jedi were actually working for the Seppies, and he got sent to take ‘em out. Weird, right? We don’t even work with Jedi most of the time.”

Echo almost chokes. He and Fives used to have similar nightmares about Commander Tano back when they’d first joined the 501st. The stress of having a Jedi padawan, a child, as their commander had caused the frightening dreams, they’d always thought. Echo’s nightmares had long since been replaced by amalgams of horrors he’d already lived. He sort of misses the other dreams—at least he’d had the assurance that they weren’t real.

“And then,” Wrecker continues. “I started gettin’ dreams like that too. He was talkin’ about it too much. I ain’t even met that many Jedi.”

“Weird,” Echo agrees. “How did…how did he deal with it?”

Wrecker’s face instantly lights up. He leans down to dig through his bag, which is sitting on the floor beside his chair. “If he finds out I told you he’ll kill me,” Wrecker says. He pulls out his plush toy—Lula, Echo remembers, is her name—and holds her out, waving her so her ears flop around. “But I let him sleep with my Lula, and it seemed like she helped a lot.”

“Yeah?” Echo asks, staring into what logic tells him are a lifeless pair of eyes, but his emotions don’t seem to agree. She seems to tick the same part of his brain that wanted to reach through the screen of Wrecker’s datapad to kidnap one of the tooka kittens from the videos. 

“Yeah!” Wrecker exclaims. “You, uh…if you wanted to, I mean…you could borrow her too. If you think she might help.”

Echo bites his lip, thinking. 

He can’t imagine anything short of Fives rising from the dead helping with his nightmares. They’d cuddle up in the same bunk when things got really bad. It helped like nothing else could, and now nothing else will ever help that much again. 

He supposes it can’t make things worse, though. 

“I’ll try for a night, sure,” Echo says, gingerly reaching out for Lula. He holds her carefully, like she might break, even though she’s made of what seems to be a durable fabric—durable, but soft. This is Wrecker’s favorite thing, after all. If anything happened to her, Echo just knows Wrecker would be devastated, and he couldn’t handle being the cause of something like that. Not with his new squad, not ever. He doesn’t want to cause any hurt to any of his brothers ever again.

He killed enough of them while he was on Skako Minor.

Wrecker smiles, but there’s something a little bit sad behind it. “Go to sleep, Echo. Me n’ Lula will keep watch for you, okay?”

“Okay.”

It hurts. 

He’s strapped down and everything hurts. 

Everything always hurts, now. 

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts—

No, no, no no no nonononono please please PLEASE PLEASE

They’re cutting into him

He can’t breathe

THEY’RE CUTTING INTO HIM

Please please please dear gods have mercy HAVE MERCY

STOP

STOP STOP STOP WHY WON’T IT STOP IT HURTS HELP PLEASE

“Echo,” a soft voice says.

He jolts awake. The scars on his head, his neck, his back all burn. They feel fresh.

He scrambles to sit, grateful that they let him have his legs and scomp back. His heart feels like it’s going to explode. Faster and faster and faster.

Something falls into his lap.

Lula.

“That was a bad one, huh?” Another, just as soft voice, says. Echo snaps his gaze to the left, and finds Hunter, kneeling beside the bed, with Wrecker, right where he was before. “Heart Rate hit one-eighty before you even woke up.”

Echo nods. Not a chance he’s getting words out. 

Wrecker reaches out, slowly, to straighten Lula on Echo’s lap. 

Echo grabs onto one of her ears, rubbing his fingers across the soft fabric.

He still can’t get his heart to slow down. His chest heaves. 

“Hey,” Hunter says, cautiously reaching a hand out. “Echo. I want you to breathe with me.”

Echo shakes his head. Can’t. Don’t know how. 

Learning how to breathe again when his lungs were replaced was hard, and sometimes he legitimately forgets how to control his breathing. He’s sure there’s some kind of mechanism to reset it, somewhere, somehow, but he doesn’t know how to access that, either.

His body is foreign to him.

“Give me your hand,” Hunter says. Echo shakes his head again, clutching Lula’s ear tightly, the stuffing a nice piece of resistance against his horrible tension. He doesn’t want to be touched.

“It’ll help,” Wrecker says gently, leaning forward on his knees. “I promise.”

Echo glances between the two of them. Takes in the sincerity in their faces, the concerned tilt of their brows.

Slowly, he lets go of Lula’s ear and reaches his hand towards Hunter.

Hunter grabs it, guiding it to rest on the left side of his chest. Through his shirt, Echo can feel his warmth, his calm heartbeat, the slow, measured rise and fall of his breath.

It’s nice.

“See?” Wrecker says. “It helps, right?”

Echo nods, closing his eyes and focusing on the feeling. Slowly, slowly, slowly, his heart starts to return to a normal pace, his breathing evens out.

“I’m gonna head out,” Wrecker whispers, after a while. “You can keep Lula, don’t worry.”

He slips away. 

Echo lets his hand fall away from Hunter’s chest, and he decides to pick up Lula and hug her, instead.

Hunter chuckles. “He doesn’t let just anyone borrow Lula,” he says. “You’re truly one of the team, now.”

Echo buries his face in Lula’s fur, right between her ears, and exhales, shaky. 

“Try and get some more sleep, okay?” Hunter says. “I’ll be here. You’re safe. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Echo nods.

He sleeps, and doesn’t have any more nightmares.

Jasper lets him go the next morning.

For the rest of the day and into the night, the Batchers watch him like shriek-hawks and treat him like glass. 

Echo can’t blame them—he feels a little bit fragile himself. But he hates it all the same.

Wrecker lets him sleep with Lula again that night. He doesn’t dream, but he wakes fitfully anyway; he hurts all over, and Tech’s all up in his face. 

“Echo,” he says, “Echo!”

“Ugh,” Echo groans, clutching Lula tighter. “What?”

“You’re scheduled for physical therapy this morning,” Tech says. “You’re going to be late. I have to go to the armory, and Hunter and Crosshair are going to the gym, but Wrecker will be here if you need anything. You really shouldn’t skip.”

Echo doesn’t respond right away, but Tech is gone before he even gets the chance. 

Still clutching Lula, with the intent to return her to her proper owner, Echo climbs out of his hammock.

Tries to climb out of his hammock.

He tumbles to the floor instead, his body in too much pain to support him. Absently, he thinks the thumps of his body tumbling to the floor sound a little more like a pile of spare parts than a person.

Wrecker comes running.

“Echo!” He exclaims, skidding to a stop and kneeling down. “Whoa, are you okay?”

Echo shakes his head. Squeezes Lula tighter. “Fuckin’ hurts, but what else is new,” he grumbles.

“Should I go run after Tech?” Wrecker asks.

“No,” Echo mumbles. “It’s fine.”

As he says so, he sinks further to the floor, sprawling out against the cool tile.

Wrecker frowns. “Did you take your meds yet?”

“No.”

“Did you eat yet?”

“No. I just woke up, Wrecker.”

“Oh,” Wrecker says. “Are you sure you don’t want Tech?”

“I’m sure,” Echo says. “I dunno what he’s gonna do for me that you can’t.”

“Well, he’s a lot smarter than me,” Wrecker says.

Echo looks up at him. “No,” he protests. “I think he just has a better memory.”

“Oh, uh…” Wrecker trails off, his gaze skittering away. “Um, do you want me to get you some food and your meds? Or…something else, I dunno? What do you need?”

“Food and meds is good,” Echo says, almost slurring his words. He’s quickly falling into a state of dissociation. It’s a little nicer than being fully aware of his body. “Maybe the strong stuff, too. Injectable. It should be with the rest of my meds.”

“Um, let’s just do your normal meds first. Is that okay?” Wrecker says tersely. 

“Sure, whatever.”

Wrecker gets him a ration bar (pre-opened), a water bottle, and his meds. He sets them gently on the floor in front of Echo and then goes to shuffle around for something else, apparently. 

Echo gnaws on the ration bar.

Drifts a little.

Gnaws some more.

Swallows his pills. 

Drifts so far he doesn’t even realize for a good few minutes that Wrecker has once again plopped down in front of him, this time with a stack of pillows in his arms, which he is carefully arranging on the floor.

“What are you doing,” Echo asks flatly.

“Making a bed on the floor for you,” Wrecker answers, like it’s obvious. “If you still hurt a lot after your normal meds kick in then we can probably get you the good stuff. And while we wait you can rest here. I dunno where the other pain meds are, by the way. They weren’t with your usual ones, so Tech must’ve hid ‘em.”

“Hid them?” Echo questions.

“Yeah, uh…” Wrecker puts a hand to the back of his neck, seemingly nervous. “Yeah. He has this thing where he gets worried and hides ‘em, whenever any of us gotta be on the good stuff.”

Echo glances, a little longingly, at the pillow pile, but doesn’t move to it yet. It’s clearly not finished. “Why’s he worry?”

Wrecker looks like he’s abandoned making the pile entirely. “Well…” he says, “it’s sorta…my fault.”

“What?”

“Hey, can I tell you something really personal?” Wrecker asks. “I think you might… get it. Part of it, at least.”

“Um…sure?” Echo says, deciding to crawl over to sit on the pillows. This’ll be an okay distraction from the pain, at least (he’s not going to physical therapy, is he?)

“When I got hurt,” Wrecker starts, “I…I woke up, n’ it was like I was a whole different person. I couldn’t see right, I couldn’t hear right, n’ I couldn’t even think, n’ then they let me look in the mirror…and my face wasn’t even right. It was really hard, y’know? The old me got burned away in the explosion and there was a whole new me in my place.”

“Yeah,” Echo mumbles, “I do know.”

He knows it intimately, in fact.

The first time he’d seen himself in the mirror, he’d panicked. 

He’s still not over that initial panic. He tries to avoid mirrors. His body isn’t his. It feels entirely like someone else’s that he’s been made to inhabit by force.

“I couldn’t really get ahold of my emotions, either,” Wrecker continues. “Emotional d…dys…I dunno. I forgot the word. I had a lotta outbursts n’ meltdowns n’ stuff. But the pain meds felt really nice, n’ made me all fuzzy. So I sorta…lied? So I could stay on them? And I got in trouble for it after a little while but it was real hard to get off ‘em. It fuckin’ sucked. I never ever wanna do that again. I don’t even want that shit near me. But Tech still hides it, ‘cuz he’s good at hiding things, and ‘cuz he worries. Not as much as Hunter, maybe, but still…”

“Oh,” Echo says, dumbly.

“You just…” Wrecker says, “you look like you wanna crawl out of your own skin sometimes! And it reminds me of me. But if you’re really hurting, you should have the meds. Jasper gave ‘em to you for a reason, and you’re real fresh outta being rescued, still.”

Echo isn’t sure what to say. He shoves Lula towards Wrecker, and Wrecker takes her, hugging her like a lifeline.

“You wanna know something else?” Wrecker says. Echo nods. “I couldn’t’ve healed without help. When we first got here, you were kinda shoving everyone away, and I got worried, because you’re not gonna heal that way. We’re here for you, alright?”

“Mm…” Echo hums quietly.

He swallows thickly. Blinks, rapid, feeling unsure and adrift and lost, because Wrecker has known exactly how he was feeling the whole time and Echo had no idea. Because Wrecker knows what it’s like to wake up new. To wake up undead. To wake up reborn. 

To struggle with it. To seek out unhealthy solutions, just because they’re easy.

Echo was rescued and he had thought…no, he had known…that he would never, ever fit in with his brothers ever again.

It’s overwhelming to think that he might’ve been wrong.

Chapter Text

He’s so cold. So cold, so cold, so cold…

It’s so hot on Lola Sayu that he can feel the heat through his armor.

He’s so cold and he can’t move.

It’s hot…why is it so hot? Wasn’t he cold just a moment ago?

The shuttle…he has to get to the shuttle. 

He’s being locked away. 

He’s being plugged in. 

A torrent of data slams into his mind, and it’s too much, too much, too much…

“ECHO! LOOK OUT!”

It’s storming.

It’s always storming on Kamino, but it’s a real bad one tonight.

Echo flinches at every clap of thunder, clenching the popping toy in his hand, very aware that’s not how it’s meant to be used. He feels like a cadet, or maybe even younger than that. Fresh out of his tube. Afraid of the storm. How childish.

He’s trying to bite back his tears, but they just won’t stop.

He wants Fives.

He wants to go home.

And instead, all he’s got is this empty lounge room in the middle of the night cycle, a hard bench against his back, as he stares out the window through his wet eyes and tries desperately to remind himself that it’s rain, not a shower of sparks, and thunder, not explosions.

The sky in front of him splits open in what might as well be a world-ending CRACK of thunder and lightning. Echo nearly jumps out of his skin, trembling violently, the popping toy flying out of his hand and rolling away to rest on the floor.

He buries his face in his stupid metal knees and and horrible, painful sob escapes his throat.

He’s gotta get it together. 

Ideally, he’ll slip back into the barracks long before anyone wakes up, and no one will know he was ever gone. 

If he doesn’t, they’re gonna tear apart the city looking for him, worry warts that they are. Or maybe they’ll think the Kaminoans snatched him away to be dissected in the middle of the night. 

The door to the lounge room whooshes open. 

Or maybe, he thinks, I will be snatched away. 

The footfalls are too quick and too heavy to be a Kaminoan, so it must be a clone. Whoever it is, they stop, close to Echo, and don’t say anything. 

Echo looks up. 

It’s Hunter, still in his sleep clothes, hair mussed, holding out the dropped toy towards him. 

Slowly, Echo takes it, still leaning down over his knees. Hunter sits to his left on the bench, and again, doesn’t say anything. 

Echo rocks, forwards and backwards, trying his damndest to self-soothe so he can be the one to break the silence. 

He’s still crying. It’s horrible. It’s humiliating. He wants to disintegrate into dust, he wants to stop existing, he wants Fives. 

The thought just makes him cry harder. 

He gasps for breath through his sobs. He throws the stupid fucking popping toy across the room, and it hits the window with a pathetic thump. Hunter eyes it, eyebrows raised, but makes no move to retrieve it.

Echo brings the back of his hand to his mouth and bites. 

Hard.

“Hey, hey, whoa, don’t do that,” Hunter whispers, near-frantic, kneeling on the floor in front of Echo and holding his hands out—but not touching. “Can you talk to me? Tell me what’s wrong?”

Echo shakes his head. Keeps rocking. Bites harder.

“It’s okay if you can’t,” Hunter says. 

His voice is gentle. So gentle. It flutters into Echo’s overwhelmed brain and only makes things worse. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t deserve the kindness he’s being offered. He doesn’t understand. 

He bites even harder. He tastes blood.

All his feelings are too big. Too big. TOO BIG.

“Do you have any weapons on you?” Hunter asks.

Echo shakes his head.

“Promise?”

Echo nods.

“Good,” Hunter says. He looks away from Echo to survey the room for a quick moment. “I’m going to get a medkit. Don’t move unless it’s to take your hand out of your mouth, and that’s an order. Understood?”

Echo nods.

“I’ll be back in ten seconds,” Hunter says, and then he darts off.

Echo counts.

He’s back in nine.

He sets the medkit on the floor, and instead of pulling out the bacta and bandages as Echo expects him to, he pulls out an instant cold pack and squeezes it to mix the chemicals inside.

“You might hate me for this,” Hunter warns, and then, forcefully, presses the cold pack, at the peak of its endothermic reaction, to Echo’s cheek.

Echo flinches away, but Hunter doesn’t relent. It’s so cold. Not cold like the stasis chamber—cold like a biting wind through the seams in his armor, cold like Lola Sayu wasn’t. So cold it almost hurts.

So cold he doesn’t realize he’s stopped crying, nor that he’s stopped biting his hand, until he’s absently pawing at Hunter’s wrist in a futile attempt to chase him away.

“There you go,” Hunter murmurs. “Sorry, by the way, but I couldn’t just let you keep doing that.”

Frowning, Echo snatches the cold pack away, and Hunter lets him. 

“How did you know that would work?” Echo croaks. He keeps holding the cold pack, just for the moment. It almost feels good. 

Hunter smiles, just slightly, and there’s something sad behind his eyes. “Can I show you something?”

Echo eyes him, feeling wary, but nods anyway.

Hunter rolls up his sleeve.

It’s hard to figure out what he’s looking at, at first—there doesn’t seem to be anything abnormal about Hunter’s arm. 

But then, underneath the dark hair, Echo spots them: little raised lines, all up and down his arm. Scars. Long faded, but scars nonetheless.

“Oh,” Echo says. 

“Cold packs used to help me,” Hunter says, looking pointedly away from Echo. “I didn’t know that it would work for you, I guess. But it was worth a shot.”

“Thank you,” Echo whispers. “You didn’t…you didn’t have to show me that.”

“Does it bother you?” 

“No, it’s not that,” Echo clarifies, “it’s just…that’s really personal. You shouldn’t feel obligated to share something like that with me, y’know?”

 “I don’t feel any obligation to,” Hunter says, reaching for the medkit and placing a packet of bacta gel and a roll of bandages on the bench beside Echo. “I just wanted you to know that you’re not alone.”

“You’re not the first one to…to tell me something like that,” Echo mumbles. Hunter gently, oh so gently, takes the cold pack away and holds Echo’s bleeding, bitten hand in one of his own. “The rest of your squad have all confessed personal things to me, too. I’m…not sure I understand.”

“What kinds of things?” Hunter asks, slowly spreading bacta over the bite. Echo winces, more out of instinct than actual pain. 

“Tech said you all have C-PTSD, like me,” Echo says. “Wrecker talked about recovering from his injury and why Tech hides the stronger pain meds. Crosshair…”

Hunter looks up at him, almost innocently, as he trails off. 

“Hunter,” Echo chokes out. He swallows thickly. “If I tell you something personal, can you promise me something?”

“Depends,” Hunter says cautiously. “What do you want me to promise?”

“That, first of all, you’re not going to freak out,” Echo mumbles, “and second of all, that you’re going to trust me, and leave me the fuck alone about it.”

“I don’t like making blind promises, Echo,” Hunter says, reaching for the roll of bandages. 

Echo feels a lump form in his throat. He either refuses to continue, leaving Hunter cautious and wondering, or he tells him and risks being treated like a youngling or maybe even kicked out of the squad. 

If Echo was the leader of a squad, he surely wouldn’t want himself in it. 

But Hunter trusts him, against all odds. Hunter has just confessed to him something incredibly personal. Hunter followed him out here in the middle of the night. Hunter is bandaging his stupid, stupid self-inflicted bite wound and being oh-so-gentle with him as he solidifies after his nightmare-induced meltdown. 

Maybe it’s not really a risk. Maybe Echo’s just afraid to open up. 

“Hunter,” Echo says, deathly serious and incorrigibly quiet. “I almost shot myself a few days ago.”

Hunter freezes. 

Echo dips his head. His hand shakes. Hunter squeezes his fingers, careful of the still exposed bite. 

“Crosshair is the only reason I didn’t,” Echo finishes. “And he said you wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone if you knew I’d tried. Because…because he knows you wouldn’t. Because he went through it. He promised he wouldn’t tell you if I promised not to try again.”

“He didn’t tell me. You promised,” Hunter concludes. “And you meant it?”

Echo nods. “I…yeah. I think so,” he says. “I don’t…really… like being alive, right now. But I’m starting to think I should keep going anyway.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Why don’t I like being alive, or why do I want to keep going?”

“Both,” Hunter says, breaking out of his ice and beginning to wrap Echo’s hand. “Humor me.”

“I’m nothing more than a broken droid,” Echo says. “And I’m worth just about as much as one.”

“Not true,” Hunter protests, “but keep going.”

“I…” Echo blinks, slightly taken aback, but continues. It feels like he’s spilling the contents of his heart all over the floor, and now that he’s started, he can’t stop. “I’m in pain all the time. I have to take a million pills every day. I can hardly sleep. The tiniest things trigger me. I hate going to PT. I…I want to go home, and I can’t.”

“Home?” Hunter inquires.

“My old squad,” Echo explains. “That was my home. Three of them died on our first assignment. And then Ninety-Nine died, and he wasn’t really part of our squad, but—”

“You knew Ninety-Nine?” Hunter interrupts, eyes wide as moons, and Echo is reminded once again of how young the Batch are. He remembers a cadet, looking up at him, eyes equally as wide: you know the Captain Rex?

“Clone Force Ninety-Nine,” Echo muses, “I get it now. You’ve got mutations, like he did. Well, sort of like he did.”

“We’d’ve been more like him if not for early intervention,” Hunter says. “He was a very good friend to us when no one else was. How did you know him?”

“He was a good friend to my squad as well,” Echo says. “We were a little…deficient. But he believed in us.”

“What about the fifth member of your squad?” Hunter asks. “There’s you, and three of them died, and that makes four, but there’s five members in a reg squad.”

Echo watches as Hunter fastens the bandage, trying to force himself into feeling numb and detached. 

He dissociates all the time; it should be easy to let go and float away.

But he can’t. Not this time.

He can feel everything.

The gaping, empty hole where his other half should be, threatening to swallow him up, to paint his soul into something wretched and dark before spitting him back out again, left to face the world alone.

Or maybe that’s already happened to him.

It hurts.

Worse than the scalpels, the drills, the bonesaws. Worse than anything he ever thought anything could hurt. 

“Hey,” Hunter says, “it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.”

“The fifth member,” Echo says, and his brain’s suddenly a broken record, and he has to repeat. Reborn, reborn, reborn, reborn, reborn. “The fifth member. Five to a squad. Five. Five-five-five-five. Fifty-five-fifty-five. Fives.”

Hunter blinks. “You lost me.”

Echo’s shaking. He can’t breathe quite right. He starts rocking again, but it’s useless. He can’t self-soothe his way out of this. It’s just not possible.

“It’s okay,” Hunter says slowly. “You’re gonna be okay. Here…”

Hunter takes Echo’s hand and places it over his heart. Its beats are calm, the rise and fall of his chest steady. Echo tries to breathe with him, but every breath, he stutters or chokes. He can’t.

Fives’ heartbeat was never quite steady. He was always moving, always active, always had too much caf in his system. But it was his. It was his heartbeat. Play Echo a thousand recordings of human heartbeats and he’d be able to pick out which one belonged to Fives.

But Fives is gone. 

His heart doesn’t beat anymore.

His heart wasn’t even intact for his autopsy. He was shot. Shot through the heart. 

Echo curls his hand into a fist against Hunter’s chest, gripping the fabric of his sleep shirt, looking for some kind of resistance, some kind of outlet. It’s not enough. He wants to punch something. He wants to bite through his own skin again. He wants to shoot himself, because then he won’t have to worry about stupid things like emotions and physical sensations and adjusting to being permanently disabled and the intractable grief of Fives being gone forever.

Echo escaped one Hell and walked straight into a second one.

Echo stands quickly, ignoring Hunter’s look of surprise, and starts wandering the room. 

“Echo,” Hunter says. “I’m going to call Captain Rex.”

Panic lances through Echo’s chest. “What? No, no no no, don’t do that.”

“He knows you better than I do,” Hunter explains calmly. “You need help that I can’t give you.”

“Well he can’t give it to me either!” Echo blurts. Subconsciously, he brings his hand back up to his mouth—and tastes the dry fabric of the bandages mixed with the bitter sting of bacta. He nearly gags.

“Stop it,” Hunter says. A note of panic creeps into his usually calm voice. “Look, if you know what you need, tell me, because I sure don’t.”

Echo pauses. Turns to look at Hunter. “I need my twin,” he says, before the impact of the words fully hits him; and then when it does, it’s like a speeder bike slamming into his chest at full throttle. 

He falls to the floor and curls into his knees. 

He can’t breathe. 

“Your twin?” Hunter asks, dropping to the floor beside him. “You have a twin?”

“Had,” Echo chokes. 

“Oh,” Hunter says, startled. “Oh. Fucking hells, Echo, I’m so sorry.”

“I woke up, after being rescued,” Echo says, shaking, “and he was just… gone.”

“Gods, I can’t even imagine,” Hunter says. “I…can I hug you?”

Echo nods. He uncurls, just enough, and is immediately held tightly to Hunter’s chest. 

He cries, and cries, and cries.

When he’s all wrung out and his tears dried, Hunter speaks up: “Tell me something,” he says, “why do you want to keep going?”

“I dunno,” Echo says, sniffling. “Because I’m supposed to. Because it’s not normal to want to die.”

Hunter frowns, his nose scrunching just slightly. “No offense, but that’s not a good reason.”

“I know,” Echo grumbles. “But it’s keeping me alive, so…?”

“Can I help you come up with some better reasons?” Hunter asks. 

“You can try.”

“Tell me something that’s happened in the past week or so that you’ve actually liked. I know there’s gotta be something.”

Echo thinks for only a short moment before replying. “This,” he says, tapping the side of his brand-new headset. “I like this.”

Hunter’s lips twitch in the faintest of smiles. “Tech does good work,” he says. “What about it do you like?”

“I like being able to hear,” Echo explains. “The hearing aids they gave me on Anaxes worked, but not this well. I like…music. And I like the rain. And I like how the popping toy sounds. I’m glad Tech showed me your stash.”

“There’s a good reason for you,” Hunter says. “Can’t hear all those things if you’re dead.”

“Mm, I guess so.”

“Give me another one,” Hunter says. “Another thing you liked.”

“Um,” Echo stammers, wracking his brain for something else. “Wrecker let me sleep with Lula. She’s very soft.”

“You like soft things?”

Echo nods. 

“I do too,” Hunter says. “When we get back to the barracks I’ll grab you a softer blanket. Those regulation ones don’t quite cut it. I can’t sleep with them at all…my senses are too strong. Feels like I’m sleeping with a cactus.”

Echo snorts. “I know what you mean. But you don’t have to, really. I can live with the regulation one.”

“I don’t have to, no,” Hunter says, “but we have extras, and I want you to be comfortable.”

“Oh,” Echo says. 

“But that’s another good reason,” Hunter says, drawing them back to the topic at hand. “Soft things. Being comfortable. The privilege of getting to sleep with Lula.”

Echo smiles. “Maybe,” he says. “But I’m never going to be comfortable. Not really.”

“Why?” Hunter asks, but his face indicates that he already knows the answer, and already has something to say about it. 

He’s done this before, Echo realizes. 

“Because I hurt all the time,” Echo says. “Because I’m always tiptoeing the line of fight or flight or freeze. Because I don’t belong anywhere. Because the shoulder I’m used to leaning on was incinerated along with the rest of his fucking body.”

“And you’re going to let all that rule your life?” Hunter asks softly. “Let it beat you down without putting up a fight?”

He’s done this before. With Crosshair, surely. He must have, because he’s good at it. 

“I’m tired, Hunter,” Echo says. 

“You’ve been free for what, three weeks or so?” Hunter says. “You’ve survived that long. You might’ve tried something stupid—a few somethings, now that I think about it—but you survived. Three whole weeks. Think you can make it another three?”

“I don’t know,” Echo answers honestly. 

“Think about it,” Hunter says. “You’ll get a nice, soft blanket. Any of the stim toys you want. We’ll start training, get a blaster in your hand again. And I’m sure Wrecker would let you sleep with Lula again if you wanted. And…”

Hunter trails off, his face lighting up like he’s got some big secret he’s waiting to spill. 

“And?” Echo asks. 

“Your armor,” Hunter says, almost giddy. “It’ll be ready in the morning. You get to paint a whole new set of armor. That’s exciting, right?”

“I guess so,” Echo says, unenthused. 

Hunter’s face falls. “You guess so?”

“Last time I painted armor it was with Fives,” Echo mumbles. “Don’t wanna do it without him.”

“Your twin?” Hunter asks. Echo nods. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but unless you want to go on missions with us as a shiny, you’re going to have to.”

“I know,” Echo says, picking at his sleeve. “I know. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.”

“Echo,” Hunter says, trying to meet Echo’s wandering eyes, “it’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. We’ll get you through this. You’re not alone.”

Echo lets that sink in for a long moment. 

“Hunter,” he says softly, finally meeting Hunter’s eyes, “thank you.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, Tech and Wrecker arrive in their barracks with a crate. 

Hunter pries it open with his vibroblade. 

Crosshair pulls out the first piece: a helmet, designed to accommodate Echo’s brand-new headset. 

Echo stares into the visor, and realizes, panicked, that he can’t do this. 

He isn’t followed when he leaves. 

Not by any of the Bad Batch, at least. 

He knows he’s been followed more by instinct than anything; the person following him is very light on their feet. He stops in front of a viewport, staring through the transparisteel at the tumultuous waves below, hoping desperately that whoever it is isn’t a Kaminoan.

Thank the gods, it isn’t. 

“Corporal Echo,” a blessedly gentle voice hits his ears, standing to his left. “You seem troubled.”

Ugh. Jedi. He tilts his head to glance at her, hoping she won’t mind that he can’t speak to her right now. 

He remembers General Shaak Ti catching him in a speech loss episode once when his squad were still cadets. Fives had been around, then, able to be the much-needed Echo-whisperer of the hour. The thought of it feels like a stake to the heart; pinning him down, draining him of life. There will never be another Echo-whisperer to divulge his thoughts for him when he can’t. No one will ever know him that well again. The very idea that someone could is absurd. 

“You’re thinking very loudly,” General Ti says. Echo knows the Jedi can’t read minds, but it always seems like they get damn close to it. 

He stares at the waves. Maybe she’ll go away. 

“Is Clone Force Ninety-Nine treating you poorly?” General Ti asks. “They aren’t exactly well known for their hospitality.”

Echo shakes his head. He holds up his left hand and signs: bad day. That’s all. 

“Would you like to come to my office?” General Ti asks. “We can talk, if you’d like, or you can just use it as a quiet place to sit. I don’t mind either way.”

Echo looks up at her. 

She looks down at him. 

He looks away immediately, her nebula-colored eyes too intense for him to bear. She reaches out for his shoulder, instead, and he shies away. 

She frowns. 

“Come to my office, Echo,” she says. “I’m not just asking any longer. This isn’t an order, but it is a personal request. Talking or no, I believe it will do you good.”

Echo nods. He’s not one to refuse a request from a Jedi. 

He follows her through the winding halls of Kamino to her office. She shuts the door, dims the lights to a less harsh setting than the Kaminoan default, and begins to dig through a drawer for something. 

She pulls out a notepad and a pen, setting them on her desk. “If you would rather sit quietly, you may,” she says, “but if you would like me to lend a montral, you’re welcome to speak or write. I might not know you well, Echo, but I have known you for a long time. I have never enjoyed watching you, or your brothers, suffer.”

Echo steps up to the desk and grabs the pen. It settles awkwardly in his left hand—he’s still not used to it. His writing isn’t going to be particularly legible. 

He writes a string of four numbers and immediately crosses them out before going to sit on the couch against the wall, hoping General Ti understands his meaning. 

5555

How did she find out he was dead? Was it buried in a report? Did she even remember him right away? She’s met nearly every clone, alive or dead, since she set foot on Kamino; that’s a lot of insignificant numbers. 

They die all the time, it’s not like she can pause to mourn every single one. 

Echo sure can’t. This is the longest amount of time he’s been given to mourn since…ever. And he finds it to be quite cruel.

“Oh,” General Ti says mildly, carefully. “Your brother from Domino Squad. Fives. You’re missing him?”

Echo curls into himself, just slightly.

“I know you two were very close,” she says. “It must be difficult to be reborn into a galaxy where he has already been mourned.”

There’s that fucking word again. Reborn. His lips twitch in a half-attempt to say it, but he can’t. He just can’t. And if he could, it would probably be the only word he’d manage to say for the next five hours. 

“It does little good to dwell on the past,” General Ti continues, “but I would like to apologize for not doing more to prevent his death.”

At this, Echo snaps his head up to look at her. She’s staring down at the notepad, one finger tracing over the numbers. 

How could she have done anything? He was shot. On Coruscant.

Sensing his confusion (ugh, Jedi), she continues. “He was here, on Kamino, shortly before his death. I knew there was something wrong, and I tried to intervene, but there ended up being very little I could do.”

He tries and tries and tries to keep the thought away, but it pops up anyway: she knew he was going to die. She knew he was going to die and she let him.

Most of him isn’t mad at her. Death is unpreventable, especially for clones. But there’s a tiny part of him that says she didn’t do enough. She was sent to Kamino to watch over the clones and she failed. 

She looks up at him, her face pinched, and says: “I’m so sorry.”

Echo’s no Jedi, but he thinks she might be thinking that she failed, too.

They sit in silence for a long while. She meditates for a few minutes before bustling around and doing paperwork, occasionally checking up on him, but mostly leaving him be.

When he finally finds his voice, he thanks her, dismisses himself, and heads back towards the Bad Batch’s barracks.

His new armor is all prepped and waiting on the worktable, ready to be painted. Cans of black, dark gray, red, and white paint are sitting beside it.

Echo feels so fucking empty.

“Hey,” Hunter drawls, looking up from his vibroblade, which he’d been tossing elegantly between his fingers. “Your chat with Shaak Ti go well?”

Echo looks up at him and tries to keep his hand from shaking. “Uh, no.”

Hunter frowns, his brow furrowing. “What’s up?”

“I just…” Echo begins. He pauses to bite his lip and swallow the lump in his throat. “I don’t know how I’m ever gonna be okay again.”

The honesty poisoning his words tastes bitter and acrid. He wants to turn and run from the room again.

“Oh, Echo…” Hunter says pityingly. It hurts. It hurts to be spoken to like that.

“Maybe you won’t be,” Crosshair’s slithering voice says. He’s perched on his bunk, gnawing on a toothpick. Echo narrows his eyes in his direction.

“Though okay is a subjective term,” Tech begins, not bothering to look up from the small device he’s tinkering on, “and as such, cannot be measured with any degree of accuracy, I find it hard to believe that given adequate time, your condition would not begin to improve.”

“But it’s fine if you aren’t okay, too,” Wrecker chimes in, stepping close to Echo. “You don’t gotta carry everything by yourself. You can let us shoulder some of the load too.”

“Oh,” Echo says mildly, stumbling towards the worktable, where his armor is, and collapsing heavily on one of its benches. He puts his head in his hand, the gaping hole in his heart consuming him.

Wrecker sits down next to him. “Is it okay if I touch you?” He asks gently.

Echo nods.

Carefully, Wrecker pulls him close, one arm wrapped around him. Echo leans his head on Wrecker’s shoulder and tries very hard to relax.

He feels like a tiny, fragile thing. Like one wrong touch or word and he’ll shatter into a million pieces.

But somehow, impossibly, the Bad Batch is here to sort through every piece. To build him back up again. To hold him gently so he doesn’t shatter in the first place.

“Why am I here?” Echo asks—whispers, really. He hadn’t intended for anyone to hear him.

But of course, Wrecker, right next to him, does. Hunter with his enhanced senses, too.

“You belong here,” Wrecker says roughly.

“You’re like us,” Hunter says.

“But I’m not,” Echo mumbles.

Like a shadow snaking across the room, Crosshair slinks over and sits down on Echo’s other side. “Keep telling yourself that,” he says.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Echo near-whispers.

“You are not a burden!” Hunter exclaims, and Echo gets the feeling he takes personal offense to the ascertainment. “You’re not any more a burden than Tech and his attention issues or social problems, Wrecker and his emotional dysregulation or memory issues, Crosshair with his depression or light sensitivity, or me with my migraines and sensory overloads. We support each other. That’s what this is for. That’s why we’re here. We fought tooth and nail to be allowed to be in a squad, and now you’re part of that, too. Whether you like it or not.”

Echo doesn’t know what to say to that.

He leans closer into Wrecker’s hold and stares at the blank armor on the table. A blank slate. A new start. Restart. Reborn.

Reborn.

Reborn.

Reborn.

Echo takes a shaky breath in. “Reborn,” he says. “General Ti said I was reborn.”

“And?” Crosshair asks.

“I just…don’t feel reborn,” Echo begins. “I feel undead. Like some kind of monster. Reborn sounds like…like a miracle. Like something pure. Like how they show natborn births in holomovies, all white linens and smiling faces. I’m not that. It’s been bothering me since she said it. I don’t know who I am anymore, and it’s scary. I came back wrong.”

“You didn’t come back wrong,” Wrecker rumbles beside him, “you came back hurt.”

“Same difference,” Echo mumbles, but everyone ignores the remark.

“Natborn birth isn’t… pure and white linens as you describe,” Tech says. “Most of the time it’s horrendously painful and bloody, with possibly months of required recovery time. It may be a more apt metaphor for your situation than you’re assuming.”

“Oh,” Echo says. 

He supposes, on some level, he knew that natborn birth was painful. He knows the mechanics of it, he’s not uneducated. But hearing Tech explain it so plainly has definitely shifted something in his perception.

“Life’s not pretty, idiot,” Crosshair says, almost affectionately. “Welcome back to the land of the living. Don’t expect to enjoy your stay.”

Echo doesn’t plan to.

But he’s here, and he might as well make the most of it.

Painting his armor is hard, for more than one reason.

He misses his twin.

He misses his right hand.

He misses his eel-blood handprint, but they don’t have any blue paint, nor is Rex around to replicate it.

It doesn’t matter, he thinks. It would probably feel wrong to have it on this armor. He’s been reborn, and he thinks he’d like a barrier between his new self and his old self. Something symbolic, more than the actual barriers of life he’s facing.

He decides to put the signature Clone Force 99 skull right over his heart, opposite where the handprint was. He asks Crosshair to paint it, his steady hands far better for the task than Echo’s non-dominant, still-healing left hand.

While he’s adding the finishing touches, Wrecker and Hunter go to fetch them food from the mess. As his armor dries on the worktable, they sit in a semicircle on the floor to eat.

Echo picks at his food. Eating’s still hard.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Hunter asks, out of nowhere. “Painting it without him?”

“Without who?” Wrecker asks through a mouthful, his head tilted curiously.

“My twin,” Echo mumbles in answer. “Dead and gone.”

“Oh.” Wrecker’s face falls.

“CT-five-five-five-five, chosen name Fives,” Tech says, adjusting his goggles idly. “Your combat record, aside from after your presumed death, is completely intertwined with his. You were stationed all the same places, trained as ARCs at the same time, and went on all the same missions together. The only thing you seemed to have done different is planning battle strategy—he is mysteriously absent from being credited in the plans you concocted with Captain Rex.”

Echo snorts. “That’s because he didn’t help.”

“Why not?” Wrecker asks.

“He just hated it.” Echo shrugs. “He’d try to sit in on our planning sessions, but he’d always fall asleep, or get antsy and go do something else, or annoy us until we kicked him out.” 

“Sounds like Wrecker,” Crosshair drawls.

“Haha, yeah,” Wrecker agrees.

“Oh, he would’ve loved you,” Echo laughs. “All of you, I think. Well, maybe not Crosshair.”

“HA!” Wrecker laughs, elbowing Crosshair’s ribs. Crosshair nearly chokes on his food. 

“Yeah, well,” Crosshair grumbles after sputtering and swallowing and coughing, “if he’s so much like Wrecker, I’m sure I’d hate him too.”

“Aw, hey,” Wrecker says, “you love me.”

“Not true,” Crosshair retaliates.

“Yes true.”

“Boys,” Hunter interrupts, “that’s enough.”

Wrecker and Crosshair scuffle in silence for a few moments longer, and Echo looks on in amusement, feeling reminded not just of he and Fives, but all of Domino squad.

They fought. They loved. They were brothers.

The Bad Batch are his brothers, too.

When his armor is dry, he tries it on.

He needs a little help getting it on, but the Batch are more than willing to provide it.

It’s still a little loose on his frame—room for his recovery, Tech had told him.

He doesn’t look in the mirror until after his helmet is securely over his head. He’s not very fond of looking at his face.

The helmet’s nice, though.

Feels like him, in an odd way. Like he’s someone new. Like he’s been reborn.

Wrecker comes up behind him and shoulder-checks him. “Lookin’ good!”

“You’re swooning,” Crosshair drawls from the doorway.

“Am not,” Wrecker protests.

“Don’t start again,” Hunter sighs. “That’s an order.”

Tech comes up on Echo’s other side, nose in his datapad, but he does spare a glance up at the armor. “Does it feel good? Comfortable around your implants and the headset?”

“Yeah, Tech,” Echo says. “It’s perfect.”

Echo’s not the same.

Echo will never be the same again.

He hasn’t really come to terms with it yet, and he doesn’t know that he ever will; but he can damn well try his best and see where that takes him.

He hopes that wherever Fives—and Hevy, Cutup, and Droidbait—are now, they’re happy for him.

Echo of Domino Squad, reborn!