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When Echo thinks of home, he thinks of a sterile creche, innocent and blinding-white; the row of bunks where he and his brothers once slept, long since emptied and cleaned out for the shinies. Back then, it hadn’t seemed like much. They were always complaining about this trainer or that squad--that is, if they weren’t busy bickering with each other. Sometimes Echo could not help but feel a little jealous of the him who could complain about Hevy not listening to the instructor, or gripe with Fives about the mess hall menu. In retrospect all of those problems seemed so very, very small.
Once, someone had told him that the clones were built to withstand stress. Remembering that now, Echo wonders if he lost more than his body in that stasis pod. He’s healed, or at least functional, but something inside of him still feels broken; something deeper even than flesh and bone. Before, any sort of feeling of unease was something Echo could discuss with his brothers… but back then, their faces and bodies were still the same. Something about that made it that much easier to empathise--when it was your own face saying the words, it was simple to imagine yourself in a situation--but save for Rex and a select few, the other clones don’t look at Echo like that any more. The ones who know what he’s done at least look at him with some sense of admiration, but he can’t feel that sense of recognition, of near-instant connection, looking into their faces. It’s no longer a mirror, but a glass wall; not always bad , but different.
He is different: haunted by the person he’d used to be. He sees himself everywhere in the barracks, clean-shaven, muscular and confident. He stands at every workstation, sits on every bench in the mess hall, lies in every bunk in the barracks. Worse, he sees Fives, too; his determined eyes staring out of every smiling face. Fives, gone in a way nobody can explain to his satisfaction. Fives, buried with a secret that Echo cannot help but sense would be right at home with the project that had made him what he is now: a mess of flesh and metal, brilliant and broken.
So he has known, from the moment he returned, that he has to leave; and when Clone Force 99 extend their hands, he’s more than ready to take them.
Hunter at first seems like the easiest to get to know, but Echo soon figures out that he’s one of the hardest. He talks freely, but is quick to move the focus toward the others, preferring to navigate Echo through Tech’s hobbies, Crosshair’s moods, Wrecker’s… wrecking. He asks a lot about Echo, too; about his training on Kamino, about being an ARC Trooper, what it had been like working under Rex and Skywalker. After years in cryo, Echo hadn’t been sure his mouth would remember how to talk, but apparently it does, because he can talk to Hunter for hours, easily; and Hunter will listen, with a warm half-smile, eyes never wavering.
After a while, though, Echo starts to suspect that Hunter got good at listening so he wouldn’t have to talk about himself. Every time Echo asks, he hesitates before answering very briefly and smoothly changing the subject again. It doesn’t feel right to press him further; not after all that he does for them.
He lives for them, Echo realises. They all need Hunter--perhaps because his relative normality proves an acceptable conduit between Clone Force 99’s insanity and the army’s uniformity--and he likes that. Doesn’t like to be the center of attention, just the center: the place the rest of them come back to when they’re sad or angry or overwhelmed, the calm eye of an ever-changing storm.
But Hunter gets overwhelmed, too, Echo notices; his enhanced senses don’t exactly come with an off-switch, and sometimes--especially in crowded cities or bases--he sees him struggling, shaking his head subtly like he’s trying to fight off a headache. Crosshair always clocks him before anyone else, of course, but it’s Echo who finally follows his laser-gaze through after they complete their first mission together, taking Hunter by the shoulder and turning him off the street they’ve been walking. They tuck themselves down a quieter looking alleyway and the others fold over the entrance without a word, though Echo catches them watching subtly.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, as Echo guides him down to sit on a grubby bench covered in graffiti.
“Beat me right to it,” he says, removing his helmet to see him better. “Do you need a break, Sarge? You don’t look so good.”
That, he knows, is pretty scathing coming from him; Hunter huffs a short, breathless laugh and starts to stand up. “I’m fine, Echo. Let’s keep moving.”
“That an order, sir?” Hunter looks at him oddly, and Echo tries to give a reassuring smile. “We’ve got plenty of time to report.”
Hunter rolls one shoulder restlessly, and Echo hears him sigh under his helmet. If he looks closely, he can see a little tremor starting in his hands. “Sure, but we should get it out of the way.”
“Fine,” says Echo, stubbornly, and sits down. “Then I need a break.”
Hunter sinks back down on the bench reluctantly, breathing deeply as he finally takes his helmet off. He’s smiling, but stiffly; a tension to his jaw, a pale clamminess to his skin. “You’re pretty damn cheeky for a reg.”
“My squad used to say I was in my tank too long,” says Echo. It’s less funny than he thought it would be, and the alley briefly falls quiet. Almost.
One thing Echo can’t help but appreciate now is that it’s never really quiet: you can always hear the wind, the birds; the murmur of a distant crowd; even the sound of your own breath. He never used to notice them--those boring, organic sounds--but now, proof of a world existing outside one’s skull is like music to him. To Hunter, he supposes, that music is just a lot louder; and better than most Echo understands how much the world can be when one suddenly takes in more than they’ve grown used to.
“Yeah,” says Hunter, softly. “Yeah, I bet you were, kid.”
It’s another instance in which Echo feels himself skillfully deflected, perhaps not even on purpose. He can’t help but feel privately annoyed even as Hunter lays a comforting arm over his shoulders: warm, solid, but not restricting. Having been determined to be the comforter rather than the comfort-ee, Echo’s just about to open his mouth and say something when he looks over and sees Hunter’s expression has relaxed, his smile softened. It makes him blink with the strange realisation; he is giving Hunter what he needs, just not quite in the way he thought he might. Still:
“I’m older than you, y’know,” Echo reminds him, with a gentle nudge of his elbow, “ kid .”
“You’re worse than Tech, is what you are.” Hunter squeezes him against his side, laughing. The tension in his face is almost gone. “Never heard so much attitude in my life.”
“I’ll bet you haven’t,” says Echo, smirking, “it’s so short.”
“ You ,” Hunter wrestles his head down against his shoulder; but gently, his fingers splayed carefully around the metal ports protruding from Echo’s scalp like unearthed landmines. Then, very quietly: “Thanks.”
From his vantage on Hunter’s shoulder, Echo can see the rest of the boys silhouetted in the mouth of the alleyway, the late afternoon sun turning them golden at the edges. Crosshair perches lazily on a trash can to talk to Wrecker while Tech fiddles with his wrist-com. He can feel Hunter watching them, too, his head turned so it almost rests on top of his. It’s been a long time since someone was this affectionate with him; it almost makes him want to monopolise Hunter a little longer.
“You’re welcome.”
Hunter’s hand trails off his head and Echo notices that his fingers don’t once graze the cybernetics. He doesn’t blame him. His new skills are useful in combat, but off the battlefield this body still doesn’t feel quite his. As if testing it, he clutches his remaining hand absently against the air. Hunter looks down at it curiously, but doesn’t say anything. They watch the boys in silence for a while.
“You feeling better? Ready to go?”
No. Echo doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready to live this new life of his. He keeps waiting to wake up--for real this time--with his legs tangled in the sheets. But it’s been a few too many rotations now, and he keeps waking up the same.
So, his smile trembles, but he says, “Yeah.”
Hunter looks at him, his expression steady again; there’s quiet concern in his dark eyes. “Only if you’re ready.”
Wrecker is the one Echo is told to be careful about, at first; not because Wrecker is dangerous on purpose , but because his herculean strength, like Hunter’s sensory abilities, is a constant thing, and not something he always actively controls. There are a lot of welded spots and extra bolts adorning the interior of the Havoc Marauder (it’s a little like him, Echo thinks) and his first week there, he finds out why when Wrecker takes out a metal ceiling panel simply by jumping a little overenthusiastically.
Nobody ever gets overly angry with him, though, because super-strength and penchant for demolition aside, Wrecker is one of the gentlest people Echo has ever met. He reminds him of the guard massiffs Hound introduced him to once on Coruscant; broad-chested and apparently built to kill, but equally happy to clown around and play catch when they’re off-duty. It hadn’t been so clear before he’d joined the squad and seen how they acted in private, but Wrecker is also by far the most affectionate. Besides the back-and-shoulder pats Echo was used to in the 501st, one of Wrecker’s MOs is to casually hoist the boys off the floor into bruising hugs--usually to some protest--before setting them down again as if nothing happened. He doesn’t do it to Echo, yet, even though he can see him considering it; his arms will open and close before Echo can walk into them, and he pats him on the head instead, like a little kid. To Wrecker, he must certainly look like one, so Echo tries not to take it personally. It hasn’t been that long, after all.
Wrecker isn’t all mindless muscle, though; Echo soon learns that he fixes the things he breaks around the ship, and it’s one of the few times he’s remotely quiet. The first time he catches him, he hovers in the doorway before finally growing bold enough to lean on the wall just a few feet away, watching Wrecker bend the ceiling panel back into shape with his bare hands. He’s so immersed in what he’s doing that he doesn’t even seem to notice.
“You want a hand?” he asks, wiggling his fingers, when Wrecker eventually looks up at him. It might have been funnier if he’d had a prosthetic to throw at him, but whatever the Techno-Union had done to the nerves on his missing arm made most standard prosthetics function strangely; Tech said he was working on it but, for now, it was easier to deal with the socket arm.
Wrecker smiles broadly as he pats the panel back into place. “Nah, I got it. 'Round here, if I wreck it, I gotta unwreck it.”
Echo sees him searching for a particular sized bolt, and picks it out for him. “You looked like you were in a dream--almost didn’t wanna bother you.”
“Eh, it chills me out,” says Wrecker, roughly donning his helmet and firing up the welding gun with a deafening screech. The noise makes Echo’s face screw up slightly, but once his ears adjust he realises he can hear Wrecker humming under the squeal of the gun. Finally, it sputters off, and Wrecker flicks his helmet back up to look over at him. “Sorry, didja want something?”
“No,” says Echo, maybe too quickly, because Wrecker is still looking at him, head half-cocked, and he isn’t sure what else to fill the silence with. Then it happens again; on his way to leave, Wrecker opens his arms and then closes them again, just as quickly. This time, however, Echo’s hand shoots up to grab his wrist when he goes to pat his head. “Hey. Why do you do that?”
Wrecker’s hand flexes curiously; Echo can feel the tendons working in his wrist, which his fingers can’t entirely curl around. If he wanted to pull away, he could--could probably lift Echo right off the floor in the process--but right now, he’s just looking down at him like some tiny, novel little creature.
“Heh, do what?”
When he actually tries to get the words out, suddenly it all feels very silly. “You don’t, uh--you never hug me.”
Wrecker’s head cocks. “What?”
“Well--it’s--I mean, you don’t have to, I just…” Echo trails off huffily, and finds himself focussing on how warm Wrecker’s skin is where it meets his. It shouldn’t be worth noting, but everything was so cold for such a long time. “Never mind.”
Wrecker’s hand begins to lift, and he corrects just as Echo’s heels start to rise off the floor. For once, he looks a bit cautious; then, he reaches for Echo’s shoulder instead and presses him loosely against his chest. Echo has the presence of mind to think it’s actually quite funny; Wrecker’s elbows are wide, hands cupped carefully, like he’s carrying an egg or an expensive vase. The proverbial bantha in a china shop.
But it feels good. Wrecker’s broad chest is warm even through his body armor, his ribs rising and falling like bellows stoking a great machine. Before he can think about it, Echo sighs dizzily and presses his cheek firmer into him. The last time someone hugged him was… well, it was a long time ago.
“Aw, hey…” Wrecker pats his back carefully--carefully by his standards, anyway, so it still feels like being thumped with some sort of huge, meaty racquet. “You okay, buddy?”
“Yeah.” His voice comes out slightly choked up; Echo quickly clears his throat. “I mean, yeah , obviously, I just--yeah.”
Eventually, Wrecker steps back, leaving him swaying slightly. His face is a little apologetic as he admits: “Hunter, ah… he told me to be careful.”
That alone makes a few things fall into place, but Echo laughs, feigning ignorance. “‘Careful’? Why?”
“‘Cause you’re so… your situation is fragile and, agh...” Wrecker gestures vaguely to all of him, earning a scowl; it looks as if he’s trying to recall something complicated, but finally he shakes his head and proceeds in his own words. “Look, what happened to you was karked, and if it was me--well, I don’t like people feelin’ up my face, y’know?”
He gestures to the series of scars, sprawling like a spiderweb over one side of his skull, and his cybernetic eye seems to gleam pointedly. Echo can’t help it; he’s jealous. An eye wouldn’t have been so bad--plenty of clones lose eyes--and at least Wrecker gets to keep the rest of him. The legs that walk beside his brothers. The lungs filling up his ribs. His hands; his hands that can tear apart anything, that would have popped open that stasis chamber like a tin of rations if he’d only been able to move, able to see, able to think anything that wasn’t--
“Hey,” Wrecker’s voice pulls him out of his head again. His eye--his real eye--looks almost a little sad. “I’m real glad I wrecked that place--but I don’t wanna…”
Echo swallows. He looks up at the ceiling panel; beaten, bolted, welded back into place, but still not quite the same shape. “Don’t worry about it. I know.”
Tech is not quite so diplomatic when it comes to Echo’s lingering insecurities, but in many ways, that type of honesty is refreshing. Tech deals in facts and data; he doesn’t sugarcoat things, doesn’t skirt around the point. If Tech says something is so, then he’s rarely wrong in any case--and, on the rare occasion that he is, he’s equally direct about that. In all, there are many reasons to trust Tech, but for Echo there is another, much more visceral layer to it: Tech’s face had been the first one he’d seen, besides Rex, when he’d woken up out of his long nightmare. Maybe it's ridiculous--like he's some sort of screwed up, cybernetic baby porgling, mindlessly imprinting on the first thing that it sees--but it has been nearly a month now, and seeing Tech still gives Echo that warm, steadying feeling in his chest.
Still, Tech is much less sensitive than Hunter or even Wrecker about Echo’s new abilities; rather, he asks about them constantly, be that about materials or inputs or even just what things feel like whenever Echo scomps into a new interface. Technology training was part of his basic and ARC Trooper courses, but there was never anything so comprehensive as the crash course he’s getting now. Back then, he figured he’d be hacking doors and defusing bombs at worst, not hotwiring entire networks directly into his brain; but Tech gives him the vocabulary he needs to make sense of this new world, and Echo eats it up hungrily. Sense is something his world’s been desperately lacking.
It’s Tech, too, who eventually offers to check on his cybernetics when they’re on a long-haul mission away from base. He doesn’t so much ask as say, “I’ll look at that for you”--and Echo, with one of his knee-joints starting to creak and jam, doesn’t have much choice but to say yes.
Perhaps it’s pride, but up to this point Echo has preferred his cybernetics to be looked over by droids; they don’t have much opinion about anything they’re seeing, just scan, fix and move on. However, when it’s a person looking at him--his sunken ribs, his shattered limbs--suddenly Echo struggles to match himself up with his body. This pale skeleton of a man isn’t him, can’t be him--and as for these foreign, metal parts? It’s easier to just pretend he’s looking at someone, some thing else, even as he feels his cybernetics shifting traitorously in time with the rest of him.
“Won’t be a moment.” Tech keeps talking as he works, and Echo finds himself focusing more on the sensation of noise than the words themselves.
A metallic scrape sounds just to his left. Echo doesn’t react at first, assuming it’s another rogue body-part of his doing something weird; but Tech taps his arm presently and points, and Echo’s gaze is directed toward a metal bucket sitting on the tiles next to his chair.
“If you’re going to be sick, do it there,” says Tech, bluntly.
Echo gives a soft, surprised laugh. “I’m not going to be sick.”
Tech hums doubtfully. “I’m no doctor, but your demeanour and complexion suggest otherwise.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s just my face,” says Echo drily, averting his eyes. Tech doesn’t laugh, but his lip quirks up on one side and he lays one of his gloved hands back on Echo’s mechanical calf, the other just above the knee joint, to guide the parts back into position. It’s an odd sensation; he can’t exactly feel it, the way he could if Tech had been touching his arm or any of his other remaining flesh. It’s more like an awareness that he’s being touched, a sense of weight and pressure that just isn’t quite tactile. The more he thinks about it, the more he feels like he might need that bucket after all.
“--and there,” says Tech, after a few seconds that feel like minutes. Echo realises he’s been tuning him out again, too distracted by his churning insides. “Your knee should be fine now. Would you like me to look at anything else?”
“Everything else is fine,” says Echo, quickly. As fine as it can be. “Thanks.”
Tech hesitates, which is unlike him. Then: “It’s important that your parts are serviced regularly, especially in our line of work.”
“I’m sure it can wait until we’re at our next base.” Echo isn’t sure why he’s being so defensive; perhaps it’s the vulnerability of having had his new body manipulated by another person. “If something was wrong, I’d tell you.”
“Actually, I think you would hide it, much like you attempted to with this,” says Tech; Echo freezes, taken aback, as he flatly powers on. “You’re not stupid, but you’re very stubborn--and you would feel embarrassed troubling me or the others.”
He’s surprisingly spot on; so much so that Echo can’t help but dip his gaze, embarrassed indeed. Finally, he looks back up at him with a strained smile. “Really, Tech. I’m fine.”
“Hm.” Tech sounds unconvinced, but reluctant to argue further. His eyes travel up Echo’s legs, his right arm, past his face to the top of his head. There’s nothing particularly imposing or lurid about his gaze--it’s nothing like being stared down by Crosshair, for instance--but the carefulness of his expression is somehow equally overwhelming. Echo is suddenly painfully conscious that he’s sitting here in not much more than his underwear, and hastily grabs for his blacks.
“Wait,” says Tech, abruptly, leaving Echo with one leg in his pants, one leg out. “At least let me look at your other leg, too. If I attend to one and not the other, you could experience suboptimal synchronicity in the field.”
Something clicks, then.
“Tech,” Echo ventures, slowly. “You… want to look at my cybernetics, don’t you? Even if there’s nothing wrong.”
He could swear a faint blush rises up Tech’s neck. “You’re very significant, in terms of technology and biology.”
“Ah,” says Echo, starting to smile again, “so you just want me for my body.”
“In a sense,” says Tech; it’s not that the innuendo goes over his head, he just ignores it. “I believe it’s important to understand its parameters, both for your operational efficiency and… personal wellbeing. Your modifications are unique, which presents both challenge and opportunity--but to be brief, the better I understand it, the better I can assist you on and off the field.”
“You don’t have to assist me,” Echo assures him. “I mean--no more than you already do. Which is plenty.”
“I know I don’t have to; I want to.” Tech looks at him as if this ought to be very obvious. He clears his throat stiffly. “You’re actually very interesting, and I like you.”
Echo blinks. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” Tech adds, much less comfortably. He dips his gaze respectfully. “This all seems... difficult for you.”
They sit in the quiet for a moment. Then Echo rolls his blacks back down and extends the leg that Tech hasn’t worked on yet. “Nothing I can’t handle. Go ahead.”
Crosshair is another story entirely; another story in that Echo finds him to be very different to his reputation, and he isn’t sure if that’s because he doesn’t know him well enough yet or if Crosshair just likes him. This isn’t to say that he’s the nicest guy he’s ever met; but Echo isn’t as nice as people would like him to be, either, and Crosshair seems to like that he can dish it back as well as he can take it. The ‘cool, aloof loner’ schtick is a little much sometimes, but Echo’s seen that before too--and none of the others seem to take it particularly personally.
Perhaps this is because Crosshair, in spite of his icy demeanour, perceives detail in ways nobody else--even Tech--can manage. He knows when Hunter has a headache, or when Tech is getting overstimulated; knows when one of their contacts is lying or when the barkeep is underfilling their drinks. He doesn’t always say these things, but he always notices--and so Echo starts to notice that the best way to learn something interesting is to follow Crosshair’s penetrating gaze.
Only problem is it lands on him, too, sometimes, and Echo can’t say what it is that he sees; all he knows is that when Crosshair stares at him, he couldn’t feel less naked if he actually had his clothes off. What’s worse is that for friend and foe alike, it’s usually a while before one realises they’ve become the target of Crosshair’s vision. By then, it’s already too late, as Echo learns one sleepless night.
Normally, he likes to be around people; perhaps it’s because he’s a clone, and the quiet sleep-sounds of other people breathing, shifting, living always used to be comforting. It was a reminder that he was a beloved brother of millions; never alone. Only now, this thought is accompanied constantly by the realisation that he is no longer like his million brothers--he is not even like Hunter, or Tech, or anyone else in Clone Force 99--and that can be a very lonely thought indeed. It makes the Havoc Marauder’s bunkroom feel small, oppressive, and for obvious reasons, Echo doesn’t like to feel enclosed by anything any more. So, he crawls out of his rack and heads out into the night air, hoisting himself up to perch on the hull just above the cockpit.
Stargazing is something he used to do with Fives, seeing what familiar constellations they could find--or make up, or pretend to find--from all the galaxy’s different angles. Tonight the sky is clear and bright, and soon, with his eyes tracing over a half-familiar nebula, Echo finds himself thinking that the stars are like clones, too: all the same, distinguished only by age and the patterns they arrange themselves in. He sighs and runs his hand over his face, shifting to get up just as Crosshair emerges over the crest of the hull and slides down next to him. He’s too numb to even gasp in surprise; instead, he just huffs and sits back down.
“Take a holo, it'll last longer,” he grumbles, after he can tell Crosshair has been looking at him for a while. Crosshair tips his head back with a low, short laugh, and follows Echo’s tired stare into the sky.
Neither of them say anything else just yet. With Crosshair it’s not always necessary to fill the silence; he tends to “socialise” simply by letting you exist in his space, and sometimes it’s nice to be relieved of the pressure to speak.
“Not a jumper, are you?” he asks eventually, nodding over the edge of the wing.
Echo scoffs. “A jump like that wouldn't even break my legs.”
“Nope.” Crosshair twirls his toothpick slowly to the other side of his mouth and sits down beside him, his long legs draping between Echo and the edge. Echo supposes this might be his way of showing concern, as indelicate as it is. Even so, he doesn’t try to smile; he’s sure Crosshair would pick out the strain in his lips, the deadness in his eyes, so it feels pointless to bother.
“What are you doing up here?” he asks, instead. Hunter’s taught him a thing or two about deflecting.
“It’s usually quiet,” says Crosshair, though not as pointedly as he could have. He’s fiddling more with his toothpick, and Echo watches it tilt and travel along the tight bow of his lips.
“Did you used to smoke or something?” he asks, pointing at it. Crosshair stills, plucks the toothpick from his lips and flicks it at him lazily; it clatters softly between them, rolling down the hull and out of sight.
“Used to.”
“Regulations say--”
“That ‘such substances may have unforeseen side effects in cloned humanoids’,” Crosshair recites sarcastically. That stuns Echo quiet; he hadn’t expected him to know a relatively obscure regulation by heart. “They say a lot of things. It’s not why I stopped.”
“Then why?”
At this Crosshair turns his head. “Tabac makes Hunter nauseous. Even just the smell.”
“Ah.” Echo tilts his head with a half-smile. “So, he told you off?”
“No,” says Crosshair, firmly; then, a little quieter: “He didn’t say anything.”
In the silence that follows, Echo hugs his knees up to his chest to watch him. Crosshair places another toothpick between his teeth and lets his gaze travel back up into the stars; to him, Echo supposes, they might look less like clones, more a band of similar-enough misfits, beautiful for their tiny variances, not their uniformity. It’s a comforting thought--and, even if it’s just his own speculation, he’s glad that Crosshair is here to make it occur to him.
“What’s your problem lately?” Crosshair asks, suddenly. His tone is still harsh and blunt, but his eyes remain averted, almost as if he’s embarrassed to ask--this isn’t an interrogation. He really wants to know.
“I…” A little taken aback, Echo considers his answer, leaning back on his hands. Hand. His other arm isn’t quite the right length or shape to support him this way, and he flinches as it jams awkwardly against the hull. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” Crosshair is looking at him, and Echo has the sense of being under a microscope. “Everyone’s worried. You should talk to Hunter.”
What would he tell him, though? Echo swallows hard, trying to get a lump out of his throat. They all know what happened to him; what else is there to say? That he’s grateful, more than anything, but that it must not be enough because he still wakes up sweating, freezing, seeing the inside of a tiny, round window. That his new body might be useful, but it makes him feel sick; that he can’t even bring himself to undress or shower with the lights on. Looking up at Crosshair, he wonders if maybe he knows some of this already. He doesn’t ‘do’ touchy-feely, but Echo has seen him catch the others in their vulnerability and accommodate them in whatever limited way he can. Perhaps it’s that sincerity, not Crosshair’s intensity, that finally cracks him.
“I don’t feel right,” he blurts. He can feel himself shaking--wraps his arm around his chest as if to hold it together. “I’ve lost so--so much time, so much of me . It’s--it’s all back there , and I can’t find it, and I don’t even have time to think about it because--b-because--”
Crosshair lets him search for the words a little longer before prompting him. “Because why.”
“Because I can’t let you down.” Echo looks up at him, tears threatening to well up at the edges of his eyes. “I can’t let any of you feel like this--like I was a mistake.”
For a moment, Crosshair’s hard gaze stays fixed on his face, and Echo is suddenly conscious that he had spilled a lot more than he meant to. But after a moment, Crosshair leans over and hugs him firmly, cradling Echo’s face into his shoulder. It’s such a shock that Echo’s tears finally spill over and he clings back like a drowning man. Crosshair’s embrace tightens, one hand rubbing Echo’s back, ignoring the oddly-shaped metal ridges pressing through his blacks. It feels like an eternity before his arms loosen, enough for Echo to make a show at straightening up again, still trembling and attempting to dry his face with the back of his hand.
“I’m s-sorry for b-being so--”
“ You --” Crosshair places his hand under his chin and tips Echo’s head upright; their faces are very close, and at this range the intensity of his stare is almost unbearable. “--tell anyone I did this for you, little Echo, and I hope for your sake those new legs are fast.”
“F-faster than yours,” Echo chokes out, smiling. “And I’d be gunning for you, too.”
Crosshair rolls his eyes and pulls him back in. “Hunter's right. You're a cheeky little reg.”
“If they ask, we’ll say you punched me in the face,” Echo mumbles into his shoulder. To that, Crosshair only hums approvingly.
Time passes, and Echo slowly begins to find his feet. His feelings about his situation--the anger, the grief, the confusion--don’t go away as much as they become more manageable. Hunter is always there with a pep talk when he needs it. Wrecker will distract him, remind him to have fun when he’s spent too much time in his head. Tech takes care of his cybernetics, helps him navigate his new abilities. Crosshair simply watches, always--and if Echo ends up hiding on the hull again, perhaps he’ll be there, too.
They still see Rex and Cody, from time to time. Sometimes it feels good to be with people who remind him of the past; other times, he’d rather not remember at all. The other clones are still family, but they begin to feel like the kind of family one keeps amicably at arms length. With them, he sticks out far too much to ever really be at ease, but with Clone Force 99 his strangeness is at least less… well, strange.
Their first time back on Kamino together, they get called for a medical exam. Echo leaves shaking, still seeing cold light and metal arms circling over his paralyzed body; Hunter calls out as he storms into the hallway and Echo hears but doesn’t stop, can’t stop. He knows he can only hold it together a little while longer, and all the eyes in the hallways--his eyes, Fives’ eyes--are incisive enough as it is. He has to be alone; has to find somewhere safe.
A familiar door wooshes open and from inside, a familiar face stares back at him.
“Fives,” he says, softly. He never used to talk to him like that before; he wishes he had been nicer, now. He would have, if he’d known, but of course he’d known , the way one knows they could be struck by lightning any day--he'd just never really thought...
“Uh…” Fives’ mouth twists into an expression he doesn’t use very often, and his eyes look back at him without recognition. “Who are you?”
“Echo!” Hunter’s voice rings out behind him. Echo turns, blinks; he’s in the corridor outside his old barracks, and the clone in front of him is soon joined by a couple of others. None of them are Fives, or anyone else he knows. “Sorry, he’s confused.”
“I’m not,” Echo says, roughly. This is his barracks-- should be his barracks, but--
“Whatever,” says one of the strangers, and the door closes again with a hiss.
“Echo,” says Hunter, level again. “You want to tell us what’s going on?”
They all look at him: Hunter’s eyes, patient and stern; Wrecker’s eyes, warm and wondering; Tech’s eyes, curious and alert; Crosshair’s eyes, sharp and knowing. None of them are Fives, either. Obviously.
“No,” admits Echo grumpily, his tunnel vision finally starting to fade. “But--but I will.”
They fold around him closely, one each corner, and walk him off, away from that sterile creche, innocent and blinding-white. Later, he figures they were making sure nobody would see if he cried. He only remembers Wrecker’s hand on his shoulder, steering, and the red knot of Hunter’s bandana leading the way.
Clone Force 99’s barracks are different, like them. It’s a dimmer, dirtier room that makes Echo’s nose scrunch the moment he steps inside, but he’s still got too much adrenaline in his system to really take stock just yet. Wrecker sits him down on a bunk that seems like Crosshair’s (if the decor is to be judged) and they wait for him.
“I…” Echo hesitates as the fog clears further, folding his arm around himself sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
In spite of the seriousness, Wrecker lets loose a sudden bark of laughter.
“Unlikely,” clarifies Tech. “Considering some of our past escapades, your perfectly justified trauma response doesn’t exactly rank.”
Hearing it called that makes Echo flinch, though it shouldn’t. Catching this, Crosshair sits down at the other end of the bunk and stares him down in a manner Echo thinks is protective. Hunter bends his knee slightly to be more at level with him.
“We all have baggage here,” he says. “Maybe not like yours, but we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.”
“I know. That’s why I...” Echo hangs his head. “I don’t want to make it worse.”
A pause; then, Crosshair clicks his tongue dismissively.
“As if you could.” But as he says it, he pointedly places his hand flat on the bunk, fingers reaching out toward him. Echo has just taken note of that when Wrecker flops down between them, flinging his huge arms around both their shoulders.
“Yeah!” He squishes Echo’s face roughly into his bicep. His big voice seems to vibrate through him, even when it softens. “You help a lot.”
Tech perches himself at Echo’s other side, just out of Wrecker-hugging-range. “Our considerable mental instability is in no way worse than before.”
“What the boys are trying to say,” Hunter interjects, just as Wrecker starts to open his mouth again, “is that we know things are gonna be hard sometimes, and that’s okay. We’ll be here for you, just like we know you’d be there for us.”
On the other end of the bunk, Crosshair squirms out from under Wrecker’s arm. “He doesn't have to talk about it, though.”
“Pushing you would be counterproductive,” agrees Tech.
Wrecker nods, scooping Crosshair back under his arm before he can stand up. “It’s like... if you don’t need to talk about it, then just tell us what ya do need.”
“Including space ,” suggests Hunter, only for all four of them to stare at him at once. “What?”
A pause. Finally, Crosshair yanks him onto the bunk with them by his wrist. “If I have to put up with this…”
“Hey, stop that, there’s no room--Echo needs--”
“You,” whispers Echo, voicing the feeling that suddenly swells in his chest; he leans his head firmly into Wrecker’s shoulder and hooks his free arm around Tech. “I need all of you.”
Hunter, still anchored to Crosshair and half-draped over Wrecker’s lap, simply smiles. Wrecker himself squeezes them tighter, meaning he barely catches a glimpse of Crosshair; might have imagined the thin smile on his face. Tech, however, seems to have gone a little rigid.
“I’m sorry, I’m just a little shocked,” he says, when Echo looks at him. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”
The others blink, but Echo laughs; not loudly, but with a fullness in his chest that makes his eyes misty. Hunter finally squirms upright between Wrecker and Crosshair, and reaches over to pat his leg.
“So tell us, okay? You tell us what you need.”
Echo starts slowly--from the very beginning this time--and the Bad Batch curls around him warmly, taking turns to meet his eyes and steady his shaking hand. Looking back much later, it's this moment that feels most transformative for Echo. Cocooned by his friends, having felt himself a weak, exposed little grub, he finally lets his past melt to form wings.
After all, there's no chance of things going back to normal, or even being okay--but that, in itself, is okay. His new family is strong, and strange, and full of love--and soon enough, when Echo thinks of home, it’s their faces that he sees.