I...have no words.
I have been gone for so long and I really don't have any explanation for it. I am so sorry! You all have been so wonderful and so loyal and dedicated to all my stories, even though it's been so very long since I posted or updated anything. Thank you so, so much for all your kind words of encouragement and support. I've started getting my life back in order, making an plan and getting things done, and I'm hopeful that I'll be back with more regular stories and updates soon.
You all are truly such an inspiration to me! Thank you for your patience and your continued support. Every single one of you means the world to me!
So, on to the story!
SPOILERS: There really aren't any past the second episode of Bad Batch. Omega isn't in here...for some reason...I don't know, I kind of forgot about her. I love her dearly, but I just...I struggle with writing her accurately, so sometimes it's easier for me to just leave her out.
WARNINGS: This is kind of all hurt, no comfort. It's very, very sad. So...yeah, have fun with that.
Leave me a review, let me know what you think of it!
Don't Push Me (I Will Shatter)
It was—perhaps unsurprisingly—Crosshair that pushed Echo over the edge.
In hindsight, Hunter really should have seen this coming.
Echo was…something else.
Since the day he was rescued, Hunter had held only the greatest respect for this reg. He was mutilated and violated in mind and body and still met every challenge facing them on that disaster of a mission with calm, professional focus and a sharp gaze.
When the mission was completed and Echo flew out with the Batch, Hunter discovered that Echo's incredible focus wasn't just the reg repressing his pain and trauma—he really was just that steady.
He never snapped back at Crosshair's snide remarks. He never lost his temper with Wrecker's loudness, roughhousing, or childishness. He never lashed out at Tech when the mechanic demanded access to his prosthetics, no matter how much Echo clearly hated having them altered in any way by anybody.
He was unfailingly kind and patient, ceding easily to Hunter's lead for all that Echo was not only older than them, but a full-fledged ARC in his own right and more than capable of leading the Batch. He pulled his weight on their missions and on the ship alike and poured his whole heart into everything he did. And never—ever—did he breathe a single word of complaint.
He was…remarkably soft, considering all that he'd been through.
And so some part of Hunter's brain decided that Echo was…not weak, per se. But not quite as hardened as the other members of the Batch.
After all, even as different as he was now, Echo was still a reg.
They'd gotten him.
Against all odds, they'd gotten Crosshair back.
Their Crosshair, all snark and sneers and golden heart and unwavering loyalty. Their sniper. Their brother. He was back. He was here.
Their team was finally complete again. Their family was whole.
Crosshair, surrounded by Wrecker and Tech and Hunter himself and Echo was—wait a minute. Echo wasn't there.
Where had he gone?
"Where's Echo?" Hunter asked, leaving one arm around Crosshair even as he turned to look around them.
"He was right here just a second ago!" Wrecker's eyes widened in panic and the big guy jerked around, head turning side to side as he searched.
"Is it possible the troopers took advantage of our distraction and captured him during the battle?" Tech asked sharply.
"Oh, they better not have," Crosshair snarled, roughly scrubbing away the tears he would never admit he'd shed when Tech's device had broken through the chip's programming.
"Find him!" Hunter barked, and they instantly split up, bolting back through the forest towards the open field where most of the battle had taken place.
For all their panic, it really didn't take long to find him. The former ARC was kneeling on the ground beside the body of another reg—a pilot, by the looks of it. The remains of his fighter were crashed not ten feet away.
Echo had the pilot's upper body in his arms, their foreheads pressed together. He was rocking back and forth, shaking his head, and whispering something in Mando'a over and over.
As an experimental unit, Hunter and his brothers had not been trained by the Cuy'val Dar. Their training had been overseen exclusively by the Kaminoans. They had been kept separate from the regs for nearly their entire lives. One of the consequences of their isolated lifestyle was that they had never been taught Mando'a.
So the words pouring from Echo's mouth were utterly unfamiliar, but Hunter did not need a translation to understand a brother begging another brother to keep breathing for just a few more minutes.
"Echo?" he murmured, pressing a button on his gauntlet to summon the rest of their team.
Echo's soft pleas cut off, but he didn't turn to face the sergeant. His shoulders were shaking.
"Did you find—oh," Tech cut himself off, and Hunter felt the smaller clone's shoulder come to rest against his own.
Mere moments had passed before Hunter sensed more than heard Crosshair glide up beside him. Wrecker's heavy footsteps weren't far behind.
They stood in silence, and in their silence, the breathing of the dying soldier was nearly deafening. His broken body jackknifed and his breathing stopped for a long, awful moment before Echo readjusted him and it resumed again with a sickening wet quality to it.
He was drowning in his own blood.
"Udesiir, vod," Echo murmured, his voice cracking, his scomp braced beneath the soldier's back and his flesh hand rubbing soothing circles on his chest. "Udesiir."
"Eyayah," the dying man gasped. "Eyayah."
"Ni olar," Echo answered instantly, tightening his grip. "Ni olar, vod."
"Gar oyayc," the soldier said, one trembling hand reaching up to touch Echo's face. "Ni briikase. Vi echoylir gar."
Echo shuddered, curling closer. "Ni ceta, vod," he said brokenly. "Ni ceta."
"W…wer'cuy," the other whispered. "Ni…ni haryc."
Echo's response was awful, pure devastation clear in the wordless sound.
"Ni ganar aranov," he said, his voice cracking. "Gar liser udes jii. Ni ganar aranov."
"Vor'e, Eyayah." The reg breathed out.
He didn't breathe back in.
And even though his posture didn't change, Hunter knew something in their brother had just broken.
Before he could speak or warn the others, Crosshair had already said it.
"So the reg's dead. Let's get out of here while we still can."
Echo went still and quiet in a way that Hunter had never seen from him before. He laid the dead soldier down, so gently and carefully, as though he were merely sleeping. When he rose to his feet and turned, there was something dangerous in his eyes.
"What do you see?" he asked, those dark golden eyes pinned to Crosshair's.
"What do you mean?" the sniper crossed his arms.
"What do you see when you look at this field?"
Crosshair snorted. "I see a bunch of dead regs and five idiots who should have blasted out of here half an hour ago. Now that all the garbage has been taken out, can we go?"
Echo moved so fast even Hunter didn't have time to react before Crosshair was staggering back, growling curses with both hands clasped over his clearly broken nose.
Echo's eyes were burning and his teeth were bared and Hunter took a cautious step back because Echo had never lost his cool like this and he had no idea what the ARC was going to do next.
"Garbage?" Echo snarled. "How dare you speak of them like that."
He was literally shaking with fury.
"Echo, please—" Hunter tried, but the other trooper just shoved past him. He gripped Crosshair's arm and literally dragged him along as he stalked back to the fallen soldier. He dropped Crosshair carelessly beside him on one side and knelt on the other himself.
"What the kriff are you doin—" Crosshair started, but Echo cut him off.
"If you're going to spit words like that around, you're gonna know exactly what you're talking about," Echo said, his voice as soft as it usually was but frozen over in ice.
Crosshair's face darkened, but Echo kept going before he could explode.
"Do you know who this is?" Echo tilted his head.
"Of course I don't!" Crosshair snapped. "It's just a damn reg, they all look the same—"
"This is Broadside," Echo cut him off. "He was one of the best pilots in the 501st. He was a part of Shadow Squadron, General Skywalker's personal fighter squadron. He was Shadow Three. Fives and I ran a lot of mission with these boys. We were the ones that got sent in when they needed a miracle. He's the best pilot I've ever seen short of the General himself. He liked to smuggle sweets on board everywhere we went and he would barter them for better shower slots or training rotations. He could fall asleep anywhere and could not stand the gray ration bars." Echo's eyes turned hard as flint. "And he's dead."
He spit the last word with such venom that even Crosshair recoiled.
"Echo—" Tech started, but the ARC merely held up one hand and Tech instantly fell silent.
"This is my brother," Echo said, his gaze never leaving Crosshair's. "This is my brother. I fought side by side with him on a hundred planets. We won battles and lost battles together for over two years. He snored like a bantha. He sang off-key and got giggly as a loon when he was drunk and he cried when we lost Matchstick and he lived. Do you understand that? He lived. He was a person. He had a soul of his own and it's gone now, because we shot down his you realize what I've just done for you?"
Hunter got it first and very nearly collapsed under the weight of it. "Echo," he choked out.
The ARC's pain was radiating off of him as he staggered to his feet and threw his arms out, spinning once.
"This," he said, "this is a graveyard of my brothers. My brothers, who I killed for you."
Crosshair was white by the time he made it to his own feet. "Echo—" he stretched out a hand, but Echo jerked out of reach. There were tears running down his face now.
"This is a graveyard of eyayah'e," Echo breathed out, his breaking heart mirrored in his eyes. "A graveyard of echoes. My echoes. My brothers." He stumbled, shaking his head and looking as though the very sky had just collapsed on his shoulders. "Do you realize what I've just done for you?"
Hunter lunged up, slamming into the broken soldier and grabbing on tight, pressing Echo's head to his shoulder, careful of the ports studding his skull. Echo didn't even try to fight him. He just crumpled into his hold and went straight to the ground.
His voice was broken and hoarse as though he'd been screaming. In a very real way, he had been. They just hadn't heard him.
Hunter felt sick as he wondered just how long Echo's heart had been screaming.
The ARC's agony was written into every line of his body and reflected in Crosshair's white face, Tech's unnatural stillness, and Wrecker's tears.
Echo's whisper was deafening, and it rang in Hunter's ears for days.
"Do you realize what I've just done for you?"
I am...so sorry.
This was not supposed to be this sad! Originally, it was going to end happier, but then my plot bunnies ran away with me (which seems to happen to me a lot) and now we're stuck with THIS.
Anyway! Hope you enjoyed. Drop me a line or two to let me know what you thought!
Till next time!
Mando'a translations:
"Udesiir, vod...Udesiir." Easy, brother. Take it easy.
"Eyayah." Echo
"Ni olar...Ni olar, vod." I'm here. I'm here, brother.
"Gar oyayc. Ni briikase. Vi echoylir gar." You're alive. I'm happy. We mourned/missed/were lonely/were less without you.
"Ni ceta, vod. Ni ceta." I'm sorry, brother. Lit "I kneel", the strongest possible apology in Mando'a.
"W…wer'cuy." It was a long time ago/it was nothing/don't sweat it.
"Ni…ni haryc." I'm tired.
"Ni ganar aranov." I have the watch.
"Gar liser udes jii." You can rest now.
"Vor'e, Eyayah." Thank you, Echo.
Eyayah'e : Echoes