Chapter 9 - Even If You Can't Find Heaven
Echo can only watch with raw, blinding horror as the blade cuts into his little brother's chest. That's Hunter. Hunter. Their sergeant, their leader, the one who led and protected them.
Hunter.
The ground explodes with it, ripping and burning. Everything is burning, and Echo wrenches free of whatever hold the Mother has on him, standing.
After seeing Fives, after meeting Tech again, he isn't going to lose Hunter, too.
His brother is gone, misting away someplace, and he feels a flicker of something achingly familiar, but he's standing now. The fire would deter anyone else, but Echo's half metal, half untouchable, and he was born in fire. It's in his blood, writes his life.
Fire and fury.
And Echo lunges at her.
Rage carries him, lights his veins, and with a thought of mind the dagger he'd picked up from Mortis is in his hand.
"What are you doing?!" hisses the Mother, a tentacle gripping his wrist.
"You messed with the wrong clones. You hurt the kid." Echo unclenches his hand, about to stab her with just his mind when she throws him. Tantiss was destroyed, too, because of her. Their mission was a failure. Everyone there is gone. He rolls to his feet sparks harmlessly hitting his legs, standing again and lunging anyway.
With a flicker of energy, the Mother vanishes.
You're my brothers, her voice whispers far away in his head, a thought he thinks he heard. My children. But it's not real, and Echo stands, dagger in hand.
The world is falling around him. Everything is falling. She destroyed this entire planet. It reminds him of Lola Sayu – the way half of it was missing, the crust fractured and molten.
It's burning away to nothing.
"Hunter!" Crosshair and Omega's voices mix over each other's, fear audible in their voices.
"What's happening?" Omega's voice is pitched high with panic, and just once, Echo has no idea how to relieve it.
The ground cracks between his feet, and he backs away, a crack in the ground carrying them apart from each other as the rocks melt away.
The others are clinging to each other, Crosshair pressing Omega to his side and her clasping his hand to her heart.
"Helloooo!" a voice sings. "Missed me?"
Havoc Marauder is flying overhead, and with it, two large, winged figures. One of white, gold, and green feathers – gentle and light, something that could only be Wrecker, and one black and red, the lower half a gray metal, smooth but sharp in a way that could only be Tech.
He's awake. Finally.
It figures the chaos woke him up.
The two winged figures swoop down, and Echo doesn't hesitate to yank himself onto Tech, who flaps to steady them and takes off back for the ship. Echo drops into the ramp, rolling inside and turning back to where the kids drop in, and Wrecker and Tech shift back to their human forms.
"I can fly myself," Havoc Marauder gripes, sharply angling at them and slamming the ramp. "You can stop pushing my buttons."
Echo looks towards the cockpit to where a small but familiar figure sits in the pilot's seat. Tech moves up front to reclaim his seat, and she stands, turning back to face Echo again.
Ahsoka.
His first kid. He never forgot her. She's always been there, lingering in the forefront of his mind, always whispering quiet attention, even if he hasn't seen her since the Citadel.
She's always been there.
Ahsoka was here even before he was, but his curse is always to be the last standing.
You don't have to be, the Mother's voice whispers in his mind, gentle and seductive. He shoves it away violently.
He's not rewriting reality to be what he wants.
She'd been there at the Citadel, and all that mattered was getting her to safety. Getting her out like she should've been if she hadn't blatantly disobeyed their general's direct orders. She'd been somewhere behind him when the explosion claimed half his body and nearly his life.
"Commander."
"Are you all alright?" she asks.
"An' where's Hunter?" Wrecker interrupts. There's a chorus of panic in Echo's mind. Of death. The entire planet below was ripped to shreds. To nothing, because the Mother... Hunter got stabbed. He won't actually die from that, will he?
"He teleported out again." Echo sits in one of the seats, panting a little. He's still exhausted from her throwing him onto the rocks and pinning him there. Should probably make sure he's not burned anywhere, but the kid's more of a concern.
He feels Wrecker's fear, his only real fear of loss, and Crosshair and Omega's oppressive worry. Ahsoka's grief and anger. Tech, well, Tech's always angry.
"What was that thing?" Omega asks, "What do we do about it?"
"I know what it was," Ahsoka answers, arms crossed, her face troubled. She's so much taller. She's almost grown up now, and her voice isn't quite as high. It feels like he's looking at someone – else. She shouldn't be so dark and burdened. She's their kid. "But I don't know what to do about it."
"Do you know someone who does know?" Echo inquires.
Ahsoka sighs. "There were three other people well-versed in knowledge of the Ones, even better than me. Master Yoda knew, but... they're all... gone now." She looks away face pained, and Omega steps up to touch her wrist, a worried look on her face.
Something sparks. Echo jerks back and the fluxing flare of power, and Ahsoka wrenches away with a gasp. "What was that!?" she hisses, wide-eyed.
Omega's staring up at her, her own now green eyes equally wide. "I – I don't know."
"You shocked me? But it didn't hurt."
"That is highly improbable," Tech replies flatly.
"She shocked me, too!" Lula announces, "It felt really nice."
"Yeah, but she didn't animate me. I'm already alive."
"Oh," says Lula, blinking, "I wasn't?"
Wrecker laughs, scooping her up. "You were to me."
Echo opts to ignore the doll entirely and focus on the Commander. "You can't be the only surviving Jedi."
"I tried to find them. After Order 66. There was nothing. Rumor has it that my – that Anakin died at the Temple."
That doesn't feel wrong. Echo thinks it's true somehow, but he can't imagine his general dead. Maybe he's outlived everyone, but he can't imagine outliving Anakin Skywalker, and there's a fire as bright as ever in his mind. Hunter's pulsing far away, like he always does when he teleports off-world, but near him is – okay, Echo's not going there, even if his heart is pounding and he desperately aches to reach out farther.
He aches to know, but hope is a dangerous thing.
"It's my blood that does it. Animates things. I think," Omega says, "When we were back on Raada, I fell and scraped my hand on a rock. There was a plant there, and it just... came back."
"You are the Daughter," Ahsoka responds, "She brings life."
"Never heard that one before."
"She brought me back to life. Allegedly."
Not something Echo wants to think about. Fives had thought it was funny. It kind of was.
"Wrecker, can you touch me?" Ahsoka asks, "There's... something I'm trying to test."
He lays his hand on her shoulder – his hand is so huge it dwarfs her already tiny frame even further.
"What is it?" Omega inquires.
"I'm drawn to your powers," Ahsoka answers slowly, "I – I don't understand it. Maybe it's just because I'm a Jedi, I don't know."
That doesn't sound right. Echo trusts her, but something in his mind just whispers wrong, and it reminds him of how his general could always know if something was true or not. "There's got to be some other Jedi out there."
"Your abilities should be able to pinpoint one. If you combine your abilities and try to focus, I'm sure you can find one."
"You think that'll help?" Crosshair asks.
"It helped my master." She recrosses her arms, watching consideringly, though something's weighing on her. Echo doesn't know what, but he catches a fleeting image of a figure he's never seen, a flash in Ahsoka's mind, seen and gone just as fast.
It makes his heart ache, reminding him of how there's something... missing. There's an emptiness there.
"Meditating doesn't really work for me," Echo objects, "Or Tech. Crosshair's got issues with it, too. And Wrecker just sleeps."
Ahsoka smiles, though it's strained. "Okay. Let's, uh – sit down. Together. We don't have a lot of room for this, but everybody, try not to get emotional about anything."
"Yes, please," Havoc Marauder calls, "I don't want to get shredded to pieces when I'm flying you through hyperspace."
Eh, he's making it really hard not to.
"And do what?" Omega asks, though they sit down, anyway. Wrecker sits between Crosshair and Omega. She's by Ahsoka, and Echo sits on her other side. Tech is between Echo and Crosshair, minus Lula, backed by Gonky, who happily invites herself into the circle.
"Close your eyes. Just listen, and tell me what comes into your head."
Crosshair's hand trembles, shaking, and Wrecker lays his hand over Crosshair's. It sparks with light, and the constant tension in their youngest brother soothes away, even if just momentary. It's stress related, Echo's come to realize. It hurts to see that happening to his little brother. Crosshair always used to be unfailingly steady.
A lot of things used to.
Echo keeps expecting Tech to disappear.
"Alright," Ahsoka says quietly, her soft presence curling with a deep aching longing. "It was back in the Clone Wars when it happened." She keeps talking, detailing about her prior mission to Mortis, how they met the Daughter and Anakin followed her alone. How she saved General Kenobi, and they returned to the ship, met the Son, and spent the night in a cave.
The cave thing is what gets it, a flashing image of a cave somewhere, shadowed and barely enough to hide from the burning twin suns. It's a sand planet. Tatooine.
"You're not gonna like what I see," Crosshair grumbles.
"Oh," Omega whispers, "He looks sad."
Crosshair's expression scrunches with annoyance. "He looks cranky. Tell me that's not the Jedi we're looking for."
Ahsoka gasps. "You found him?"
"Tatooine," Echo replies, "It's a cave on Tatooine. And I think General Kenobi might be there."
"What would he be doing there? Are you sure it's him?"
"I don't know. I didn't see him."
"I don't want to see him," Crosshair gripes, crossing his arms sulkily, "He could stab me in my sleep because he was bored." Echo throws him a disapproving look solely on principle. Not that he fully disagrees. General Kenobi altered wildly from being very nice to very, very cranky.
Cody complained about it a lot.
But hey, he never hit them.
That can't be said for, well, another certain Jedi. (In Ahsoka's defense, she was fourteen.)
"Anybody could do that," Omega snips.
Crosshair does this irritated growl-groan thing and stomps to the back to sulk with Lula and Gonky.
Looks like it's settled, though Echo can't deny being a little overwhelmed and disconcerted. He hasn't seen General Kenobi in years.
"Can I have hands?" Havoc Marauder asks loudly.
"You have wings," Tech tells him flatly, "And they do quite nicely."
**w**
Ahsoka goes up to the cockpit alone, and Echo follows. She's quiet, and feels far more disturbed than he would've thought. "Something on your mind?" he asks her finally.
"I know, I know. You'd think I'd be more excited about this." Ahsoka sighs. "The last few times I saw Master Obi-Wan, we fought. Then, everything changed, and I don't think we're the same people anymore. Besides. Back then, we... weren't alone."
He sighs. "The general was there."
She sighs, looking away. "Yeah."
"The Mother locked you into something," Echo adds after a pause. "You seemed a bit... shaken up." He means to ask if she's alright, but it's mostly an offering to talk if she wants.
"She trapped me in some kind of... dream. There was someone else there. I thought she was my imagination, but now that I'm awake again, it felt like I always... knew her. I don't know what it was. The Mother warps reality. We can't believe anything right now."
That's overly fair, actually. She's a reality warper. It's dangerous. Not a type of game Echo's familiar with. He can't imagine something enough to warp Ahsoka's mind, but she did the same with Omega, who... might be stronger than her?
"I've had enough mind games on Skako Minor."
"There's something weighing on you, too," Ahsoka adds, "Are you okay?"
"We just got these powers out of nowhere." Sparks flicker across his hand. "Tech... we thought Tech was gone, but he somehow made it. Hunter's not dead now, but she stabbed him. I don't think we can die, can we?"
"The Ones died," Ahsoka answers, "All of them. They... were killed with the dagger you had when you came back."
"So it's something we need to keep away from her."
"As far as we can," the Commander agrees.
**w**
Echo has never been to Tatooine before, no matter how much he's heard of the dustbowl. It certainly is no more to see than Anakin always said, though Omega and Lula are in awe.
Tech wordlessly flies them down to near the cave. Echo can feel clearer here, pick up what feels like layers and layers of pain and loss. He hates it here already.
Tech covers their trek from the ship to the cave with chatter about how Tatooine used to be a water planet before the suns expanded. They left Lula aboard, despite her complaints, because she's fabric and will be trekking sand everywhere if they let her out.
"Doesn't sound like there'll be much left of this dungeon soon, then," Crosshair gripes. He's such a mood. Personally, all Echo cares about is getting to the bottom of this mess. He really misses Hunter. He always knew how to handle, well, difficult situations, even if Echo often disagreed with his methods.
Ahsoka pauses in the doorway, looks around, and then leads them inside.
They only wait another ten minutes before the general himself shows up, looking – well, worse for wear, and his clothes are awful.
Ahsoka's on her feet first. "Obi-Wan."
He pauses in his tracks, eyes narrowed and scanning all of them. "Ahsoka."
"It's okay," she promises, "We're just here to ask your advice. We've run into a problem we don't know how to handle."
"You're in the wrong place," he answers rigidly, "And you bought clones here."
"You got a problem with clones?" Crosshair snarls, and Echo wants to bash his head on the wall.
"It's okay," Ahsoka promises, "They're friends. All of them. But that's not what's important. It's about the Mother."
"Well," he answers, still tense and guarded, "That's a name I haven't heard in a long time."
"The Ones, too. It seems like their powers somehow got absorbed into these clones. The Mother must've sensed the shift, and it awakened her. She's been stalking them ever since."
"There is nothing I can give you."
"Obi-Wan, we need your help."
"There is nothing I can do," Obi-Wan replies, "Not if they can't."
Echo feels like he's watching someone else. This isn't the same Jedi Master who led Cody in countless battles. This isn't him, and he doesn't understand it. "What happened to you?" he demands finally, "You used to be one of the greatest of the Jedi."
His presence shifts with something violently complicated, something messy and a sort of hopeless, crushing grief. A darkness flares, a rippling darkness drawing in light. He's grieving, the same way Echo was for so long, but this is different.
This is guilt. Hopelessness.
It reminds him of Tech.
A what did you do, what have you done builds in his throat, with a flash of lava and flames and smoke. Something happened to make him this way, and Echo can't imagine how he could have done something he would regret so severely.
He has something here, some sort of mission, and he doesn't want to leave.
"Nothing in this galaxy will matter once the galaxy's gone," Echo adds.
"If it's the will of the Force that the galaxy be destroyed, there is nothing I can do to stop it."
"That thing doesn't do the will of the Force!" Ahsoka half explodes, "It destroyed an entire planet."
"Systems die all the time."
"There are people dying," Omega protests, jerking forwards. There's a scowl on her adorable little face. "They need our help, and we don't know how to stop her. We don't know these powers."
"Master Obi-Wan," Ahsoka adds with a sigh, "I know everything with the Empire feels hopeless, but if there's one thing my master taught me, it's that one person's choice can make a galaxy of difference. I'm not going to stop trying until the Empire and the Sith are gone. We all know that's what he would've wanted."
Echo's heart clenches sharply at the mention if his long-gone general, but the grief he feels in the Force isn't his own – it's from the long-lost Jedi master, who he's starting to think is more lost than he realized, with the way there are such strong tendrils of darkness curling around him. He feels like rain, in the same way Anakin once described, but something in the storm's center is...
It's like a hurricane, the eye twisting around something burned black.
Something ripples. Distant and far away, but Echo still feels Hunter's presence in his mind over whatever strange link they can feel each other's emotions over. He's scared.
Crosshair inhales sharply. "Something's wrong."
Ahsoka jerks around. "What is it?"
Echo knows what this is, though. "Hunter's panicking."
"It is just as likely something may have triggered him," Tech asserts. "There may be no cause for alarm."
"Oh," Wrecker says, "Maybe he fell."
"I think it's over," Omega pipes up, "Maybe."
"What?" Crosshair asks, radiating confusion. Sometimes, it's hard to remember he doesn't know, but Hunter's fall was before they'd even heard about... Crosshair's chip. That was a whole very messy experience Echo doesn't care to think about.
"Hunter's got issues with heights," Echo answers shortly, "He missed a jump to the Marauder and fell down the mountainside. That's how he was captured."
Crosshair's quiet. He feels lost, hurt. It hurts to see that on Crosshair. He's struggled a lot, but Echo wasn't really there to see it or help him. Echo would've gladly been there to help him, but most of Crosshair's struggles were with his other siblings, not Echo. Truth is, he's been settling in badly. He's been dealing badly.
But other than Hunter, there's something shifting, something wrong. He's felt that three times now. "She's coming," he warns.
Ahsoka turns to him. "Here?"
"No. Coruscant. That's where Hunter is. And what's left of our rebellion. The Empire found and destroyed our last base."
He tries really, really hard not to see Tech look away, or feel the flicker of twisting shame.
"It wasn't your fault, Tech," Echo adds quietly. "What Hemlock did would've gotten to anybody."
"Coruscant's way more populated than Raada," Ahsoka worries. "We'll never have time to evacuate everyone, or anyone."
Crosshair and Omega gasp in unison, falling to their knees in the sand. It kicks up over their armor in itching little grains. There's a wave running through the Force, some sort of explosion like something's ripping and tearing.
She's destroying another place.
The dagger. He left it on the ship. It can kill the Ones. It should be able to kill her, too.
"We have to go," Echo decides, "We could use your help, general." He leaves it at that, breaking for the ship.
Something about what's happening this time is different, and Crosshair and Omega are panting, hands pressed to their heads, and Wrecker and Tech are going a bit... well, feral. They're angry, and something about them changes when the Mother uses the Force. It's like they're absorbing her disharmony, or maybe it's that she's drawing it out in them. It figures none of this is normal, seeing as there were supposed to be four beings, and now there's seven.
He still doesn't know what happened to Emerie. She was just starting to settle in. Was doing better than Crosshair, and for all Echo is angry at her for what she did, he respects just as much she was able and willing to make different choices than the ones she'd been raised for.
She's one of them, but they lost her.
"I'll get the ship."
"No," Tech objects, "There's no time."
"I haven't seen anyone but Hunter be able to teleport."
"The Father could do it," Ahsoka replies, "It's not really a natural ability, though."
"I'm more likely to start something on fire."
"That is the truth," Tech agrees, hand tightly on Crosshair's shoulder. "Go."
Echo goes.
The Mother is going to learn very, very fast that she messed with the wrong people. She took Emerie. Hurt Hunter. Hurt Ahsoka.
**w**
His mind mists into something far away, something –
He sees Coruscant. Burning. Fire.
"It feels like we're the same," Hunter says, "Something – recognizes you. I don't know what it is or what it means. It's not..."
"I feel it as well," the cyborg response, his voice deep and mechanical, but Echo knows it, knows him. Anakin. That's his general.
"I don't know what it means."
"Perhaps you were not intended for these powers."
"You think you were meant to be the Father?"
"Perhaps, though I cannot imagine how. The Force does not always lead our paths in ways we imagine."
"What do you want to do?"
Echo feels it, the way their powers ripple, drawing out like they're meant to be part of another, like there's meant to be another to share it, to hold and bear the weight they drown in. the responsibility of trying to carry the weight of the Force.
"We must link our minds and fight as one if we are to delay her until the rest of your squad arrives."
Their powers flare and flicker together, fluxing with a surge of energy Echo feels jolting through his body.
He tries grabbing the back of the pilot's chair with his non-handed arm first, and his scomp smacks into the metal with a grating screech. His knees won't buckle unless he means for them to – plus of metal legs – but Echo grabs it with his other hand, spinning the seat around and firing the engines.
"Echo? Echo!" Lula is hugging his leg. "You okay?"
"We'll be fine," he promises. The doll is starting to grow on him. It's genuinely silly. She's just a doll, but she's genuinely cute. Ahsoka had a stuffy of her own, too. A bantha she'd left with Anakin when she left the Order.
The general had gotten it for her, even if Jedi aren't supposed to have personal items.
Echo flies the ship back to the cave. They have to go.
Anakin's fighting that thing. He's alive. Out there. Waiting.
The 501st finally has a chance to come back together. To make a stand, to fight together, to come home – all of them, except Fives.
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