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In physical therapy, there’s this thing his therapist does a lot. She’ll have him stretch something as high as it’ll go, and then a bit more until the pain goes from good and working into the white-hot and searing range.
While it hurts, it always ends up moving something forward. It’s almost ARC in its design. Find your limits. The line in the sand that you shouldn’t cross because you don’t know what’s beyond. Run over that line, if just a bit until you collapse and draw a new line. Rise. Repeat. Live to fight another day, until you die trying.
Move your leg like this, she says and so he does, and the joints creak and protest, and wow does his body hurt that night, but it’s the good type of hurt, the one that makes you stronger, faster, a little more dangerous. It’s hurt that comes from work and from forming calluses on the hand.
It’s work that tells him he’s alive and his body is his own. He is the puppet master, he is the one making these choices, and after over a year of not making a single choice because he made one singular decision, it feels like a breath of fresh air.
Corkscrew doesn’t know why he’s on this mission.
This is a mission for ARC troopers like the Lieutenant who's leading their squad, not guys who just got their armour painted some two weeks ago. It’s a mission for people who know what they’re doing, not five shinies and their battle-hardened leader. But alas, the legion is stretched thin, and Torrent Company is stretched even thinner, so here they are, crawling through the forest.
But the Lieutenant (FIVES! The hero of the Republic, the one they’re all in debt to) seems unbothered, his voice strong as he urges them to press on even deeper into the marsh they’re wading through in order to hopefully stumble upon a Seppie base that’s hidden somewhere in a particular 50-acre section of the woods. Through mud and muck, they march on.
Fives’s voice is the only auditory memory he has from those fateful few moments, but he can’t quite remember what Fives said beyond screaming his name. He charges forward.
Fives begs him to come back.
For the first time in his life, Echo does not listen to a direct order, and the heat and pain speak to it. His body is destroyed, he is reduced to dust on the wind, a memory in those he loves minds. Dust and ashes and an empty helmet he’ll never get back.
Echo is dust and ashes but his chest rises and falls still, when they find him, baptised in the pool of his blood. They take him and dust and ashes are reforged into a weapon. Echo is lost beneath the waves, somewhere in the process. CT-1409 breaks the surface of the water to face the incoming storm,
It takes a grand total of three seconds for everything to fall apart.
Corkscrew doesn’t even register that something has exploded before he registers that the Lieutenant is down, having been thrown back and hitting against a tree hard. Immediately, all troopers converge on him like moths to a flame, stabilising him and prying his helmet off of his head to reveal the bloody face and unfocused eyes.
“Corkscrew,” the Lieutenant grounds out, jaw squared as he offers up his comm. “Call the Captain, command, anybody. Give ‘em our position, tell ‘em I’m down.”
“Yessir,” he says, heart pounding in his throat. “This is CT-19-4048, of Lt. Five’s scouting squad, to command. The Lt. was caught in a blast and needs medical attention. Sending our location now.”
Silence stretches on the comm for a long, long moment, and then a raspy and unfamiliar voice of a vod comes over, and Fives snaps to attention, “I’m sorry, who is down?”
“Echo?” Fives mutters, then passes out.
Hit higher! Ahsoka croons. Echo hits higher.
Put your weight into it, Echo! Fives yells from the sidelines. Echo does just that, his muscles rippling and screaming in absolute ecstasy at the feeling of moving and working and fighting cause that’s what he’s good at.
His body is flesh and metal, marrow and steel, blood and circuits. And yet, he moves like it’s all he’s ever known. It’s taken months to get here, but he is here, and he’s fighting and it feels so goddamn great. Moving is a commodity. Moving is freedom.
Blood in your heart and air in your lungs means your body is your own and warmth is the greatest prize of them all. Warmth is life and living and being aware of what's around you and knowing what you are. Warmth means you are nobody's slave.
Corkscrew hears the speeders before he sees their rescue. The Lt. lies prone on the floor, and they’ve packed the wound closed as best they could, but he’s bleeding so much, and he’s afraid, and this is his first mission–
“Where is he?” Someone screams, and Corkscrew whirls to see an ARC in grey armour tearing towards their group, his feet making deep engravings in the mud. The Captain is hot on his heels, hissing his name out, the medic close behind.
The ARC pushes everyone aside, cradling the Lt. in his arms–no, arm and Corkscrew suddenly realises who has turned up. ARC Trooper Echo, who has been away from the Legion for a while now, running some missions with his commando squad or something. He knows him by reputation alone. But here he is, planetside again, holding Fives in his arms. Corkscrew’s pretty sure they’re twins.
“Troopers,” The Captain says, voice tired and Corkscrew and the three other men he’s with snap to attention. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a medic, Kix, by the looks of it, crouching over the Lt and beginning first aid. “What happened here?”
“Some form of explosive advice was triggered while we walked through the forest. The Lt. caught the brunt of the blast and was thrown against a tree. We didn’t move him for fear of injury to his back and spine,” Corkscrew rattles off immediately, glancing at his brothers who are just as shiny as he.
“Good thinking,” Kix says, “Nothing’s broken, Rex, but definitely bruised. How soon can we get a LAAT over here for transport? I’m not taking him back on a speeder.”
“As soon as I give the order,” the Captain says, “Good work boys. There are a couple of speeders just over that way. We’ll take the LAAT back, you take the speeders.” They exchange a glance, then slowly walk away, getting faster until they’re all but running, jumping on the speeders and tearing through the forest as the adrenaline wears off and gives way to shaking.
The gun fires and in the space of a breath Echo is dust and ashes and nothing at all. The world is hotter than hell and then it's cold as shit, and all he can do is lie and die and wait for a saviour. Quickly, though, he comes to realise that there is no saviour for him. There is just the shadows falling over him and their metal and their plans.
Echo slips away. Nothing comes to take his place. CT-1409 is all that survives, the last dredges of something that he clings to in the torrent of pain and grief. They take his body from him, take his mind, take all that’s ever been his. CT-1409 dies over and over so Echo can be protected in the darkest and deepest and most jealously guarded parts of his mind.
Live to fight another day. Live to fight another day. Live to fight another day.
This isn’t happening to him, none of this is happening to Echo. It’s happening to a number, a total in a war. He is nothing but a number and a tool and a body hanging in suspension in an eternally cold world. Echo is okay. Echo died a painless death. CT-1409 is being tortured behind enemy lines. CT-1409 calls out into the dark.
CT-1409 is pulled from the stasis chamber, and it’s in the open air that he sinks below the darkness, and for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, it’s Echo who breaks the surface of the water, reborn and redeemed in the waters of his bloody trial. He takes a breath of air.
“Echo,” Kix says, glancing at Rex before repeating his brother's name once more, “Echo, the LAAT’s here. We need to move Fives. He’s going to be okay.”
Echo shakes his head, and even with his helmet screwed on, Rex knows he’s crying, from the tense set of his shoulders alone. He makes a pitiful noise, curling his hand into Fives’s hair, leaning forward until his head is resting on his twin’s chest.
“Echo,” He says now, putting a hand on Echo’s shoulder. The man flinches violently, his pauldron hitting Rex’s hand. Shaking his head quickly, he once again draws himself as close to Fives as possible. “Echo, we gotta go. Move or I’m moving you.”
Echo stays still for a long moment, and Rex is just about mentaly preparing himself to pry Echo off of Fives when he uncurls himself and lets himself be hauled to his feet. Coric sweeps in instantly, helping roll the still unconscious Fives onto a stretcher, careful to not pull at the bacta patches on his side.
Kix glances at Rex as they load Fives into the LAAT, but he barely notices, trying to talk to Echo, get a word out of him, but he can see the telltale signs of Echo shutting down to protect himself from a mile away. He’s standing still as stone, shaking his head back and forth over and over again, until he puts his hands to the side of his head and presses as best he can with a scomp and only one hand, clearly trying to block out the noise. Rex meets Kix’s eyes from across the clearing, and a thousand words pass between them.
In the public eye, Echo is nothing familiar.
There is no blue on his armour, but he’s beside Fives through every arduous minute that follows the reveal of who exactly discovered Palpatine's plot. The black and red of the Bad Batch is just as famous as the white and royal blue of the 501st. And Echo, as distinct as he is, does not escape notice.
His therapist calls him maladjusted. Fives is a mess of unresolved tension and age-old aches, and for the first time in what feels like years, Echo looks at Fives and sees himself reflected back. Not in appearance, but in pain and misalignment in the world they’ve found themselves in. In the fact that they’re both too messed up to accept peace and too known to live normally.
So, Echo adapts. Long gone is the bright-eyed cadet he was a lifetime ago, on Kamino, on Rishi, on Kamino again. He is water through a sieve, and it feels like the right choice. His brothers need adaptability, someone to press on through the dark, and while he’s not always perfect at it, the fact that he’s trying to be something new is enough, in the end.
Rex sits across from Echo, holding his hands in his, even as Echo tries to pull away. When he’d finally come down to the med-bay he’d found Echo in this chair, digging his fingers into his arm, about to draw blood.
Echo shifts his hand as best he can, forming a familiar pattern. Rex lays the hand on his open palm, watching as Echo begins to shakily sign, <cannot> <task>. It takes Rex a moment, “Why don’t you think you can do this?”
<afraid><five> followed quickly by, <no><move><sick> . “Okay,” Rex says as gently as he can, “Do you want to see if you can at least lie down?” Echo shakes his head violently, lurching forward at the movement. Rex catches him, noting the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and quietly sending an alert to Kix’s comm, hoping he’ll pick up on what he needs.
Echo leans back, then begins to sign, beating the motions against his chest. <done> <more> <no> <injured> <five>, he signs and Rex sighs heavily, opening his mouth to protest, but Echo continues on, <cannot> <calculate> <do> <task>. <help> <scared> <sick>
At that moment Kix rounds the corner, pulling up another chair and sitting next to Rex. His fingers slowly move to the lip of Echo’s helmet as he softly asks, “Do you want this off? It may help you breathe easier.”
Echo nods and Kix helps pry it off. Rex’s heart lurches at the sight. Tear tracks run all over his bloodshot face, his lip quivers and bleeds from where he’s bitten through it, his dark eyes darting around the room but focusing on nothing. They screw close after a moment, his hands tearing away to cover the places where his ears lie under his ear cuff.
“Can we turn down the volume receptors?” Rex asks, but Kix is already moving, still narrating as he touches the mechanism, turning something down. Echo deflates again, still shaking like a leaf in the summer wind, but looking a little less sick. Rex takes his hands again, and he, to Rex’s surprise, tightens his fingers around Rex’s.
Eyayah, I’m okay, Fives rasps from his hospital bed, poking at the bruising. Echo shakes his head silently, crossing his arms and forcing himself to look anywhere but his brother.
I’m supposed to protect you, he hisses between his clenched teeth, the words feeling painful to draw out of himself. And I failed, and now you’re hurt, and it’s my fault.
You couldn’t have expected that the platform would collapse, Echo, it’s okay, Fives continues to insist, but Echo just shakes his head again. If it was okay, Echo wouldn’t be in this med-bay and Fives wouldn’t have bruises that look like a painting across his side. But he does and it’s because Echo didn’t run enough calculations–
Echo, please, Fives implores. Again, he makes his protests known when he shakes his head, trying to open his mouth to speak, but the words won’t come. He makes a ragged noise, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head until it feels like it’s come unscrewed.
His mind is a broken record, repeating over and over, Fives is injured. It’s your fault. You failed to protect him. He needed you and you weren’t there. You weren’t there. You weren’t there. He needed you and you were somewhere else and now he’s hurt because he trusted you.
Rex knows that Echo doesn’t like being hovered around, but it’s the one thing Kix had all but ordered him to do, so here he is, sitting with Echo as he picks at his food, glaring at every trooper who pulls too close. And when they look to their captain for an explanation, he sends them a look to scatter, mouthing not now.
Jesse and Hardcase linger though, coming to sit at either side of their friend. And when Echo begins to shake again, moving his hand up to his mouth, Jesse grabs it and interlaces his fingers with Echo’s. Hardcase, uncharacteristically silent, rubs Echo’s back in soothing patterns.
Echo digs his scomp into his leg. Hardcase holds it gently. Rex presses his foot against Echo’s when he begins to bounce his legs. And when the tears and noises come, silent and looking painful as all hell, they help him to his bunk and sit with him as he shakes through his sobs, ragged and horrible sounds tearing out of him.
Echo is scared. Fives is hurt. Echo hates med-bays more than anything, and the mere thought of his twin being there is sending him spiralling, but his brothers are there. They hold him as he finally screams into his arm, their eyes gently closed as they listen to the sound, praying for a miracle and a single moment of peace to lie on their brother.
Echo cries, and yet, he is not alone, being carried through the endless night, in hope of a better and maybe impossible future.