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Where'd the October birds go?
I used to watch them from the window
When I had eyes to see
When I was more like me
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This body was new, unfamiliar, and wrong. Echo had never before felt so broken, so used, so fucking wrong. Cold metal connected with painfully inflamed skin and every movement caused a flinch. Even with Rex’s consistent support, he couldn’t make this feeling go away. He couldn’t change the fact that his body was not his anymore, that the proud ARC trooper he once was had died in that explosion.
Echo wasn’t Echo anymore. He was a hollow, a used grenade, the shell no longer smoking and long gone cold with time. He was useless like this.
“C’mon, vod, please try to eat for me.” Rex’s voice floated through the haze, muffled and hurt. Echo glanced down to the ration bar and then to the floor, the mere thought of it dissolving on his tongue made his stomach roll with nausea.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, barely able to hear himself respond. He had no clue if the words actually left his mouth. His ears were near useless, only able to pick up the shouts and loud noises that sent him into a panic. Kix had moved him to a private room until his hearing aids were finished, but that made the utter lack of noise that much more obvious.
Before, he’d never realized how much he relied on his hearing, how much the background noise of chatter and shifting and armor and life was a gift. Now, he longed to be able to hear the soft lilt of Kix’s laugh, the confident rumble of Rex’s voice when he spoke of Ahsoka. Hell, he even wished to be able to hear the whir of machinery and the beeping of the heart monitor. Just… something to prove to himself that he was alive.
Rex’s expression softened, a mix of pity, concern, and open understanding. “Okay. Maye later, yeah?” He placed the ration bar on the bedside table.
“Yeah,” Echo echoed, knowing full well that the ration bar would go uneaten another day.
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Where did your rosy face go?
When did your cheeks get so hollow?
Just a reflection of me
Did I hurt you so badly?
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Out of all the things to adjust to, the most surprisingly difficult aspect was the sea of vod’e. Echo still had some of the brothers from his time before, but they were few and far between. The shinies looked younger than they should have, some with baby fat still clinging to their cheeks. The older clones, he’d noticed, took extra care to watch out for those ones. Kix was uncharacteristically soft for his youngest medical assistant, a shiny named Spring. The kid had an odd way of speaking and had moments of complete shutdown, hands clamped over their ears and shaking, teeth grinding through an invisible pain. Kix never reprimanded them, only gently shuffled them away to work through it privately. Echo noticed more often than not, especially in the slow lull between missions, that Kix had an arm slung over their shoulders or a hand on their forearm, keeping them close even within the safety of the med bay. It was sweet, but Echo’s heart ached at the sight of them. It was how he had acted with Dogma. The loss of his ad’ika was a constant ache, a dull throb amongst the sharp pain of his phantom limbs.
But despite being surrounded by his vod’e after months of isolation, the one brother he needed was nowhere to be found.
“Fives…” he had mumbled out on the ride back to the Venator after escaping that terrible, terrible place, “is he waiting for me?”
Rex had sucked in a breath and said nothing, only tightening his arms and running a gentle hand over Echo’s head. That had been enough of an answer.
If Dogma’s loss was painful, Fives’ loss was agonizing, a knife being twisted into his gut.
He saw Fives’ face everywhere. In the med bay, in the training grounds, in the shinies fresh from Kamino. Fives was everywhere and nowhere at all. Everywhere but in Echo’s own reflection.
He hardly looked like a clone anymore, what with his sunken cheeks and ashen skin. His body was near skeletal, nothing like the bulk of muscle from his time as an ARC trooper. Then there were the droid parts. Ugly, heavy, built for durability, not for comfort.
Sometimes, he would lay on his bed, hearing aids tossed to the side, eyes closed as he feigned sleep for Rex’s sake. In those moments, he could pretend that the body pressed against his side was the one of his twin, that it was simply the night after a rough mission. That they would sleep late on the first day of leave, slow to wake and lazily drag themselves to the mess after the sounds of their vod’e became too enticing to ignore for the sake of the comfort of each other.
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I'm a flinch in your cheek, I'm the shake in your hand
And I've laid here before and I'll lay here again
And I haven't seen war, but I've tasted the sand
I've died five hundred times with your flag in my hand
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The Bad Batch welcomed him with open arms, something that Echo never thought would happen again. They were different, but not in the same way he was different. He was a freak amongst the freaks. What a wonderfully hellish way to exist.
The only relief was the lack of reminders of his lost brother. None of the Bad Batchers looked remotely like the regs. Even Hunter, who was the closest in appearance to standard clones, was different enough that there was no fear of mistaking him for Fives. The face tattoo, though, was something Dogma would have loved. For all the kid’s adherence to the regs, the one thing he couldn’t deny was his love of tattoos.
They managed to navigate his ever-shifting moods and ease him into their dynamic. His nightmares and flashbacks were handled quickly and skillfully, his bouts of silence never questioned until they stretched longer than usual. They cared in a way that was new, personal but not quite, professional but not distant. He knew this was the learning phase, that they’d get to the point where they would be able to touch him without carefully avoiding the ports on his head and be able to know exactly what kind of support he needed without having to second guess every decision.
But not yet.
Echo sat on his bunk, staring into the middle distance, flesh hand twitching against his thigh. Rex had sent over his old personal files. Echo had made the mistake of looking through the pictures on a bad pain day. At least none of the others had questioned the true reason to his tears.
It had been a week and Echo had spoken little more than to affirm he was still alive. The others were starting to worry. He noticed every concerned glance, every whispered conversation, every little act to try and bring him out of his head. They meant well, but nothing they could do would be able to fix this aching loneliness that was eating him from the inside out.
Fives was gone, Dogma was gone, and another part of Echo had died with them. At this point he was more dead than alive. All he had left was Rex, Kix, and Jesse. If he lost anyone else, there was no doubt that Echo would simply pass away into the cool waters of death, leaving his body to artificially function until his mechanical heart finally gave out.
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But I've never seen a staircase without dreaming of falling
And I've never seen a river without dreaming of jumping
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There were days when he thought about just… letting go. Letting go of his desperate grasp on life, his aching limbs, his shattered heart. Maybe taking too many of his pain meds or jumping in front of a stray shot. Something quick. Something relatively painless until the final release came.
There were days when that temptation was so strong it was nearly overwhelming, and he hated himself for it. He couldn’t leave his new squad, not after everything they did for him, not after Rex and Cody pulled so many strings.
He weathered the torment with clenched teeth. He would go on. Not for a desire to live, but as to fulfill a promise.
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Call me lucky and spoiled, I'm selfish and awful
I wake and I want more, I go to sleep needing you
Over and over, I take what you give me
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He feels like he’s asking for too much. Between the consistent check-ins, Tech’s detailed medication schedule, and Crosshair’s silent show of support, Echo can’t help but feel like he’s getting in the way, like he’s being a burden. While they insist he’s not a burden, he can see though to the strain behind their eyes and the placating lies falling from their lips. He should be grateful, he should be thankful that they took him in, the broken reg, but he just… can’t. Not really.
Fives would have never made him feel this way. Not for very long. But this feeling is a stubborn one, it clings to his bones like spiderweb, tangled in his intestines like knotted string.
His ghost flits in his periphery and if he were here, he’d be scolding Echo on his hypocrisy. When he’d first adopted Dogma, the poor kid had thought he was broken, that his assignment to the 501st was a pity placement. Echo had been quick to amend that line of thinking. And now here he was, thinking the same goddamn thing.
He’d just been so lost since he was rescued. He’d never been only himself. He was part of a pair, a matched set. Fives and Echo. Echo and Fives. Now he was just Echo, and he had no idea how to navigate that.
He cried himself to sleep that night.
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I cling to your sleeves and I stop you from leaving
Don't let me down easy, you're in me too deeply
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Echo wanted for a lot of things. He wanted to have died in that explosion. He wanted to have survived that mission. He wanted to have all his limbs again. He wanted his vod’e and he wanted his ad.
But most of all, he wanted the impossible. He just wanted his brother.