Chapter Text
"We're soldiers, Hunter. What else are we supposed to do?"
Not for the first time over the past several months, Echo was left with the feeling that he'd made the wrong decision. Picked the wrong team. Should he have joined Rex and the 501st from the beginning? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know.
Rex had pushed him, told him, and it had been a split decision. Old ghosts versus new horizons. He’d chosen the new. So much for loyalty.
He turned his body to face the hull of the Havoc. The Bad Batch had never known the old Echo, never had anything to compare him to, couldn’t look at him with pity, expecting something more than the broken shell of a man.
“Where’s Fives?” he’d asked. He knew. Nothing would have kept Fives from being on that mission.
“Dead-” Rex continued speaking. He didn’t hear it.
Dead. Dead. Dead. The person who he had stuck with all of his life was dead. Died thinking he was dead. Died alone. A part of Echo died with him.
He couldn't return when it was empty, empty, no Fives. Pity. He couldn't take it. The Bad Batch had never known him before, couldn't hold him to himself. Echo could. Echo did. Guilt was eating at his soul. What they were doing was wrong, wrong, and Echo couldn't stand for it. He has to. There's nowhere else to go.
Sickness hung low in his stomach. He felt like vomiting. He couldn't. He didn't want to take Tech's attention from Hunter. He couldn't.
They were soldiers. Scavenging made him feel sick.
They served the Republic. The Republic didn’t exist anymore.
He was a soldier, a good soldier, the best soldier. He'd died for the Republic and now he felt like he was going without them. He missed the order, the schedule, the rule book he had memorised to heart as a young cadet. He balled his hand into a fist. He'd wanted to leave with Rex. Rex hadn't given him the chance.
In some ways, he was still angry at him, at Rex. He'd let his twin die. “Fives died in my arms. He warned me about the chips. He saved my life." Echo knew he would trade Rex, would trade his own life, hundreds of times over to have his twin back. Didn't that just make him a worthless Vode?
He missed his twin like his right arm.
But what if Fives would have still been alive? Echo would have joined the 501st again and… Wrecker’s rampage was replaced with Fives in his head. He knew they couldn't fight it. When the order would have gone out, he wouldn't have known, couldn't have known what Order 66 meant. His chip wasn't faulty. It had just never been there in the first place. Removed by the Techno Union.
He would have stopped his twin firing on Skywalker, Ahsoka, only to have the cold barrel of a D-17 pushed into his head, in violation of Order 66 without ever knowing what it was. "Good Soldiers-"
Five’s face would be full of hate. Echo couldn’t move, couldn’t talk his twin down, feel as Fives pulled the trigger, no hesitance in the motion.
Echo woke up screaming.
Hunter was at his side in an instant. He wanted to push him away. He was injured, hurting the same. They could save Omega. Nothing could save Fives. He was dead, bleeding out in a Coruscant warehouse. He couldn’t. He cried angrily. He’d had enough of that since Skako to last a lifetime. Didn’t know how he could cry anymore.
He wasn’t one of them. They didn’t owe comfort to him; still, they gave.
Empathy shouldn’t be a desirable trait in soldiers made to kill, but it was something that bound all of them. The Bad Batch couldn’t understand the war he had lived through. They had never lost anyone. Never got numb to it. Echo, too, had failed at that somewhere along the lines. Echo expected them all to die. The Bad Batch had the arrogance to think themselves invincible. They were contrasts, but their broken bits fit, making him one of them.
Echo made Hunter sleep. He didn’t need to lose sleep over someone who had lost his faith long ago. He was injured and he needed to rest. He didn’t want the others to feel the grief he felt for his batch. Not now. Not ever.
He’d painted his armour to blend in. He didn’t want to stick out from the others, not like he had before. He didn’t fit anymore. He’d wanted to, so desperately. He’d wanted to fit in, in a place that he never could. He painted the 99 on his helmet, remembering the way 99 had died in front of him. He’d lost so many people that he didn’t know how to count them all anymore.
He sat, cross-legged, as Hunter and the rest slept, staring at his armour across the way. Why was he hiding anymore? Why did he even care anymore?
He was still Echo. Why did he think that it didn’t matter anymore?
He dipped a paint brush into a tin of red paint and copied the design that he remembered so well. The Rishi eel took life on his helmet, the 99 left above. He could remember his twin this way.
He hoped the Jedi were right, hoped there was an afterlife, hoped Fives was still watching over him. He wanted to make him proud and felt like he wasn’t at the moment. Echo was hiding, following orders. He wanted to join Rex, wanted to fight for what he believed was right.
After Omega was safe, he was leaving, finding Rex. He wanted to do so much more than just hide for the rest of his life.
Slowly, Echo dipped his hand into red paint and placed it flat onto his armour, careful not to let the paint drip. The last time they'd done this, Fives had painted it for him. Echo had never done it himself before. Maybe it was another reason he couldn’t bring himself to paint it when he had just joined 99. This handprint had meant something once, meant he was a good soldier, that Rex viewed him as a cadet with potential. It had meant all of that and more.
It was the way he had stood out, the way the others had told him apart. It was love, brotherhood, and… identity. It was the identity they had always been told to shy away from.
He held his hand against the chest plate, ignoring the way it trembled.
He was Echo. This handprint was Echo.
With the red paint, he bled himself back into his armour. He had been someone once, something, someone. In the Bad Batch he'd wanted to stand in, with the 501st he'd always wanted to stand out. He wanted to be that Echo again. The good soldier, not the scavver, not the reject.
He took his hand away and smiled at his handiwork. He'd meant something to Rex once, something autonomous, something unique.
Crossing his legs, he sat and waited for the paint to dry. He could make his Captain proud of him again. He just had to stop hiding. Had to prove that he was still the ARC that he had always been.
He was Echo the machine, and Echo the man. There was nothing wrong with either. Echo smiled. There had never been a difference at all.