Echo was learning, in these small, private moments in between duties and missions, that wherever Tech was, Crosshair would eventually follow. He might only pass through a room, giving it a quick surveil. Or he might sneer at a Reg who was looking too close to starting shit. Or he might throw out a comment that sounded mean to Echo but which Tech countered with a dignitary’s grace and which got a small, sly smirk from Crosshair in return.
It didn’t take Echo long to realize it was Crosshair’s way of checking in, ensuring everything was as it should be.
He’d commented on it to Tech a few rotations back, as they waited for their medical eval in preparation for departing Kamino.
“There was an incident with some Regs when we were cadets,” Tech had said as they watched one of the Regs come in, start to take a seat next to them only to about-face beneath the weight of Crosshair’s stare and sit on the other side of the room. “I was making modifications to the protocol of the training droids in the cadet gym, to better align with the strengths in which we would need to demonstrate proficiency during one of our final simulations. I wanted my squad to be prepared. I explained what I was doing...but the Regs seemed to take it as an insult. My arm was broken. Crosshair was heavily reprimanded for infighting. He’s been this way ever since.”
“Did you need something, Crosshair?” Tech asked as Echo stepped into the cockpit.
“Yeah. I need to not be woken up by one of your hairpin turns.” Crosshair eyed Echo as he lingered in the doorway. “How’s his flying sitting with you, Reg?”
“Ah,” Echo said intelligently, not used to being invited into the bickering.
He still wasn’t quite sure where he stood with Crosshair. The quiet clone was cool, often short when speaking with him. Not mean...but, Echo would never mistake his interactions for a warm welcome.
The most warmth he had gotten from Crosshair to date had been on Skako. The squad had sent him and Crosshair to the high ground. It was only fair. Echo had been in no shape for a stand up fight, but he could fire a blaster if needed. And he was doing just that—aiming for a half broken droid climbing toward their location—when one of the flyers swooped low overhead.
He’d felt the brush of metal talons against his scalp. Then Crosshair had yanked him to the ground, laid half on top of him, his weight and warmth familiar and alien all at once, and shot the droid out of the sky.
Tech glanced at Crosshair; his mouth was taught but his eyes were bright. “I’ll have you know that I passed Jaon Ehn’s flight training with exemplary scores. He gave me a commendation.”
“He’d probably take it back if he knew how your fancy flying blew out the left sublight and got us stranded on Murkhana.”
Tech sniffed. “It was the damage the Marauder took on Felucia that took out the sublight.”
Crosshair looked pointedly at Tech. “And how long would the engine have held if you hadn’t done what you usually do?”
Tech pushed his goggles up his nose, though he didn’t need to. “Potentially to our rendezvous on Boz Pity.”
Crosshair smirked and unfolded from the chair.
“But,” Tech continued, “I must point out the odds of us being blown apart by separatist fighters were far more likely if I didn’t make that dive into the atmosphere.”
“Whatever helps you sleep, Tech. Hey, Reg,” Crosshair said, passing by and plucking a mug of caf off the tray, “keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t fling us into the side of a passing cruiser.”
“I can hear you,” Tech said.
With a smirk over his shoulder and a rude gesture, Crosshair disappeared into the rear of the ship.
From Chapter 3: A Place Called Home (Series: Written in the Dust, an eventual kind of fix-it, self-indulgent fic.)
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Crosshair and Tech are definitely batch twins. They have a unique connection. Echo's being invited in. Crosshair also has that big "I can pick on my brothers, but if you do it, no one will ever find your body" energy. These three together - I love them so much.
And, taking another look at "On Wings of Keeradaks" that shoulder touch he gives Echo is just...agh. *heart melts* It's an unspoken "well done," for shooting that droid out of the sky; and a touch that's meant to be both stabilizing and reassuring ("you're on the edge of a cliff, we're under fire, but I have your back").
I've played with some of their dynamic in several chapters in "A Place Called Home" but I definitely want more of it.
“So,” Hunter prodded, “who was she?” He sat up straighter, leaned forward like he was after a secret. “Someone untouchable? A prime minister’s daughter? A senator?”
Echo glanced at Tech, who was watching him expectantly, head slightly cocked.
“She was a Jedi,” Echo said and took a sip of his whiskey.
“Bullshit.”
“Jedi can…” Wrecker looked puzzled, then strangely delighted.
“You fucked a Jedi?”
Tech hid a small smile behind his glass.
Hunter looked from Tech to Echo. “How did that happen?”
“Rescue mission on Bernilla. She invited me and Fives back to her room for a drink after. It went from there,” Echo said.
“I heard about Bernilla,” Hunter said. “Civil war broke out after the Bernillan CIS rep was killed in a shuttle crash. They blamed Republic sabotage. The capitol city was lost. But you got a Jedi out of it?”
Crosshair finished his beer, fished a toothpick from his pocket, popped it between his lips. “So your general took you both back to her quarters to reward you for a job well done?”
Echo narrowed his eyes at Crosshair. “She was a consular, negotiating an agreement on Bernilla. Not a general.”
“Well,” Crosshair’s eyes glittered, “that’s a little disappointing. Still, good on you, finally getting your head out of your reg manuals.”
From A Place Called Home (read on AO3)
Yeah, Crosshair was proud of Echo's past exploits, but he'd have been even prouder if he'd hooked up with a general.
“You didn’t,” Hunter said firmly, setting the book aside and, slipping off the table. He picked up canteen, held up a pill bottle in his other hand. “Another round? Need to take the edge off?”
Echo took the bottle. They were the same pills Kix had given him on Anaxes. But the bottle and the label was different.
“These are yours,” Echo said dully.
“Yeah, wasn’t sure where yours were.” Hunter sat on the bunk next to him. “The thing about enhanced senses...they play hell on the body until you get used to them, learn how to tune in what’s necessary and tune out the rest. Used to be real bad. As a cadet, I’d get headaches that laid me out for days. Not the results the Kaminoans were looking for, but “desirable mutations often come with side effects that must be properly managed.” Used to be on a different med at a much higher dose...”
“Pump you full of drugs, send you back to the field.” Echo had seen it multiple times. Brothers with blaster holes through their guts, held together by bacta patches and Symoxin, glassy-eyed from endorphins and the rush of drugs, descending on the battlefield with only one thought in mind—the fight, the win—and inevitably meeting their end by way of a clanker’s blaster.
“Yep,” Hunter said. “Have to say, I was more agreeable on the higher dosage, but much less effective in the field. More than once, Crosshair or Tech or Wrecker had to drag my ass out of the fire, when the drugs got to be too much or when I had moments where I lost myself, got blinded or deafened by blaster fire or explosions. And,” Hunter’s voice grew firm, making Echo look up from the pill bottle. “I’ve done the same for them. So hauling you up after you puke your guts out from a migraine? All part of what we do. The Batch looks out for each other. And you’re one of us now.”
From Chapter 2 - "A Place Called Home" (Series: Written in the Dust, an eventual kind of fix-it, self-indulgence)
Consciousness was a strange, slippery thing. Just when he thought he had it, it escaped him and he fell back into the dark. When he finally opened his eyes, it was to a too-bright light, an unfamiliar ceiling. He was cold. The fingers on his left hand tingled. He couldn’t move his legs. He couldn’t feel his legs.
For a moment, he was back in the Techno Union lab, in a haze of pain. He had no sense of time then, only the certainty that they were doing something to him, changing him.
Somewhere near him, a voice, unfamiliar, cool and human, said: “...just look at him, think the warranty’s already expired.”
Then another voice, familiar and formidable as Echo had ever heard it, spoke. “I will take it from here, medic. You are dismissed.”
A stutter of words and grumbles Echo couldn’t make out, then the swoosh of a hard shell tent door opened and closed.
Tech’s face appeared over him. Like Skako, the first thing he focused on were Tech’s goggles, the light reflecting off them like sun rays he hadn’t seen in forever. And behind them, Tech’s eyes, soft with concern.
“Tech,” Echo’s voice was a rasp.
“It isn’t as bad as it looks” Tech said. He pressed a hypo to Echo’s neck. “A mild sedative and analgesic. When you wake up, you will be on the Marauder.”
The Marauder’s lights were dimmed to emulate night. The only illumination in the ship came from the floor lights, control panel and the smear of stars as the ship zipped through the hyperlane.
Echo used the flattened and stretched starlight to see as he worked Tech’s mini air compressor around the head of his scomp. Small bits of metal and wire fell into the cloth across his lap; no wonder the thing hadn’t been turning smoothly since before he’d driven it into the head of that battle droid. He tucked the compressor away and tossed the debris into the scrap bag to be dealt with later.
He ran his left forefinger around the edge of the scomp and, with only a thought, made it spin. It turned smooth, slowed to a stop when he willed it. And for a moment he found himself marveling at how quickly you could get used to something so new, so strange.
Before his surgery on Anaxes, Kix had given him a choice to have the scomp removed. With the caveat that he had nothing, at the moment, to replace it with and it might be 30 rotations or more before they could make that happen. If they could.
Echo had chosen to keep it. Even if they’d had a mechno hand ready for him, he thought he might have chosen to keep it. It was...useful. Though he could admit—thinking of the empty sketchbook he’d found in the Tipoca City library, now tucked carefully away in his pack—there were some things he missed having a right hand for.
With a sigh, he spun the scomp once more, making sure it turned solidly. He’d need to remember to oil it when he got a chance; he’d left his bottle on Kamino, still not quite used to some of his new needs. In the back of his mind, he could hear Fives making a joke about him forgetting the lube.
From: A Place Called Home
I keep revisiting this bit, mentally. And after the most recent episode of TBB, I think I'm definitely keeping an idea I had for the second, larger part of this series.
Also, yes, I headcanon that Echo sketches. If you were able to see the reg manuals on his old datapad, in addition to underlined important bits and notes in the margins, there would be doodles.
Though I'm sure that's not the only thing Echo misses having a right hand for. Good thing the clones are pretty ambidextrous. (I'll show myself out.)
Busy Night (Snippet with more brotherly shenanigans)
Echo side-eyeing his brothers.
Hunter had slept on the ship; after an evening of drinking, he sometimes ended up more sensitive to the world around him rather than less and the quiet of the ship was more restful than the barracks.
Wrecker was at the cafeteria after being up all night. Echo knew he’d crash hard in a few hours. And Crosshair and Tech had joined the woman—Eilami?—for drinks just after Echo left 79’s.
Speak of the devil, Echo thought.
He watched over the rim of his mug as two tall figures made their way across the tarmac toward the Marauder; Crosshair’s lope and Tech’s purposeful stride had an air of exhaustion about them. Crosshair’s mouth was missing its toothpick and Tech, for once, didn’t have his nose in his datapad; it hung loosely from his hand.
“Morning boys!” Echo said brightly as they drew close, hiding a smirk in his mug as Crosshair visibly flinched at the noise.
The sweet smell of what was most definitely not GAR-issued soap wafted over Echo as they reached the gangplank. Crosshair’s right pauldron and what looked like one of his socks was in his hand. Tech had a red suck mark on his neck and his goggles were slipping down his nose.
“Nice night? Eilami’s friend finally showed, eh?”
“No, but Eilami’s company was more than convivial,” Tech said, stifling a yawn, skirting around Crosshair and Echo and disappearing into the ship.
A moment later, they heard Hunter’s voice, pitched low: “That’s my caf, Tech.”
Crosshair rolled his eyes. “Should’ve come along, Reg. Eilami would’ve enjoyed you. She seemed to have a pretty good collection of toys already.”
"Yeah.” Crosshair eyed Echo, lingering in the doorway. “I need to not be woken up by one of your hairpin turns. How’s his flying sitting with you, Reg?”
"Ah," Echo said, intelligently, not used to being invited into the bickering.
Tech glanced at Crosshair; his mouth was taught, but his eyes bright. “I’ll have you know that I passed Jaon Ehn’s flight training with exemplary scores. He gave me a commendation.”
"He’d probably take it back if he knew how your fancy flying blew out the left sublight and got us stranded on Murkhana.”
Tech sniffed. “It was the damage the Marauder took on Felucia that took out the sublight.”
Crosshair looked pointedly at Tech. “And how long would the engine have held if you hadn’t done what you usually do?”
Tech pushed his goggles up his nose, though he didn’t need to. “Potentially to our rendezvous on Boz Pity.”
Crosshair smirked and unfolded from the co-pilot chair.
“But,” Tech continued, “I must point out the odds of us being blown apart by separatist fighters were far more likely if I didn’t make that dive into the atmosphere.”
“Whatever helps you sleep, Tech.”
Echo stepped further into the cockpit as Crosshair neared.
“Hey, Reg,” he said, plucking a mug of caf off the tray Echo held, “keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t fling us into the side of a passing cruiser.”
“I can hear you,” Tech said.
With a smirk over his shoulder and a rude gesture, Crosshair disappeared into the back of the ship.
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Smol snippet as I’m drafting the next parts of Echo and the Batch. (Ultimately, the part this snippet comes from is a moment for Crosshair and Echo, but Tech features heavily.)
And I just needed to get in some banter.
Specifically Crosshair giving Tech shit about his flying. Because he would. (Even though he completely trusts Tech not to kill them.)
The first thing I’ve shared in months. I think I majorly sprained my writing muscle with work projects last year and it’s been an epically slow recovery. I’m still not out of the woods. And...I’m starting yet another storyboard, for a two hour course, this coming week.
FFS.
But I’ve had this idea in my head for a while (as a precursor to another set of fics/ficlets) and...yeah.
Part of a series of small, meaningful moments Echo shares with his new squad, taking place in the days and weeks after he joins the Batch.
__________________________
Echo came awake with a shudder and a shout that rang inside his head like an explosion but was, he realized, as he struggled out from under the weight of his dream, only a bit of strangled breath escaping him.
“Nightmare?”
Echo swallowed, turned his head toward the voice.
Wrecker sat on the floor just across from the fold-out bunks, leaned against the bulkhead and the small inset sliver of cabinet and counter top that served as the Marauder’s galley. He had a datapad resting on his drawn up knees; his thick fingers tapped out a pattern on the edge of the casing. Echo’s heart and breath slowed as he listened to it.
And gradually other sounds filtered in, both familiar and strange.
The comforting beep of shipboard monitors, the hum of the air recirculator. The hushed murmur of his new squad’s voices in the cockpit. What he was coming to recognize as Tech’s precise tones when he was explaining a concept he was passionate about and Hunter’s soft gravel as he humored his brother.
Above Echo, the second cot had been folded out and he knew Crosshair slept there, could smell the light scent of leather, fire and the lingering tang of solvent the sniper used to clean his rifle.
“Echo?”
“Yeah,” Echo ran his left hand over his face. “It was. How’d you know?”
“Your breathing changed.”
“Were you watching me sleep?” Echo winced. It came out rougher than he intended. He’d snapped at Kix like that too; before they left Anaxes, the medic had muscled his way on board the Marauder to give Echo one final check up and gentle, but firm, admonishment about taking it slowly to get back on his feet.
Wrecker ducked his head. “Not on purpose.” He shrugged. “Just...there’s not much to do on this ship and not a lot of space to do it in. Tech already kicked me out of the flight deck for fidgetin’ too much.” Wrecker flipped the data pad in his hands, nearly dropped it. “You need anythin’? Hunter likes tea after...after.”
“Yeah,” Echo said, curling up and swinging his legs to the floor, clasping his hands—hand...and scomp link—between his knees. “Tea would be good.”
Wrecker jumped to his feet with a quietness and agility that surprised Echo, and rummaged through the galley cabinet. He only fumbled the tin mug once, resulting in a muffled grumble from Crosshair.
Wrecker talked as he made the tea, voice alternating between a whisper-shout and a low rumble. By the time he pressed the mug into Echo’s hand, he’d caught Echo up on a roster of previous missions the Batch had been on, ending with one on a planet that had—conveniently left out of their mission briefing—less than docile wildlife that tried to make a meal out of the passing sniper.
“It came up right out of the swamp. Screaming. And wrapped itself around Crosshair. I cut into it with my knife. Thing was all teeth and a black mouth. No eyes.” Wrecker shuddered. “I still see ‘em sometimes. Wake up sweatin’, cold, creeped out. Eh. Lula helps.”
“Lula?”
“Oh,” Wrecker rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s my Tooka doll. Crosshair gave her to me, when were cadets. When we started our specialized training...I had a hard time sleeping. Lula helps,” Wrecker said, firmly, as if he feared Echo might make fun of him.
“Why tell me all this?”
Wrecker looked confused. “So you know you’re not alone.”
As they docked on Kamino, a place Echo had never thought he’d see again—and wasn’t sure at all that he’d missed—a sexless, placid Kaminoan voice came over the radio and requested CT-1409 report immediately to the medical wing for evaluation.
Heading down the ramp as a unit, Tech handed Echo a datapad. “Yours. Standard issue for commando squads, but I’ve taken the liberty of...upgrading it. You’ll also find a map to our barracks.” Tech pushed his goggles up his nose, looked like he wanted to say something else, but turned and disappeared into a sea of their brothers.
Crosshair brushed by him, nearly toppling the datapad from Echo’s hands, and gave no acknowledgment or apology. But Echo thought he heard the words “Good luck, reg” rasped under Crosshair’s breath. Then again, it might have just been the ship settling.
“I can come with you,” Hunter said. “Pull rank as your commanding officer, insist on observing?”
“No,” Echo said. “They think I need hand holding, they’ll consider me a defective unit.”
Hunter looked grim, but nodded and raised his chin at Wrecker before turning on his heel and melding into the crowd. Wrecker clasped Echo’s shoulder, said, “Bring you somethin’ from the mess for after they’re done poking you,” before following Hunter.
The stark, sterile white rooms of the medical wing brought back every ache and chill and pang of grief Echo experienced in his brief moments of lucidity in the cryopod on Skako; the sting of bacta in his nose took him back to the surgeries on Anaxes, the cold burn of his upgraded legs, the heat of the healing wounds along his spine.
He’d give anything for Kix’s blunt bedside manner and overbearing concern in the wake of Nala Se’s sharp, clinical gaze. Even as a cadet, he was always certain she could see straight through to his insides and would find him lacking in the function that would make a proper clone trooper.
That feeling returned as she ran diagnostics on his cybernetics, scanned his human parts and then pushed him through physical tests he hadn’t taken since he’d been part of Domino Squad.
At the end of it all, his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth and his nails had left half moon marks in the centers of his palms.
By the time Echo was released and made his way to the Batch’s private barracks—Tech’s map having proved easy to follow—he was drained, achy and wanting nothing more than to pull a blanket over his head and ignore the world. Even if the idea of sleeping, of dreaming, made him faintly sick.
He wasn’t sure what he expected of the Batch’s barracks. They were, as far as he knew, the only squad to get their own private quarters; the privacy being a trade off for peace among the ranks, he’d gathered.
When the door opened, the first thing he noticed was the stark contrast between the brightly lit hallway and the room which was lit only by the individual bunk lights and a goose-neck lamp sat atop a crowded workbench that could only be Tech’s.
The second thing he noticed, stepping inside, the door sliding shut behind him, was the smell. Dirty laundry and stale food and something unidentifiable that he didn’t want to think about, not with the pulse of pain beginning behind his eyes.
Given none of the others were around, Echo explored the room on his own, spotting his bed strung up between what could only be Tech’s bunk, with its collection of diagrams pinned to the wall and small unidentifiable contraptions scattered across the mattress, and the window frame behind a large, out of place couch.
Tech’s message that had been attached to the map now made sense.
There wasn’t time or material to kit out a proper bunk for you. But from what you said about the comfort of the med-bay bunks on Anaxes, I think you’ll prefer the hammock to our mattresses.
With a small grin, Echo unstrapped his boots, fairly ripped the armor from his body and rolled himself, hands free, into the middle of the hammock. It swayed under his weight, but held. The heavy cloth cradled him perfectly, pressing in on the parts that needed support and skimming past his pressure points.
Save for one.
Reaching beneath his hip, Echo pulled out a bundled up Kamino issue blanket. Inside, someone had placed a thin pillow, a now half squashed pair of dumplings wrapped in a napkin and a worn, black and red Tooka doll.
“Lula,” Echo murmured, tracing a finger over a set of thick and clumsy red stitches that reattached an arm. Another set, smaller and neater than the first, reinforced the eye. Wrecker’s stitches on the first? He wondered who did the second set.
Sighing, Echo popped the dumplings in his mouth—they were scantly filled, more dough than anything, but savory and some of the best food to come out of the Kaminoan cafeteria—crumbled the napkin, dropping it to the floor to pick up later, and tucked Lula under his chin.
The doll smelled faintly of soap, blaster fire. It was a familiar smell. One he’d come to associate with his brothers, with home. Outside, the rain fell, the pattern of it on the glass also familiar enough to keep more recent memories at bay, returning Echo to a time when it was just him and Fives and the rest of Domino Squad, huddled together in a barrack not too unlike this one, listening to the same rain.
