Knockback Ch. 4
Squaring his shoulders, Echo turned to face his brother, wanting to have this conversation before he lost his nerve.“As much as I’d like to pretend they’re not, things are different now. I am different now, Fives.” He let his words sit for a long moment before continuing.
Echo and Fives have a long-awaited conversation, and Echo learns about what the 501st has been up to in his absence.
Ch. 4: Missing
After postponing for nearly a month, the medics had finally determined that Echo was medically stable enough to be put under anesthesia for his kidney transplant. Now that his lung capacity had improved and his blood sugar had more or less stabilized, this surgery would be another step on the road to recovery.
They’d also discussed the potential merits of performing an islet cell procedure while Echo was out, but that would all depend on Echo’s reaction to the anesthesia. The Seppies had given him more than his standard share of sedation while they had their hands on him, and between that and his lower-than-average body mass, the medics had already explained the potential risks of the juggling act of keeping Echo under anesthesia for long enough to complete the procedure without risking respiratory arrest.
As the medics explained the procedure to him, Echo’s fist tightened even as he put on a brave face, like he’d done with most of his recovery. If Echo never saw the inside of a medbay again, it’d be too soon, but he wouldn’t let a case of medbay jitters stop him from recovering.
If he let his fear stop him, that would be letting the Separatists win— that, and Echo was eagerly awaiting the day that the medics stopped greeting him with questions about his urinary output. A trooper wanted his privacy, after all.
Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t an anxious mess for the twenty-four hours leading up to his procedure— and he wasn’t the only one.
“How are you doing?” Fives asked for the third time that day, approaching his batchmate carefully, mindful of the way the others’ fist clenched his pillow as he laid facedown on his bunk in a perfect picture of sheer frustration.
Echo gave a dramatic groan into the pillow before turning his head to give Fives a put-upon look. “I wish you’d stop asking me that. Because if I answer that honestly, then we’ll both be freaking out, and I can’t deal with that right now.”
At that, Fives grimaced apologetically. “Sorry…” Rationally, he knew that his reactions over the past few weeks hadn’t been the most helpful. Echo was going through a lot right now, and it was unfair to make him deal with their combined worry.
Echo sighed, expression softening slightly as he pulled himself up into a sitting position. “I know you are…” He ran a hand through his patchy hair, still shorter than regulation but longer than it used to be.
They couldn’t keep doing this. Echo pushing himself just past his limits, and Fives tapping the breaks every chance he got, overprotective and overanxious in equal measures— it was wearing on both of them, and honestly… Echo missed his brother. But they couldn’t go back to the way things were either.
Nowhere to go but forward.
Squaring his shoulders, Echo turned to face his brother, wanting to have this conversation before he lost his nerve.“As much as I’d like to pretend they’re not, things are different now. I am different now, Fives.” He let his words sit for a long moment before continuing.
“And every time I improve, I still feel like you’re holding my recovery to an unattainable standard. I’m not a newly-minted ARC trooper, fresh off the press— but I can breathe, I can walk, and I can make my own decisions, vod, and that’s parsecs better than I doing was even a month ago. Treating me like anything less is only going to slow me down, and I’ve already wasted enough time to get here.”
Fives’ expression caved, shoulders slumping as he responded. “I-I know… I just— I don’t want to lose you, vod.” Not again. The unspoken thought churned in the back of his head before he pushed it away. Once was more than enough for an accelerated lifetime.
Echo gave him a bittersweet smile— that was the crux of it, after all. “I don’t want to lose you either— it feels like we’ve barely gotten to talk recently about anything other than my recovery, and I still don’t know even half of what you’ve been up to while I was gone.” He paused again before finally meeting his brother’ eyes. “I miss my vod, Fives.” He shot Fives an earnest look, and with a pool of guilt in his stomach, Fives realized that he was right.
He’d been so caught up in the mix of anxiety, anticipation, and guilt at having Echo back and keeping a secret from him that he’d forgotten; just like Echo had been lost to him these past months, he’d been lost to Echo.
Fives needed to step up. He needed to do better— be better for his brother. Inhibitor chips or not, he wouldn’t let this secret get in the way of getting to know his batchmate again after so long spent apart.
Fives gave a weary sigh, mirroring Echo’s position on the bunk next to him. “I missed you too. And you’re right— I haven’t been as… present as I should’ve been.” He gave him an apologetic smile that came out as more of a grimace.
Echo nudged his shoulder with well-worn familiarity, “I get it, we’re in the middle of a campaign. You’ve got a lot on your plate, but if you’ve got the time, I want to catch up— just you and me.” After all, there was no way Echo was sleeping tonight, and he could use the distraction.
“Sure,” Fives agreed easily. He had perimeter duty in the morning, but he’d pushed through with less sleep before.
“What do you want to know?” Fives asked. He still couldn’t tell Echo about the chips… but he could fill him in on almost everything else.
So he did.
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“So Hardcase took out a whole Seppie Supply ship? I didn’t even know he knew how to fly.”
“He didn’t,” Fives remarked dryly, remembering how close they’d all come to eating duracrete the first time they tried piloting the Umbaran aircraft.
“Ah.” Echo winced internally.
“Somehow we made it there in one piece, but getting back… that was another story.” Fives ran an anxious hand through his hair. “It was closer than I’d like to admit, but I was able to grab him after the first explosion, before the whole ship went up in flames, and we made it back to the 501st— and with Krell in charge, there was a firing squad waiting for us when we returned.”
He wanted to skim over the details and save Echo the pain the memories brought him, but he’d already gotten in trouble for treating Echo with cadet gloves once, so he pushed forward.
“Looking in their faces, I-I just couldn’t— No clone should go out that way,” Fives swallowed thickly, echoing his own words from back then. “Thankfully, the troopers assigned to the firing squad all seemed to agree— none of them could take the shot.”
He cleared his throat before moving on. “But Hardcase was hurt pretty badly, and that hutuun’la traitor wanted to ‘Let nature take its course,’ instead of allowing basic medical care— it took months of rehab for him to get back to active duty, after everything that happened.”
Echo winced sympathetically. He knew what that was like, and it was reassuring, in a way, that he wasn’t alone in that— but the thought that a Jedi General, even a fallen one, could be capable of such cruelty and sadism—
It made him grateful for General Skywalker, although Echo couldn’t help but wonder at the emptiness in their General’s expression these days, his smile absent more often than not, and a hole in the 501st left unfilled. War was taking its toll on all of them— Jedi and clones alike, and the 501st was no exception.
At first, when he’d noticed Commander Tano’s absence, Echo had feared the worst, only slightly reassured when he learned that wasn’t the case. He’d always wondered how the little biter would’ve done with her own battalion, but even knowing that she’d left, he couldn’t blame her for it. Commander Tano had been made for war— like them— and she was kriffing good at it, but she’d taken the exit that none of them could, and he would never hold it against her— none of them would.
“And the Commander? Where is she?” He’d asked earlier in Fives’ explanation of everything that had happened in his absence.
“Last I heard, Coruscant. Ran into her not long ago— she seemed alright, a little taller than when I’d last seen her. Had on this scrapper gear, so I guess she’s found work.” He gave Echo a half-grin, “Helped us out of a tight spot.”
“Sounds like her.” He’d remarked at the time.
“And Krell? What happened to him?” Echo asked, moving on, praying there wasn’t another lightsaber-wielding Seppie on the loose.
“Tup got him, actually.” Fives grinned, all teeth. “Stunned the chakaar when he tried to make a run for it and got tangled in a vixus.”
“Kriffing serves him right!” Echo pumped his remaining fist, chest full with newfound respect for the younger trooper.
Fives’ smile faded as he thought back to the reason for Krell’s capture, “A lot happened with Krell that I still don’t feel good about, but the long and short of it is that he tampered with holo footage to trick the 501st and 212th into firing on each other, thinking they were Umbarans in stolen armor. He was a traitor, plain and simple, and he died the same as anyone else who takes a blaster bolt to the back.” Fives finished with grim satisfaction.
“Can’t imagine GAR Command was too happy about it,” Echo mused to himself. “So, who was it that took the shot? I’d assume Rex, since he was the one in charge.”
“Dogma, actually. The kid had a pretty rough time of it— still reminds me of you before you got your head out of your reg manual—“
“Hey!”
“—but he figured it out eventually. He’s a good vod, and a terrifying medic, now that he’s fully trained.” Fives huffed a tired laugh between fending off Echo’s durasteel limbs, and Echo couldn’t bring himself to disagree.
Falling into silence, Echo’s thoughts turned back to the last unexplained absence in the 501st. Time to address the bantha in the room…
“…And Kix?”
Fives was quiet for a long moment as he put his thoughts together before finally speaking. “… I can’t tell you all the details. The mission’s still pretty classified, but we were making our way back to the 501st after getting separated when we were boarded by a squadron of Commando droids.” Rubbing fiercely at his eyes, Fives paused before continuing.
“Their tactics were near-perfect— the pilot and I got taken out by knockout gas before the hatch had even opened. The others were either injured, outgunned, or both, and Kix convinced them to hide in the smuggler’s hatch before letting himself get taken in our place… Hardcase was there when it happened…” He murmured, ears still ringing with the phantom cries of Hardcase’s stinging regret. Echo leaned into his side, offering silent support, even as he wracked his mind for why this all sounded so familiar.
“We’re pretty sure he’s still alive— they wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble when they could’ve just gunned us down and been done with it.” Fives sighed internally, not knowing which option would be worse. “We’re hoping we can get more information the next time we raid a Seppie info tower, but…” He trailed off, and Echo knew why.
As a returned POW, Echo himself was one-in-a-million. The 501st could only be lucky so many times…
And yet— something about Kix’s capture rang familiar in the back of his mind in a way that he couldn’t shake for the rest of that night, long after Fives had curled up next to him on his bunk, exhausted snoring droning rhythmically in the background, worn out by the day’s emotions.
Somehow, Echo knew the details of Kix’s capture… if only he could remember why.
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Ao3 Link TBD!
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3