#cryptids writing

"Ya hair's growin' out, Kal," Zeb said.

Alexsandr smiled, shutting his eyes against the sun of Yavin IV and leaning into Zeb's hand.

"Aye, probably," he replied.

But he knew he would not trim it. He had no need to anymore. It tickled the back of his neck as Zeb slowly tucked it away from his face, and Alexsandr drank in the touch. He would never cut his hair, if it meant Zeb spending longer and longer carefully untangling it. If it meant a reminder that he was here on Yavin IV, with the rebels. With Zeb.

"You want a trim?" Zeb asked.

Alexsandr squinted up at him, the sun eclipsing his lover and setting his fur alight.

"No," Alexsandr answered. "I think I might let it grow."

Zeb smiled and ran his fingers through it again.

"It suits you."

Hello I bring you more Kallus art

@cameoliob reminded me to draw more Kallus (and Zeb) and also made me think about Kal growing his hair out (and the metaphor of it) with this post

CHECK OUT HER ART!!! ITS VERY GOOD!!

Enjoy this silly excerpt and drawing that is, for once, just fluff

Prompt: "It's just a scratch,"

Prompt: "Forget I asked,"

Omega has not been living with the Bad Batch long, and is desperate to retain their approval and respect. She tries so hard to avoid acting like a child, especially when she is reminded of the things her brothers have endured.

[Hurt/Comfort, Comic then Text]

Omega had sliced open her leg after tinkering with some parts Tech had left for her. It stung so bad that for a moment she had forgotten herself, and shouted for Echo's help as she stumbled down the hall where she knew he was.

Now she just felt sick.

She was no stranger to injury of course, after assisting Nala Se for so long, but she had never seen the extent of Echo's scars, of his cybernetics. She felt stupid. She felt like a child.

Only a baby would cry and call for help over such a silly injury. Especially when her brothers had made it through what they had without crying like children. She didn't deserve to act like this. She shut her eyes tight and hoped he had somehow missed her tripping into the bunk area of The Marauder.

---------------------

Echo sighed and tugged his sleep shirt all the way over his head when he saw Omega frozen in the doorway, silhouetted by the glowing paths of stars from hyperspace. Blood was running down her leg and pooling onto the floor, and while the cuts were not anything serious, he imagined they must sting.

"Omega," He prompted again, and he knelt down to get eye level with her.

Her cheeks were burning pink and she looked away and shook her head.

"It's just a scratch," She repeated.

Echo took in her teary eyes, her clenched fists, and Hunter's shirt hanging loose off of her tiny shoulders. She was so little, but when she was cheering at a risky dive Tech pulled off or an explosion Wrecker set up, hollering with adrenaline right alongside her brothers, it was so easy to forget that she was just a child. That sometimes she needed to be a child.

None of the clones had ever really experienced that themselves, and for that single moment Echo was overwhelmed with a deep piercing desire to give Omega everything that he and his brothers would never get. His heart hurt knowing that she had already missed out on so much. That she already felt like she had to pretend in order to be loved by her brothers.

He wanted to gather her up in a hug and never let go, repeating over and over that it didn't matter how she acted. Her brothers would always be there for her. That she was allowed to be a child. That she was allowed to just be.

Echo wasn't sure she quite knew how.

"Let's get that cleaned up," he said instead. "It'll be alright,"

She gently took his hand and glanced up at him, the shadows framing her blood-shot eyes and snotty nose, and Echo could not breathe past the love he felt for his little sister. He squeezed her hand and they set off towards the cockpit where the medkit was kept.

"I'm proud of you, you know." He added.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have feelings about this one, if y'all couldn't tell. :')

I did it!! Here's my finalized character sheet for my Clone Trooper OC Loth! I love this made-up sleepless man so much :) More character details can be found on this post (or this one) if you're interested!

These are my final prompts for @summer-of-bad-batch

Excerpt:

'The era of the clone trooper was dying a quiet death.

Now, on the beach, Echo thinks that he might have been dying a quiet death too. A somber march towards the end full of rusting metal and clammy skin in solidarity with every single brother who would die in an empty base with an empty stomach and an empty heart.'

--

I used this last piece to try and explore, from the perspective of my favorite character, much of my own struggles, which is part of the reason I became so attached to him in the first place. The Bad Batch are essentially Echo's second chance at life, but more importantly, they keep giving him more chances. They are such a perfect example of how important finding joy within struggle is, and they remind me why I love Star Wars so much in the first place. Because really, in the end, the point of Star Wars is to have hope. In the face of everything, hope is our greatest weapon.

Anyway I hope you enjoy, this piece is very dear to my heart

---

Prompt: “Stop touching me!” // “I’m not touching you!”

Prompt: Crashing Hard

Prompt: Light in the Darkness

***

I did my job, I paid my dues, Love is for fools (Because nobody gives a F*ck)

---

Echo never realized how much he was terrified of change until he found himself on a beach on Pabu watching the waves crash over the sand near his mechanical feet, Rex leaning a heavy shoulder onto his own. They had not spoken for several minutes now, and the silence was heavy in Echo’s throat. 

It had all started when Rex had suggested they take a break from the endless violence and suffocating despair of their tiny freedom movement for their brothers. Echo had fallen asleep over his datapad again, trying to figure out a way to save just a little more of their kin because it felt like they would never catch up to the endless death, the endless decommissioning of their brothers as though they were just reactive pets. It was a spiral that repeated in Echo’s head every moment he had to think.

Rex had shaken him awake, the ship smoothly falling out of hyperspace as Echo had startled and flinched back into reality. His dreams were stained red now, and he always felt exhausted when he woke up.

“How much time?” He asked Rex.

Rex shifted a little, his hand still on Echo’s shoulder, and he glanced out at the stars and the approaching planet, where they were attempting to pick up more of their brothers abandoned with little to no resources, starving slowly for a New Empire. 

“Few more minutes before landfall,” Rex said. He sounded just as tired as Echo.

The mission went on without a hitch. It still hurt. 

Physically, Echo was slower now, he knew it. His body broke down faster and faster, the mechanics popping and clicking at the joins and his already unsteady immune system cracking further and further. Even the slow and steady process of loading up cargo from the base they were quietly dismantling made Echo sweat heavily through his layers of clothing and armor. But he never minded pushing past chronic pain and rasping breath when it mattered. No, what really weighed down the ex-ARC was the hollow faces of their newest rescues. 

The boys didn’t put up a fight. They rarely did anymore. Early on in the clone rebellion, many of their brothers still believed in the rhetoric of the Empire and the Cause. Were ready to die for it. But now, they had all been abandoned. It was cheaper for the Empire, lacking the Kaminoan facilities to actively decommission large amounts of clone troopers (and whose fault was that), to simply post clone troopers at far-away bases and planets that were barely in the grasp of the Empire, and then simply forgetting about them. If the clones were lucky, rations would be sent every other month or so, but as time dragged on, more and more of them were not. There was less battle now, less blood and violence, for Rex and his rebellion to rescue their brothers. Now it was just fighting the passing of time. Every new face Echo saw was empty from loneliness and starvation and the general emptiness of someone who’s had their purpose stripped away from them with no explanation or warning. He could only imagine the thousands more that would never find a new community within the family Rex was doing his best to collect. 

The era of the clone trooper was dying a quiet death.

Now, on the beach, Echo thinks that he might have been dying a quiet death too. A somber march towards the end full of rusting metal and clammy skin in solidarity with every single brother who would die in an empty base with an empty stomach and an empty heart. Echo thinks that Rex might have been able to see it, in the bags under his eyes that matched Rex’s own. In the names of those they couldn’t quite save, carefully scratched into the back of Echo’s datapad. Numbers for those that they never learned the names of. For those who never even got a name in the first place.

Echo fisted the sand in his hand aggressively and looked away from his brother and once, a long time ago, his commanding officer. He didn’t deserve this. Not with so much to still do. So many to still save. Rex laid a hand on his shoulder. It was calloused from holding a blaster and starting to wrinkle and stain from sun damage. It was familiar. Echo leaned into it despite the anger boiling in his stomach. 

Because Rex had asked him to leave.

He had taken Echo to Pabu with a suggestion of a break, and then sitting him down on the beach while Omega dragged Hunter and Wrecker further down the shoreline to search for shells, he had turned to look at his younger brother, and in a soft voice, suggested that he stay on Pabu. Permanently.

“We’re getting old, Echo. The work will never be done. But after all of this, after everything you’ve done, don’t you think you deserve the rest? You have a family here. People who love and miss you. People to grow old alongside of.”

Echo wanted to tell Rex that he was his family, but a familiar feeling of being sliced right down the middle choked him up. It felt like the moment where he had stood at the entrance of the Havoc Marauder for the first time, staring out at a group of people he would die for, had died for, knowing that he could never go back to them. That his place was with these strangers who had shown more acceptance of his new body than those he shared a face with. Than those he had shared everything with. Echo didn’t say anything. 

Rex took it as disagreement because he knew Echo so well, and he shook his head.

“Look vod’ika, this isn’t any easier for me than it must be for you. I just, I want better for you. You deserve better. You deserve to find a life, even for just a few more years, outside of, of this.” Rex gestured at himself, at his battered armor, and the dark lines under his eyes, and Echo wanted to punch him. Because Rex was everything, and the work they did together was everything, and couldn’t Rex see that underneath it all, Echo was nothing? 

And Echo was terrified that underneath it all, he really was nothing.

“There’s, there’s more to do, Rex,” he answered instead. “There’s always more to do.”

He tried to pretend that he didn’t sound defeated as he said it. 

He tried to pretend that he didn’t already know how this was going to go.

That for the second time in his life, he was going to have to split his heart in two, standing in a doorway of somewhere that was strange and unfamiliar, watching his family leave him behind because for the second time in his life, he wasn’t enough.

Echo didn’t know if there were any parts of his heart left to pick apart. So he stayed silent, and refused to look at Rex, and tried not to cry. It felt wrong in a place as beautiful as this, the sunset starting fires on the palm fronds and the water in bright oranges and reds, dancing along the horizon in a joyful celebration of another day gone. 

“Please, vod’ika,” Rex whispered, his hand still on Echo’s shoulder. “Please look at me, please say something.”

Echo could only watch the sun slip away and gasp around his lungs turning to stone. 

Empty.

Empty.

Empty.

“Breath, ori’vod,” Crosshair unceremoniously dropped into the sand on Echo’s other side. He had been sitting a ways away with a book, watching Omega, Hunter, and Wrecker, but Echo hadn’t even noticed him move. He didn’t touch Echo, didn’t worm his way into the spaces Echo had carved out and left empty in case someone needed a place to rest. That wasn’t their way, it never had been. Echo appreciated it. It was just as familiar as the callouses on Rex’s hands, but right now, it felt safer. He took a deep breath.

“I…” He stopped. Took another breath. Started again. “I don’t have anything left.”

Leaning back, Echo let the last little moments of sun warm his face, closing his eyes to the onslaught of emotions tangled up inside him. His brothers were silent, letting him untangle the knots one by one. Out of anyone, Rex and Crosshair both knew how much it took to tug on those strings, not knowing what would happen when they were straightened out. What would be left. Echo continued.

“I know that it’s time to let go. I get it. I’m slowing down, I’m not as… as useful. But do I really deserve this? There’s still so many brothers left behind, and how can I–How can I call them my brothers if I give up on them? If I stay here, and, and what? Retire? I’m drowning on dry land and it feels like no one in the entire galaxy cares about us, about anyone else at all, and what am I supposed to do about it? There’s so much death and we know exactly who’s responsible, but all we can do is just sit here and be angry, and I have been angry for so long now. I don’t know how much longer I can do it. But if that’s the only thing I can do? Then what right do I have to stop? What right do I have to rest?” 

It was Rex’s turn to stay silent. Echo swiped away the tears that were running down his cheeks, cold against the sunburnt skin. He didn’t expect an answer. But Crosshair had never been great about keeping his mouth shut. 

“I spent a long time being angry.” Crosshair began. He was running his fingers along the spine of his cracked novel, something about romance that he wouldn’t admit to enjoying. 

“I spent so much time being angry, that I forgot why it was important that I was at all. I spent so much time hating you all, hating that I had been left behind, that I forgot why it was important that I was angry in the first place.” 

“Why was that?” Echo asked, softly.

Crosshair finally looked at him, smile lines only just starting to form around his eyes and mouth. His eyes were burning, staring straight at Echo, as if he was trying to silently whisper ‘I see you, I see you, I see you’ with every second. 

“Because I loved you. You’re my family.” 

And in a heartbeat, Echo got it. 

Down the shore, Omega squealed as she was lifted up by Wrecker as he cackled. He tossed her into the air and she lifted her arms up, curls whipping in the breeze as she looked as though she was flying, if just for a moment, before landing safely back in Wrecker’s arms. Squirming away as he began to tickle her, laughter bounced down the beach and Hunter joined in the playful teasing. 

“Stop! Haha, stop!” Omega cackled. “Stop touching me!” 

The whole time she was wiggling in joy, which kind of ruined the admonishment, a grin plastered on her face. Hunter and Wrecker’s expressions mirrored her, and Wrecker scooped her up again.

“I’m not touching you!” And he tossed her into the air once again.

Omega’s excited howl was heard easily by the three other men on the beach, and none of them could resist cracking a smile at her exuberance.

“Sometimes,” Rex said, “The hardest thing we can do in the face of tyranny, is to laugh.”

Crosshair nodded, and he turned to Echo one more time, finding his eyes one more time to make sure his brother truly understood.

“You are allowed to enjoy this. You are allowed to experience happiness, when it is something that they have tried so hard to keep from us.”

Finally, he leaned into Echo, Rex taking up his other side, holding their brother securely between them. And Echo collapsed. His body shook from the terror and the rage that had been coiled up in him for so long with nowhere to go. He mourned the loss of countless of his family, thousands that he never got to know. He mourned his own body, and what time had taken from him that he would never get back. But he also shook from the sheer unadulterated hope that flooded through him. Because he was still here, and he had a family who loved him unconditionally, and none of them had ever thought that this was a future any of them would ever see.

Crosshair pulled him into a keldabe and held him there firmly. Rex had his hand on Echo’s back, the other gripping the back of his neck. Omega's laughter danced with Hunter’s and Wrecker’s as they chased each other along the sands of their home.

“You’re allowed to live, Echo,” Crosshair whispered. “We all are.”

***

AO3

I can't believe I managed to finish every single prompt. It was often a challenge, but I'm actually really proud of the work I've done for this. If you'll allow me to be sappy for a moment, this was really my first foray into this community, and I am so glad that I'm here. It has been the most accepting, creative, and kind group of people that I've ever had the pleasure of talking to.

Thank you.

Prompt: Nightmares

Prompt: Radio Silence

"He did not ask why Echo had called, nor for an explanation of the hour or panic in his brother’s voice. This was not the first time this had happened, nor would it be the last.

And he was happy to help, every single time."

@summer-of-bad-batch

***

I hear your voice on the phone

(now I'm no longer alone)

---

Explosions. Fire on his skin. Knives tearing him apart, opening him up as he screamed and pleaded and begged for anything to stop the pain. Please, please please please–

Echo woke with a gasp, hand clenching hard in his sheets and digging into the mattress underneath. He was sweaty and his breath was heavy and labored. The phantom feeling of needles and burns ghosted over him, heating up his scars criss-crossing over his chest and back and up his neck. He scrubbed at them in a frenzy and fumbled for the light next to his bed. Once he could see he scooped up the old scratched up comm on his bedside table and tried to slow his breathing enough to speak into it.

“Co-come in Jaig, come in please,” He begged, his finger slipping on the call button with how clammy he was. 

Nothing.

“Jaig, come in, please, please,” 

Nothing.

“Please, please, vod, please be there,”

His breath was heavy again.

Nothing.

Echo could feel himself beginning to panic again, the racing thoughts only staved off for a single moment as he tried to imagine every possible scenario to explain the radio silence on the other end of the line all at once. There were tears on his face he hadn’t even noticed until they began to drip into his lap and damped his already sweaty sheets.

“Please ori’vod, I need to hear your voice,” He tried one last time. Still nothing.

Then, just as he was about to drop the comm onto the ground in frustration, it crackled to life.

“Are you alright vod’ika?” Came Rex’s voice, muffled through the soft speaker.

Echo nearly sobbed in relief, trying to once again capture his breath back into his lungs.

“Yeah, yeah, just needed to make sure– just needed to hear your voice.”

Rex chuckled a little, and while he sounded tired, there was nothing but love in his tone as he confirmed that he was there, before launching into a report of the most recent going’s on with his group of rebel clones. He did not ask why Echo had called, nor for an explanation of the hour or panic in his brother’s voice. This was not the first time this had happened, nor would it be the last.

And he was happy to help, every single time.

Cause they say that it's based on everyone else's memories, which means that none of his friends really understand him well, since his fakes are so obvious from the start

I made myself cry with this one boys

@summer-of-bad-batch

Prompt: Cadets

Prompt: “You really think you’re going without me? Not going to happen.”

CW: Death (the gentle, soft kind, that we all hope awaits us)

One of my favorite lines from this:

'But he and his brothers were collared beasts no longer. They were standing on shaking new legs, reborn as something gentler, with teeth never meant to rip and tear and hurt. All learning to walk together.'

Something about those dog metaphors ruins me every time. I wanted to explore the depression that Echo struggles with, and how that looks when someone doesn't have a name for it, but still faces it head on every day. How it looks with a found family that you didn't necessarily ask for, not at first. Anyway, hope you enjoy! Comments/constructive criticism welcome :)