#knockback fic

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.

———————————————————

“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!

Chapter 5: Knowing

At long last, Echo felt like he was truly on the mend.

Other than a scratchy throat from the intubation process, Echo’s surgery went without complications, and after only 24 hours of bedrest in medbay and a series of bacta injections, he was cleared to return to the barracks to sleep off the rest of his recovery.

Between Fives’ hourly check-ins, Tech pestering him about the hydraulics in his knees, and the rest of the Bad Batch’s visits, Echo hardly had time to be bored. After much pestering, Echo even managed to convince Crosshair to teach him how to flick a toothpick hard enough to hit a target, even if Echo only hit his target every tenth attempt now.

A week later, when medbay finally cleared him for light conditioning and low impact training, Echo was raring to go, steps nearly skipping as he headed straight for the training mats. It wasn’t until he pushed open the doors to find a room full of unfamiliar shinies and near-identical side-eyes that he remembered his current nonconformities.

He’d spent so much time with more familiar members of the 501st and the Bad Batch that he’d almost forgotten, in his haste, how much he differed from the average trooper. His hair had finally started to grow in at a semi-normal consistency, but between his still-sickly pallor, the conspicuous number of prosthetics, and the not-so-subtle durasteel plating going down the length of his spine, Echo couldn’t help but stand out in a room full of identical troopers. The ports drilled into his skull were just icing on the cake.

Pushing past his instinctive discomfort, Echo headed for a less heavily occupied corner of the room, starting first with a cycling machine and then moving onto core strengthening and arm workouts. According to Patch, his core strength was his biggest limiting factor at the moment, now that he’d started to build up his endurance, and he could definitely feel it when he was moderately winded and aching after only ten minutes of light exercise.

When he’d first started as an ARC trooper, his body was a finely-tuned weapon, and every movement was planned out with pinpoint accuracy for maximum impact. Now, he was lucky if he was coordinated enough to balance on one leg for ten seconds, although he was improving every day. He’d also been steadily increasing his protein intake, now that he could stomach regular rations, and his body was finally starting to feel like it was within his own control again— at least, the parts of it that were fully him.

His prosthetics, although greatly improved by Tech’s tinkering, still felt alien and unfamiliar— like an unsteady surface that would give way without warning, at least to Echo’s own mind. Patch never would’ve given the okay for unsupervised strength training if he thought Echo’s prosthetics were anything less than functional, and Tech would’ve been insulted by the insinuation that his work was anything less than perfect.

Still, no matter how much he tried to convince himself of the opposite, he couldn’t help but feel like he was stepping into a void, whenever he truly slowed down enough to focus on each step, so he tried his hardest not to think about it. And that had served him well for most of his recovery, when dissociating from the pain kept him sane, but now that he needed to pay attention to things like weight distribution and movement patterns, Echo struggled to retrain himself to pay attention to what was going on with his body.

More than a month into his recovery, and Echo still couldn’t help the instinctive hesitation shifting from one foot to the other. His stomach pooled with frustration at just how far he had to go before he could be considered battle-worthy, and the self-consciousness in his gut only doubled when he launched himself ineffectively at one of the punching bags, barely even getting it swinging. He didn’t miss the choked-off snicker from one of the unfamiliar troopers around him.

He put so much effort into ignoring the unwanted audience around him that he almost decked Hardcase when he came up behind him unexpectedly with a grin, only to duck away at the last second.

“Geez, warn a guy before sending him back to the med station, vod! They’ve seen enough of my ugly mug down there for a lifetime.” Hardcase chuckled good-naturedly, hands up in a faux surrender.

Echo pushed down the impulse to shoot back, “We’ve all got the same face, vod,” instead giving him an eye roll followed by a sheepish grin.

“Sorry, vod. Thought you were part of the audience.” Echo apologized with a meaningful glance to the not-so-subtle onlookers scattered around the room, earning a brief moment of confusion followed by a fierce surge of protectiveness.

Shooting a surly look at one of the more obvious gawkers, Hardcase rolled his good shoulder in a threatening gesture, “Lookin’ for something?” He asked, ready to follow through with the threat to his squadmate— or he would’ve, before Echo’s hand latched on his shoulder and the perpetrator wisely took his exit, along with a good portion of the other troopers in the room.

Echo sighed in weary amusement. He appreciated the gesture, really, but he couldn’t be the reason that Hardcase got written up for picking a fight with the 187th— again. Still though, he couldn’t help the stab of guilt that he needed someone else to fight his battles for him.

It was that, more than anything, that strengthened the force behind his next blow, sending the punching bag swaying just a bit more than before.

“Now that’s more like it!” Hardcase grinned before coming alongside Echo. “Mind if I make a few adjustments?” He offered, and Echo shrugged easily before allowing Hardcase to adjust his stance to something a little more stable before gesturing for him to take a few more hits.

“Can’t help but notice that you’re leading with your left side. Is your prosthetic hurting you?” Hardcase asked after watching Echo almost exclusively attack the punching bag with his remaining intact limb.

“No, it’s fine. I just– don’t wanna mess up all of Tech’s hard work, or end up in recovery for longer if any wires are loose.” Echo muttered, grimacing at the phantom feeling of sparks of electricity, and how they’d always lance up his arm anytime he moved wrong in those first few months of his captivity. He’d learned eventually how to move without setting his missing limbs on fire, but by now, the habit of guarding his movements had set in, and he still flinched minutely at the expectation of pain when it was jostled unexpectedly.

Hardcase shot him a dubious look. “I’m pretty sure Tech made it tough enough to hold up against a standard issue punching bag. ‘Sides, you’ve got a battering ram for an arm now! I’ll bet you could beat the shebs off General Grievous with that thing and it wouldn’t even get scratched.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Echo’s responding smile looked more like a grimace as he responded. “It’s just an adjustment, is all…”

Sure, he’d used his scomp arm during his escape, but out of all his modifications, it was the most visible reminder of how he’d been changed– altered by his experiences and his captors. Honestly, he tried not to think about the worst of the non-consensual body modifications he’d been subjected to, preferring to pretend they were simple prosthetic limb replacements most of the time.

Back when Tech had offered to replace his old prosthetics, he’d declined the other’s offer to show him the schematics and exactly how it connected to his neural interfaces, but that lack of information was only contributing to his hesitation now, and Echo knew he couldn’t allow his hang-ups to get in the way of returning to the battlefield.

So with a determined stance, he pushed back the instinctive fear and dread at the thought of moving a little too fast— or a little too hard— and lashed out with all his might, grinning at Hardcase’s answering whoop of excitement.

——————————————————

“Has anyone ever told you that the scar on your stomach looks kinda like a belly button?” Hardcase asked with a cheeky grin that only widened when Echo’s arm reached out to smack him, water splashing in the echoing shower room. Echo had never been more grateful for the generators powering the basecamp that made such luxuries possible, leaning into the spray with a blissful sigh.

Hardcase had never been one to shy away from sensitive topics, and Echo could only feel grateful for the others’ tendency to rush straight past any social niceties. For all of Hardcase’s faults, Echo never had to worry about Hardcase treating him like glass— which was a rarity these days.

Sitting on a shower chair with all his scars revealed, Echo couldn’t help but feel curious at the other’s surprisingly blase attitude towards Echo’s long recovery. However, many of his questions had died in his throat when Hardcase had removed his own blacks and revealed the extensive scarring along his own torso. After finishing their own shower and moving to the locker room, Echo let out a low whistle, gaze drawn up to the other’s now-familiar tattoo.

Scaly browns and greens encompassed the worst of the damage in a dramatic exclamation of life; Hardcase had leaned into his experience, in typical Hardcase fashion, and the krayt dragon emblazoned across his shoulder and down the length of his back only served as a reminder of that shereshoy.

“I see Kix’s technique has only improved in my absence,” Echo grinned, only a little melancholy at the missing medic’s mention. Before he’d gone missing, Kix’s steady hands had been well-known for their precision and skill with both a scalpel and a tattoo machine.

"It’s a tattoo machine, not a tattoo gun— but if you want me to get my DC-15, I’m sure we can arrange something," The medic had always insistently corrected whenever anyone made the mistake of referring to it as a tattoo gun. Fives had certainly gotten an earful on more than one occasion from the offended medic, but when it came to honoring lost vode or ensuring a design would stick, there was no one better in the 501st Legion.

Hardcase’s smirk matched his, as he flexed his muscles none-too-shyly. “It’s gotta be one of his best works, if I do say so myself.” As batchmates, Hardcase had been more than happy to volunteer as Kix’s test subject on more than one occasion growing up, with the more memorable experiments including a tip-yip on his left foot, among other things.

“Looks like it must’ve taken a while to finish. How many sessions did it take?”

Hardcase rolled his eyes good-naturedly, “Kix insisted on four or five, cuz of the nerve damage, but the line art was mostly done after the first round. He finished it about a month before— well, y’know.” Hardcase trailed off, mood heavy but not sour with grief like Echo had expected.

Each vode handled loss differently— although Echo would be hard-pressed to label it as grief, given the beating any trooper incurred when they insinuated that Kix might be dead. And as much as Echo wanted to tread lightly with this topic, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he needed to know.

“I’ve heard the basics from Fives,” Echo started slowly, tasting each word on his tongue before letting himself speak. “But I haven’t really heard the details of how he was taken, and I just— can’t help but feel like there’s something familiar about the whole mess. Like it’s something I knew, before—” He trailed off.

Maybe something I could help with.

But he kept that thought to himself, knowing just how dangerous false hope could be, in a war as long as this. Hardcase had never been one for false reassurances or subtlety, but as he shared more and more details about the mission leading to Kix’s capture, Echo realized just why Fives had been so tight-lipped about the experience.

Hardcase hadn’t told him everything, sure, but he’d said enough. Somewhere between the description of their narrow escape from Kamino, to their transport ship’s exact make-and-model, to the description of the Seppie’s lightning-fast and terrifyingly efficient boarding procedures made his stomach go cold. With his head ringing with the once-buried memory of ones-and-zeroes detailing a meaningless enemy defeated in a meaningless war, he came to a chilling realization.

That was his algorithm, his strategies— his brothers. And he’d been used against them in the worst possible way.

Fives hadn’t wanted to tell him— but he had to have known. Fives hadn’t told Echo that he was responsible for Kix’s capture, indirectly or not— because he’d known just how much this had the potential to shatter the vice-grip on the wall of guilt settled deep in his core.

And the knowing— the knowing hurt. It was one thing to know, abstractly, that his knowledge had been used to win battles half-a-galaxy away, hurting vode he’d never known, but it was another thing to know that his survival had resulted in suffering for the brothers closest to him.

And yet… now that he knew that he was responsible, Echo straightened with renewed determination— if he’d gotten their vod kidnapped, maybe Echo could be the key to saving him.

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AO3 Link: