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Echo had seen – and done – a lot since first leaving Kamino. First, with Domino Squad by his side, then with just Fives.
Then, by himself.
Following his near death at the Citadel, he had been captured by the Separatists, who transformed him into a cyborg. Without his consent – and very much without his input – they had outfitted him with cybernetic replacements for his lower torso and legs, while his right arm, which he had lost in the explosion, was replaced with a socket-arm that allowed him to interface with computer systems.
That time was still a blur for Echo, but he knew that sometime following his capture, he had been sold to the foreman of the Techno Union, Emir Wat Tambor, and further experimented on.
And forced to betray his vod’e.
Tambor had taken Echo to Skako Minor and placed him in stasis – preventing him from regaining control of his consciousness – and forced Echo to remotely feed information for the Separatists' campaign on the planet Anaxes.
After his rescue, when it came down to it, Echo couldn’t bare to face the vod’e he had once considered aliit.
Not after his mind had betrayed them.
Which was, in a very roundabout way, how he found himself skulking in the underbelly of Coruscant with Clone Force 99 for company.
The Bad Batch.
The Commando Squad was… unique, to say the least. They weren’t like any vod’e Echo had worked with before, at very least.
He liked it.
“Echo, you with us?” a voice crackled through Echo’s com, drawing him back to the present.
“Yes, Sergeant,” Echo replied immediately, trying not to sound – or feel – guilty.
He didn’t want to slow the squad down more than he already suspected that he was.
Tech had already, in that blunt way of his, explained that they didn’t usually operate on Coruscant, preferring to leave the city planet to their vod’e in the Guard, and the jetiise. But, with Echo newly cleared for duty and sorely in need of something to do, they’d taken the suggestion of the Kaminiise to hunt down rumours of spice dealings on the planet.
Not their usual calibre of job.
But something manageable for Echo.
A field test.
“Any sign of trouble?”
“It would help if I had a better idea of who – or what – I was looking for,” Echo pointed out, even as he continued his rounds through the murky alleys of Lower Coruscant.
“Our sources indicate that the individuals dealing, trading, and running spice on-planet may belong to various affiliate groups, including Death Watch, Black Sun, the Pyke Syndicate, the Hutt Clan, or the Night Brothers,” Tech’s voice crackled through the com.
“So, really anyone then.”
“That is an accurate assessment.”
Echo sighed and rubbed at his forehead. He didn’t have a headache, per say, but… He did miss the straightforwardness of battle. A vod always knew where they stood on a battlefield. With the Bad Batch, everything was… murky.
It was frustrating, to say the least.
But work was work, and Echo was grateful to be back off Kamino and away from the prying eyes and wandering hands of the Kaminiise. He owed it to Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, and Crosshair to at least try.
~~~
Nearly an hour later, Echo was wondering if he wouldn’t have just been better off karking defecting.
Everyone on the Lower Levels of Coruscant looked – and acted – suspicious. It didn’t seem to matter that Echo was disguised as a droid – people still gave him a wide berth, and eyes him suspiciously when he got too near. Probably because the vast majority of them were currently doing something illegal.
Or they were planning on it.
Or they had already done it.
Echo was just about ready to give up when he caught sight of yet another cloaked figure cutting their way through the gloom. This far down, it wasn’t an unfamiliar sight, but there was something about them that Echo simply couldn’t ignore. If the way they moved hadn’t caught his eye, the brown leather satchel at their side would have – it was GAR issue and uncannily familiar. Kix had had a similar one for his off-duty medical supplies, before… Everything.
Echo had no idea if he still had it.
Echo quickly slipped out of his current path and rerouted to follow the stranger from a distance, careful to maintain his purposefully constructed disguise as a droid. Most people ignored droids – or avoided them – and it was easier to fade into obscurity.
“I am in pursuit of a suspicious individual,” Echo relayed through the coms.
“We have your location,” Tech confirmed.
“Ready to move in at your word,” Hunter added.
“It’s time to brawl!” Wrecker announced heartily.
“I have eyes on Echo and his target,” Crosshair relayed blandly.
The suspect moved fluidly in a way that was both familiar and foreign to Echo, who was still learning to navigate confidently with the cybernetic replacements for his lower torso and legs. When they veered sharply down an alleyway, Echo quickened his pace, not even hesitating to follow, since his suspect hadn’t given even the slightest indication that they had noticed him.
Only to find himself starting down the barrel of a DC-17.
“Why are you following me?”
That voice –
“His suspect’s got him at blasterpoint,” Crosshair drawled through the coms. “Should I take the shot?”
“No!” Echo yelped, momentarily forgetting his predicament. “I – uh – stand-down.”
The gun tilted downward, a momentary lapse in judgement, and Echo didn’t hesitate. He lunged, seizing the other’s wrist and twisting so that the gun was pointed away from his body as he grabbed it with his good hand, and spun away.
Or at least, he tried to.
His assailant moved with inhuman speed, snaking a leg behind Echo’s and tugging, sending them both tumbling to the ground as they grappled for the blaster.
“Now they’re engaged in what appears to be a rudimentary spar,” Crosshair reported blandly. “I think the reg might actually be losing.”
Echo growled out a curse at that – kark Crosshair, this shabuir was fast – and struggled to regain the upper hand as they twisted and turned.
After several long moments, Echo’s good hand snatched the blaster and tossed it away, the clattering echoing around the alleyway as they rolled. For a moment, Echo thought he had his assailant – then he found himself flat on his back, gasping for air as he was bested by a move far too familiar to be a coincidence.
“Vod’ika?” Echo gasped out.
His assailant froze, still perched atop him, at the words.
“What – what did you just say?”
“The suspect has Echo pinned,” Crosshair reported diligently.
“Ahsoka?”
Echo’s assailant released him as though she had been burned, and pulled pack sharply. The movement finally – finally – caused her hood to drop, revealing a face as familiar to Echo as those of his vod’e.
Ahsoka Tano.
Her fingers trembled as she reached forward to hit the release latch on the buy’ce Echo was wearing to disguise himself as a droid. He shifted slightly and reached up to fully remove it, letting his vod’ika see what he was – and what had become of him.
“Echo,” Ahsoka murmured softly.
Then she was pulling him to his feet and dragging him into a crushing hug, clinging to his back just as tightly as Echo clung to her shoulders.
“We’re nearly at his location,” Hunter related through the coms. “Sitrep, Crosshair?”
“They are… hugging?”
“What?”
Ahsoka had grown, since the Citadel, her montrals nearly equal in height to Echo now, despite the prosthetics. They felt longer and thicker too, where they were pressed against Echo’s chest and torso as Ahsoka clung to him.
“When Rex said… I didn’t believe it,” Ahsoka choked out, not bothering to pull back or loosen her grip. Echo was glad for it, as memories roared through his mind. Of sparring with Commander Tano, just after he and Fives had joined the 501st, not even aware of who she was. Of late-night study sessions, reading up on the history of the Republic and the art of war over far too much caf and Fives’ complaints. Of cuddling on empty bunks and sharing stories while she recovered from her ordeal on Mortis. Of teaching her how to curse in Mando’a and how to cheat at Sabacc.
“I’m here, vod’ika,” Echo assured her.
Ahsoka let out a choked sob at that, and clung tighter to Echo – not even pulling away at the sound of approaching footsteps.
One set of those, at least, was heavy enough to be Wrecker’s.
Echo activated his commlink via his cybernetic implants, speaking softly but clearly to his vod’e.
“Stand down,” Echo ordered. “Ahsoka Tano is not a threat.”
“Did he say Ahsoka Tano?” Wrecker asked over the coms – though they were close enough now that Echo could just make out the boom of his voice without it.
“I believe so,” Tech confirmed.
“Like the jetii Ahsoka Tano?”
“Technically, Ahsoka Tano is no longer a Jedi,” Tech explained to Wrecker – and the rest of the team. “After being framed and falsely accused of a bombing at the Jedi Temple, Ahsoka Tano chose to leave the Jedi Order of her own volition, even after General Anakin Skywalker cleared her name.”
“Vod’e” Echo growled, aware of Ahsoka tensing against him. Karking Togruta and their heightened sense of hearing. “She can hear you.”
Silence on the comms –
“My apologies for my vod’e, Commander Tano,” Hunter said, from directly behind Echo.
“Not Commander,” Ahsoka replied wetly. “Just Ahsoka, now.”
“Sure thing, Commander,” Echo replied gently, with a quirked smile as he looked down as his vod’ika, still wrapped in his arms. This close, he could see how thin she had grown, and how gaunt she looked.
Kix would undoubtedly have something to say about her not eating enough.
Rex wouldn’t let her out of his sight ever again – Echo certainly wasn’t planning on it.
“Did you forget how to eat properly without Kix badgering you about it?” Echo asked, effectively ignoring Hunter, Tech, and Wrecker behind him in favour of focusing on the Togruta in his arms.
“No,” Ahsoka replied with a familiar pout. “I’ve just had to be more mindful of how much – and how often – I eat. Just while I get myself settled.”
Which meant she was running low on credits, and was rationing whatever she had left to stretch her resources as far as she could.
Hunter, apparently, reached the same conclusion.
“You’re welcome to join us for late meal aboard the Havoc Marauder,” the Sergeant offered. “Tech requisitioned far more rations than we’re likely to need on this mission, and we have plenty of space for you to bunk down for the night.”
Ahsoka pulled a bit further back to peer over Echo’s shoulder at the gathered clones, her brow furrowing as she took them in. Echo chuckled and released her to that he could turn more fully.
“Ahsoka, meet Experimental unit Clone Force 99,” Echo said. “They're – we’re – defective clones with, uh… desirable mutations.
“Desirable mutations?” A nose wrinkle at that, like she had a bad taste in her mouth.
“We are all unique in that our enhanced abilities and physical form deviate from that of our progenitor, Jango Fett,” Tech explained. “Hunter has enhanced sensory abilities, while Wrecker has an enhanced muscular form. Our sniper, Crosshair, has enhanced eyesight, while I have an enhanced mental capacity.”
“I – oh,” Ahsoka nodded, clearly still out of her element.
“They were with Rex and General Skywalker, when they rescued me from the Techno Union,” Echo explained. “I – I joined their squad, afterwards. I couldn’t stay with the 501st, not after everything.”
That, at least, Ahsoka clearly understood.
“If we’re all done with the pleasantries,” Crosshair drawled through the comms.
Hunter snorted before responding.
“We’re enroute back to the Havoc Marauder,” the Sergeant confirmed. “You can meet us there, Cross.”
Echo glanced down at Ahsoka.
“Will you come with us?” he asked gently – hopefully.
“I just need to grab my speeder bike first,” Ahsoka responded, glancing over her shoulder – likely towards the bike, hidden somewhere in the gloom of the alley.
“You had the credits to buy a speeder bike, but not dinner?” Echo grumbled, following her away from his vod’e to retrieve said bike.
“I – uh… Well, Fox gave me the credits for the speeder bike,” Ahsoka admitted hesitantly.
“Commander Fox?”
A nod, then –
“After I left the Order, I crashed on the cot in his office, a few times,” Ahsoka explained. “Before. Not since…”
Not since Fox had shot and killed Fives.
Echo didn’t say anything else – there wasn’t really anything else to say. The two images warred in his mind – that of the man who had murdered Fives, and that of a man who scrounged up whatever spare credits he had to help a vod’ika he didn’t even particularly like.
“Echo?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’m happy that you’re not dead.”
~~~
Much later, The Bad Batch quietly observed Echo and Ahsoka from the cockpit. The two were asleep now, but they’d given Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, and Crosshair plenty to think about before succumbing to exhaustion.
“Did you know that the 501st adopted one of their jetii?” Tech asked Hunter curiously.
Hunter shook his head.
It was obvious that they had adopted her though. Echo was comfortable around her in a way they hadn’t seen him be with anyone except Rex, bullying her into eating more rations than should have been possible before he insisted that she sleep in his bunk.
She’d given it right back, refusing to crash in his bunk unless they shared it, going so far as the sit resolutely on the floor of the Havoc Marauder until Echo growled out an exasperated sigh and flopped onto his bunk. Then, the former ARC trooper had begrudgingly allowed the Togruta to clamber in on top of him, wrapping herself around Echo firmly.
They’d both fallen asleep within minutes.
“Did you finish preparing the extra rations and medical supplies for her?” Hunter asked, glancing towards Tech, who nodded.
“I slipped in some of the credits the Kaminiise gave us as well,” Tech added.
“He should go with her,” Crosshair rumbled out, his sharp eyes never leaving the sleeping duo.
“He should,” Hunter agreed. “But he won’t.”
His honour, his vod’e, his loyalty to the GAR and the Republic’s cause, meant too much to the cyborg for him to abandon the fight now.
Not when he still thought he had so many debts to pay.
Not when he still blamed himself for what the Techno Union made him do.
No, Echo would stay until either he marched on or the war was won. There was no other way for him, and he knew no other way. One day, perhaps, he would be able to reunite with his vod’ika as a free man.
But for now, the Bad Batch has a job to do.
And Ahsoka Tano had a life to live.