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He didn’t want to do this.
Echo sighed shakily and let his head thump back against the bulkhead he was leaning against, the white paint marker in his hand clicking faintly as he shook the contents to make it pliable enough to use. The upper loft hold really wasn’t that big of a space to begin with but it was one of the few places on the ship one could go to get some privacy. He loved Omega to death but he didn’t want to answer her questions or deal with Wrecker’s sad mastiff pup eyes at the moment. He didn’t need to see Hunter’s knowing look tinged with a heaviness that none of them should have to experience even as he turned away from Echo respectfully. He didn’t want to deal with the anger that had only recently started radiating off Tech in waves causing their youngest brother to start acting like a bastardized version of himself mixed with an unhealthy dose of Crosshair’s infamous temper.
He just needed this moment to himself.
It wasn’t like he was unaffected either, he could just handle it better. He brought his socket up to lightly tap against the right side of his chest four times. He’d unfortunately lost brothers before. He's dealt with the influx and convoluted feelings before. He'd learned over the years how to keep going as his brothers marched on ahead where he had yet to tread. He couldn’t fault the rest of the Batchs' reaction.
Losing Crosshair had hurt them more than any one of them wanted to admit.
When he had first met Crosshair -as in really met him and not in the mad chaotic rush that they had getting out and the resulting fight at the Poletec village Skako Minor- he had been sitting in the jump seats after having left Anaxes with the Bad Batch for the first time. He knew he had been right to get onto the modified attack shuttle with them but sitting there as Tech got ready to jump them into hyperspace, Echo couldn’t help but wonder if he had made a big mistake. He didn’t even really know these guys besides the fact that they were damn good in a fight and unpredictable as all get out.
To this day he doesn’t know why Crosshair had stayed in the back with him when the rest had filed into the cockpit. All he remembers was sitting there, staring at a spot on the floor absently and clenching his jaw so tight it was giving him a headache. Of course everything back then had given him a headache but the tension building in his head and down along his spine was both familiar and not. He wasn’t used to his cybernetics and he had just willingly stepped onto a ship without any gear besides what he was wearing to go karking knew where.
The ship jolted as it jumped into hyperspace but Echo paid it no mind. What he did pay attention to was Crosshair suddenly getting up with an irritated huff and stalking back towards the aft of the ship as if Echo had somehow offended him with his mere presence alone. Echo hadn’t bothered tracking him far, more interested as his mind barked itself in vicious little anxiety ridden circles as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to do now.
After thumping around and opening a locker, Crosshair had come back and dropped a blanket that was still partially folded on his head. Echo had made a surprised noise and shoved the blanket back out of his face enough to watch as Crosshair had flopped into the seat across him, sans his helmet now and with the most bored look on his face that Echo had ever seen. “What?” he had looked at the blanket confusion. It wasn’t a GAR issue one but rather a purple, fuzzy one that felt soft against his bare skin.
Crosshair had just shrugged at him from across the way, rolling his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Space is cold,” was all he had said as a way of an explanation.
That’s when Echo realized that he was shivering, even though it had nothing to do with cold. “Oh uh… thanks,” he had said not wanting to admit to the real reason he was shivering but he was fairly certain Crosshair had actually known why regardless of his admittedly weak act. He’d known and still gave him an out so he hadn’t had to admit to anything if he hadn’t wanted too.
After watching Echo trying to untangle the blanket with little success, Crosshair had griped something about regs being incompetent at everything and had gotten up to swiftly bundle him up in the warm folds of the blanket. Yet no matter how irritated he sounded, his hands were always gentle the few times he came in contact with him as he helped.
It was then he decided that Crosshair was an asshole… an overall good guy who hid all his compassion under a mountain sized rock of sarcasm, biting words and simmering anger… but he was still an asshole.
They hit it off great.
… and by great Echo really meant not at all…
Crosshair was a standoffish individual in the first place but it had taken ages for Echo to figure out exactly where he stood with the squad's sharpshooter. Crosshair buried everything under the surface, letting his antagonistic attitude drive almost everyone away. He used it like a shield against anyone that came around and employed it ruthlessly even against his brothers.
Though his brothers didn't seem to pay it any mind. In fact Echo was fairly certain that Wrecker baited Crosshair on purpose most of the time they got into it. They all seemed to have figured out the secret to dealing with Crosshair's temper but even with Techs reassurance that Crosshair wanted him on the team it was hard to get by the snide comments that had seemed to burrow under his skin and stab pointedly into his heart.
Tech had been his usual blunt self when Echo had pressed him for an answer. He had finally given in with a small shrug before pointing that out. "You do realize that if Crosshair didn't want you on this team he wouldn't have been the first one to demand that you had to come with us?"
He'd been in medical when that had apparently happened; fresh off Skako and giving Kix a small melt down when he started reviewing his scans and realizing what had been done to him. Tech had of course recorded the entire event and passed it into him willingly when he asked for it. Hearing Tech say something and seeing it for himself allowed him to judge the situation with his standards and not one cloudy with logic and paraphrasing. He had still been getting use to his place amongst the squad at that point and he figured that Tech was just trying to soften the blow. Probably worried about his mental and emotional fortitude as he had been stressing over him in general for almost the past two weeks at that point.
Echo was more than surprised that Tech hadn't been lying to save him from rejection. The recording was both vid and audio taken from his recorder but even from his perspective it was short, sweet and to the point. Hunter had barely even stepped into the ship at some point after the mission only for Crosshair to stalk into his space, eyes blazing and obviously already pissed off about something. Hunter had stood his ground as Crosshair got nose to nose with him and hissed venomously in a tone that brokered no argument.
"We are not leaving him here with those regs."
The resulting conversation had proven that once and for all that the Bad Batch had wanted him as a member of the squad even before they had left to deal with Admiral Trench's fleet. Crosshair never really gave a reason on why he had demanded that they take Echo with them but as the conversation developed it showed without a doubt that all of them had wanted Echo on the squad regardless of what he had wanted at the time. Hunter did insist on giving him a choice rather than going right to 'Plan Forty Eight Snatch and Grab' like Wrecker had suggested. Which was definitely a quintessential Bad Batch plan and now made him smile to think about the risks they had been willing to go to protect him even though they knew so little about him at that time. Echo already knew his past self would not have reacted favorably about being manhandled, tied up, possibly drugged and then thrown over Wrecker's shoulder like a large bag of meiloorun fruit as he made a mad dash to the Marauder.
Also he doubted any of the Generals or the battalions stationed there would have appreciated the amount of explosions that the rest of the Batch would have employed as a distraction. To this day he smiled when he thought of that recording and the possible mayhem the resulting 'rescue' would have entailed. General Skywalker probably would have demanded that the Bad Batch be transferred to his company after such a stunt and the 501st would have ended up taking over the galaxy and a series of very, very large explosions.
Still, even with that recording it had taken a long time to really feel accepted by Crosshair. Sure he would turn into a rabid nexus to anyone who would so much as gave Echo a sour look but his tongue was about as sharp as Hunter's knives and he deployed them regularly enough. He had no problem pointing out all his flaws, criticizing everything he did and feelings he would feel. It was like constantly having his personal defenses and barriers picked at and whittled away. It made him hard to like and even though he tried not to rise to the bait, Echo felt like the two of them were at each other's throats at the best of times.
It had come to a head after they had been stuck together in a sniper's nest for almost thirty six hours up on a mountain. Echo hadn't been able to keep warm and Crosshair had been relentless in his commentary on how ineffective regs were in such environments or pretty much in everything about him in general. Tired, cold and with his nerves so frayed from dealing with Crosshair for so long on his own, Echo had finally broken down and apologized for being just another useless reg in his eyes.
He still remembers the look of offense on Crosshair's face as he said that and the angry noise the other had made before he could go into too much depth with a self depreciating tirade. "You're not a reg like they are anymore and it's sickening that you think you are," his words were little more than an angry hiss as the look on his face showed him that Crosshair had never truly been mad at him until that moment. 'Resting bitch face' was apparently Crosshair's default look but Echo realized that he had finally crossed over the line at the expression the other had been sporting. "You've been groomed your whole life to blend in that now you're handicapping yourself trying to fit into that perfect little mold that doesn't fit you anymore. Not after surviving what you were forced to go through. You are still a reg but you're our reg and as soon as you come to terms with that you'll actually be able to rise up and become the soldier you can be and not the one you want to continue pretending to be."
Maybe he had just needed to hear it from someone else for him to realize it but after the initial sting of his words sunk in Echo realized he was right. He wasn't a reg anymore. It was why he had accepted the Bad Batch's offer to join them in the first place. He didn't belong anymore amongst his brothers. He longed to still be with them back before his imprisonment but now… now he could be so much more than he had been even as an ARC Trooper.
He wouldn't say that their relationship changed after that. Crosshair still got under his skin and pushed all his buttons the wrong way but it was more like Echo started to notice things. Yeah he'd get a scything comment about his targeting but on the tail end of that -when before when he was too busy trying to rein in his own temper- Crosshair would give him advice on how to fix or mitigate it almost as an afterthought. Distract but give a solution even if it was more like a stab wound or the largest inconvenience that Crosshair had ever faced. Injure to teach a lesson but soothe it over as soon as the wound was inflicted.
Honestly it was kind of a karked up way of doing things but it was so him that Echo had to admit it had started to grow on him after a while.
It wasn't like his brothers were immune to this treatment either and now that he was paying attention he saw it more and more frequently. Crosshair would yell at Tech for getting distracted during a mission at almost every debrief but he didn't mind listening to him for hours on end, talking about something new he had learned when he had been distracted and extrapolating his findings on the topic. He would get in fights with Wrecker regularly, either verbally or physically that only escalated to the point where Hunter would have to step in to break it up. However, if Echo paid attention to him beforehand, Crosshair would only pick these fights or rise to the bait after Wrecker made some comment about being bored. With Hunter, Crosshair always challenged him when he was coming up with new plans or tactics on the battlefield. Poking holes where he saw an opportunity only to offer a secondary choice instead of leaving Hunter trying to piece it together on his own.
It was probably why his betrayal hadn't been that jarring at first. In the field your emotions took a back seat, they had too or you would get so caught up in your own head that you wouldn't be able to act. It was only after everything that it finally dawned on them -both individually and together- what had happened.
Crosshair had shot at them.
Crosshair had branded them as traitors.
They had left him.
Omega could never and Echo doubted that she ever would try to fill the void Crosshair's absences had caused. In a way she was the exact opposite of everything he was. He was dark, moody and full of sarcasm whereas she was bright, helpful and curious about everything. He was probably the best sharpshooter and sniper that ever stepped foot in the galaxy and Omega could still miss a target by a good four meters on a good day just because she was 'distracted' by something more interesting at that moment rather than target practice.
They had all regretted their actions even though there had been little they could do to remedy them at the time. The few times they had run into Crosshair while he was under control of his chip they hadn't wanted to fight him and he was so entrenched behind Imperial forces that even attempting to capture him ran too high a risk of them being captured themselves. They weren't even sure where he was half the time until he was firing at them so attempting to extract him was completely out of the picture.
And perhaps the final injustice, the last nail in their relationship came when Crosshair chose to return to the Empire rather than go with them.
Echo didn't want to fight his brothers. He'd had a bad taste in his mouth for days after keeping Crosshair covered when it looked like he was about to shoot Hunter during their escape from Kamino. Nothing came of it thank the Force and he had thrown his gun to Wrecker peacefully enough. Looking back on it, he knew that there would forever be a rift between them now. Crosshair had sat down, his body language folding in and away and it was almost like an icy wall was thrown up around him before they had even started paddling towards the landing pad.
Echo had known that Crosshair was going to refuse when Hunter asked him to come with them. It was more than him being stubborn and unyielding being his nature. They had hurt him, unintentionally yes, but all the same they had been wrong.
… And Crosshair had paid the ultimate price.
There had been a hope that one day they could reconcile. That each of them would get their chance to apologize to Crosshair in their own ways. He doubted if they would ever have the same dynamic that they did back during the war but at least they would know he was okay. That they would be there if he needed him and vice versa.
Of course now the Empire had taken even that slim chance away from them.
Crosshair was gone… executed in front of a firing squad because he had blindly thought that the Empire was the best choice for him.
…Possibly because he thought it was the only choice left to him…
… Because they pushed him down that path…
Echo wasn't exactly sure when his eyes had slid shut but he blinked away the blurriness that clung to his vision when he reopened them. His memories had provided him more than enough time to adequately shake up the marker which he set aside. He sighed as he undid the latches that secured his chest plate to the rest of his kit, lowering it down onto his lap before taking up the marker again and flipping the cap off.
The… 'modifications' done to his lungs meant that he had some interesting components sticking out of his chest enough so that the structure of his armor had to be reworked to accommodate them. To keep his armor functional enough to protect him in the field, Tech had actually built in a different style of reinforcements into the plastoid that left a small space on either side of the center of his chest. It wasn't big but when he realized the space on the right was almost exactly where the blue hand print Rex had bestowed on him at the beginning of his service in the war, Echo felt compelled to do something.
It had taken a while to find the right color of paint. He had never actually learned the name of the blue paint Torrent company used in their armor but what he finally ended up choosing was as close to the 501st blue as he possibly could get. He had painted a miniature version of the hand in the space unintentionally provided to remind himself of Rishi outpost, where he had come from and what he had done while being a member of the 501st.
There wasn't much in the way of lighting up in the hold loft but the ambient running lights casted long shadows about the space and caused the stake white numbers, neatly written just next to the hand print, to almost glow. The list of trooper identifiers wouldn't mean much to anyone else but to him they meant just about everything. They were his batchmates, his brothers.
Domino Squad.
Droidbait… Cutup... Hevy… Fives…
There was also a small white five drawn on the lower left part of the blue hand. A reminder of the support Fives always gave him because his twin knew he always could do just a little bit better. Could push himself just a little bit further.
Echo really didn't want to do this. He didn't want to but he did in a weird juxtaposition. He wanted to remember Crosshair but writing his number down was a monumental effort and he hadn't even begun.
This is where he put his brothers he had lost. Those so close to him that he felt like he had lost a piece of himself when they marched on. Those who made him who he was today. Those who were there when he needed them most.
He wrote quickly, not trusting himself to so much as even breath as he went. The number was inconspicuous enough on its own. There was really nothing about it that went into depth on just how important he had been to him in the comparatively short time they were working together. Nothing that went into detail on just what a wonderful, sarcastic, karking bastard he’d been when he was alive. It was just a number…
CT-9904
...Crosshair...
… But just seeing it was enough for him to remember everything he both loved and hated about his adopted batchmate.
He knew he hadn’t stopped adding numbers to his little memorial… but he hoped he wouldn’t have to add any more numbers there for a long time to come. Just seeing Crosshair’s trooper identifier number underneath the rest of his fallen batchmates caused something to stick in his chest. The numbers started to blur together as his eyes got suspiciously blurry again and he let the cap-less paint marker fall from numb fingers.
“Ni ceta,” Echo whispered in the silence around him as he gently brought his chest plate up and pressed his forehead to the spot above the list of numbers. His breath came out in faint sobs, puffing across Crosshair’s CT number. “Ni ceta… Ni Kelir ratiin partaylir gar, vod. T-taabir bat,” he managed to choke out as he gave up and let the tears streamed down his cheeks. The hollow feeling in his chest expanded and he only hoped that he didn’t attract Hunter’s attention with all the noise he was making. He’d probably figured out how to blame himself for Echo’s tears.
“March on, Crosshair,” he whispered sadly as he switched languages. “I promise. I’ll take care of them for you, now and always. March on vod'ika."
The suddenly heavy plastoid armor flopped into his lap as Echo leaned back against the bulkhead again. He let his head tip up so that he was looking up towards the ceiling even though he kept his eyes closed. He didn’t try to stem the flow of tears as he grieved. Regulating his breathing just enough so that it wouldn’t get too loud and alert Hunter.
After all, in the dark, he could imagine that it was just rain hitting his face.