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They were supposed to be here in a job for Cid.
It was supposed to be a quick one too. Infiltrate the place, get the thing she wanted and get out as quietly and fast as they entered. Nothing they haven’t done before, if he is honest, but well, sometimes he didn’t count all the variables in his experiments so room for improvisation was needed.
This was one of those times.
They discovered them when they were retrieving what they came for and they had to run for their lives (again) to get to the Marauder.
“I told you this was a bad idea!”, Echo yells from somewhere on his left. Before Hunter or he could answer, blaster bolts were seen going in their direction.
“Well, in our defense, Cid skipped the fact that there were going to be regs in here, which shouldn’t be surprising at all since she is always skipping vital information”, he answers, while he turns to shoot at the regs following them.
“Wrecker, where are you?”, Hunter asks in the comm.
“We are on our way. Hang on”, Omega answers, and the three of them groan quietly before they shoot at the regs again.
They kept running through snowy trees to avoid the soldiers until they arrived at a cliff. They had to stop suddenly, and Tech had to grab Echo, so he didn’t fall.
“I calculate that not even with your mechanical parts, you’ll be able to survive that fall”, he says, holding Echo.
“That’s reassuring, thanks, Tech”, Echo answers sarcastically, before they all turn around to see how the regs are approaching fast from the trees.
“Wrecker, any time now”, Hunter says in the comm.
“What’s the plan, Tech?”, Echo asks.
“I’m not the one who orders people around”, they exchange a look, until they look at Hunter.
“I’m thinking”, Hunter answers.
“Uh, guys, we are having a little bit of trouble here”, Wrecker suddenly says in the comm, and they all could hear blaster bolts at the other side, just as Omega letting go a big whoooooooaaaaaaah in the background.
Tech looks down the cliff for a second, to see if he could come out with something but then he sees something that resembles very much a person. He must put his thermal vision to confirm it, but then he doesn’t find anything warm, yet he is sure is a humanoid.
Hunter starts saying something, and Echo responds to him, but Tech is too busy looking at the snow on the ground. He wants to believe that his exceptional mind is coming up with a plan to get out of this mess, but he ends up distracted when he finds something popping out of the snow a few feet from Echo and him.
Echo says something to him when he moves to grab what he saw, but he ignores it completely. Once he has the thing in his hand, he observes it and comes to a conclusion in a second.
It’s a lightsaber.
But how did it get there? Was the humanoid on the cliff a Jedi? Where they still alive? Were they a victim of Order 66?
“Tech!”, Hunter yells and he turns around to look at him, but it's too late since at that moment a blaster bolt landed on his chest plate.
He lost his balance, and his brothers watched in horror as he started falling off the cliff.
The last thing Tech remembers before hitting something very hard was Hunter and Echo screaming his name.
Then everything was black.
He woke up with a terrible headache, but his helmet was still on. His chest hurtled and when he tried to sit up to look at it, he couldn’t stop himself from groaning.
“Well shit”, he exclaims sarcastically, while he confirms that the chest plate saved his life as it was supposed to do.
He then tries to stand and shake the snow from over him, but he groans again, discovering that his back hurts pretty bad too.
“Dank farrik”, he curses again, trying to use the rocky wall beside him as a support for a second.
He looks up, to the cliff, to find that there is no one popping their head to see and that he can’t hear anything either and that makes him sigh.
"It could have been worse". (For once he is glad his calculations were wrong about this cliff and he did survive the fall without metal parts).
He looks at his comm, to see that is kind of broken but he still tries to contact someone. Static is his only response.
He decides then to look around to see if he can find a way out of there, but then his eyes land on the humanoid figure not so far from him.
He approaches, cautiously. He was sure that you were going to be dead by now. At least, if you were actually a Jedi like he thought you were.
He kneels beside you and slowly turns you around until you’re on your back.
Your skin looks like you’re suffering from hypothermia, you have Jedi robes full of blood and snow and he doesn’t see any sign of life in you until he checks your pulse.
He finds one. It's weak but he swears it's there.
He can’t find a logical explanation as to how you’re alive, but instead, he tries to act fast. He searches for your wounds and finds that most of them are blaster shots.
“You’ll need a bacta tank”, he says, before getting all the bacta he has on himself as the non-official medic of the team. He tries to put it evenly in all your wounds, but he doesn’t have much hope.
Once most of your wounds are bandaged, he checks your temperature. You’re cold even with your warm Jedi robes. He looks around to see if he can find something to keep you warm since the cold was going to kill you if the wounds didn’t.
He can’t find anything, so he decides that the only logical option available is to share body warmth with you.
And so, with a very uncomfortable grip, Tech holds you between his limbs while he tries to get his comm to work. When it finally does, he thinks he was never being relieved to hear Wrecker’s loud voice before.
“Tech, it’s that you buddy?!”
“Yes, it’s me!”
“TECH!”, everyone says in a chorus at the other side, and he would've told them to quiet down since he had a headache and they did it ten times worse, but he doesn’t.
“Hey, we are on our way to you. We are just trying to avoid the regs”, Echo informs.
“I’m on the cliff. I found a Jedi”.
“You found a what?”, they all say at the same time again.
“A Jedi”, he responds. “They are alive, but barely. You need to hurry”.
“We are on our way”, Hunter assures and Tech sighs leaning back into the rocky wall.
“I hope I have enough bacta in the Marauder to save you”, he comments absent-minded.
He hears the Marauder before he sees it. And he also hears some blaster bolts.
The Marauder appears a few seconds later, the door of the ship opens, and he sees Wrecker popping his helmet out.
He has never been relieved of seeing him, but of course, he is not going to say that out loud…ever.
Wrecker uses one of the cables to descend and once he is on the floor; he looks for him with a light.
“Tech, buddy, where are you?”, he whispers/yells.
“I’m here, Wrecker”, Tech answers, momentarily blinded when Wrecker points at him with his light.
Wrecker almost falls over the two of you in a hug, but he stops when he realizes who you are.
“Wait a damn second, it’s this the General?”
“Wrecker, you need to be more specific, most of the Jedis were Generals”, Tech answers, trying to get up, with you in his arms.
“I mean the General”, he answers, as if that made things better. “The one you had a crush on”, Wrecker says like it was obvious, and Tech looks at him offended about to say that he didn’t have a crush on anyone even less a Jedi when Hunter’s voice appears in the comm.
“Boys, we need to move. The Regs are shooting at us”.
“Oh, yeah, right. C’mon, I’ll take them”, Wrecker says, taking you in his arms.
“Careful, they are wounded”, Tech warns with a tensed voice.
“I’m being careful”, Wrecker assures.
Tech gets on his feet and is about to clip himself to the other cable when he suddenly remembers the lightsaber he found and that was probably yours.
“Wrecker, give me your light and take them to the Marauder. I need to look for something” before Wrecker could protest, Tech took the light from him and started searching.
Wrecker simply sighed before he told Echo to pull him up.
Tech looked around the cliff, conscious of how the blaster bolts from the regs were closer than before. After a few seconds, he found the lightsaber not so far from where he initially fell.
He took it, put it on his belt, and clip himself to the cable.
“Okay, I’m set”, and the cable starts going up.
You don’t remember much; you don’t want to remember.
You were a Jedi, a peacekeeper, not a warrior, not a General.
And yet you were forced to take part in a war that was only going to destroy the galaxy.
Yet you followed orders, they put clones at your service and made you think outside the box a thousand times to fight stupid droids and see the clones you commanded die in front of you.
Slowly but inevitably, you ended up getting close with the troops you commanded. How not? They were clones, yes, but they were also people, and they looked all the same but each one had a personality and a different way to behave and be. You cared for them, just as your master taught you to, and it was maybe the reason why you felt more than physical pain when they started shooting at you.
It didn’t matter what you told them, didn’t matter where you tried to hide. They find you and they kept shooting at you until they corner you on a cliff, made you lose your lightsaber, and then left you to fall to your death on that same cliff.
And you were sure you were going to die. The blood was a lot, you could barely keep yourself awake and everything felt like it was in an agonizing fire that consumed you totally.
Yet you didn’t die. The Force kept you alive, or at least that’s what you think happen. She also sent someone for you. You could sense them.
You couldn’t wake up nor talk nor move, but you knew there was someone, someone that tried to heal your wounds and tried to keep you warm.
It was a familiar presence that did all that for you. One that you were sure you recognized from somewhere. Someone that liked to brag like they were right all the time and yet, were funny when they wanted.
The Force brought them to you or maybe it was fate, or luck, it didn’t matter, really, you just know that you were somehow alive and that was thanks to that person.
After that person arrived, you started to slowly recover your senses. In the beginning, you thought you were inside a bacta tank since you felt like you were floating around and heard muffled voices around you. Eventually, you left the bacta tank and you could hear and sense them clearer.
Most of them were familiar somehow, but others were new. Yet you were too weak to move or talk.
Until you weren’t.
When you open your eyes for the first time, they were heavy, and you felt exhausted. Your body was sore but not in pain.
After blinking a few times, you got to find the ceiling of somewhere unfamiliar. You tried to move to see where the kriffing hell you were, but your limbs felt too heavy to move.
Still, a quiet presence at your left noticed this because then a blonde child appeared in front of you to smile at you kindly.
“Hi, welcome back”, she said with too much cheer.
You look at her confused.
“How do you feel? Can you talk?”
You gulp before answering.
“I can talk”, you say, in a raspy voice.
“How do you feel then?”
“What happened?”
“Ah, Tech found you on a cliff. You were barely alive”.
“Tech?”, you frown at the familiar name.
“Yes. Do you remember him? He was part of Force 99”, she answers, and then you understand.
Clones.
Your body is reacting before your mind. You’re sitting in the bed in a second, trying to get off all the stupid cables on your person so you could get out of there as fast as possible.
The child beside you starts complaining and tries to convince you to stay but you don’t hear her.
“You can’t move, you need to rest. You’re not fully recovered yet”, she says when you try to walk and fall to the floor instead.
“I-I must go. Th-the clones…th-they…”, before you could finish your words, steps started approaching. Before you could do something, four clones entered the room.
Your heart skipped a beat, and you started to shake but you pushed the child behind you like you were trying to protect her from them.
“Omega, wh-?”, Hunter started but he stops when they all find you on the floor, looking at them with panic and…fear.
“General, you’re awake!”, Wrecker exclaims, about to step ahead to hug you, but you raised your hand to stop him.
“Don’t approach. Stay where you are”, you say, in a broken voice.
They all look confused.
“General, they aren’t going to hurt you”, Omega suddenly says, escaping your grip and standing right between them and you.
“They are clones. The-they all want to kill me”, you answer, still holding your hand in front of you but without actually doing anything. You were too weak to use the Force.
“Not us”, Tech says, stepping ahead.
You look at him, recognizing his presence and his voice.
He was the one. The one who found you. The one who saved you.
“We aren’t regs. The chip doesn’t work on us. We aren’t going to hurt you, General”, he assures, and you stare at him for a while, until you sense it with the little Force you could grab onto.
He was saying the truth.
Your hand slowly falls, and a defeated sigh escapes you.
Omega approaches and you let her kneel beside you to comfort you with a hand on your shoulder.
“I-I’m sorry. I-I thought y-you were going to k-kill me. My men…they…almost killed me”.
“They didn’t do it on purpose. It was the inhibitor chip. They can’t control it”, Omega explains.
“You’re safe here”, Tech comments, and when you look at him again, he blinks a few times, blushing a little for a moment. “But since your injuries were pretty major and we lost you a few times on our way here, I must insist you on returning to rest”.
After a moment of staring at him and he trying to avoid your eyes like he was nervous, you nod tiredly.
Wrecker approaches and with Omega’s help, they return you to the stretcher.
“It's good to have you back, General”, Wrecker comments, with a little smile of his own.
"Thank you...its Wrecker right?"
He grins happily.
"Wow, look at that, the General remembers my name!", you chuckle.
"Its difficult to forget the Bad Batch", you answered, looking at them all. They smiled awkwardly.
You lay back, Tech gets the cables back up and Omega decides to introduce herself since she was the only one present you weren't acquittance with. They end up giving you a briefing on what happened after Order 66 and knowing all of it made your heart heavier.
They leave after, to return to their affairs not without giving Tech a look that confused you pretty much, specially when he blushed a little.
“How did you find me?”, you decided to ask.
“Accidentally, really”, he answers, entertained with checking your vitals in his holopad. “We were on a job and regs cornered us in the cliff. I fell when I got shot”.
You frown.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, nothing to worry about”, he looks for a second at you from under his goggles. “My armor saved me like it was supposed to do”.
There is silence, but you can sense certain nervousness from him.
“Thanks”, you suddenly say, and he looks at you confused for a moment. “For keeping me alive down there”.
“Oh”, he looks away almost immediately. “Nothing to thank me for. I, uh, you are a Jedi, and I’m a clone. It’s what I’m supposed to do anyway”.
You exhale.
“I hate when you clones came out with that poor excuse”, he looks at you with wide eyes. “I’m not superior to you just because I know how a lightsaber works and you're not expendable, at least not to me”, you make a face, a face of pain, but not because you were hurt, at least not physically.
He didn't need Hunter's senses or the Force to know in what type of pain you were.
You were famous among the Jedi Generals for having a similar philosophy as Master Plo Koon when it came to clones. For you clones weren't just bred for war, they were people and each one of your soldiers was different from the others even if they looked or sounded alike. You even helped them to chose their names and you encourage them to talk to you personally about their well-beings. You even visited your wounded on the medical stations.
Of course the fact that they all tried to kill you hurtled more than the physical pain they inflicted.
“That’s not-“.
“I know what you wanted to say”.
You exchange a look. But then he looks at his holopad again. You sense that he is trying to concentrate and not succeeding at all.
“Its only a matter of time before they come for me, isn't?"
“A Galactic Empire is now in charge, and we received news that Jedis are being hunted. But I assure you General, you’re safe here. A friend of ours let us use this facility while you recovered, its well-hidden and no one is going to find you anytime soon".
You gulp.
“I hope you’re right”.
“I’m always right”, he assures, and a little smile appears in your face. Something similar to a smirk appears in his face too, but then his face changes. "I just remembered", he turns around, to look into a bag in a corner of the room. When he turns again and approaches you, he is holding your lightsaber in hand.
You almost cried.
"Its that-?"
"Yes, it is. I found it on the snow, close to the cliff", he answers, stretching his hand for you to take it.
You do, slowly, with almost tears in your face. It's familiar weight fills your hand, but it also fills your sorrow. You gulp, nodding a couple of times while you try to make your tears disappear from your skin.
He looks at you for a second or two more before he realizes he is staring. He looks away, clears his throat and holds his holopad harder than necessary.
"I'm sorry, General. For everything that has happen to you", he says, in the softest voice he can come up with.
When you look at his eyes again, you find sincerity.
“I think you should rest, at least for a few more hours".
You nod again.
"If you need something, anything, you can use this comm", he says, passing you a comm that had being laying in a table next to your bed. "I - we - will answer as soon as possible".
"Thanks, Tech", he looks at you to nod.
"I'll see you later, General", he says before turning and walking to the exit.
He stops when you call him.
“You can call me by my name. I don’t command an army anymore...and the Jedi Order is gone", you look sadly at your lightsaber.
“As you wish then”.
You watch him go before you squeeze the comm and the lightsaber. You put them both in the table next to you and lay back.
You close your eyes, gathering the Force, until a wave of calmness washes over you.
You were with the Bad Batch now, you were safe.