Chapter Text
Echo had seen a lot of injuries in his time as a Republic trooper; been on the receiving end of more than he could count, and watched his brothers fall one after the other, succumbing to any number horrific ways to die on the battlefield. The overwhelming majority of them laid down their life for the Republic on planets so scattered across the galaxy and so completely ravaged by the war, it was well known the number of clone casualties could not be accurately kept up with.
But then again, that's what they were made for. Created for and born into a life that would never be their own, sent into Hell in their spotless white armor that would eventually become their shroud. Echo had always pushed these thoughts to the back of his mind, preferring to live a life (no matter how short) where his sacrifices, and the countless sacrifices of his brothers meant something. He believed in the Republic, he believed in the Jedi. Theirs was a noble cause, not like the Separatists who only brought violence to every world they touched down on with their endless droid army.
The GAR had been trained by experts–mercenaries, Mandalorians, bounty hunters–and the sparking, smoking droid carcasses they left behind were proof of that. However, nothing on Kamino had prepared them for what a dying breath would be like, what it would sound like leaving their brother's throats. They were never prepared for the terrified wailing of a child clutching their dead mother in the street, surrounded by ash and blood when there wasn't enough time to fully evacuate a village or town. They were not equipped to witness the life leave their brother's eyes—their same eyes—or understand that the stench of death would never again leave their mind.
Echo had seen a lot of injuries as a Republic trooper.
When the Zygerrian leader stepped out of the watch tower, dragging a bloody and nearly naked figure behind him by a thick chain, Echo froze in horror. The open wounds and welts covered so much of her body, and any area that wasn't ripped open was streaked with blood. Echo's heart rate rose, and he began to feel the heavy, clutching pressure in his chest that had been so constant in his life since Skako. As his peripheral vision blurred, the dusty desert ruins started to fade into somewhere else. Somewhere cold, sterile; the coppery scent of blood mixed with antiseptic in the air, and a bright light blinded his eyes and pain coursed through his mangled body.
Suddenly the prisoner was deposited onto the ground and chained beside him. It was a human, a young woman, and she could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty standard years. Hard to tell through the sharp grimace of pain painted over her features. Echo's vision stopped fading at the sight of her dark eyes, vacant and glassy. She bowed away from his gaze, curly black hair sticking to her neck and cheeks with dried blood.
“Now now, no need to be shy my dear; best show them what happens to little mercenaries who try to steal our slaves.”
The Zygerrian leader's snide voice lashed through the air like his whip, and the woman's shock collar flared to life without warning. A hoarse, guttural scream escaped her as her legs failed; before she could hit the ground, Echo lunged forward to thrust his bound arms under her on instinct. She almost slipped from his grasp as he struggled to support her. He could hardly find purchase to brace her; so much of her body was dotted with welted over lash marks, and half had torn open to leak blood.
“The Republic outlawed slavery!” Echo growled, in disbelief, angered at what he was seeing. Was this what Echo had fought for? What hundred of thousands of his brothers had died for?
Is this what my sacrifice brought the galaxy?
"We are not in the Republic anymore, skug," the leader spit back. Echo felt rage ignite in his belly, but it was immediately tempered by the small whimper of the woman he supported. He lowered her as gently as he could, cursing the binders they both wore, and set her against the fountain. Her head lolled back, and he exhaled sharply as she tried to focus on his face. Echo could hardly hear the Zygerrian, or anyone else, his mind immediately jumping to head trauma as she blinked up at him.
"Hey," he muttered, his left hand cushioning the back of her head from hitting the stone. "Can you hear me?"
She didn't (or couldn't) respond, and Echo's heart rate ratcheted up again, this time set off by the alarming injuries and affect he was currently staring at. The muscles of his jaw tightened as he ground his teeth, running through countless emergency exfil protocols in his mind; the image flashing behind his eyes of spearing the Zygerrian leader through the throat made it only slightly harder to focus.
No time. Focus on the immediate risk.
The immediate immediate risk ended up being 'a rampaging adolescent rancor' as Tech put it. The next several minutes were a flurry of screaming and chaos; Wrecker took the opportunity he was given and snapped the chains. Echo swiftly turned back to the woman at his side, who was nearly knocked into the fountain with Wrecker's force, but she was already standing; unsteady, but standing. He reached out to stabilize her.
"Hey, I've got you," he said, voice low, taking on the tone he'd used so may times comforting a brother as he took his last breath; that realization set his skin prickling.
The woman's dark eyes were bright with the awareness of adrenaline, barely obscuring the terror underneath.
"Please," she rasped, gripping at the shock collar around her neck with shaking hands. "Please, please help me–" But Echo was already jamming his scomp into the collar's locking mechanism; if she held any shock at his scomp attachment, it didn't show. Her breath was shallow and her body trembled as he held behind her head again to keep her still while he worked. A second later, the collar fell from her neck, and Echo was struck with yet another wave of anger. A ring of bloody, blistered lacerations, singed in places, wrapped around her neck. His mind raced, struggling to remember the field medic basics all troopers were taught. His mind had always been a durasteele trap for mundane information; battle plans, regulations—but in that moment, confronted with a kidnapped woman who had been held and tortured… no matter how dissimilar their situations were, Echo's normally disciplined mind became a sieve.
The other three prisoners, the ones that had already been there when his squad arrived, were begging in Huttese and holding out their bound hands to be freed next. Echo exhaled deeply, pushing the rising panic back down as he whittled his focus down to something tight and controlled; it was an ability he'd had since childhood; according to Tech, they all had it. Just another one of the lengthy list of genetic alterations made to all clone troopers.
The woman, trembling but still alert, gathered the two Falleen toward them, murmuring softly in Huttese. Echo started drilling into the child's binders first while the woman hold the kid steady and whispered what had to be words of comfort in a low, placating tone. As the binders popped open, Echo looked up and met the woman's gaze.
"I'm Echo," he said, tamping down any alarm at seeing her eyes up close. Dark brown, almost black from the blown pupils, sclera bloodshot.
"Lyrri." She responded, rubbing the child's wrists between her hands. Echo was struck by it; she was actively bleeding, and had probably suffered serious internal damage, but she still gave what comfort she could. "Muaarga… muaarga," she whispered to them, both Falleen and the other man. Echo was pretty sure that meant 'peace' in Huttese.
He nodded in acknowledgment as she moved on to hold the other prisoners so that he could break them free.
"Thanks," he said, eyes still noting how shaken she was. He'd need to keep an eye out for when she would inevitably crash; the battle fever and adrenaline would flag sooner rather than later, judging by the severity of the wounds. He never thought he might have to convince someone with wounds like that not to walk 3 clicks alone out onto the plains, relying solely on stimpacks—but it had been a while since anything made sense.
Lyrri had jabbed herself in the thigh with a mini stim injector immediately upon Omega recovering her armor and weapons, and he could tell how often she had done this same thing. He'd seen it before with planetary army soldiers who were drafted into service to protect their homeworld, shoved into the war untrained and unprepared. Stims were easy to come by early on in the war, and liberally used by everyone who wasn't an ultra-disciplined lab grown trooper; they were only given stims in the heat of battle, under fire and at highest risk. The cocktail of opiates, blood vessel reinforcers, and adrenaline was known to be habit forming, and Echo had seen more withdrawals and crashes than he would care to admit.
Later, after making sure the other prisoners got away safely, he stood with Hunter and Tech discussing what exactly had just happened, and what the kriff they were supposed to do next.
"I don't like this."
"None of us like this."
"We should have been told about her."
"Would that have changed our approach?"
"You know it would have."
"Alright enough," Hunter held out a hand. "Echo, you said her name is Lyrri?"
Echo nodded once, sharply. He glanced over toward the large piece of rubble where Omega was standing guard over a frightening looking Lyrri, her armored jumpsuit showing dark stains where her blood had already begun seeping through.
"We cannot be certain of who she is." Tech pushed his goggles up his nose. "What if–"
"She needs medical attention, can we debrief after we're sure she's not going to bleed out?" Echo knew his tone was just a bit rigid, but he was not in mood to bicker with Tech about logistics when a woman who had been brutalized sat 20 feet away fading fast.
While Tech brought the ship closer to better load up Muchi, Echo stood a little ways from Omega and Lyrri, watching his sister take Lyrri's pulse rate every few minutes, in between wiping blood off her face and hands; he felt a warmth surge in his chest at how careful Omega was being.
He didn't notice at first that he had drifted closer, tracking every move and grimace Lyrri made; he didn't know exactly why he was drawn to her, or why he had locked in so quickly on supporting and stabilizing her.
Lyrri's head lolled back against the stone, like it had when he tried to set her down gently against the fountain, baring the nasty wound circling her neck. Echo was suddenly very aware of his prosthetics, and the scarring that surrounded them. He clenched his fist and shut his eyes against the returning pressure in his chest; a common occurrence post Skako that Echo was still trying to get used to managing.
Echo hoped he could be strong enough to give Lyrri a fighting chance at recovering from this, but he knew from all that personal experience how hard it would be, and how it was going to get much worse before it started getting better.