ct-arc-echo - Tumblr blog

ct-arc-echo · 1 year

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It's easy to feel invisible, here. In a lot of ways I don't want to acknowledge, though I understand that I will never truly be one of them, a brother, or a real part of this team.

One day at a time. One foot in front of the other.

For the republic. For them. For us. For Fives.

#arc trooper echo #echo and fives #fives and echo #star wars the bad batch #the 501st #the clone wars

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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Standing outside with a herd of brothers, Fives nearly felt normal again. It was these cool nights he felt most connected to his lost brother, through the pain of missing his twin, Fives had come to associate the cold with Echo. Not that it made sense. Not that anything made a whole lot of sense anymore.

Pressing the rolled up cigarette between his lips (courtesy of one of Wolffe's boys), Fives took a drag of the sparked dry smoke, allowing the burn to settle into his lungs. If Kix knew he would have an earful. If Rex knew he would be running laps all morning. It was good then, that Fives was the only brother in blue out in the chilly streets.

Leaning heavily against the wall, the ARC let his mind wander, silent remembrances after an ever growing list of names. Cutup. Droidbait. Heavy. Hardcase. Dogma. Echo. Bunny. So many brothers lost before any glimmer of hope, a chance at life outside of war. But nothing was fair.

Another drag of the burning herb had smoke curling between his ribcage, setting the remaining oxygen on fire in his stupidly healthy lungs as he thought of his brothers that no longer breathed. Ashing the cigarette onto the dirty pavement, Fives made eye contact with the dull permacrete, allowing his thoughts to wander dangerously as the breeze caught smoke, lazily dragging the evidence through the dark streets of Coruscant.

#vod #the clones #the clone wars

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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Tonight, it feels like I miss my brothers just a little bit more than usual. Maker, Fives, what happened to us?

#arc trooper echo #echo and fives #fives and echo #star wars the bad batch #the 501st #the bad batch #the bad batch echo #the domino twins #arc trooper fives #clone wars #echo roleplay #open

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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Too many times over the past rotation I've wondered if this feeling of isolation will last forever.

What happened to us, Fives?

Why did you have to go?

#i miss you #arc trooper echo #echo and fives #fives and echo #star wars the bad batch #the 501st #the bad batch #the bad batch echo #the domino twins #arc trooper fives #clone wars #vod #i miss my brothers

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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Dreaming had become a warped coping mechanism over the past several rotations. At first, it had started in attempt to put an end to the endless thoughts that whirled through his brain, a computer truly in overdrive, out of control and heading for a crash when sleep finally overtook Echo's exhausted body... and then came the nightmares.

Maybe that was too kind of a word for what they were, recalling terror, pain, and streams of numbers spilling through the forced connections anchored in his psyche... Brothers dead because of him. Fives was dead now, too. Echo didn't know too much about how his twin had passed, though it made bile stain his throat thinking he could have had a hand in that, as well.

When it all began, Echo would force his eyes shut, willing phantom limbs to unclench and relent in their aches, imagining a better location, a better time that didn't seem very long ago, curled up in Torrent's barracks with Fives' snoring keeping his mind just awake enough to find it annoying. If he pretended hard enough, the nightmare could be the one Echo had found himself in presently.

Visions of his brothers, laughter and easy banter guided his steps to sleep, easing the way into slumber as gently as one would coax a scared cadet from a broom closet on Kamino. In his dreams, Fives' arm never left his shoulders, Hardcase effortlessly evoked laughter even in the worst of moments, and even Kix would find himself pulled into their collective nonsense through Jesse's involvement. In those imaginary moments, he was alive again. In his dreams, the good ones, Echo could remember who he was, who he strived to be, what he liked, who he loved, and how to just exist. Eventually, falling into the fantasy of what reality once was became easier, and Echo could find himself drifting into a world he wanted to be a part of...

Until the night came when the dreams turned dark. His brother's faces warped, cold durasteel and wiring etching over their bodies, stripping his vode of their humanity, until all that was left were hardened, twisted forms that slunk towards his own tortured form, fixed in place on the operating table back with the Techno Union. The one place they had allowed a semblance of consciousness - needing their subject to be cognizant enough for intricate probing and delicate surgical interfacing to show the desired results, forming the connection between the biological anatomy and technological alterations.

Screams fell on deaf ears. Thrashing against the restraints did nothing but bruise and break his already weak body. Pain flooded through neurons, sparked every sense, wrapped around his soul like fire and burned until there couldn't possibly be anything left of whoever CT-1409, ARC trooper Echo, was. Drenched in sweat, lungs heaving as if Alpha 17 had been drilling troopers in PT, Echo would wake. And wake. And wake.

The nightmare truly was never over. The endless dream, the one they all seemed to have before things fell apart, had been replaced with a cruel punishment of reality.

Brothers dead, and Echo left behind. Brothers dead, and Echo's fault. Brothers dead, and maybe whoever Echo used to be, had died too, somewhere along the way. Brothers dead. Fives, dead.

Sometimes, Echo felt dead too.

Echo wished he was.

#arc trooper echo #echo and fives #fives and echo #star wars the bad batch #the 501st #the bad batch #the bad batch echo #the domino twins #angst #clone wars #the prequels #arc trooper fives #bad batch fanfic #clone wars fandom #echo roleplay #open starter

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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Forcing another breath into his lungs, Echo sat overlooking a quiet lake on whatever planet Tech had been rambling on about. He hadn't paid attention. The Maurader had begun to feel more and more suffocating, and he had just needed to get out.

Between the bickering and banter of his new brothers, Echo had been able to slip away once they had landed. Passing off Hunter's questioning visual assessment through a simple desire to stretch his legs.

Echo didn't have legs, anymore. Hunter kindly did not remind him of the metal puzzle pieces that made up more of his body than flesh did.

The water was calm, so unlike Kamino's angry waves, crashing and brash against platforms through heavy rain and endless storms on the dark, watery planet. Here, everything seemed green. Moss crept over the riverbank, making itself at home on larger rocks and trees. Flowers peeked out of long grasses and ferns, a brush of color among the forest floor.

If it had been a year prior, Echo might have pulled out the flimsy pad tucked away in his kit and sketched the tree bark and flora... Traced how the water rippled, and captured the baby fuzz on a pair of lothkittens that pounced on the grasses when the breeze whispered over the land before they scurried away once more.

Fives used to lean against his shoukder while Echo drew, watching the lines come together, forming into whatever study he had chosen that moment. More often than not, his twin would fall asleep in minutes, snoring in his ear while Echo's pen brought their surroundings to life on paper.

So much had changed, and it felt like no time at all had passed, nevermind a whole year and then some rotations. Fives was gone, a single blaster shot to the chest ending the man's life. Echo had seen brothers get shot, kriff, he had survived an explosion, and Fives got shot. That was all. It was difficult to believe, to wrap his head around how it all could have happened so fast while he floated in that chamber, giving away the GAR's secrets, one brother betrayed at a time.

Pressing his flesh had to the grass in an attempt to ground himself, Echo rolled a piece of the greenery between his fingers, the kittens making another appearance by the riverside, chasing after eachothers tails. Fives would have loved them. A smile tracing his lips, Echo was reminded of his newer brother, Wrecker, who would have also been thrilled over the fuzzy little creatures. Perhaps...

Hesitating, Echo fished around in a pocket for the pad of flimsy, staring at its worn bindings for a moment before opening the pages and lightly pressing his pen over the new page. The kittens jumped, pawing at a minnow pool in the shallow water, delighted their newest discovery. A whole world, just for the two of them.

Slowly, lines took form of the pair of tiny creatures pawing at the fish, sunlight catching on baby fur and hilighting the lazy stream. Trees overlooked the scene, tall and serene in the lull of the afternoon, not a care in the galaxy found by the rivers edge. Wrecker was going to love it.

#fives and echo #echo and fives #the domino twins #the 501st #the bad batch echo #star wars the bad batch #arc trooper echo #learning to live #the bad batch #tbb wrecker #wrecker bad batch #hunter tbb

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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Feeling alone wasn't exactly new after Echo's time spent with the Techno Union, but this feeling held a different, more bitter meaning behind it. Where the tank had brought with it a cold reality of numbers, isolating data transmissions, and endless streams of information running through his brain, he had at least had the numbing effects of being under their control. As much as he hated it. Hate was too gentle of a word for how he felt about not being able to fight back, resist the atrocious he had dealt upon his brothers... Perhaps this was payback for his betrayal.

He missed Fives. Missed Torrent. The late nights and early mornings, Rex's perpetual annoyance at their antics that had always been laced with amusement. Now, he might has well have died at the Citadel. Echo was pretty sure he had, in part. The look on Jesse's face had been the first of too many upon their return to Kamino. A man back from the dead, or a dead man walking. But he was hardly a man. Durasteel and ports, data in his brain and pulses of electromagnetic frequencies brushed across his nervous system. ARC trooper CT-1409 was dead. This new... thing he was didn't seem to click.

This new reality, this state of being that had been thrust upon him all felt so foreign and wrong. The brothers who passed in the hallways, the ones he used to share a face with, a body, a heart and blood, looked at him now as a strange puzzle, one whose pieces were all mixed up.

Feeling alone in a group of vode, the ones he had been closest with, found home in, shared DNA, training, a life with... gone. And Fives was gone now, too. Joining the rest of their batch in the stars. Echo wondered if Fives had been comforted at the end, thinking they would finally be together once more, only to have the twist of fate that left him where he was now.

It was hard not to feel as though really, it should have been him who had stayed gone. Buried under the whispered remembrances brothers said in the morning before the day began. Fives had so much more to do, so much more to give. And it wasn't that Echo wasn't greatful, he was. But Fives had always been the one bursting with energy, with life. Always the one who brought people together, loyal and unyielding, kind and compassionate, and all the things Echo loved him for. Every last cell in the man's being screamed life, and now...

He stood alone. One last domino, a real sick party trick to keep the game alive. The last man standing on artificial legs, blood and brain connected through cybernetics and technology woven into his being, meshing around his soul like barbed wire. Keeping him standing. Keeping lungs inflating. A heart beating. Brain thinking. Rembering.

For Fives, he would go forward. For Fives, he would beat the odds. For Fives, he would live. Just as it had always been, one for the other.

For Fives.

#arc trooper echo #bad batch echo #clone wars #attack of the clones #star wars the bad batch #the bad batch echo #fives #arc trooper fives #the 501st #501st #501st battalion #501st legion #echo and fives #fives and echo #the domino twins #domino squad #domino twins #the bad batch

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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(Eyes narrow) ...that's kind of sweet, actually. But I'd much prefer if you spoke in basic.

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ct-arc-echo · 2 years

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