Chapter Text
Echo had never had any particular talents. Nothing which others hadn’t shown two-fold more than him, at least. The one word that had appeared again and again in his performance reviews was ‘workmanlike’. While others would have been damned by such faint praise, Echo had always treated it like the compliment he’d always felt that it was.
There was no shame in being workmanlike. Workmen were skilled and competent and thorough, quietly putting in all the nuts and bolts in a system that no one ever missed until they weren’t there anymore. Among thousands of troopers who were all so basically the same that individuality was a precious reward and a lofty goal, Echo was one of the rare few that had never wanted to stand out. He’d wanted to do a good job and nothing more.
Perhaps it was the company he kept. Fives had been born to stand out. He’d always been so wholly himself, so completely and fiercely certain of everyone’s right to be who they were and not be dictated to about it. Even Echo, who compulsively sought out the safety of structure and hierarchy for the better part of his early life, could not help to be drawn to such a flame.
Fives had always known exactly who Fives was and to hell with everybody else. Echo had just been Echo. He’d gone by the book because he knew he had no specialness to speak of, no individuality like he saw in so many of the others he admired. If he could not be set apart, what else could he do but blend in as hard as he could?
He was never made to stand out. He was made to follow those that did for as long as he could. The chances of him surviving the entire war without the ingenuity, the genius, the resourcefulness of his far more talented brethren were low.
He never expected to wake up one day and find out that he was, in fact, the last of them.
Funny old galaxy, really.
*
His new transfer into Clone Force 99 was perhaps less jarring than most others would assume it would be. He’d stood in the shadow of standouts his entire life and no squad the GAR stood out quite like the infamous 99. In a way, it was familiar ground.
He was out of step with his new squadmates, of course, but he hadn’t expected better. They didn’t know him and they were a tight unit in and of themselves. They didn’t exclude him, but including him took extra effort neither side was used to having to put in. There was nothing Echo could do about the awkward missteps. He’d just have to keep moving until he was in synch, or could fake it well enough. It was just a matter of working at the problem and developing adjustment protocols to suit.
The squad didn’t make it easy. Just when he thought he had their rhythms figured out, a massive curveball would come at him from a blind spot, forcing him to go through the adjustment protocol again.
And again.
Like their SERE training drill on Aleya. The training itself hadn’t been a problem, although Echo admitted there was a certain unprofessional thrill in going up against the still-running, live ammo security net of a long abandoned temple. He could see why Clone Force 99 had gained their reputation for being the wild cards. For any other crew, infiltrating here would have been a mission. For them, it was just training. It was a brilliant, real-world problem that offered real-world field experience you didn’t get in a droid sim. The Batch took it in stride and Echo was pleased that he’d managed to both keep up and contribute meaningfully.
That had been the smooth part.
The curveball came later on, when the drill was done and it was that brief, golden time where they were free to rest before heading back to Kamino to get assigned their next mission. While he was confident enough in his abilities in the field, Echo was less certain of correct protocols when it came to downtime with the squad. The others all had their own things to do for leisure, both separately and as a team and Echo was less certain here when to engage or to be engaged. It seemed like they were too.
Crosshair disappeared into the woods once they’d rested, rifle in hand. Wrecker amused himself using one of their spare mines to blast a small crater in the planet’s surface, cackling madly as he did so before wandering into the woods himself. Tech dug around in the ship's guts, removing heat units and plunking them outside the ship for unfathomable reasons. Hunter appeared to be sharpening knives methodically taken from a leather roll bag. For all their disparate activities, there seemed to be some sort of uniform method to this madness. Their synchronicity was wordless but Echo didn’t feel comfortable enough with asking for an explanation.
Finding himself at a loss with how to occupy his time, he thought maybe he should just go lie down for a while. The constant, low key aches he lived with since his body had been modded beyond recognition were legion, and he was still getting used to them. Maybe he could read something, he mused. His personal effects from the legacy archives were still finding their way back to him through layers of bureaucracy but his data account had been reopened and there were still books he’d wanted to read lined up on his datapad. It was as good a time as ever to delve in.
“Echo, can you grab the red pack-box from the cooling unit for me?” Hunter asked absently as he fiddled over some of the boxy components Tech had removed from the ship. The genius himself was heading out over the fields, waving to their returning teammates.
“Sure thing,” Echo said, putting a minor hold on his plans.
He found the box as promised. Someone had scribbled open this and you're on scrub duty for a month, Wrecker across the lid along with a skull motif, which made Echo blink slowly. Deciding to leave that where it lay for now, Echo went back outside the Marauder...
… and nearly dropped the box in surprise.
Later he wouldn’t have been able to say what surprised him more; the sight of Crosshair, Wrecker and Tech in a distant clearing efficiently butchering some sort of ungulate species which he didn’t know the name of but which was clearly recently deceased, or the sight of Hunter, their commanding officer and the coldest and most lethal knife wielder Echo had ever seen standing at a trestle table peeling a bunch of freshly uprooted native tubers with far too much skill to be new at it.
“Over here,” Hunter said, removing tuber skins with lightning fast hands, one long peel per tuber.
Echo regained enough equilibrium to deliver the box which, to his astonishment, contained what looked like a full set of spices, salts, breads, other fresh produce, nuts and various cheeses. Echo helped lay out the trimmings with increasing bewilderment, and was witness to his commanding officer setting a pot of broth on the field stove to, apparently, get started on a marinade for the game.
Finally, he had to say it. “Sarge, you cook?” And instantly regretted it. The Batch weren’t exactly adherents of military correctness, but the words had sounded rude even as he’d said them.
Hunter, thankfully, only looked amused. “That surprises you?”
Wondering just how big of a bantha’s ass he’d just made of himself, Echo hedged. “Yes, but, in my defence, when I think of Clone Force 99 the word ‘domesticated’ isn’t the first one that springs to mind.”
Hunter looked to where Echo was looking. They watched as Wrecker, wearing a pair of ungulate antlers as a helmet, tried to mock charge Crosshair who obligingly flailed him with disemboweled giblets and they both nearly knocked Tech into the pit Wrecker had made, which had been filled with wood and lit ablaze while Echo hadn’t been looking.
“...fair point,” Hunter sighed, and went back to peeling tubers with master-level precision. “It’s not really a big mystery,” he added as the awkward silence stretched and Echo fumbled for something more diplomatic to fill it. “We,” he pointed the knife fearlessly at his own neck. “Are Clone Force 99. We’re supposed to be nothing but a rumour. A lot of our work is covert ops well off the grid.”
“Yes, I know,” Echo frowned.
“So,” Hunter shrugged, dicing tubers lightning fast. “We spend most of our time trying to make sure nobody knows where we are. It’s not like we can just stop in at any forward base for resupply or to visit the mess,” he said archly, reaching into a bag of what looked like alliums, peeling and slicing them without pause and without looking as he talked. “We’re off the grid, so we live off the grid. We have to supply for ourselves. We buy supplies, sometimes, if we can get away with it quietly, and sometimes we might be able to arrange a dead drop, but otherwise we’re scavengers and gatherers for everything; food, medicines, parts, you name it. The GAR money helps, but it can only go so far in the middle of nowhere or out in some uninhabited wasteland where the Seps have set up shop. After all, droids don’t need to eat.”
Echo nodded. At the end of a long day’s slog through Force knows what the only things you wanted were a warm bunk and a hot meal. If those weren’t in your regular supply chain then it was logical that you’d damn well learn to do them yourself. Even Echo, infamously hidebound as he was, or had been, had learned to improvise comfort where he could. Good morale beat out reprimands any day of the cycle. It beat out almost everything, in a war.
Still… “I wouldn’t have expected you to be the cooking type,” he murmured to himself, watching with keen interest as Hunter sauteed sliced alliums in an oiled pan over the second camp stove, adding spices and broth from the ration kits and flipped the mass of it with careless ease.
Hunter’s damnably sensitive ears had caught the observation. “Who would be the cooking type among us, do you think?” he smirked.
Caught out, Echo shrugged awkwardly. “Crosshair, I suppose?” He looked over in the field where the lanky clone idly watched Tech and Wrecker bicker as he enjoyed the fire roaring up from the fire pit. “He doesn’t strike me as the type to live with substandard fare if he can get better.” He’d learn out of spite, if nothing else, Echo added inside his head.
Hunter barked a laugh. “Astute observation, shiny,” he replied, for a moment the gentle derogative pulling a hook in Echo’s chest; not quite painful, not quite not. “But never, ever let that man cook for you unless you are tired of tastebuds, gut health and life.”
The skewering of their loyal sniper was so unexpected that Echo snorted a laugh. “That bad?”
“Once done, never forgotten,” Hunter’s face pinched. “By all the gods, we tried though. He’s got no kriffing taste. In any sense of the word. Which, incidentally, is how I ended up on permanent KP,” Hunter continued, turning up burners and tossing cream into the pan, greens into the big, bubbling pot. “The rations are kinda hit and miss with me. Some of ‘em are… okay. I can eat them. Others I can’t kriffing stand . It’s not just the flavours or salts and sweetness or textures - though it is sometimes that too - it’s also that if there’s something rancid or mouldy or if there's been an infestation in the processing plant, I can taste that shit,” Hunter was gloomy. “Sometimes literally.”
Echo stared at him.
“Oh yeah,” Hunter said to his aghast look. “They test ‘em to make sure they’re good for consumption, obviously, but you’d be amazed what contaminants they let pass through so they don’t waste the food or the money. After all, nobody will be able to taste the ones that are slightly off. Except me, of course.”
Echo gave an internal shudder and tried not to think too hard about any of the rations he’d ever eaten. That was knowledge he had a feeling would be following him into every mess he walked into from now on. He wasn’t generally squeamish, but ick.
Hunter grinned at his now doubt slightly greenish tinge. “Don’t worry, if there’s a problem like that with the chow, I’ll let you know. Tech scans everything we eat anyhow. A bunch of the standard troop rations cause anaphylactic reactions for me in any case, and oh what fun we had finding out which ones. The ones that I can eat are fine but kind of… bland,” Hunter made a face, tattoos pulling at the lines. “That’s where I got into the herb and spice game. It’s amazing what a difference a little extra flavour makes. I guess this,” he gestured to the full kitchen he was running. “Spun out of that. Plus,” he spun the knife like a credit on fingertips, before slicing tubers into flimsiplast thin slices in a hyperspace blur of movement, no hesitation, no fear. “Anything to keep the skills sharp. Hey!” he yelled over to the other three. “Is the pit oven ready yet?”
“Temperature nearly optimal!” Tech yelled back.
“You better have made that sauce!” Crosshair added from wherever he’d secreted himself amongst the long grasses.
“I don’t take requests!” Hunter yelled back, shaking the pan of sauce as it thickened nicely. “Make it yourself if you want it!”
Crosshair’s response was drowned out by a frantic, tandem “NO!” from the other two, followed by yelps and swears as Crosshair answered their criticism with finely aimed knuckle sized seeds pelted with deadly precision from the long grass.
Hunter chuckled to himself and even Echo cracked a grin. Then Hunter shoved a spoonful of sauce into Echo’s mouth. “Good?”
Echo didn’t answer right away. He was briefly at one with the Force.
“Good,” was his eventual response, so inadequate it was nearly a lie. “Very, very good,” was his best follow up attempt to get even close.
“Good,” Hunter grinned at him. “How’s your mixing game?” he asked, getting out some big silver bowls from their supply box.
Echo blinked at him, then looked down at his scomp link, whirring it back and forth a few times. “I do alright, sarge,” he deadpanned.
Hunter laughed again. “Then come closer and I’ll teach you how to make stuffing.”
“Are we ready to cook yet?” Wrecker shouted to them. “I’m hungry!”