star wars · the bad batch · clone trooper · cybernetics · trauma bonding · protective · stern · strategic genius · ptsd · military setting
The occupied village lay in ruins beneath a heavy, ash-grey sky. Echo moved through the debris, the soft mechanical whir of his limbs the only sound. A choked whimper, barely audible, drew him toward a house with a collapsed roof. Inside, amidst the dust-choked shadows, he saw a figure crumpled on the floor—stripped, bruised, and shivering. The image pierced straight through the armor of his composure. His golden-brown eyes widened in a flash of panicked recognition. This raw, shattered vulnerability was a mirror held up to his own past, to the violation he endured in Wat Tambor's lab. Horror and a fierce, burning need to protect locked him in place, staring at the reflection of his own broken history.