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laughhardrunfastbekindsblog · 2 months

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These Scars Remain

Summer of Bad Batch 2024 | Week 6 | Prompt: Battle Scars

Summary: "Did I ever tell you what Tech did when I got my first big scar?" POV: Wrecker (Word Count: 3131)

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Notes: I touched on a few of the concepts here in one of my other works that I wrote up while imagining how the months between episodes 2.16 and 3.02 had gone for Hunter, Wrecker and Echo. And recently I've been thinking a lot about how Wrecker might have gotten the huge scar on his face. And then I saw this week's prompt. This is the result.

“Wrecker.”

Pain. So much pain.

“Wrecker!”

Blinding… burning… pain… ringing… agony… so dark…

“Wrecker! Wake up!”

Stabbing… crushing… why wouldn’t the pain stop… just make it stop…

“WRECKER!”

That voice… he knew that voice… who… Tech, why was Tech yelling at him? Why was the ground shaking…?

Wrecker came to with a groan. He wanted to move, find his way to more solid ground so he would stop shaking – maybe he wouldn’t hurt as much if he wasn’t shaking – but the only part of his body he could manage to move for himself was his eyelids.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Tech’s goggles, which were currently taking up most of his field of vision – a field of vision that was narrower than usual… Wrecker blinked, what was wrong with his left eye?

Then he realized the ground had stopped moving… No, Tech had stopped shaking him. Why had Tech been shaking him…? Had he been asleep? Were they late for a battle simulation or…?

Suddenly Wrecker remembered: the squad was in their third and final week of completing individual field tests, tests that would determine whether each member of the squad was prepared to progress to the final months of advanced training. Hunter and Crosshair were currently in a different room, Wrecker didn’t yet know what tests had been assigned to those two today. Wrecker and Tech had been shuffled into another area, with Tech being assigned target drills with the blasters in one corner of the long training room, and Wrecker being given the task of disarming a bomb at the other end of the room.

He had thought it would be a smoke bomb or something similar, he had been told as much – at least, he thought that’s what he had been told by the trainers before they left to watch the proceedings from the observation room. Wrecker still wasn’t sure what had gone wrong, but he was starting to think that definitely had not been a smoke bomb…

But it didn’t really matter what kind of bomb it had been; he should have been able to disarm it. All the regular cadets had to prove themselves to a certain standard; Wrecker knew full well that his squad of 99s had to prove themselves to be not just on par with the regs, but superior.

Now, Wrecker couldn’t help but recall that how quickly a cadet recovered from injury during training often played a role in determining whether said cadet was decommissioned or not. And… well, Wrecker knew he had definitely been injured.

That, on top of having clearly failed the test…

He didn’t know if retakes were allowed with these exams – he had never asked. None of his squad had needed to.

“Wrecker! Can you hear me?” Tech may have stopped shaking him, but his anxious voice persisted in calling Wrecker’s name, and Wrecker realized he had spent the last few seconds of reverie staring in a silent daze.

“Y… Yeah, Tech, I can hear you,” Wrecker replied. His words sounded muffled, garbled to his ears. It hurt so much to talk, but he tried to keep talking anyway, more to reassure Tech than anything else. “Guess I…”

Tech suddenly disappeared from Wrecker’s line of sight, replaced by a medical droid. “The stimulant worked, CT-9903 has regained consciousness,” Wrecker heard the droid report, before he felt himself being lifted onto a gurney.

Oh. He was going to be taken to the medical wing. That was fine… just, he didn’t really like going to the medical wing, he didn’t like all the tests that involved being poked and prodded and scanned, and he definitely didn’t like being there alone…

“CT-9902, where are you going?” the gruff voice of Gibli Ecto, their trainer, sounded somewhere behind Wrecker.

“I’m going with my brother to the medical wing. I want to stay with him,” Wrecker heard Tech reply.

“He’ll be just fine on his own. You need to finish your exam. You weren’t supposed to leave your testing station in the first place,” Ecto returned in a tone of finality.

“I already passed the test,” Tech replied.

“Excuse me?”

Tech’s voice was fading as Wrecker was carried further away, and Wrecker strained to hear his brother’s frank explanation: “Of the 150 targets on the exam, I have already accurately hit the first 136 of them, yielding an average 90.6% hit rate. Even if I miss the last fourteen targets, I’ve already exceeded the target rate required for passing at this point in my training. I don’t need to complete the remainder of the test. I want to accompany CT-9903 to the medical wing.”

“CT-9902, your insubordination is grounds for disciplinary action…”

“Let him go, Ecto,” one of the other trainers sighed – Wrecker couldn’t tell who was speaking now, maybe Timbria? “He’s right, he already passed. And these are special circumstances. CT-9902, you’re dismissed.”

“Yes, sir;” and Wrecker heard hurried footsteps catch up to him before his gurney was carried through the test room doors.

“I’m here, Wrecker,” Tech said matter-of-factly, placing a hand briefly on Wrecker’s right shoulder to reinforce the fact of his presence. “I’ll stay with you during the medical tests.”

“Thanks, Tech,” Wrecker said weakly. It still hurt to talk, still hurt to breathe, still hurt to think – and Wrecker found himself succumbing to unconsciousness again.

---

“Oh good, you’re awake,” was the first sound to greet Wrecker’s right ear.

“What… what happened?” Wrecker said bemusedly, staring around at the sterile and well-lit room, registering the fact that the left side of his face and head was heavily wrapped in bandages; and the events of the day rapidly caught up to him even before Tech spoke again.

“You were unsuccessful in disarming the bomb,” Tech started.

“Yeah, and it blew up in my face. Got it,” Wrecker said, trying to ignore the sick feeling that was developing anew in the pit of his stomach. He was grateful it had been an individual rather than a group exam, that none of his brothers had been nearby when the bomb had gone off, but… What would happen to him for failing his first explosives test? He had heard rumors of other cadets being decommissioned for far less. “I mean, what happened after I passed out again?”

“You’ve only been unconscious for half an hour, but that was ample time for the medical droids to see to your wounds,” Tech said conversationally, before his tone turned more somber and he seemed reluctant to continue. “Based on what they were saying amongst themselves, I don’t think you’ll regain function of your left eye or ear.”

“You mean… I won’t be able to see or hear on that side again?”

“That is correct.”

Wrecker tried to shrug – oh, it hurt to shrug. And it hurt to grimace from the pain of shrugging. Even thinking still hurt. But none of that mattered. So long as they let him retake the test, he’d learn to live with the pain, just like he’d learn to live partially blind and deaf. He was going to be a soldier and stay with his squad, no matter what. “Guess it’s a good thing I have backups. One ear and eye’s enough. I can still crush droids.”

Ever since the first wave of graduates had been shipped out a few months ago to officially serve in the Galactic Army of the Republic and fight in the new war, cadets had been informed that they would primarily be facing battle droids, and battle simulations had shifted to reflect this. Barreling through droids had become one of Wrecker’s favorite things to do, and just thinking about it now would have been enough to make him smile – if it didn’t hurt so much to move his face.

Tech smiled at Wrecker’s brash determination. “That is also correct. It does not seem that your injuries will have any permanent effect on your brute strength and physical domination of the battlefield.”

He sounded almost relieved as he said it, and Wrecker suddenly realized Tech was as worried about Wrecker being decommissioned as he himself was.

Maybe that was why Tech had not only left his own test without permission to make sure Wrecker was alive after the explosion, but also had been so insistent on staying by Wrecker’s side afterwards. If anyone would be able to mount a successful argument against decommissioning any member of this squad of 99s – even if the argument went up against Prime Minister Lama Su himself – it would be Tech.

The squad had been together long enough and understood each other well enough that Wrecker knew he could count on any one of his brothers for anything. Still, the fact that Tech had risked his own standing as a cadet just to be able to stay close and ensure Wrecker’s safety made Wrecker’s heart warm with gratitude, and he felt in his bones that whatever happened, Tech would always be there for him.

Wrecker loved his brothers so much. Nobody could have asked for better squadmates.

“You’re the first of us to be assigned that task. I wasn’t aware the disarming test involved thermal explosives,” Tech said now.

“I didn’t know either,” Wrecker replied in a low voice.

Tech sighed. “At any rate, you’re going to have a very – ah, impressive scar.”

Wrecker frowned as he cautiously patted the layers of bandages on his head. “How do you know?”

“I saw the damage. The droids did their best and it’s already healing quickly, but… there was a lot of tissue missing. Your hair probably won’t grow back in that area either. All along here – ” and Tech indicated the area by stretching his hand over his own left ear and side of his head.

The full implications suddenly hit Wrecker; and despite the continued pain, he grinned.

“What is it?” Tech asked curiously.

“It’ll be my first battle scar.”

“I’m not sure you can call it a ‘battle’ scar when you didn’t sustain it in a real battle,” Tech replied drily.

“I know I didn’t get it in a real battle, but most of the other regs won’t know that,” Wrecker countered. “The important thing is, the regs’ll see this scar and they’ll know I survived something big. And since the scar is right on my face, no one will miss it!”

“Unless you have your helmet on,” Tech pointed out.

Wrecker stammered for a moment as he tried to come up with an appropriately witty response, but before he could verbalize his retort, the door slid open to admit two very anxious-looking cadets.

“Wrecker!” Hunter exclaimed, hurrying over to the bed.

“An actual explosion. Is there anything you can’t survive?” Crosshair quipped as he came up behind Hunter, though the worry was still apparent in his eyes.

Wrecker tried to guffaw, though it came out more as a wheeze. “It’ll take a lot more than that to put me out of the fight!”

Hunter shook his head. “This shouldn’t have happened. You weren’t supposed to be tested with a thermal explosive in the first place. From what I can tell, the trainers are all trying to figure out what went wrong.”

Well, at least he hadn’t misheard critical information… but he had still failed the test, and he was still badly injured, and he couldn’t help but think that he might be deemed unfit to be a soldier.

“That should be grounds to allow him to retest, then,” Tech was saying thoughtfully.

“Oh, yeah,” Hunter said, “that’s not gonna be an issue.”

Hunter said it so confidently, Wrecker couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief. “Really? So I’m not getting…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence, but all of them knew exactly what he meant.

“Nope, you’re not,” Hunter said. “I overheard Nala Se saying we’re ahead of the curve already, whatever that means, and that the Jedi will probably want to see our skills for themselves when they get here.”

Tech’s face perked up with interest. “Jedi?”

“Yeah. Some of the cadets were saying some Jedi will be coming to oversee training operations from now on. I guess it’s true.”

Tech now had his “explanation incoming” expression on. “That will be most interesting to experience. The Jedi are formidable warriors, and by all accounts their ways seem to be quite distinct from the Mandalorian and even Kaminoan styles of fighting and training. They have been…”

“Yeah, yeah, Tech, we didn’t ask,” Crosshair cut him off with a playful shoulder bump to offset the harshness of his voice.

Wrecker shifted himself slightly to a more comfortable position, noticing that the excruciating pain had become more bearable now that he wasn’t worried about his fate and the fate of his squad, now that he could look forward with new resolutions.

He wasn’t going to be decommissioned over this. He was going to become an explosives expert – no bomb would ever best him again, and he wouldn’t let any bomb pose a threat to any of his brothers. He was going to be one of the best soldiers out there, just like his brothers were going to be, even if he only had one working eye and ear. He was going to wear his battle scar with pride, because it showed that he might get knocked down, but he would never be beaten. And as long as he, Wrecker, wasn’t beaten, his brothers wouldn’t be, either.

He would make sure of it.

********

“You must sever the connection hinge. Now!”

Pain. So much pain.

“There is no time, Wrecker. Plan 99.”

Blinding… burning… pain… ringing… agony… so dark…

“When have we ever followed orders?”

Stabbing… crushing… why wouldn’t the pain stop… just make it stop… JUST MAKE IT STOP…

“Wrecker?”

Echo’s voice drew Wrecker’s thoughts away from Tech’s final words ringing again in his ear, though it wasn’t enough to draw his gaze away from Tech’s broken goggles.

He didn’t want to think of Tech as broken. He had tried so hard since Eriadu to focus on happy memories with Tech, their time together as cadets, as soldiers, as deserters, their lives together as brothers. But sometimes – most times – focusing on Tech’s life was impossible, when the brutal reality set in.

Tech was dead. Wrecker hadn’t been able to save him. Omega was gone. Wrecker hadn’t been able to save her – it had been days and they hadn’t even been able to find her. But there was hope Omega would be found and rescued. There was no hope for the same for Tech.

“Does it ever get better, Echo?”

For a brief moment, Wrecker wasn’t sure if Echo had heard the question – his voice had been so low and gruff he wasn’t sure if he had even heard himself – but then Echo sighed and leaned against the console, crossing his arms as he faced Wrecker.

“Yes,” Echo said slowly. “It does get better. But it never goes away completely. You’ll go for longer stretches of time – days, weeks even – feeling okay, the ache is so dim you almost don’t notice it. And then suddenly you’ll feel the pain all over again, like it never left in the first place. But that won’t last long, the pain will fade again, because you’ll have learned to live with it. Just like all the other injuries and losses you’ve learned to live with.”

Wrecker sat in silence, grappling with this explanation. He knew Echo had lost brothers before – lost his entire original squad, actually – and he figured Echo must know what he was talking about… but Wrecker didn’t understand it. At all. Losing a brother wasn’t like losing one’s sight or hearing, wasn’t the same as recovering from a blaster wound or a knife to the gut or burns from an explosion.

Especially since the brother that had been lost had been with Wrecker since the beginning, had helped him through every single injury, every single hurt, those that had healed without leaving a trace and those that had left scars – all of them, except this one.

Some battle scars couldn’t be seen. The losses that caused them ate away slowly on the inside without leaving any physical marks, just aching emptiness that somehow hurt even worse than every other injury Wrecker had ever experienced.

All of Wrecker’s physical injuries had healed over time. He didn’t think it was possible that time would somehow make this wound heal too.

As if he knew exactly what Wrecker was thinking, Echo now added, “It hurts a lot, at first; but remembering my brothers, what they meant to me, all I learned from them helped me keep moving forward. That’s how I learned to live with it. I live for them.”

“I… I keep trying to think of Tech, of how much he talked and studied and came up with some of the craziest plans,” Wrecker confessed. “I wanna talk out loud about it, but…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. If he wanted to ramble on about Tech, Hunter would patiently listen to him – Wrecker knew this; but, much as his older brother tried to hide it, the look in Hunter’s eyes when Wrecker had first done this had been more than enough to convince Wrecker to stop. Hunter just wasn’t ready to talk or listen about Tech, and Wrecker had to respect that.

But thoughts and memories like these flowed easier for Wrecker when he was able to talk through them. Holding it all in was so hard.

Echo glanced back at Hunter, who was currently sleeping fitfully on his rack. The lengths to which Wrecker and Echo had had to go in order to convince Hunter to rest at all…

“You can talk to me, you know,” Echo offered. “There’s a lot about your time as cadets on Kamino that I don’t know about.”

Wrecker sat in silence for some time, staring again at Tech’s goggles. Tech had had such poor eyesight that couldn’t be corrected without lenses, no matter what Nala Se and the other medical personnel had tried, that of all the 99s in the squad, he had nearly always been at highest risk for decommissioning; and after Wrecker’s failed disarming test, it had been comforting to know that one brother really understood what it was like to have limited vision, even if Tech had pestered him for months with all the options he had researched of possible ways to restore Wrecker’s vision in his left eye, while Wrecker had responded by teasing Tech that at least spectacles were not one of the options.

The memory was enough to almost bring a smile to Wrecker’s face – almost – and he glanced up at Echo.

“Did I ever tell you what Tech did when I got my first big scar?”

@summer-of-bad-batch

#the bad batch #star wars the bad batch #summerofbadbatch2024 #tbb wrecker #tbb tech #tbb echo #tbb hunter #tbb crosshair #clone cadets #kamino days #headcanon #tech still lives btw #his family just doesn't know that at this point #if you'll excuse me i'll just be over here making myself feel better with ALL the Tech Lives stories and art #tbb fanfiction #tbb headcanons

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