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When the clone trooper wakes up, he is serene.
This is less out of any actual feelings of tranquility or peace, and more because of sheer necessity. He has to be calm, he has to be in control. He can't afford to panic about the fact that he can't feel his legs, can't afford panic about the fact that he can't feel his right arm, because then he'll panic about the rest of it, and then he'll be dead.
He'd heard rumors about what happened to troopers left behind on battlefields, about hunts and slavery and Trandoshans, but he never imagined, well, this.
He knows he's on a moon, but he's forgotten the moon's name. He knows it's a Trandoshan hunting ground. He knows if he doesn't move soon, he'll probably meet an ugly end. He knows that his body doesn't feel like his own, and that he's not sure that he can move.
So he's kriffed, basically.
The clone trooper lies there for some amount of time, and he knows he should be keeping track of it, but all of his energy is going towards staying awake. There's rustling all around him, and he's pretty sure he's in some kind of forest, which means that there should be water around, so maybe he's less kriffed than he thought he was.
Then he hears voices.
Kark.
The clone trooper can barely bring himself to lift his head, so yeah, he’s kriffed. He's dead, he's so dead, and kark, it stings, knowing that he survived Rishi and the Citadel, just to end up dying like this. The voices are coming closer, and he takes a moment to send an apology to Fives, thinks of Cutup and Droidbait and Hevy, wonders if he'll get to see them on the other side—
"Hey!" a voice exclaims, "there's someone here!"
"Leave them," another voice says, and they've got the same edge in their voice as Rex does when he's issuing orders. Their leader, then. "We can't let them drag us down."
"But he's a clone trooper! They were made for the Jedi, were they not?"
"Being Jedi hasn't exactly helped us survive this," the authoritative voice hisses back, and the voice reminds him oddly of General Ti, just... younger. But if they're Jetii— he groans, pulls up every bit of determination ARC training taught him, and tries to move.
"Sithspit!" the first voice exclaims, and there are hands on his head before he knows it, stabilizing him, keeping him in place. "Jinx, can you—?"
"On it," the voice at his feet— Jinx— says. "Kalifa?"
A pause, then a huff. "If this gets us all killed, it's your fault," the Kalifa kid replies, and he can practically hear the eye roll in her voice, stifles a laugh at how much the kid sounds like a disgruntled Droidbait because he's pretty sure that if he starts laughing he'll start crying.
Footsteps move away, and then there's a hand on his arm, right where it connects to the prosthetic, and he flinches away from it instinctively. "Sorry, sorry," the first voice says, "you just look uncomfortable, you're kind of at an awkward angle right now, I was going to rearrange you a bit. Are you a clone trooper? You look like one, and Jinx says you are, and he's usually right about this kind of stuff."
The clone trooper blinks, and tries to respond. "Yeugh," he says unintelligibly, "ARC-0408. Five-oh-First Legion."
"The 501st?" the voice asks, and he manages to blink, and then open his eyes. Everything is blurry, but he can see a head right above him... some kind of humanoid? Maybe a Cerean? It’s... probably a Cerean, unless his vision is really karked. "I don't remember hearing about the 501st."
"Mmph," the clone trooper replies, and he stops, tries again. "'m not lying."
"I know," the Cerean says, and he suddenly realizes that the Cerean is small. The Cerean is cadet-sized. But before he can even begin to consider those implications, consider why there's a kid on a Trandoshan hunting moon, the voice is speaking again. "Sorry about Kalifa, by the way. She's just trying to keep us all safe, and last time we tried to help someone, it... ended badly. Sorry."
Someone died, his brain helpfully supplies, and the trooper groans, pushes that thought away. Not everywhere is a war zone. Maybe they mean something else. "It's okay, kid," he manages to say, and it comes out more as mumbles than words, but the Cerean seems to get his drift. "Are you really a Jetii?"
Silence, and a shaky sounding breath. Then— "Y-yeah, I am. Jedi Initiate O-Mer. It's an honor to meet you, ARC Trooper 0408. Do you have a name that you'd prefer to go by?"
And he really shouldn't say his name, he's got no idea who's listening, but... any energy he has is fading quick, and he really doesn't want to be called 0408 for any longer. "Echo," he says. "My name, it's Echo."
"Then it's an honor to meet you, ARC Trooper Echo," O-Mer chirps back, bringing his hands together and bowing slightly and—
Huh. The kid reminds him of Ahsoka. Might as well humor him.
"It's an honor to meet you as well," Echo says, stops, takes a moment to catch his breath. It feels almost like a nexu has been clawing at his chest. "Initiate O-Mer."
And the kid is still relatively blurry, so Echo can't be sure, but he thinks he may get a small smile in response.