Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories

I’m multishipping garbage, so I decided to write a little TechPhee fix-it piece because they deserved so much better. They’ve also got a newborn.

Phee was pulled from the gentle sea of sleep by the precise staccato of a familiar whisper. Before giving birth to Aroha, she had been a heavy sleeper, but having a newborn had somehow made her more prone to waking at the slightest noise, her brain filled with one phrase: “the baby”. Phee rubbed the sleep from her eyes and rolled over towards the source of the sound. A broad, scarred, brown back topped by a head of grey-streaked auburn hair cut through the moonlight flooding through the window, and Phee felt warmth down to the very pit of her stomach.

She sat up and scooted towards the opposite edge of the bed. When she reached her husband’s warmth, she rested her chin on his shoulder. Tech glanced up from the quiet bundle in his arms and turned to Phee, stealing a quick but scorching kiss from her parted lips.

“The baby okay?” asked Phee, reaching down and stroking an old, silvery scar that ran like a ravine across Tech’s left pectoral.

“Yes,” he replied, still whispering, “Aroha was sound asleep. I, however, was not.” It wasn’t uncommon for Tech to pick their daughter up from the bassinet beside their bed in the middle of the night, and it had been like pulling teeth to get him to admit that his dreams were the catalyst.

“Another of your dreams?” asked Phee, reaching down to run a gentle index finger along Aroha’s chubby cheek. The newborn’s eyelids twitched, but she remained lost in slumber.

“The one with the needles and the electricity,” said Tech, his voice cracking. He pulled his daughter closer to his chest and took in a tremulous breath.

“Oh, Brown Eyes,” Phee said before tilting his strong chin towards her and kissing him deeply. She felt a tear escape her eye. When the kiss broke, Phee stroked the side of Tech’s neck. “It’s all over. You’re on Pabu.”

“Sometimes, I am prone to forgetting,” said Tech, his voice colored by guilt for horrible things that he didn’t remember, and yet had been forced to do.

“I know,” replied Phee, only to be interrupted by a shrill cry.

Aroha’s wide, brown eyes opened for a moment before a shrill cry for her mother erupted from her toothless mouth.

“She’s hungry,” said Phee as she plucked the baby from her husband’s arms, lifted her shirt, and allowed Aroha to latch on and feed.

Tech turned around and looked at his wife and daughter with a warm smile, and the motorized components in his prosthetic arm hummed as he adjusted the silk bonnet that sat askew atop Phee’s locs.

“You are beautiful,” he said, “so is little Aroha. She has your smile.”

Phee’s heart lept as though she were a schoolgirl talking to her first crush, “she’s got your pretty eyes, Tech. What were you talking to her about tonight?”

Tech took Phee’s flesh hand in his cybernetic one. It was warm. “I was simply telling young Aroha the tale of the Prince in the Cursed Mask and the Pirate Queen whose kiss broke the spell,” he said.

Phee hummed and gave Aroha a smile, “how’s it end?”

“Just like this,” said Tech.

THIS. All of this.

The part about mourning Mayday getting more screen time than mourning Tech? Fuck.

Yesterday everyone was posting their feelings on TBB. I'm glad I waited, because there's a lot swirling around. Cut for negativity again.

I was introduced to The Bad Batch in August 2022 and fell instantly in love. The characters, the story, the complex family dynamics, they all spoke to me. I wasn't even a Star Wars fan but I went through and devoured The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, all of it. I threw myself into this world and adored every second of it. I must have rewatched season one over five times before season two even came out.

When season two premiered I loved it. Every Tuesday night I stayed up until the episode drop and devoured it immediately. I looked ahead at the schedule and took days off work for the double episodes, for the big Crosshair episodes - he was my favorite early on and season two only made that grow. But season two also really brought Tech into my radar even more. I had always liked him, but here he was shining. The Crossing really solidified it, as an autistic person. I'd never heard someone describe the difference in processing so succinctly before, so clearly, and it spoke to me like very little had. Here was a character that was like me. Here was a character that I needed when I was an undiagnosed child, someone that would have made me feel like I had at least some way of describing my differences.

Then, well. He died. It was an affecting scene, but it felt out of nowhere, it felt unfinished. Tech didn't even get the climax of the episode. He just fell into the clouds, the Batch grieved for a few minutes, and then the plot steamrolled right along.

I didn't believe it, not after the mad scientist presented his goggles and claimed not to salvage anything else. It seemed like such an obvious fake out. The longer I sat with it the less satisfying it felt. It felt so brushed over, so pointless, all for a mission that they accomplished nothing on. Then came the social media circus. Again and again his fall was shoved in our faces on Twitter, demanding we stream it. TikToks were made that were so out of touch they felt like parodies, the wound ripped open again and again, and I thought surely there had to be a purpose to it.

So I waited for season 3 as interviews were done that seemed to almost intentionally avoid calling him dead. As tweets were made promising we'd be so fulfilled if we could only see who was onscreen in the mid-season! (A tweet that immediately garnered dozens of people hoping it referred to Tech, all without a single comment to try and quell the speculation.) It felt already like we were being toyed with, but I thought it had to be for a reason or a purpose. More weirdly vague discussions went up about his Sacrifice, his Fall, his Anything But Death, even as everyone insists that it was so meaningful, the way he died on a mission that accomplished nothing. Jokes were made around Valentines Day.

He Fell For You, get it?

The first official use of killed went up on the databank right after the trailer, on Hunter's page of all places. The first time the interviews used dead was the Friday before the premier. It all felt too late, theories had already grown for months by that point.

Season 3 finally came and I waited up for every episode drop just like I did for season 2, hoping for him to come back or at least for him to be properly grieved, since we had barely a couple of minutes in Plan 99 before it was swept away for the next plot point. Surely Tech's impact deserved an episode of focus, if he were really gone.

The previously on plays his last words twice. But then we skip months into the future. We don't see Crosshair find out the news - even though Tech died on a mission to retrieve him. We don't watch Omega grieve. She barely seems to notice she's missing a brother. We got a brief allusion in episode two. It took three episodes to even mention his name in passing. Five episodes in everyone got their chance to look sad about him, but only for a few seconds and only when his skills were relevant. Compared to the gorgeous callback to Mayday in the same episode, it felt shallow. He had to have been more important than this didn't he?

Episodes 6 & 7 felt like maybe there was a reason. We see a new masked assassin that gets extra focus, who got put through a series of Tech-adjacent situations, whose beef with Crosshair was just a little too personal, who survived longer than all the rest but stayed masked. Rex talks about losing brothers, but Hunter says nothing about the brother they lost. I hoped it all meant something, that this was the reason that he felt so much like he was thrown away, so that he could come back in.

More one off mentions that only really come up when it's about how useful Tech would have been. More poking at the wound that still felt open and raw because we'd never gotten any closure. The closest we get is a single scene in episode eleven, so late in the season and so brief that I thought that couldn't possibly be it.

CX-2 comes back, and he talks like Tech. He's still not unmasked. I really need him to be something because otherwise what was it all for?

The most emotion comes in Juggernaut, from Phee. Its a highlight because it actually feels like it was about him, like he mattered as a person. It's episode twelve and we finally talk about him like a person. We never saw her get the news either.

Episodes thirteen and fourteen pass without any mentions at all. We're running out of time. Episode 15 hits and we get one raw one from Crosshair that Clone Force 99 died with Tech. It's the first time they directly say he's dead in so many words. It's the season finale. CX-2 is a nobody it turns out, and he dies faceless. Everyone gets a happy ending and after over a year of wondering if we'd ever get closure, it turns out Tech's just dead. But look how happy everyone else is!

Everyone gets to grow old. Except the autistic one of course. He's just dead and it hardly feels like it mattered at all. Did you know Wrecker and Hunter don't use his name once in season three? Omega and Echo mention him once each. Crosshair twice, only once with any emotion behind it. Phee tops the charts at three mentions, two by name and one by nickname. We see his goggles four times. I kept count.

There was never a bigger plan, this was just all he was worth. We spent two seasons on Crosshair's absence. We spent a whole episode dealing with it when Echo decided to go with Rex. Tech dies though and all his life amounted to was a handful of mentions when his skills would have been useful, some shots of his broken goggles, and endless cooing out of the text over how meaningful his sacrifice was. Too meaningful to take back, of course, even as Ventress is brought back from her own sacrifice.

I had really, really thought that this time autistic life would be worth more than autistic death. That a character that felt so carefully handled couldn't have just been thrown away for shock value, barely to even be mentioned again, his memory used to string us along to keep us watching. If you added up every mention and shot through season 3 it might actually clock in at less time than was spent on Mayday's send off.

I'm an adult. I'll survive, though the sting of seeing yet another character like me used as a stepping stone for everyone else's happy ending will take a while to fade. But I think about the child I used to be who needed a character like Tech. And I think about how it would have felt to actually get that only to watch him die a handful of episodes later as a side note to his family's story, barely even mentioned again. How badly it would have hurt, how deep it would have scarred.

I'm not that child anymore. But there are a lot of autistic kids out there that are the same as I used to be, and they're learning for the first time that people like us don't get happy endings. Instead they die so that everyone around them can rise up, and they might even get mentioned a few times. But don't worry. Everyone will tell you how meaningful and special it is and how delusional you were to ever hope for anything else.

The Bad Batch still means a lot to me. I think it always will. I love the characters. I love the family, and all the potential they had. But the sting of not belonging in this happy ending is there, and it's deep. It's been a long time since I trusted a show. It'll be a long time before I risk trusting another. And I hope that the autistic kids trying to learn how to close their hearts off behind new walls are doing okay.

As far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t contradict canon at all.

I love it.

I see your old man Tech. And I raise you, Tech and Phee together.

Ohhh challenge accepted! They’re just having a nice relaxing afternoon on Pabu enjoying the sun and being alive and happy and old together. Perhaps they just got back from an adventure?

Tech lives. And my autocorrect always wants this:

Tech loves.

pspsps techgirlies, i saw your man on pabu

Older Tech. Full image below.

"Brown Eyes"

He will always have a special place in my heart.

Don't worry I am sticking around a little longer. I have a couple of pieces I had planned before the finale but didn't have time to get to. I hope you enjoyed the finale! TBB is and always will be one of a kind.