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literallyjustanerd · 9 months

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Twist The Knife To Keep The Scar (Fives & Echo, grief/mourning)

Rex is leaning over his cot, face drawn into a gaunt mask. He knows what Echo will ask. Echo thinks he knows the answer. He asks anyway.

“Rex… where’s Fives?”

In their own ways, both Fives and Echo experience outliving the other. But in the end, it's Echo who has to find a way to live on in a galaxy with half of himself missing. A galaxy that, despite his brother's best efforts, Echo sometimes wishes he hadn't survived to see.

Back on my bullshit ruminating about Fives and Echo never getting to see each other again!

Dividers by the incredible @freesia-writes with amazing helmet art by @lornaka

General vibe: Grief, angst, dissociation, recovery, found family

Words: 4,888

Characters: Fives, Echo, Rex, Tup, Omega, The Bad Batch (mentioned)

Read it here or support me on AO3.

There's an exquisite heat in the air around him. Then a harsh, biting cold. A blinding light, then suffocating darkness. The ecstacy of adrenaline thrumming in his veins, then blood-curdling terror choking him until he cannot even scream. Hope, then despair. Peace, then pandemonium. Repeating in an endless cycle so maddening he wants to split his own skull open to quiet the furore.

And then, he's awake.

He comes back fighting from the void. Lurching, crying out, violent and reckless on instinct and little else. He wrenches at what’s left of his limbs, dismayed when they flail freely, unbound by the tethers and wires he’d grown so used to. It’s bright. He cowers from the light, though can’t think to shield his eyes with his one remaining hand. It’s an eternity before a voice reaches him through the ringing in his ears. The voice of a brother. It changes, alternating between speaking calm words and barking sharp orders. The familiarity is enough to break through Echo’s hysteria. He stills, holds back his own cries to try and make out the words. In time, his bleary vision begins to take in the sight around him, foggy shapes coalescing into a silhouette, then a face. It’s Kix.

It’s Kix. His brother Kix.

He stands in a halo of fluorescent light at the head of Echo’s cot, calling brisk instructions to the other medics. At his order, the lights dim, soothing the ache in Echo’s eyes. He lays a hand on Echo’s shoulder, firm and grounding, and sternly tells him not to try and move. It’s then that he realises that there are lines attached to him. A great deal, in fact. IV tubes snake from his wrist and the crook in his elbow. There’s a port below his ribs syphoning some sort of clear-pink fluid, and wires running to electrodes arranged in a grid on his chest. He listens when Kix tells him they're all there for good reason. He believes it when Kix tells him he’s safe, they’ve got him, he’s okay. Someone raises a cup of water to his lips, and though Echo nearly chokes on the tiny sip, it still makes him want to sob with relief. By his head, Kix makes an adjustment on one of his IV flasks. He doesn’t raise his eyes when he says,

“Someone find Rex. Tell him he’s awake.”

Memory floods back into the broken kaleidoscope of Echo’s mind.

“Where is he?”

Rex hadn’t answered him the first time he’d asked, careening down hallways and around corners, still half-convinced he must be dreaming or dead. He had tried to convince himself that Rex was just distracted. That maybe he hadn’t even heard the question at all, despite it being one of the first things past Echo’s lips the moment he regained control of them. It was plausible: the blaster fire was loud enough and the chaos was all but overwhelming. But even in his addled, delirious state, he had caught the twitch in Rex’s jaw, the guilty way his eyes darted across the room, cagey, avoidant. Everything Rex never was. Echo had not asked again, had instead put the last of his meagre energy into clawing his way out of hell. And, despite his expectations, he’d made it. They all had. He had seen the sun again. He hadn’t lasted much longer than that– his atrophy and fatigue had come back to claim him once he’d been loaded into a transport. Still, the question remained stuck on his tongue as he passed out, not quite able to speak it aloud. He does it now, though, when Kix has cleared out the medbay and Rex is leaning over his cot, face drawn into a gaunt mask. He knows what Echo will ask. Echo thinks he knows the answer. He asks anyway.

“Rex… where’s Fives?”

Three standard rotations. Nine Republic-sanctioned mealtimes since making it off Lola Sayu and out of the Force-forsaken Citadel. And still, Fives has made no appearance in the mess hall. Rex suppresses a sigh at the empty seat next to him, tries to still the bounce of his leg under the table. He gives up on his rations halfway through, sliding them across the table to Jesse as, wordless, he leaves the rows of bustling benches. It’s not easy to track him down. He checks the gym, the boilers, the bridge, even the laundry rooms before he comes to the cold, cramped halls of the armoury. It’s all but abandoned, only a handful of troopers choosing to skip or postpone their meal break. Rex weaves through the tight corridors of catalogued rifles and torpedoes, affording a distracted nod to the men who greet him with the usual salutes. Finally, he spots his brother in the back corner. He's counting stock, eyes boring into a datapad as though it's the only thing tethering him to himself.

"Fives.”

It gets no response at first. He’s far too wilfully engrossed in his task. Just as he has been in every spare moment since leaving The Citadel. Rex has watched him move like a man possessed from hauling cargo to running maintenance protocols, reviewing battle maps to making supply orders. More productive in three rotations than he’d ever been in a week. If he’d eaten, Rex hadn’t seen it. If he’d slept, it hadn’t stuck, judging by the dark, gaunt circles draped under his eyes. They age him, make his cheeks look too sharp and his skin too pallid under the ship's stark lighting. The half-serving of rations churns in Rex’s stomach.

“Fives, look at me.”

There’s a hand on Fives’ shoulder, one he throws harshly off like a man woken from a nightmare. He blinks at his brother, unable or unwilling to focus his gaze.

“Don’t,” he says, before he knows quite what he’s refusing. Self-consciousness leeches into his fingertips, tightening around the datapad. It’s too much to keep his face turned in Rex’s direction, so he points it back at the wall.

“You know you can’t go on like this. You’re running yourself into the ground,” Rex coaxes. A hot rush of shame burns across the back of Fives’ neck, his shoulders raising against it. He’s being spoken to like a scared stray tooka. Like a cadet with a skinned knee. Given the choice, Fives picks the easier of two options and lets anger steer his reply.

“I know what I’m kriffing doing. Don’t need you checking up on me.”

“Then it’s a good thing you don’t get a choice in the matter.”

The growl Fives gives in response is involuntary. His fingers grip harder at the datapad. A sign of losing control? A sign of trying to keep control? Just because he itches to feel something break under his hands? After waiting patiently for a reply of some kind, Rex fills the silence again.

"I'm not trying to tell you to stop caring. I know that's how it feels, but I'm not. I just want you to take care of yourself, too."

"And what's the point of that?!" Fives blurts. The datapad clatters across the floor, the sound louder than it should be, echoing and doubling off the towering metal walls. "What does it even matter anymore if he—" As quickly as the dam breaks, he stems the flow. Straightens his back and swallows the words back down, bitter as they stick in his throat. The seconds scrape by, sandpaper against his frayed mind. His teeth grit, eyes closed. He waits. But Rex stays silent. No more platitudes, no stern, parental reminders about health and self-care. In time, Fives is seized by the fear that Rex has grown tired of his tantrum and left. But when he turns away from the wall, his brother is there, his gaze steady, open. Waiting.

"I… It was supposed to be… It was always …"

Try as he might, the thought won't make it out of his head in full, ending up in pieces by the time it tumbles past his proud, clumsy lips.

"Always the two of you," Rex finishes for him. "Right from the start, I know. We all knew." Rex's mouth quirks, his eyes dipping downwards a moment. Fives wonders what memory it is that drives the expression. While he is still caught in a losing battle against his own voice, Rex continues, holding the silence at bay. "You know, back after the invasion on Kamino, Cody and I wanted to take one of you each? We both needed a new ARC trooper. It seemed perfect." He steps forward, turning to lean against the wall next to Fives. No resistance this time when a hand braces on Fives' shoulder. There's a lump in Fives' throat that is hard to swallow around. Rex continues. "But when we got one look at the two of you together, the way you were with each other… Well." The quirk in Rex's lip grows to a smile, small and fragile. "Cody and I never managed to stay together long. We were always pulled apart. We couldn't let the same happen to you."

A dry, guttural sob bursts from Fives' chest, breaking through the barrier of his clenched teeth. The words follow before he can stop them.

"It should have been me."

The reprimand he expects does not come. Instead, Rex keeps his gaze on Fives, as resigned as it is devastated. There's a soft understanding in the way he breathes; slowly in, heavily out. Underneath all his composure, it becomes clear just how intimately Rex knows this feeling. How many times Fives’ words have crossed his own mind after returning from battle. Fives lets go. Finally cuts the string he had tied to the top of his head to hold himself off the ground. The plastoid of Rex's shoulder pauldron hurts when Fives' forehead hits it. He relishes the pain.

Goosebumps break out across Echo’s skin when he steps into the rain. He gasps at the little pinpricks of cold, radio static dancing in the gaps of his armour. The sensation is not unpleasant, just another that he had long since given up on ever feeling again. Mercifully, the perpetual storm over Kamino has momentarily ebbed; Echo would not trust himself to stay upright on his cybernetics in a full typhoon. Walking is still entirely alien to him. He knows he must look a mess, unsteady and teetering, each step a lurching fall forward with the hope that the sordid mess of durasteel beneath him will catch his weight. Hunter stands a few feet ahead of him, and he’s flanked by the other members of Clone Force 99 as they disembark. Though they form up around him, clearly ready to act as a buffer if one of Echo’s gambled steps doesn’t pay off, they say nothing, only watching from the corners of their eyes. Affording him his pride. Preserving the illusion of normalcy.

They needn't bother. Under Echo's carefully-drawn expression there is a storm as vicious and brutal as the worst of Kamino’s tempests.

Kamino has changed since the last time he had walked its sleek, streamlined halls. It feels cleaner, smoothed over, more soulless than usual. Was it always so cold here, even inside? Beside him, two of his new squad are bickering. Though only a few feet away, their voices reach Echo from a distance, muffled, underwater. He feels thin. Not just malnourished, though he evidently is. His whole existence feels thin, as though he isn’t actually there. Someone could walk straight through him and feel nothing more than a cool breeze. A fleeting pang of regret tells him he should be with Rex, should have stayed with the 501st. But beneath the crashing waves on the surface, in the depths of his mind he knows that it’s better to be a stranger than to face those who know him, what he was and who he’s lost. What he’s become. Rex could feel it, too, when he had seen Echo off on the landing field.

“If that’s where you feel your place is, then that’s where you belong.”

Was it about belonging? Or was it just that he couldn’t bear to stand so close to the edge of the gaping hole that had been left in his life?

The only time Echo had ever talked about this with Fives, he had been shut down with a single look. A thousand words in a microscopic expression, the silent language they’d forged together accidentally through years of traded glances. Across battlefields and barracks, strategy meetings and mess hall benches, until they knew the other’s mind by instinct, sometimes better than they knew their own.

“When,” Fives had said, with the weight of the galaxy behind the word. A shield raised against the knife of Echo’s ‘if.’

“When we both make it to the end of the war, we’re going to Naboo first. General Skywalker talks about it all the time. It must be worth the hype.”

Maybe Echo should have pushed it. Doubled down on his ‘if’ and done something, said something to prepare them for having to keep breathing after the other was gone. They had never dared to say aloud that their plans for a galaxy-wide sightseeing tour could grind to a halt in a single heartbeat. For years they had curated their list of destinations, sights to see, cities to explore, foods to taste and cultures to learn, everything they had always been denied. Neither wanted to be the first to say their grand adventure might never happen. Or, worse, that it could be a solo trip. Echo opened his mouth. But the minute twitch in Fives’ brow told him all he needed to know: he was picking at a thread that could unravel them both. Once one of them was gone, the other would surely die in every meaningful way. There was no point in even acknowledging the possibility. So instead, he lobbed a wadded-up piece of dirty laundry at Fives’ head and smiled.

“Fine. Naboo first. But I still want to see the museums in Alderaan. Don’t care if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.”

Beside Echo, the muted conversation grows louder. Words repeated. Someone trying to get his attention. One of them, the big one, Wrecker, slaps him on the back. It jars the rivets along his shoulder blades, sending sharp bolts of pain through his spine as he’s thrown forward by the force. It’s too fast for his cumbersome legs to catch him, and in a split second Echo has accepted he’s going to hit the floor. But the impact doesn’t come, and he opens his eyes to find a shamefaced Wrecker holding him aloft with one arm looped under his chest.

“I– Sorry, Echo, I didn’t mean to– Should’ve been more careful,” he stammers, returning him to his feet as though he weighed less than empty armour. The shock brings Echo crashing back into his body, makes him feel real again in a way he is woefully unready for. The others are staring at him, their eyes singing like blasterfire on his skin. It takes an embarrassingly long moment to will his mouth into moving.

“It’s fine,” he mumbles, unable to meet anyone’s eye. “I’m fine.”

He wonders if it’s better to be stranded in a vast, flat desert than to stand at the edge of a bottomless pit.

It’s after Umbara that Rex overhears Fives with Tup. Lights-out was hours ago. They’re out of the barracks, but Rex can hardly reprimand them for it: half of the men, himself included, have had scarcely little sleep since what happened on that wretched, awful planet. All over the ship there are small groups of vode, hunched over mugs of caf at tables in the kitchen, crammed into bunks together, running endless drills in the gym. Rex despairs at being unable to do more for them, but he knows better than most that nothing could grant his brothers rest or peace in a time like this. Still, something in Fives’ tone tugs him closer, makes him linger around the corner and strain his ears to listen.

“–not about glory or heroics.”

“But what about what you–”

“Forget what I did. Okay? What I did doesn’t matter. I’m telling you , here and now, you stay alive.”

They’re sitting on the ledge of a large bay window, faces backlit by the ship’s external lighting and the low ambient glow of hyperspace outside. Tup has his legs drawn to his chest, a steaming mug cradled in his hands, while Fives leans forward, elbows on his knees. Rex knows he should make himself known. Or at the very least walk away now. It’s not his place to eavesdrop.

He doesn’t move.

It was a different version of Fives that came back from losing Echo. Sharper edges, harder, but more brittle. Scar tissue where there used to be unmarred skin. He still jokes, even still plays pranks and pulls stunts to entertain those around him. But his laughter is never quite as free or unguarded. His eyes scan every room he enters, searching, never finding. And most noticeably, he’s developed an intense protective streak over his brothers. Especially the shinies.

“I just want to fight for our brothers. Like you and the others have been.” Tup sounds chastised, confused. Still so sincere. Rex chances another glance around the corner to see Fives topping up his brother’s mug from a small flask before he takes a swig himself. Another breach of regulation Rex can’t rightly fault him for.

“You want to do something good for your brothers?” Fives says, voice low. “You survive the war. You stay around for them. You live to see a day we’re not forced to risk our lives for people who don’t karking care, don’t even know we exist .”

Rex doesn’t realise just how much of a hypocrite Fives has become until months later. Until he’s holding Fives to his chest on the floor of a derelict warehouse, the smell of blasterfire and burnt flesh thick in the air.

Losing Echo has made a hypocrite of Fives. As fiercely as he protected his brothers, as many times as he told them not to be heroes, he never reserved the same caution for himself. In fact, he launched himself headlong into more perilous situations than he ever had with Echo. He hid it under his status: an ARC trooper was supposed to be a more independent agent, a knife to make the daring precision cuts, carving a path for the battering ram of his fellow troopers. Still, Rex worries what the real motivation behind his recklessness might be.

“...Okay,” Tup says finally. But Fives still says it again.

“Just stay alive. Kark the war, kark the Republic, just… stay alive .”

An overwhelming silence falls over his mind, like a blanket of thick, black velvet. Relief. The sudden dying out of a background murmur he had never recognised until it stopped. The quiet is all-consuming, incomprehensible, fantastic. The release of a muscle flexed for years on end. Finally waking from a nightmare to the unworldly hush of night. A dream he knew well, but had never put name nor reason to. Weight lifted from his chest, breathing free, movements wholly his own for perhaps the first time in his life. Respite from the storm. But underneath the stillness, there’s a foreboding: a forest only falls silent in the presence of a predator.

It’s been years, but Echo still panics whenever he wakes on a medical bench. Pain blooms in his frontal lobe as he pitches himself upward, his hand raising to find a bacta patch plastered there beneath the rivets.

“Echo?”

Omega’s voice sounds so fragile. She lays his name out delicately, like she’s afraid she’ll break it. He immediately forces his eyes open to give her a reassuring smile, desperate to rid her of that timid tone.

“Hey, kid.” He cuts her off when she opens her mouth again– “I’m fine. Promise. Good as new.” A quick scan of the room, and he sees his brothers around him, all in varying stages of regained consciousness. All with matching scars on their scalps. Marking them, finally, as free men. If Echo was awake enough to have full use of his body, he would smile at the thought. His gaze lands on Rex, standing guard in the doorway, and he finds that the smile grows completely on its own.

It had taken months for Echo to feel like a part of Clone Force 99. That was mostly by his own design: any attempt at bonding from his new teammates had been met with a wall of solid durasteel. He’d lacked even the decency to respond with anger, denying the others the barest hint of emotion. Scared that even hostility was too much of an intimacy. But his brothers had worn him down, for better or worse.

“Echo, you ever play Sabacc? Cross always cheats, but if we team up on him we might win!”

“I noticed on the last mission it seemed your cybernetics were somewhat miscalibrated. If you like, I can take a look at them and make some improvements?”

“If you’re going to sit up and brood in silence again, you can at least make it worth your while and drink with me. …And for the record, I don’t cheat at Sabacc. I’m just better.”

Before he knew it, he had four new brothers.

Just what he got for vowing never to get attached again.

Rex offers him a hand when he tries to lift himself to his feet, one he gratefully accepts.

“Did it feel this strange for you?” he asks, blinking hard. Rex gives a stiff shrug.

“Didn’t have time to think about it. When I got my chip out, I… had other things to think about.”

Echo doesn’t pull at that thread.

“So… He really was right.”

No matter how many times Rex had explained Fives’ death, Echo had never made sense of it in the past. It didn’t help that Rex’s own recollection of the incident was garbled, fogged over by confusion and grief. All Echo could gather was the vague notion of fear, paranoia and conspiracy. His brother had died desperate and frantic, with a warning to Rex that made little sense in the moment and even less when retold after months of rumination.

It made far too much sense now.

“Yeah,” Rex sighs, eyes flitting to each of the other clones in the derelict room. “Yeah, he was. I just wish…”

Echo nods.

“Me, too,” he breathes. It’s silent for a moment, until Rex speaks again. Echo isn’t sure what makes his brother say it now: despite Echo’s probing questions since he’d first been rescued, Rex had never answered. Now that he does say it, though, it hits Echo like a punch to the gut.

“He never got over it, you know.”

Even after he had begun to consider himself a real member of the Bad Batch, Echo had done little more than coast. Though he still put all his effort into their missions –it was hard to break such a hardwired work ethic– his heart was rarely invested in their assignments.

And then, just like that, the war had ended.

Standing aboard the Havoc Marauder, watching Kamino turn into a pinprick of light in the ocean as they fled, Echo had felt a sudden, harsh pang of relief that Fives was no longer with him. He would feel it often in the coming months as The Empire tightened its grip on the galaxy, sometimes morphing into a bitter jealousy: Fives never had to see what had become of the Republic. Of their brothers.

Slowly, he and the others gather their bearings, carve out as many seconds of rest as they dare before scraping themselves together to leave. They aren’t naive enough to consider anywhere safe for long. The silence as they trek out of the rotting venator is heavy, and it’s jarring when someone breaks it.

“One of your men really figured all this out?” Hunter says to Rex, sounding sceptical in a way that sparks an involuntary flare of anger in Echo. “The chips, what they were for, Order 66, all of it?”

“I don’t know if he knew what it all meant,” Rex says, kicking aside a hunk of warped durasteel to make way for Omega. “But he definitely knew what the chips could do to us. And he figured out the Chancellor was behind it long before anyone else ever did.”

“The Emperor,” Tech interjects, “technically speaking, now.”

Rex shrugs halfheartedly, then continues, eyes trained firmly on the ground in front of them;

“I shouldn’t have been surprised. If anyone was brave, skilled and stupid enough to pull that kind of stunt off, it was always going to be Fives,” he says, smiling wistfully. “But I’m sure you’ve all heard far too much about that since Echo joined you.” The silence from behind Rex makes him pause, turn to see the others’ confused expressions in the light of his headlamp. He looks to Echo, gives him a bewildered, questioning frown, and Echo shrinks, unable to meet his eye. As close as he has grown with his new brothers, there are still a few nerves too raw to touch.

He stays in touch with Rex as often as their situation allows. It may be an unnecessary risk, the number of calls he makes to Rex’s encrypted comm frequency. He always disguises it under some flimsy justification, sharing a scrap of intel or paltry status report. Hardly anything substantial. Nonetheless, Rex answers every time. And he never ends the transmission when the information runs out and the conversation turns trivial.

“She’s getting good,” Echo tells him, smiling vaguely out into hyperspace. “She’ll be a better shot than I ever was.”

“Sounds like she’s got a good teacher.” There’s pride in Rex’s voice. Echo never did manage to outgrow his giddy reaction to positive feedback. Especially from his Captain. Silence takes hold, and Echo searches for something to keep the transmission going, but Rex gets there before him.

“You know my offer still stands,” he says gently. “There’s always a place for you here, brother. I’d be glad to have you back.”

Echo isn’t quite sure what makes him pause. Months ago, in the last days of the war, and even after its end, he would have jumped at the chance. To be back with Rex, to return to something he knew, to what he could only assume was the closest a clone could get to home. He’d been so directionless, disconnected from himself, unsure there was even a self left anymore.

“I…” He begins the sentence with no way to finish it. There’s a lot he wants to say. A lot he wants to do. He’s still getting used to wanting things again at all. It was a strange feeling after spending so long adrift, running on inertia without drive or purpose. But once the Batch had turned from soldiers to brothers, then to sister as well… Once his chip had been removed, and he’d learned exactly what his brother’s death had meant, all Fives had done to try and protect the family he had left…

“I think I understand,” Rex says, and Echo wonders in dismay if he’d said any of that out loud.

“I want to go with you,” he finally blurts. “I want to help you, I do. Eventually. But right now…”

“It’s okay.” Rex’s voice is softer over the comm. Too soft. Echo digs his scomp into the side of his thigh, breath tight in his throat. “You’ve got to do what’s best for your vode. And right now, the best thing you can do is stay around for them.”

A noise in the cockpit behind him sends Echo scrambling to wipe at his eyes, whirling his chair around to find Omega peeking down at him from her tailgun-come-bedroom.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says, like she’s apologising. “Are you talking to Rex? Can… Can I sit up with you?”

Who is he to say no to her, when she looks at him like that?

Rex keeps the frequency open far longer than he probably should, regaling Omega with war stories, some true to life and some Echo knows for a fact are embellished. Still, he doesn’t correct him, not when it would only dull the spark in Omega’s eyes, listening so intently. Echo says nothing when Rex begins the story of two particularly brave ARC troopers, incredibly daring and heroic on the battlefield, but–

“–absolute idiots everywhere else.” Omega giggles uncontrollably, and even Echo smiles: he’ll cop that one. Though he does have to cringe at some of the misadventures that follow. At least Omega enjoys laughing at these two ridiculous, childish ARC troopers and their exploits.

“They were always better when they were fighting together,” Rex tells her, and Echo’s chest seizes, “but even when they were separated, even when they didn’t realise it, they still fought for each other.”

Echo makes the decision right then and there, with his brothers asleep in their bunks behind him, Omega perched on the arm of his chair and Rex’s stories in his ear. When (not if, when ) this is all over, he and his family will go travelling.

Naboo first.

#drabble #fic #do i write a fic now where rex tells echo about umbara and echo has to deal with knowing what his brothers went through #or do i finally leave these poor men alone #sw tcw #tbb #star wars: the clone wars #star wars: the bad batch #sw tcw fic #tbb fic #arc trooper echo #arc trooper fives #domino twins #captain rex #clone wars angst #angst #grief

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