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phantom-of-the-501st · 3 days ago

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Galaxies Apart but Always Together

Fives finds out that his brother is still alive.

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Guess who's back on their usual bs! Yes, that's right, it's me. Thinking about Echo's rescue from the Citadel and what would've happened if Fives was still there made me think of this.

Angst but with some comfort as well because I'm not going to be that mean to you today :D

Tagging the usual suspects: @inkstainedhandswithrings @saturn-sends-hugs @the-bi-space-ace

“Where is he?”

“Fives. Calm down.”

“I said, where is he?”

His captain grabbed onto his shoulders and held him in place, face stern. “The medics are giving him a once over. I need you to calm down. Take a deep breath.”

“Calm down?” Fives’ anger felt bitter in his mouth. “I get an emergency comm asking for my immediate return and I come back expecting to be told that one of you has died only to find out that my twin is still alive. And you want me to calm down?”

“I get that you’re angry, Fives, but I need you to stay with me here.”

“You don’t get anything. You’re not the one whose batchmate has magically arisen from the dead. Let me see him!”

“You know I can’t do that. There’s no point in barging in there right now. They aren’t going to let you see him until they’ve finished running their tests.” Rex’s grip tightened slightly. “Stay here and settle down a bit. You can go and see him as soon as they give the go ahead.”

“How long have you known?”

Rex’s stoney face gave way to mild surprise. “What?”

“I said, how long have you known?” Fives’ fists were clenched at his sides. His jaw was set and he was not letting his next line of questioning go unanswered.

“We only found out today.” The captain’s hands fell down to his sides.

“So what? You just found him? By accident?” He was met with hesitation as Rex avoided making eye contact. His brother seemed to be more interested in looking over his shoulder and down the corridor rather than at his face.

“Not quite.”

“What do you mean not quite? You just said you didn’t know.”

“We didn’t know for certain.” Rex sighed and met his gaze again. He looked slightly defeated. It was only now that Fives noticed the bags under the captain’s eyes. It didn’t look like he had slept recently. “Once we found out what strategies the Separatists knew, I had my suspicions. Cody and Anakin were less convinced but-”

“Wait. Cody and Anakin knew?” He stared at his brother in disbelief, his blood starting to come back up to a boil. “What is this? Are you telling me that I’m the only man in the GAR who didn’t know his own twin was alive?”

Rex sighed in frustration. “Fives, just listen to me for a minute, okay? Yes, we thought it was a possibility. But we couldn’t know for sure. I mean, the chances of Echo being alive this long after the Citadel were almost non-existent! We felt it was best if you were kept unaware until we knew what we were dealing with.”

“So you kept me in the dark? On purpose?”

“Yes. But we did it for your own good.”

Fives rolled his eyes and turned to face away from his Captain. The sterile floor of the medical unit was far less annoying to look at right now than Rex’s face. They hadn’t told him. They hadn’t told him.

“Fives, listen.” He refused to turn back around. Rex continued anyway. “We thought it was best if you didn’t know right away. I know you. I’ve known you since you were a shiny. So has Cody. And because of that we know that you can be impulsive and reckless, especially when your squad is involved. If we had told you that there was a chance of Echo being alive you would have jumped on the next shuttle out of here and gone to find him no matter what we said. Doing it this way meant that if our suspicions were wrong, and there was a good chance they could have been wrong, then you wouldn’t have gone through the pain of losing him again.”

“Would you have told me? If you hadn’t found him would you still have told me?”

“We would have done what was best.”

That wasn’t a yes. It also wasn’t a no. Fives’ skin prickled. They might never have told him. Despite all of their suspicions and their plans and their knowledge of how much this would have meant to him, they still went behind his back. He deserved to have been there. He should have been there.

“I want to see him.”

Another sigh. “I know. But you also know that you can’t right now.”

Fives could feel his cheeks start to burn and his eyes sting with unshed tears. A hand settled on his shoulder.

“Come to the break room with me. Sit down, take a breather, and I can tell you what I know. Then you can go and see him, okay?”

Fives swallowed the lump in his throat before giving a small nod. He pushed back the tears and stood up straighter, letting his brother lead him down the corridor to a small break room reserved for those waiting on updates from the medics. Fives slumped down on a small sofa, resting his elbows on his knees. Rex sat down next to him. He placed a hand on Fives’ leg to stop him from bouncing it up and down. With how pent up he was, there was a chance he would wear a hole in the floor before the end of the conversation. No-one said anything for a while. Fives could feel the tension in the air. It was Rex that tried to break it first.

“You feeling any better?”

“No.”

A sigh. “I just want to help, vod’ika. What can I do?”

“Just let me see him.” Fives wasn’t going to let Rex’s terms of endearment sway him. He knew his brother was trying to distract him from everything.

“How many times do I have to tell you that I can’t do that?” Despite the question, Rex didn’t sound frustrated. “Anyway, he’s not going to be much of a conversationalist when he’s sedated.”

Fives shot up, horrified. “Sedated?” The captain had failed to mention that tidbit of information before. Along with every other thing he’d kept hidden.

Rex flinched. “Err… yeah. They had to put Echo under to run the tests.”

“What? Why?”

“He freaked out when they tried to run the check up. Turns out he still has a mean right hook on him.” Rex gave a mirthless laugh. “He took a swing at one of the medics, nearly took his eye out. They thought it would be best to knock him out for the time being.”

Fives felt cold. His ears were ringing. Echo had never been the biggest fan of the medbay to begin with, but it was never so bad that he would attack the medical staff. “How bad is it?” There was no response. Rex looked uncomfortable, too uncomfortable for Fives to stop panicking about what had happened to his twin while he had been gone. “Rex. Tell me. How bad is it?” His chest felt tight.

It took a moment for his brother to answer. “It’s-” Rex paused and started ringing his hands. He always did it when the news was bad. It wasn’t a good sign. “It’s- He’s.” The captain’s shoulders slumped. “It’s worse than we thought.”

Fives felt like the ground had disappeared beneath him. He was shaking.

Rex screwed his eyes shut. He was squeezing his right hand a little too hard with his left. He was probably going to have a bruise there come morning. “He lost three of his limbs.”

That shouldn’t have been surprising but it was. Echo had blown up. Of course the chance of him losing his limbs was high. Maybe it was because Echo had already defied the odds just by surviving that up until this point Fives had assumed his brother was still in one piece. “What else?”

“I don’t know if this is the best time-”

“Rex. Please. I’m going to find out sooner or later. What happened?”

If Fives hadn’t been panicking before, he definitely was now. Rex looked like he was about to cry.

“They experimented on him.” His voice was trembling. “We found him in a cryochamber. They had him hooked up to machines. So many machines. He was plugged in like some sort… some sort of object.” Fives felt his heart plummet. “Tech had to disconnect him from the server. They were extracting information from his brain, that’s how they knew the plans. But it wasn’t just his head. It’s his pulmonary system, his respiratory system. It’s all tied up with cybernetics.” Rex looked at him. His eyes were wet. “They were turning him into a droid, Fives. One they could command at their will. The medics aren’t even sure they can run the necessary tests, not when he’s more machine than anything else. Kix said his heart rate is lower than it should be, but that could be the new normal for him. We don’t know how much we can do.”

Fives’ stomach rolled. He felt like he was going to be sick. More machine than anything else. They’d hurt his brother. Used him for their own sick games. And they could have stopped it.

“We should have gone back for him.”

“We didn’t have a choice, Fives.”

“We should have saved him!”

“And done what?” Fives looked at Rex in surprise. He hadn’t expected his brother to snap at him. He watched the man next to him shift slightly, clearly unsettled by his own outburst. Fives didn’t know what to say, but it looked like he didn’t have to.

“I understand your anger, Fives. I do. I’ve spent the last year wishing we could have gone back for him. But we couldn’t. And even if we had, there was nothing we could’ve done. The Kaminoans wouldn’t have helped him, not with the level of injuries he had. And that would have been if we were even able to get him off-planet.

“I never wanted it to be this way, Fives. None of us did. But he’s back. He’s back and he’s going to need us now more than ever. We have to be there for him.”

Fives let out a shaky breath. “I’m so scared, Rex.”

“I know, vod’ika. I know.” Fives let himself be drawn into a hug as the two men shared their grief.

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Rex was right. It was bad. Actually, the captain had understated just how bad it was. Nothing could’ve prepared Fives for the sight that had met him when he finally entered the medbay.

His brother was on the bed, hooked up to wires and machines that were monitoring his vitals. Kix was right, his heart rate was too low. It was unnerving. Echo’s skin was pale, sickly, his usual tan muted by the pallor he used to get on the rare occasion he came down with a virus. Fives had asked the medics about the ports in his brother’s head, whether they would stay there. He was told that they couldn’t take them out, not without doing damage to Echo’s brain. They were going to have to stay.

The decision had been made to get some new legs made to replace the ones the Techno Union had given to him. No conclusions had been made about the scomp link just yet. They were going to leave that for Echo to decide when he woke up.

Fives shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was starting to ache and his hands were damp with sweat from where he had been clasping onto Echo’s. He’d been there for the last few hours, but he wasn’t going to move now. He was staying by that bedside until his brother woke up.

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“What do you mean you’re leaving?” Fives stared at his brother in complete disbelief. He and Echo were in the barracks, having just come back from the mess hall. Echo had seemed tense and unusually quiet while they were eating, but never did Fives suspect that this was the reason why.

“I mean that the Batch have offered me a spot with them. And I’m going to take it.”

“But-” Fives didn’t know how to respond to that. That was it? After everything that they had been through? Rishi, The Citadel, Anaxes? He was just going to up and leave?

“I’ll still see you around, just not as often. I need to do this, Fives.”

“Do what?” Fives was angry. “Leave your brothers behind? After everything?”

“Fives…”

“Don’t “Fives” me! You're leaving the 501st! For a group of clones you don’t know!”

“They helped rescue me from the Citadel.”

“I would have too!” A fire burned hot in his gut. “The only reason I didn’t is because I would have been a liability apparently!”

“You know they made the right decision about that, Vod.”

“No! You don’t get to tell me what is and isn’t the right choice for me! Not when you’re about to go and run off with a bunch of strangers.”

Echo’s face turned stoney. He fixed Fives with a cold glare and folded his arms across his chest. “Stop. You’re acting like a child.”

Fives scoffed. “Me? A child?” He pointed an accusatory finger at his twin. “You’re the one that’s leaving us behind to go and hang out with your new friends that you’ve only known for all of five minutes!”

“And yet right now, they’re being far more accepting of my decisions than you are.”

“They didn’t even trust you!” Fives flung his arms up in frustration. “They thought you were working for the Separatists!”

“They had every right to do so and you know it.” Echo’s voice was level, but stern, unhappy. “This is my choice, Fives.”

“It’s a stupid choice if you ask me.” All he got in response was a glare. He rarely saw Echo this annoyed and that probably should have worried him, but he was too frustrated to care.

“You’re 501st, Echo! You have been since the day Rex took us in. You can’t abandon that now.”

Echo bit the inside of his cheek, clearly mulling over what he was going to say next. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like his thought process involved changing his mind.

“I’m not abandoning anything. Things aren’t the same anymore, Fives. I have to do what’s necessary for me right now.”

And apparently that didn’t seem to involve his brothers. Nor his own twin. Fives looked Echo right in the eyes. “You’re right. Things aren’t the same anymore.” And with that he stormed out the door, barging Echo’s shoulder on the way and muttering a sharp “hope you enjoy your new family” as he marched down the hallway.

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“There you are.”

Fives look up from where he was hunched on the floor to find Rex standing in the doorway, hands on his hips. His brother came over to sit next to him, slotting himself in the small gap between Fives and the next bunk over. It was narrow enough that Fives found himself pressed shoulder to shoulder with the captain.

“Echo’s leaving.” It was all he could muster up at this point.

“I know.” Rex glanced at him before staring at the wall opposite. “He tracked me down, panicking because you’d stormed off after an argument, so I’ve spent the last two hours trying to find out where you’d holed yourself up. And there was me thinking I was done with you guys and your fights."

When the attempted joke didn’t get a reply he nudged Five’s shoulder gently. “You know he’s making the right choice.”

That got Fives fired up again. “You’re letting him go?”

“I’m not letting him do anything. It’s his choice.”

“But you're our captain. Surely you can make him stay.”

“I could, but I’m not going to.”

“Why not? He’s leaving us behind!”

Rex’s face was gentle as he faced Fives. “He’s not leaving us behind and you know it. He’s going where he needs to be.”

“But he needs to be here!”

“No.” Rex gave him a soft smile. “You need him to tell you it’s all going to be okay. That’s not the same thing.”

“You’re letting him go off with a bunch of lunatics.”

His brother chuckled. “Once again, I’m not letting him do anything. And they’re good men. They’ll look after him.”

Fives furrowed his eyebrows. “You punched Crosshair in the face.” He was hoping that his unimpressed look would show the captain just how ridiculous he found this whole situation. Rex floundered slightly as he tried to find his next words.

“Err… well.” He coughed nervously. “Maybe I did.” He quickly pulled himself together. “But tensions were running high. We were all stressed out. I have every faith that they will look after him.”

Fives was still not convinced.

“I mean it, vod’ika. Echo’s doing the right thing.”

“You’re just saying that because he’s your favourite.”

Rex shot him a grin. “Maybe I am.” Fives punched him in the shoulder. “And maybe I’m saying it because I want both of you to be happy.”

Fives curled up into himself. He felt less frustrated and more disheartened. His twin was going to leave. “How can I be happy when he’s not here?”

“Because you know he’s going to be out there somewhere. And you know he’s going to be doing what he needs to.” Rex leant into him, putting a comforting weight on his side. “I don’t want him to leave either. But I know that we can’t help him the way we want to, not right now. It’s not going to be easy, but I’ll take comfort knowing that there are people out there who can help him heal, and you should too. He’ll always be our brother, Fives. And he’ll always be your twin. Never forget that.”

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“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Fives was sat on the bed in front of Echo, arms wrapped around his legs, which were brought up to his chest. He tucked his chin into his knees and glanced up at his brother, who was sat with his legs crossed, looking at his twin intently.

“I know.” Echo bowed his head and picked at the end of his scomp nervously. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“No, you were right to wait. All I would’ve done is yell at you sooner.” Fives tried to give a halfhearted smile, but his mouth twitched sadly. After his conversation with Rex, he’d come to find his brother, hoping to reconcile for what had happened before. Things were uncomfortably tense and Fives couldn’t help but fidget anxiously.

“I’ll always love you, you know that right?”

“Of course I do, Echo.”

“No. I mean it.” Echo stared at him intently. “I know that you’re going to get all caught up in that head of yours and convince yourself that I left because I don’t love you anymore. Or that I walked away because I blame you for leaving me at the Citadel.”

Fives flinched. That cut a little deeper than he was hoping.

“My path is different now, Fives. I can’t escape what happened to me on Skako Minor, but I can learn to live with it. I’m not the man I once was, and I can’t pretend like nothing has changed. I’m doing what’s best for me, Fives. Not because you’ve done anything wrong, but because what I need right now is to be with people who understand what it’s like to be different.” Echo shuffled forward awkwardly and took one of Fives’ hands in his own. “Things are different now, vod, but that doesn’t mean I love you any less. And, hey, now I can access even more reg manuals than before.” He gave his scomp a quick spin and grinned at his brother. Fives felt the corner of his mouth twitch up in amusement.

“I’m going to miss you.” Fives mumbled, brushing his thumb over Echo’s hand.

“I know, vod. I’m going to miss you too. But remember, I’m always going to be a comms call away. If you need me to get you out of trouble, give me a call and I’ll be right there.”

“Going to use all that new insider knowledge to save my shebs?”

“Of course.” Echo looked at him with a big smile before his face grew soft. “Everything is going to be fine, you hear me?”

“You said that before the Citadel.”

“Yeah, well.” Echo shrugged. “Geniuses can’t be right all of the time.” Fives shoved his shoulder, chuckling.

He pulled Echo into a hug, wrapping his arms around him tightly and burying his head in his neck. “You promise me it’s going to be alright?” His voice was muffled by Echo’s shoulder.

“I promise, vod.” Fives was starting to feel better. He was scared, sure, but he trusted Echo’s reassurances. Maybe Rex had had a point. Maybe all he needed was to be told it was going to be okay. Stupid Rex being right all the time.

“Promise me they aren’t going to be your new favourite people?”

Echo laughed and gave him a squeeze. “Hmm, I don’t know about that. Tech has some pretty cool stuff to play with and Wrecker-” Fives jabbed his finger into his twin's side, which just made Echo laugh harder.

“Okay, okay. I promise. You’ll always be my favourite.”

“Di’kut.” Fives mumbled.

The galaxy may be changing, but if there was one thing Fives knew for certain, it’s that the dominoes always stuck together, even if they were galaxies apart.

#big brother rex will always be one of my favourite things #always looking out for the dominoes #star wars #the clone wars #the clone wars fic #echo #fives #rex #the domino twins #arc trooper fives #arc trooper echo #the bad batch #captain rex

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