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It begins on Rishi. Rex looks at the three shinies in front of him and he immediately knows that they’re his. If they survive this, these boys are gonna be 501st.
But one of them doesn’t survive.
Rex knows the joke, though he isn’t part of it. Down go the Dominoes, one by one.
He’d never known Cutup or Droidbait, barely known Hevy.
But he knows Echo and Fives, and they’re both something special.
“It seems Rex took a liking to the new shinies we found on Rishi,” Cody teases as they meet up with some other veterans on Coruscant, “Even asked Skywalker if he could keep them.”
Rex just groans.
“Shut up, Vod, you sound like General Kenobi,” he says. “They’ve been good troopers so far.”
Cody just laughs.
“He’s smart when he’s not being reckless,” he says. “And you’ve obviously adopted them,”
Rex just grunts in reply, but he can’t really argue.
Not that he knows them for more than a few months before they make ARC training, but Gods if he isn’t proud of them. He’d checked their records and Domino Squadron had had to retake their test to become troopers.
And now here they are, the best of the best.
Fives and Echo return in new ARC armor and very little changed attitude, but they’re smarter and faster than ever, and Rex even gets their help in a simulation he was designing that analyzed every battle plan the Republic had used.
(Echo often carries it around with him and even had it memorized and nobody knows this yet but one day this fact will leave Echo more dehumanized than any of his brothers.)
Naturally, things go wrong. As they do for everyone, in this war.
The Citadel happens. So much at once and there isn’t even a body or a face to drag from the wreckage, not when they need to run and there was that explosion and it hurts so much but it’s nothing to Fives’ cry for his closest Vod.
When they get back Fives cries and Rex holds him tight and they’re both still half in their armor but it doesn’t matter because look at what they lost . But Rex is the big brother and the captain so he stays strong until Fives leaves and goes to Cody looking probably just as heartbroken as Fives had looked.
(And Rex lets himself believe the story the General when Rex catches him sneaking out of Fives’ room because the war takes everything and at least Fives has someone loyal and “important” as Anakin Skywalker on his side, even more than any other 501st Vod, or any of the Vod’e. Someone who will always fight for him and maybe this war will end with Fives alive.)
Then it feels like a blink before things get even worse and there’s Umbara and maybe Rex is scared of memories (and maybe those memories themselves are of forgetting), but it doesn’t matter because he didn’t do enough and he can see that Fives still partially blames him so he pulls himself together and tries to act normal as the war goes on but still isn’t surprised when, weeks later, Fives blows up on him.
He’s honestly just amazed it took so long.
He’d failed them by his own code and fear.
But it’s too much and Rex is still holding together by threads and this is how he breaks, 4 weeks after Umbara. And there’s Fives and things are right again.
Until they aren’t.
Ahsoka leaves. The little sister of the legion. She’d grown so much and Rex knows the veterans are as proud of her as Skywalker. But her people betrays her and she leaves.
Without even saying a goodbye.
And then it happens. A month later. Later Rex will find out how right Fives was, but he doesn’t yet.
All that really matters is that Fives is dying in his arms. Shot. Killed by his own brother.
“The dreams…” Fives gasps, locking eyes with Rex and oh but he can see so clearly that there’s something else at play. “The nightmares… they’re finally… over.”
Rex holds him for what feels like hours but is likely little more than minutes.
There had been no other brothers to Rex like Echo and Fives, and now he’s begun to often wonder which way of death would have been the easiest.
Perhaps it would be easier in a battle, where bodies fall everywhere, and he’s not instantly crushed by the loss. and perhaps Fives would be buried without preamble, near camp only if there was room.
Perhaps Echo might have been in the wrong transport, his transport hit on the way down to the surface. Perhaps, as with every time that happened, Rex would still have to put the plan first.
Perhaps both could have died on Rishi, Rex not knowing them nearly as well and morning them as a Vod and not his own little brothers.
Rex couldn’t say.
(And sometimes he thinks of
But he does know that everything is wrong.
Fives would never laugh into an explosion like the 501st ARC he was. He would never give a cheesy pickup line to someone at 79’s. He would never smile or laugh or see the end of the war.
And Rex could only follow and watch as Fives was taken away for examination. He stays all light until he’s forced to leave.
But he doesn’t quite believe that Fives was simply crazy.
He has to know the truth.
(And, of course, he doesn’t hesitate when he has a chance to save Echo. He can’t.)