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Echo thought he would cry. Like Hunter. Like Wrecker.
He didn’t.
Echo’s heart felt like glass. A thousand razor-edged shards, glued back together again and again, fragile, becoming more misshapen each time. Its freshly shattered pieces scraped against the inside of his skin, but he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t cry. The shards embedded themselves deeper into his lungs with every breath, cutting off his voice. In the war, Echo had seen brothers stumble toward him, shrapnel sticking out of their lungs, unable to speak. He had held them as they grasped at his hands, their blue lips forming silent words, until they went limp in his arms without a sound. He imagined dying like that felt a lot like this.
The soft sound of footsteps sounded behind him. Hunter. He didn’t bother turning around, didn’t bother facing him.
“She hasn’t woken up yet. AZI says it’ll probably be a bit, yet,” Hunter said after a long, quiet moment, his voice rough. “I… wanted to talk to you.”
Fabric rustled, coming closer, and stopped just behind Echo’s shoulder.
“We’re going to stay on Pabu. Wrecker, Omega, ‘n me,” Hunter said from behind him.
Echo might have nodded, or he might not have. He wasn’t quite sure. Distantly, he was glad. These kids had given enough. They deserved to be happy. To have peace.
“I want you to come with us. To stay with us.”
Echo made himself turn his chair toward Hunter, to face him. Hunter’s eyes were bloodshot, the skin under his eyes red and blotchy. Without his bandana, his hair hung in tangles around his face.
“Hunter. You know I can’t.”
“You can.”
A spark of old anger pulsed underneath the blanket of thrumming pain.
“I’m leaving, Hunter,” Echo said, trying to keep his voice from rising as Hunter forced him to rehash this same argument again. Echo was so tired. He didn’t want to have this screaming match again, not now, with the empty seat beside him, with his heart ripping at the inside of his rib cage
Echo stood, his right knee stuttering, damaged by the crash.
I’ll have to ask Tech to take a look at—
Echo shook his head, brushing aside the litany of warning lights and damage reports in his internal HUD.
“I’m going after them,” Echo said. “Crosshair. The clones.”
“No.”
The sheer, incandescent heat in Hunter’s voice would have shocked Echo any other day. Now, it couldn’t burn through Echo’s numb hurt.
“No?”
“I told you no,” Hunter snarled. “You’ve done enough. Rex can go fuck himself. You’re staying with us.”
“This isn’t Rex’s choice, and it isn’t yours. It’s mine.”
“No,” Hunter repeated, as if Echo hadn’t spoken. “You’re staying.”
“You can’t give me orders, sergeant.”
Hunter took a step back, as though Echo had hit him. Echo made himself pause, to take a deep breath before he continued. He wanted to put his hand on Hunter’s shoulder, but he couldn’t make his arm move.
“Look, it’s not right now. I’ll stay until Omega wakes up, until you settle on Pabu, but—”
“We’ve lost enough.”
Hunter’s voice cut through Echo’s words.
“If you leave, if you join Rex on his little suicide mission, you’re not coming back,” Hunter cried, his voice rising, his eyes going wild, almost hysterical. “You’ll die in a hail of blaster fire, or screaming in an Imperial interrogation room, or peeled open in a lab somewhere.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Echo said. “But I won’t abandon our brothers.”
“Echo—”
“Nothing you say will change my mind, Hunter. This is my choice. I’ve made it.”
Hunter moved faster than Echo could think, seizing the front of Echo’s cuirass and throwing him backward.
“I’ve lost enough!”
Echo moved with Hunter, letting Hunter shove him hard against the wall and pin him there, letting him have this moment of control. Hunter’s hands shook.
“I’ve lost enough!” Hunter screamed in Echo’s face, his eyes burning. “I won’t lose you, too!”
Echo recoiled away from Hunter, away from the too-intense heat of an emotion Hunter had rarely extended toward him.
Hunter loved with a grasping, possessive selfishness not often directed toward Echo. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about him, Echo knew that, but, during the war, their bond was that of a soldier and his commanding officer. Brothers-in-arms. No less firm, no less unshakeable, but different than the intense and sometimes illogical protectiveness he held for Wrecker, Tech, and Crosshair, the brothers he had grown up with, the brothers he had spent his life loving and protecting. After Order 66, that same possessive protectiveness had transferred to Omega. Echo didn’t know when Hunter had started to view him like this. Maybe he hadn’t, until now. Maybe, with Tech leaving another gaping wound in his heart, Hunter was looking for someone to fill it, like he had filled the bleeding wound Crosshair left with Omega.
The thought left a bitter, ashen taste in Echo’s mouth.
All at once, Hunter deflated. He leaned forward, into Echo, resting his forehead on Echo’s shoulder, curling his body around Echo’s. He still smelled like fire and twisted metal and blaster fire, mixing with the more recent smells of disinfectant and bacta.
“I don’t want to lose you, too.” Hunter buried his face in the crook of Echo’s neck, holding him so tight it hurt.
Echo wrapped his arms around Hunter, holding him tight, whispering to him, low condolences, remembrances, just as Echo had done for so many brothers during the war, just as he and Fives had done for each other after Hevy and Cutup and Droidbait. And Hunter shook, for a quick, terrible moment feeling like a trembling child in Echo’s arms, as though he would break with one wrong move, leaving Echo holding a corpse.
Hunter squeezed his arms impossibly tighter around Echo’s middle, and the illusion shattered. And then Echo’s numbness fell away, and he was suddenly, viscerally there, holding Hunter in the Marauder’s belly, feeling Hunter’s tears against his neck, feeling his own shattered synthetic heart beating in time with Hunter’s.