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Echo was cold.
Rex dismissed it at first, far more concerned with getting his little brother unplugged from the Skakoans’ technological horror. There were mechanical ports driven into Echo's head and chest, crawling down his back. Attached to each was a cord, or maybe some kind of a tube. Rex wasn't sure what they were - electrical conduits or feeding tubes or access lines for sedatives or other drugs. The feel of Echo's cold, grayish skin was the least of Rex’s worries as he helped his brother stagger most of the way to his feet to lean against the control terminal.
There were clankers in the outer hallway, enough to give even the general difficulty if they managed to breach the door. Tech was typing furiously at the terminal, slicing into the programming which was hijacking Echo’s mind. Hunter and Crosshair were sealing them all inside with the plasma settings on their multitools. None of them knew if there was an alternate way out of the room, or if they were going to have to let Wrecker get creative with his explosives and hope for the best.
Force, at least Echo was alive. they could deal with anything else later.
Of course Echo was cold. He'd been vivisected, spliced with machinery Rex couldn't begin to parse out at the moment, and then sealed up in a coffin of a cryo-stasis chamber for Force knew how long. Months, at least.
"There, got it," Tech said, his rapid-fire typing on the terminal ending abruptly. "You can unplug him now."
Thank kriff.
The rest of their escape was just about normal, for a typical 501st clusterkriff. Sneaking out through ductwork, leaping, sans jetpack, from a guaranteed lethal height onto the backs of a group of flying reptiles, and fighting a whole host of clankers, alongside a group of locals with whom they could barely communicate. Just another Taungsday in the G.A.R.
Echo had collapsed, just about the same time the modified omicron-class attack shuttle transitioned into hyperspace. It was a minor miracle it hadn’t happened earlier. It had been obvious to all of them that he’d been running on nothing but adrenaline and pride there by the end.
Rex had gotten his brother settled in one of the shuttle’s bunks, Tech’s, if the scattered circuitry and assorted detritus were any indication. The others had stayed outside, either in the passenger compartment or the cockpit. It was quiet, or at least as quiet as a spaceship ever got. Echo’s shallow, rasping breaths sounded unnaturally loud against the droning hum of the ion engine.
He didn’t sound healthy, but he was breathing, so Rex counted that as a win.
Rex found a minimally cluttered spot against the bulkhead and let himself sink down onto the floor. He could feel himself crashing in the wake of his own adrenaline high. Relief and guilt tore through him by turns. Echo hadn’t died at the Citadel. Echo had been abandoned, handed over for torture and worse. Echo was here, now, and Rex had given the orders which had led to all three of those things.
Rex was so, so tired.
He pulled off his helmet and set it aside, unfastening his gauntlets and dropping them, as well as his gloves, into his upturned bucket. Here, in the semi-privacy of the ship’s cluttered bunk room, he could let his hand shake a little as he rubbed his face. No one was here to see. No one would hear, if his breath went a little unsteady. He let his head tip back and rest against the wall and shut his eyes, listening to the sounds of the ship. The thrum of the engines. Someone’s voice, probably Wrecker’s, muted and incomprehensible through the walls. Echo’s breathing.
Echo’s breathing?
Rex’s eyes snapped open again, landing on his brother.
Echo lay exactly where Rex had placed him, too pale and too thin with too many sharp metal angles to fully hide under the bunk’s thin blanket. He didn’t move. His eyes didn’t twitch under his eyelids.
His chest didn’t rise or fall.
No.
Rex scrambled across the floor. Echo wasn’t… They’d gotten to him in time. They’d saved him. He couldn’t be…
Rex’s hands landed on Echo’s shoulders, ready to shake him. Ready to check for a pulse. Something. Echo’s skin was cold. As cold as it had been fresh out of the cryo tank. Cold as the dead, and Rex would know. He’d held enough of his brothers as they’d died.
No.
Unnaturally pale eyes flew open. Echo gasped in a breath, expression momentarily wild and disoriented. Panicked.
Rex could relate.
“Rex?” Echo said, confused but breathing. Still breathing, but shallowly.
“Nothing,” Rex said, letting Echo go. “I just…” He trailed off, not wanting to finish that thought out loud. It was crazy.
No crazier than thinking Echo was still alive. Rex had been there. He’d seen the explosion. He’d seen the pieces. Clones didn’t leave their brothers behind, but at the time, Rex had been certain. No one could survive that.
“Just get some rest,” Rex said gruffly, pulling the blanket up a little further over Echo’s bony, pallid shoulders.
Echo was cold.