Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Echo already regrets stepping off the Marauder in full kit, the damp heat of the Sebiris jungle seeping under his armor within minutes. Tech made the very valid point that jungles like these tended to play host to all sorts of bloodsucking insects, some carrying unheard-of diseases, but as Echo picks his way across the jungle floor, he thinks some further risk analysis might be in order.

Calling Rex’s intel thin is generous. Most sentients have no reason to visit Sebiris, so while Rex had said he had a confirmed sighting of a clone living out in this backwater jungle, Echo wonders just whose eyes made that sighting.

“Between you and me,” Rex had said, “it sounds like this brother has been on his own for a long while. Source called him, uh—”

“Feral,” Gregor had supplied, from off-holo.

“That’s the one. Good luck, vod.”

It’s the heat that’s making Echo grumble internally that there’s no benefit to bringing in a brother that doesn’t want to be found, if he’s on some Outer Rim hole even the Hutts don’t want. He wouldn’t think so uncharitably if he weren’t so fucking sweaty. It’s soaking his back, his pits; it’s chafing at the stumps of his thighs, and making the skin around his scomp link itch and flush.

A leaf slaps him in the helmet.

He hopes Tech is having an even worse time.

The squad has split up to cover more ground, with Omega tailing Wrecker. ("You look high, I look low!" she’d said.) That Rex had been able to get them any kind of coordinates at all was lucky, but the positioning had been a rough estimate, at best. So here Echo is, boiling in secondhand civvies under what’s left of his GAR-issue armor, looking for a vod who’s more likely to eat him for dinner than to thank him for the rescue.

«Don’t suppose anyone’s found this clone and just forgot to mention it,» Echo sighs.

«Tired already?» That’s Hunter, chuckling through a grunt of exertion. Maybe he’s fighting back giant leaves, too. «Expected better from Rex’s favorite.»

«Oh, fuck you.» The good-natured razzing makes Echo’s surroundings one notch more bearable. «You’re not the one who can’t hear himself think over his own cooling system.»

Silence on comms. He keeps hoping they’ll get better about his jokes about his cyborg body.

«We’ll buy you a huge fan and strap it to your front so you’ll stop bitching,» Wrecker says with a laugh.

«Bitching and moaning!» Omega chimes in. The comms dissolve into instant chaos as Tech tries to explain why a giant fan on Echo’s front would be inoperable, and Hunter struggles to address Omega’s cursing without just yelling over Tech.

There’s a flash of something out in the trees.

«Cut the chatter!» Echo hisses. «I’ve got movement.»

The comms go dead. There’s a strong chance it’s only an animal, and the next most likely is a native Sebiri, but he’s not taking chances.

Echo unholsters his blaster, eyes sweeping the plant life. The only movement his HUD is picking up now is his own.

«Not detecting anything now,» Echo says. «I’ll—»

Something heavy slams into him from behind. Echo barely keeps his legs under him, twisting to try and fire stun blasts at his attacker. The hostile twists with him, ducking the stun rounds and pulling Echo down after them.

Echo hurls himself to the right, landing on his scompside shoulder and firing off another stun round at—nothing. The hostile has already rolled back up to their feet, and is rushing in for another attack when Echo levels his blaster at them.

The hostile stops cold, holding up bare hands, panting through a deep scowl.

Even through long, greasy hair and a wild beard, there’s no mistaking the Jango Fett features. The Sebiris sun has deepened the brown of his skin, though there’s nothing else about him that looks healthy; his threadbare clothes have a griminess to them, like dead skin cells have been mashed into their fibers like a paste.

This is their feral vod.

The second Echo raises the team on comms, this clone is going to either book it, or attack him again, of that he’s sure. The clone looks flighty enough, limbs twitching, eyes flicking to the side for an exit. So long as Echo presents a threat, the end of his blaster is like a tractor beam, keeping him in place, and even that has a ticking clock.

“Don’t mean you any harm,” Echo says, slowly. He stands just as slowly, keeping a steady hand on his blaster. “Heard about a clone needing help in these parts.”

“Don’t need help,” the clone growls. He hasn’t even got real shoes on, his feet wrapped in—strips of fabric? Leaves? Whatever it is has become so ratty it’s impossible to tell.

“Doesn’t look that way to me, brother.”

“Says you, holding me at blasterpoint and trying to tell me you don’t mean me any harm.”

“You’re telling me if I lower my blaster you’re not gonna make a break for it?” Echo raises his blaster a little higher.

The clone squints at him. Tilts his head, shifting his lank hair away from a patch of ink at his temple. Something blocky, small, simple. Aurebesh, maybe. Like—

“What’s your answer, trooper?” Echo tries again.

“Not a trooper,” the clone says, a distracted mumble. He’s not looking at Echo so much as he’s staring at every part of Echo, pupils jumping from helmet to scomp to cuirass to legs and back, brow scrunching with each new detail he takes in. “Not in a long time.”

“Brother, I’m asking if I’m gonna lose you if I lower my weapon. Right now everything you’re doing is just locking us into a stalemate.” Echo takes a step closer. “So what’s it gonna be?”

Something ghosts over the trooper’s face. Something frightened, something angry. It’s gone before Echo can really meditate on it.

“Won’t run.” The clone keeps his hands up, glancing at Echo’s blaster. His voice is raspy. Like this is the most he’s talked in a long while.

Echo lowers his blaster incrementally, ready to swing it right back up at the first sign of trouble.

“You got a designation, soldier?”

The other clone doesn’t acknowledge the question, his inspection of Echo only intensifying. His hands are still up, as though a blaster is still trained on him. “You with the Empire?”

Echo scowls under his bucket, holstering his blaster. “No.”

The clone bites his lip, shaking his head in single, epileptic snaps of his neck. “What—what division.”

“No division. Clone Force 99.” No use getting into the details of whether “Clone Force 99” even exists anymore, much less the many divisions of the GAR, with the Republic gone.

“Hm.” He looks down. “Don’t know that one. Don’t think I’ve ever known that one.”

“Experimental. Didn’t see the whole war,” Echo says. “What about your designation? You know that one?”

“Designation?” That pulls his gaze back up. “Only thing I can’t forget.” He pinches his thumb and forefinger together, mimes scribbling on his temple.

Line on top. Space in middle. Broken box on bottom.

“Five,” the feral clone says, eyes losing all focus. “Five, five, five, five five five five, fives, fives...”

Echo’s fingers go numb.

“What,” Echo starts, his tongue dry and thick in his mouth. Makes no damn sense in a jungle. “What else do you remember? Battalion? Company?” Commander? Brothers?

The clone’s eyes skate over Echo’s armor again. “Missing some kit, soldier.”

Echo snorts, despite himself. “Nobody’s making clone armor anymore. We make do with what we have.”

“Nobody?” He’s losing focus again, frowning as he mouths the word to himself.

And it can’t be Fives. Because learning Fives hadn’t survived to see Echo returned from his enslavement had somehow been the worst part of returning to the living world. He would have traded the rest of his human body away if it would have meant having Fives back.

Rex has never lied to Echo. Would never lie.

“Were you 212th?” Echo prompts. “187th? 104th?”

“Can’t say I much wanna answer, with you circling me like that.”

“I’m not—” He is. Echo brings himself to a hard stop. “612th? 442nd?”

“Stop. Stop.” The clone turns to face Echo again, flat hands held out before finally dropping to his sides. “No more numbers.”

Too much. Of course it is. Echo nods. “Alright.”

The jungle is never silent. The clone tries to run a hand through his hair, getting his fingers caught in a whorl of tangles. He pulls his hand free, wiping his oily hand on his equally grubby pants, and sighs. “501st. Either that or I’m getting it confused with my designation again. Five, five, a lotta fives.”

The numbness crawls up Echo’s arms, seizes his face. “And your name?”

He gives Echo a bitter smirk. “Would you believe me if I said my name was Fives?”

Echo’s hand flies up, fumbling to mute the sound of his gulping breaths through his vocoder. Locks himself inside his body, stilling the tremors until his lungs squeeze. Can’t-Be-Fives is watching him, suspicion growing with every second Echo doesn’t move or speak.

“What do you want from me? Why are you really here?” Not-Fives demands, taking a step toward Echo, then another. “What kind of ‘rescue op’ sends in one skinny cyborg?” He gestures at Echo’s scomp. “Are you even a clone under there, or did you program your vocoder to fuck with me specifically?” Another step. Another step. Not-Fives-Never-Fives is reaching for the bottom of Echo’s helmet.

Echo darts back, breaths still coming hard and irregular. He doesn’t want Fives to see under his bucket, even if it can’t be Fives, because it is Fives, because he knows that stubborn rancor attitude anywhere, that refusal to simply accept what he’s given. Fives always pushed past the bantha shit.

He knows that voice, could pick it out of a sea of brothers with his eyes gouged out. He knows the tilt of his shoulders, knows the hangnail curl in his eyebrows, the exact rivulets of the worry lines etched into his forehead.

It can’t be Fives, and it is Fives. Breathing. Whole. Here.

Echo turns his vocoder back on. “Five of us, actually. Only had a rough estimate of your coordinates so we spread out.” He clears his throat, forces his shoulders down and back. “I’m just the lucky vod who found you first.”

“Vod with a droid arm and an allergy to being seen,” Fives scoffs. “Sure.”

Echo goes with the first not-a-lie he thinks of. “It’s ugly under here, trooper. Prefer to keep it to myself.”

Something softens in Fives’s expression, though it doesn’t ease his frown. “Promise you I’ve seen bad damage. The brain doesn’t let go of the ugly memories, I think, no matter how hard you bang it around.”

“Still.” Echo should be comming the squad. Should have.

Fives nods at his scomp. “Got somethin’ to do with that?”

“It does.” So far Echo hasn’t lied, not really. “I’ll comm our coordinates for a pickup—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I told you this was a rescue op,” Echo says, bewildered. Fives is far from thriving on Sebiris, after all. “And you said—”

“Said I wouldn’t run. Didn’t say I would go offworld,” Fives says, pointing for emphasis. “If you comm your squad, they can come pick you up all alone and I’m outta here.”

“You—you can’t tell me you want to be out here,” Echo says, gesturing wide. “You’re a mess, trooper.”

“A mess means alive,” Fives growls. “The Republic didn’t care about this wet hell, and neither does the Empire. That’s all I need to know. I’m staying put.”

“You’re a karking idiot if you do,” Echo fires back. “You look like you got pulled out of a Wookiee’s asscrack—” Echo looks around, meaningfully, “—on Sebiris!”

“Where the hell would you even be taking me? Huh?” Fives throws his hands up, then flicks his wrists as if he’s tossing the whole conversation away. “No. I’m not going anywhere with you, not on foot, not by ship, no way no how.”

“To Rex.” As soon as Echo says it, he regrets it. No rank to put distance between himself and their former CO. He could have said To the captain of, what was it? Torrent Company? That was 501st, right? except that he already knows he could have never been convincing enough.

Rage twists Fives’s features, his face red as he bellows, “That’s fucking Captain Rex to you! Who the hell do you think you are? You weren’t 501st, you didn’t even know him!”

“Captain. Captain Rex. You’re right,” Echo stammers. Fuck. “The Captain has a whole operation rescuing brothers. He got intel about a clone sighted on Sebiris, but the he’s stretched thin, so he asked us to—”

All of Fives’s rage has been replaced by a cold, wide-eyed dread. “Who sighted me?”

Rex hadn’t mentioned a name or description of his source. “I don’t—”

“Fuck. Fuck! This planet’s compromised.” Fives starts pacing, muttering theories to himself about when he might have slipped, when he might have given himself up. “Fine,” he snarls. “Fine! I’ll go with you.”

Echo reins in his relief with a hard pull. “Good to hear it, brother.” He opens comms. «Got our target. I’ll send coordinates in just a sec.»

«Copy that,» Hunter says. «We’ll rendezvouz at the Marauder then come in with a pickup.»

Echo glances at Fives, who’s fallen back into pacing and mumbling, scratching manically at his scalp with both hands. He mutes his vocoder again to keep his next words comms-only. «Got a favor to ask. From everyone.»

«Shoot,» Wrecker says.

«Don’t use my name around this clone. He’s ex-501st and we—» Echo chews his story a second longer. «There was bad blood. Be better for everyone if we just leave my name and designation out of the mix.»

«We can do that,» Hunter affirms. «I’ll always choose a quiet flight when I can get it.»

«Ooh, does this mean we get to think of a new name for you?» Omega says, way too delighted.

«No. No it does not,» Echo says, firmly.

«Yes it does!» Omega cackles. «We’ll have it ready by the time we pick you up!»

«How do you feel about names associated with livestock animals?» Tech asks, an unexpected addition to the mess.

«No!»

«Alright, that’s enough,» Hunter says. «See you soon, Ech— See you soon. Over and out.»

“Bunch of nerfherders,” Echo mutters, just as he flips his vocoder back on.

“That was a long time on muted comms,” Fives says, glowering from a much closer distance than Echo had left him.

“Nothing you wanna hear,” Echo says, with a weary sigh. “You ever wonder how many brothers in your squad came out of the jar the wrong end, or something?”

For a tight moment, there’s no reaction—and then Fives bursts out into laughter so loud it almost makes Echo jump clean out of his armor. “Yeah,” Fives says, through his laughter, “yeah, I know that feeling well.”

He wants to laugh with Fives so bad. He knows exactly who Fives must be thinking of as he laughs. It would take so little to reveal himself to Fives as exactly who he is, as his twin flame who loved him so much and loves him still. Sure, he’d have to explain himself—his appearance, and why he didn’t tell Fives right away—but Fives would know him anywhere.

Wouldn’t he?

Shouldn’t he?

Doesn’t he know Echo’s voice through any vocoder, from any brother? The way he stands, even on metal legs? Even if so much of Echo has changed, doesn’t Fives know him bone-deep? Soul-deep?

He doesn’t ask who Fives is laughing about.

The Marauder doesn’t take long to make an appearance. The smoothly-executed pinpoint landing—wildly dangerous if it had been attempted by anyone else—means Tech has successfully kept Omega away from the controls. The ramp drops before the wings have even finished folding, with Hunter standing behind it.

“Nice work,” Hunter says, “Reg.” Echo bets there’s a shit-eating grin under that helmet.

Echo rolls his eyes inside his bucket. He wonders what much worse names Hunter vetoed on his behalf.

“I’d say brace yourself for the smell,” Hunter says to Fives, as Echo shoulders past him, “but right now you look like you’re just gonna add to the ambience, trooper.”

“I’m a regular plom flower,” Fives snorts as he climbs the ramp.

“We don’t have a sonic, but—” Hunter glances at Echo as the ramp closes. “Reg here can show you where you can at least scrub off some of that muck, and we might have some spare civs for you.”

Fives looks over the squad, alighting on Omega. “You know there’s a kid onboard, right?”

“I’m part of the squad, too!” Omega crosses her little arms, daring Fives to say otherwise.

“You’re aboard the Havoc Marauder,” Hunter says, walking over to Omega and pressing her to his side. “I’m Hunter, this is Omega, that’s Tech piloting, and Wrecker harassing our GNK droid.”

“I’m not harassing Gonky!” Wrecker protests, holding a slowly-kicking Gonky aloft. “He likes it!”

“Hunter was our sergeant, before we defected,” Tech adds.

“And you’ve already met Reg,” Hunter finishes, pulling off his bucket and leaving Echo the only one still helmeted.

“I mean,” Fives says, taking them in a second time, “I see the resemblance, but you all look more like Prime’s cousins than you do vode. No offense.”

“Nothing we haven’t heard before,” Tech says, curt as he turns back to the instruments panel.

“I’m guessing Reg here is an offshoot, too.” Fives leans over, as if he might see under Echo’s helmet from the right angle.

“Don’t guess,” Echo snaps. It comes out rougher than he means it to.

Hunter coughs. “Anyway. It’s gonna be a long slog in hyperspace from the Outer Rim all the way back to Coruscant, and we’re stopping to resupply on our way, so best get comfortable.”

Echo speeds straight to the copilot’s seat. It’s not until he sits that he remembers that Hunter volunteered him to show Fives where to wash up, but Hunter has already stepped in and taken care of it.

He puts his gloved hand over his visor. He’s a coward.

Chapter Text

The squad disperses from the cockpit as soon as the ship hits hyperspace. Reg all but rockets to the back of the ship, and Tech keeps his seat at the instruments, while Hunter holds Fives up with an invitation to take a kip in the tiny back cabin with its hard, narrow racks. Fives thanks him for the offer, and lucky him, the back cabin is exactly where Fives hopes to corner one particular squad member.

In all honesty, Fives still has doubts about these so-called clones. Undoubtedly, they all have the Fett gene, even the one wearing what might be corrective goggles, but that’s part of it, isn’t it? No clone made by the exacting Kaminoans could ever get away with poor eyesight. The kid looks enough like any cadet he’s seen being marched through the halls of Tipoca City, but he’s also never seen a lone cadet traveling with adult troopers.

Reg is the only one who sounds like a vod. He’s also the only one who refuses to take his bucket off, every brotherly word filtered through a vocoder.

Modified or not, there aren’t many places Reg could be on a ship this size. Fives tries not to be obvious in his search, meandering from stern to stem. Wrecker, not Reg, is in the back cabin, sorting through various small-format explosives. There’s a curtain over the gunner’s mount, which Wrecker tells him is “Omega’s room,” whatever that means; to Wrecker, it seems to mean Don’t touch. Hunter is at the midship terminal and, yep, Tech is still sitting in the pilot’s seat, tapping at a data pad under the blue streaks of hyperspace. Fives is pretty sure he would have noticed if Reg had spaced himself, somehow.

Pretty sure.

He catches the kid watching him from the seat behind Tech. He lifts his head, giving her a stiff little wave from his spot in the doorway. If he remembers anything about cadets, it’s that getting caught staring always put a stop to the behavior; no cadet wanted to be painted as uncool enough to be starstruck, even of an ARC trooper. Not Omega. If anything, she slips off the chair that’s too big for her, and comes over, head tilting as she inspects Fives close up. There’s something about the intensity of her calculating stare that’s familiar in a deeply unpleasant way.

“Generation…” she starts, twisting her lips in deeper thought. “Four?”

“What?” Whatever he thought a kid might say to him, it wasn’t that.

“Just a guess. Rex is a gen one.” She tilts her head again, in the other direction. “Do you want to come sit with me?”

She watches him the whole way as he approaches the chair behind the copilot’s seat, his body sinking into the memory of countless missions.

Except Echo had always taken this seat. Always a copilot for Fives, the steadying force to his mania.

“So,” Fives says, when Omega doesn’t stop staring. Watching. Whatever. “They’re still training up cadets on Kamino?” He gestures at her.

Omega’s eyebrows quirk together. “Kamino is gone.”

Cold blooms in Fives’s stomach. “What do you mean, gone?”

“The Empire did it.” She pulls her legs up onto the chair, balling herself up. “They destroyed everything, planet wide, but they started with Tipoca City.” Resting her cheek on her knees, she adds, “I was there. We all were.”

Fives slides down in his seat. Imagines Nala Se drowning. Imagines hundreds of thousands of brothers in the depths below her churning legs, already dead.

“Were you the only survivors?” he asks, quietly. Rex must have not been there, if Reg invoked his name, but Kamino was a way station for clones as much as it was a birthplace and training ground.

Omega chews her lip. “They evacuated active troopers. Cadets, too, I think. And the heads of the scientific divisions.”

Fives pushes down the memory of Nala Se’s dry fingers against his neck. Giving himself a head injury on Sebiris hadn’t done anything to erase that one. “But not you?”

“I don’t think they knew I was there,” Omega says, picking at a loose thread on the hem of her pants. “But no. We’re defectors.”

“Omega.” Tech’s voice holds a note of warning, though he doesn’t turn toward them.

“He never even heard the order, Tech, I think he's—”

Tech stands abruptly, looming over Fives. “I must be clear. Until we are able to remove your inhibitor chip, which you undoubtedly have not done yourself, we will not be able to share any information about ourselves that is not surface level.” He turns his face toward Omega. “Understood?”

“Understood,” Omega sighs, flopping her legs back out to dangle from the edge of the chair.

Fives laughs weakly. “Oh, is that all?”

Tech cocks his head. “Is there a question? If you're curious about the clone inhibitor chip, that is a topic I am perfectly willing to discuss.” He gestures to Omega. “Omega is also capable of informing you, though I will be able to provide more detail.”

“I can provide just as much detail as you,” Omega says, though her offense seems amiable.

“No, no questions,” Fives says, waving Tech off. “No, I think I know more than I ever wanted to know about the inhibitor chips, actually.” His bitter grin makes his jaw sore, teeth held tight. “Believe I was the second clone to ever have his chip removed, actually.”

Tech stills. “I fail to follow.”

“Don’t know how I lost you, trooper.” Fives digs at his scalp, grease and dandruff piling under his nails. “Had a chip, just like any clone. Found out about it. Got a droid to remove it. Now I’m here.”

“Before Order 66?” Omega asks, leaning forward.

Fives frowns, looking at them both. “What’s Order 66?”

“Omega, do you remember where my chip scanner is stored?” Tech asks, skipping over Fives’s question.

“Yep!”

“Then please bring it here.”

“I asked what Order 66 is!” Fives growls, with Omega already skipping out of the cockpit.

“I heard your question. It was not as pressing,” Tech says, taking Omega’s vacated seat. “Order 66, or Clone Protocol 66, was an order issued to all clones by the then-Supreme Chancellor. All clone troopers with functioning inhibitor chips turned on—”

“On the Jedi,” Fives finishes. His eyes won’t focus. “W-when was this?”

“You said you ‘found out’ about the chips. Is that how you knew the target of the order?” Tech’s words come out sharp, full of suspicion Fives honestly can’t blame him for.

“Got it!” Omega chirps, carrying some kind of junkheap tiara. “It was just this, right?”

“Yes, Omega, thank you.” And after a moment, “It will sync to my datapad.”

“Keep that away from me,” Fives says, legs tensing as Omega holds the tiara out like she wants to put it on him. “No. No machines.”

“A ship is a machine.” And Tech is an asshole, Fives decides.

“Everything alright?” Hunter asks, appearing in the cockpit doorway.

“Our guest claims to have already removed his inhibitor chip,” Tech says, without looking up from his datapad. “I am attempting to ascertain this claim, but I cannot say he is being cooperative.”

Hunter snorts. “Let no one ever tell you you have any kind of bedside manner, Tech,” he sighs, before entering the cockpit proper. “It’s only a quick scan, soldier. Tech’s used it on all of us, even himself.”

“Even the kid?” Fives asks, more incredulous than he means to sound. Omega and that thing are still too close, and she’s got that blank, calculating look again.

“I never had an inhibitor chip,” Omega says.

“How do you know?” he fires back. “How do I know any of you have your inhibitor chips out, actually? Assuming you really are clones and not just Mandos playing with their food—”

“Hey!” Omega protests.

“Or how do I know that thing isn’t meant to, I dunno, pop a brand new chip in me!” Breathing is getting harder, the air painful inside his throat.

“That would be absurd, and not remotely possible,” Tech says, but Hunter stops him with a touch to the shoulder.

“I think you know we’re clones, even if we came out a little...” Hunter seesaws his flat hand.

“Non-regulation,” Omega supplies.

“Our squad name, y’see, it came from a non-regulation clone. One who didn’t make it to the field.” Hunter holds his hand out to Omega, and she passes him the tiara. “He didn’t look like the rest of his brothers, either, but he died a hero.”

“Your squad name?” Reg had mentioned something like that, back on Sebiris, but it slid off Fives’s brain like the sludge of so many other memories.

“Clone Force 99,” Tech says, as Hunter kneels at Fives’s feet. “99 was—”

“I knew him,” Fives murmurs. “I knew him.”

99 had died in Echo’s arms, and Echo had died in no one’s.

“Can I put this on you, vod?” Hunter asks, holding up the scanner. Fives sags, nodding, and doesn’t move as Hunter leans over him to secure the tiara to his temples.

The scan doesn’t take long, though Fives tries to hide the tremors in his hands by gripping the sides of the chair that much harder. He knows it’s over when Tech puts his datapad down, and says, “He has told us the truth.”

“That’s one less worry, then,” Hunter says, clapping Fives on the shoulder.

“Can you...” Fives points at the tiara without looking up.

Omega is the one to pull it off him. Then there are little fingers in his hair, probing behind his ear, and Fives flinches.

“Omega,” Hunter says, sternly. “Ask.” The fingers slip away, and Fives lifts his head.

“It’s—it’s part of the examination,” Omega says, faltering. All Fives can see is the oil and dirt on her fingertips. “I wanted to see if he had a scar. And the state of it, if...”

“It’s in there somewhere,” Fives says, sitting up and turning the right side of his head toward Omega. “I’ll be impressed if you can find it past all this, though.”

“Gave you a comb with those civs, didn’t I?” Hunter asks, scratching his own head as Omega busies herself with her search. “Or did I only imagine that?”

“Ah. Yeah.” Fives had looked at the comb and just—set it aside.

“Here it is,” Omega says. Tech is immediately next to her, adjusting his goggles with a few taps that make Fives think he’s zooming in.

“A very neat job,” Tech says. “How and when was your chip removed?”

“What if,” Hunter says, holding out his hands, “we save the big stories for when we get this trooper to Rex? That way he doesn’t have to tell them twice.” He fixes Fives with a look that feels like what Fives imagines a natborn’s parent might be like. “Maybe see about that comb.”

“Maybe,” Fives says, glancing away.

Tech exits the cockpit with Hunter with a clipped gait, arms wrapped around his datapad. Omega is still hovering, and he supposes that now he’s passed their test, they trust him alone with the kid. Doesn’t seem smart to him.

“I can help you, if you want,” Omega says. “With the combing, I mean.”

“I’ll just cut it all off when we hit terra firma,” Fives says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I bet it’s uncomfortable the way it is now, though,” she says, looking at his hairline, at his choppy split ends. “I like it when Wrecker combs my hair for me, even though I can do it myself.”

“The big guy?” Fives asks, snorting before he can hold it in.

“Yeah! He’s good at delicate tasks. Because of the explosives.” Omega is already at the cockpit door, bopping the panel to trot into the cabin. He thinks that’s a weird way to end a conversation, until she comes back a couple minutes later, brandishing the comb and fabric square Hunter had left for him.

“I told you, kid, it’s alright. I’ll just bear it until we get...wherever.”

“Coruscant.”

Fives narrows his eyes. “The heart of the Empire.”

“Well, yeah, but no one would expect a whole platoon of defector clones right under the Emperor’s nose, right?” She folds the fabric diagonally, again and again until—ah. A bandana, which means it must be Hunter’s personal spare.

“I’d feel better about it if I could call Rex on the holo. Kid, no—” He pushes Omega’s hand away, and the comb with it.

“I know Hunter said to ask, but I also know that sometimes, you have to push people to accept something good.” She stands as resolutely as any ARC trooper, from the stance of her feet to the squared shoulders, to the obstinate furrow of her mouth. “Sometimes you have to push harder than you think, or than you want to push, but you have to do it.”

In a fairer galaxy, a child her age, clone or not, wouldn’t speak with so much weight on her words. Whatever it is she’s thinking about, or whoever, it’s more than a kid should shoulder. Fives sighs. “You can’t complain about how gross it is, alright?”

She brightens so fast it’s like someone threw a switch. “Alright!”

He ends up sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cockpit, his head bracketed by Omega’s knees. She works the comb through the snarls of his hair slowly, from ends to roots, in sections so small he wonders if she can even finish before they leave hyperspace. She scratches at his scalp when she reaches the end of a section, and it rains dead skin on the clean civs Hunter loaned him.

After everything that Fives has been through—the parts he can remember, the empty pain of those he can’t—this is what finally breaks him. Sitting on the floor of a GAR-issue ship, being groomed like a wild animal being nursed back to health. Which is what he might be. Hot tears track quietly down his cheeks, and it only makes him feel dirtier.

“You didn’t tell us your name,” Omega says, as she begins a new section of hair.

“Guess not,” Fives replies, staring at the floor just beyond his crossed ankles.

Omega waits, wiggling the comb diligently.

“Fives,” he says. “My name is Fives.”

Her fingers stutter in his hair. Maybe she’s only clumsy, being as young as she is, but Fives’s body screams because she knows something, she has to know something, something she’s keeping from him—

“And you knew 99?”

“Yeah.” She’s regathering her intel. She’s connecting dots in a plan, she was sent by Hunter and he has to uncover this trap before they can spring it. “I was there when he died.” Bait. What will she do with that?

“I’m glad,” she says, softly. “That he wasn’t alone. I think you must have been nice to him.” Omega sniffles. “He was always nice to me.”

“Yeah?” And Fives wants to kick himself, for thinking the worst of a little kid who’s only trying to help him. He really has become fucking warped.

“I wasn’t allowed out of the lab very often. Not until the Republic fell, and—” A longer sniffle, breathed in deep to steady herself. “He could go most anywhere, because most paid no attention to him, so sometimes he would sneak me a piece of candy. I hadn’t tasted anything sweet until the first time did that.”

Fives isn’t so far gone that he would choose now to ask Omega why she exists. What lab she means, or who wouldn’t let her out. He’s not sure he wants the answers.

“He was a good soldier,” Fives agrees. “Loved his brothers deeply. And we loved him back, those of us who knew him.”

“I’m glad,” she says again. She doesn’t sniffle.

They’re both quiet for another stretch, filled with nothing but Omega tugging through each tangle and mat she encounters.

“Haven’t seen Reg since we hit hyperspace,” Fives remarks, hoping it sounds offhanded.

“Think he’s sleeping,” Omega says, distractedly. Of course her focus is not on wherever Reg stashed himself. “Rack time? Is that what soldiers say?”

“Yeah. Don’t think I saw him on any of the racks.”

She hums her I dunno.

“Saw he’s got a kama,” Fives tries again. “Was he recruited to the squad after he made ARC?”

“The Bad Batch wasn’t recruited,” Omega says. “They were enhanced separately, and trained together from the start. They were always meant to be a commando squad.”

The word enhanced strikes him like a fist, sending shockwaves of memory through his brain. At least, he thinks it’s a memory, the word looping in Nala Se’s voice.

Fives resists the urge to shake his head, swallowing. “Th-then how did he get a kama?”

“I...” Omega hesitates. “I think he just liked the look?”

The sting of hair being pulled from his scalp is a distant one as Fives twists to face Omega. “He what?”

“I don’t know!” she yelps. “I never asked!”

“The kama is earned,” Fives snarls. “By commanders. By captains. By ARC troopers. Not just any pissant rank-and-file who wants to feel special!”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Omega scrabbles to flatten herself against the back of the chair. The cockpit door whooshes open behind Fives. “I’m sorry!”

“Leave Omega alone,” says a voice that is decidedly not Hunter or Tech’s. The giant hand that descends on Fives’s shoulder means it’s Wrecker hauling him to his feet and spinning him around.

“Get off me,” Fives snaps, failing to break Wrecker’s hold.

“Apologize to her!” And great, now Hunter’s here again, watching from the doorway. There’s a scrap of ugly I told you so in his chest when he looks at Hunter, because he should have known better than to leave Omega with a lunatic. Fives puts his hands over his face, breaths ragged.

“Wrecker,” Hunter says, and just that one word has Wrecker bowling him into one of the empty chairs.

“And where’s Reg, since you’re all here?” Fives wants to know, laughing bitterly as Tech appears behind Hunter. “Or did I imagine him? Wouldn’t be the first fucking time.”

“He was just asking some questions,” Omega says, waving both hands frantically. “About Reg. I didn’t know the answers.”

“Reg,” Hunter sighs, “prefers his privacy. More than the rest of us. If you’ve got questions about him, you can direct ‘em my way.”

“Just because you’re named after 99 doesn’t give you his honor.” Fives pounds his fist against his chest. “And how a brother earns his kama should be an easy answer.”

Hunter’s eyebrows lift. “Then you can ask Reg yourself, if it bothers you so much. Later.”

Omega slips off her chair. “I’m sorry, Fives.” She reaches for one of his hands, waiting for him to settle when he pulls back at first touch. “Can I finish fixing your hair? I’m sorry I don’t know anything about Reg that you want to know.”

“I don’t think—” Hunter begins.

“I’ll watch,” Wrecker says, plopping himself into the pilot’s seat and spinning it to face stern.

To say Hunter doesn’t look thrilled is underselling the man’s expression, but he gives in. “So long as you’re watching, Wreck.”

Fives doesn’t ask any more questions as he retakes his place at Omega’s feet, this time under Wrecker’s eye. Omega chats to him amiably enough, as if he hadn’t scared her at all, about all the kinds of surface-level things Tech had said he was allowed to know. Less than surface level, really, as she runs through her knowledge on various military transports.

She only goes quiet when she finishes detangling his hair, and starts pulling it toward the back of his head in sections. Omega rescues every flyaway as she gathers his lifeless hair into a braid at the back of his neck, the coil of it flattening until the braid reaches the bottoms of his shoulder blades. “Bandanas around the head are Hunter’s thing,” Omega says, as she pulls over the folded bandana and ties it around the end of the braid. “But I think this will do!”

He hasn’t not had his hair in his face in so long. Fives could almost believe he looks like his old self, if he couldn’t feel the weight of so much hair on his back.

He touches two fingers to his temple, ghosting over his tattoo.

“Dropping out of hyperspace,” Tech announces as he settles back into the pilot’s seat. Reg reappears without a word to take copilot again, with Hunter and Omega taking the last two. Wrecker, meanwhile, has chosen to stand close enough to Fives to make him want to bolt, regardless of there being nowhere to bolt.

They haven’t told him where they’re resupplying. Frankly, Fives is surprised they’re even letting him off the ship, though Wrecker continues to be his chaperone. “They’ve got sonics here,” Wrecker says, grinning. “Kark knows you need it.”

“Whoopee,” Fives deadpans.

The rest of the squad splits up, with Omega following Hunter. And Reg—

Well, his bucket’s finally gone, but it’s been replaced by something that looks like a droid’s head. Is that his head? Fives looks up at Wrecker, finds the Fett in him again to remind himself that yes, Clone Force 99 is made up of clones, but the idea that Reg has been a droid programmed to sound like a clone all along is one that shakes him.

Wrecker follows Fives’s line of sight, just before Reg disappears into the crowd. “If you’re wondering why, uh, why Reg looks like that, that’s so people leave him alone about his face. He just pretends to be a droid and people leave him alone.”

It’s ugly under here, trooper.

“That bad?” Fives whispers.

“Oh, yeah. Real bad,” Wrecker says, crossing his arms as he nods. “Makes all this,” he wiggles his fingers at the scarring that spiders out from his ear, carving deep into the skin, “look like a beauty mark.”

“What happened?”

Wrecker shrugs, shifting his weight to one leg, then the other. “Reg likes his privacy, like Hunter said. You gotta ask him.”

“Don’t know how I’m supposed to do that when he keeps disappearing,” Fives mutters.

“Let’s get you clean!” Wrecker says, as abruptly as he grabs Fives by the bicep and shoves him forward. “You stink!”

The public sonic is housed in a building that looks like it wants to quit its job just as much as the disgruntled Rodian manning the counter. “Just the one,” Wrecker says, thumbing at Fives while he counts out credits.

“Think he needs more than a sonic,” the Rodian scoffs as he makes change. “Your man looks like he needs to be boiled like laundry for a day or two.”

Wrecker laughs. “Yeah, he’s ripe.” He turns to Fives, and starts walking him toward the door to the sonic room. “I’ll, uh, hold onto your stuff.”

“Hey!” the Rodian calls. “You only paid for one!”

“I’m not gonna take a sonic!” Wrecker says, rolling his eyes. “Just gonna hold ’is stuff. Stand guard an’ all.”

“No. Nope. That scam stinks worse than your friend. Pay up.” The Rodian holds out a hand palm-up, grabbing at the air.

“Aw, what!” Wrecker digs for more credits, huffing all the while, and stomps back over to clap them into the Rodian’s hand.

“And a fee for a locker,” the Rodian sneers. “For all that.” He waves at Wrecker’s armor.

“Think you’re the scammer, pal,” Wrecker grumbles, but he pulls out one more credit. The Rodian smirks, waving them through at last.

“Guess I could use a sonic, too,” Wrecker says as he removes his cuirass, raising his arm to take a big whiff. “Not as bad as you, but whew! Smell that!”

“I’m good,” Fives gags, staggering back when Wrecker brings his armpit in close.

“Just gonna have to remember a number,” a naked Wrecker says, contemplating the locker with a towel probably meant for a Wookiee over one shoulder. “Not like anybody knows my designation, I guess.” He punches in 9901 on the keypad.

“Does your whole batch start with 99?” Fives asks as they walk toward one of the sonic stalls.

“Hold up!” Another Rodian comes striding up. “Separate stalls.”

Wrecker frowns. “But I gotta watch him!”

“This is a sonic room, not a cathouse. You can do that somewhere else, but not here!”

“Wha—no, I—” Wrecker splutters. “I mean not that I wouldn’t, but—”

“I’ll be fine, Wrecker,” Fives says, patting him on the forearm. “Besides, doubt we could fit in together.”

“I guess,” Wrecker says, taking in the width of the sonic stall in front of them. “Hey, lady, this is a real skinny sonic you got here, you know that?”

“If I could make ‘em be skinnier, I would,” the attendant says with a sniff. “Keep you perverts in check.” She saunters off.

“’M not a pervert,” Wrecker mutters as he steps into a sonic stall. “I’m healthy, is what I am.”

Whatever other opinions Wrecker holds on the matter, Fives doesn’t get any of them as he enters the stall. He turns the sonic on as forceful as he can bear, feeling it down to his bones as the layers of grit and dead skin slough off under the vibration. The Rodian out front was right, in that a sonic can’t get him all the way clean like a water shower could; his beard is a lost cause.

It feels wrong, undoing all of Omega’s work in braiding his hair—right until the sonic hits his tortured scalp. He scratches at his scalp as flakes fall to the tiled floor, making it a snowstorm joining all the other shit coming off his hair. He angles his whole head under the sonic head, scratches more, harder—

A drop of blood hits the tile.

He can’t even take a sonic like a normal person.

Fives puts his fingertips under the sonic head, blasting out the blood under his nails, and takes the rest of his sonic passively, turning whenever one side of him can’t take the pressure anymore.

The thing is, Wrecker isn’t finished when Fives steps out. Despite Fives being lightyears dirtier, Wrecker is taking his time, and his off-key singing leaks through the noise of the sonic at full blast.

The thing is, Reg is alone, somewhere in this dinky spaceport.

9901. Fives dresses in a hurry, pulling his hair up into a sloppily wound bun in place of Omega’s pin-neat braid. The Rodian at the desk says something about a tip that Fives doesn’t catch on his way out.

The thing is, Reg is easy to find when he thinks he doesn’t have to hide.

His droid disguise is a good one, if Wrecker is telling the truth. Reg gets bumped by every fifth organic pretending not to see him, like any other droid walking without an owner. If Fives hadn’t spotted the kama, he might not have even realized it was Reg.

Reg is looking over a stall with droid parts when Fives comes up on him. Really selling the scam, Fives would say, if Reg weren’t part droid already. “Funny,” Fives says, “how you’re better at hiding on a ship the size of a credit than in a spaceport where you have at least a square klick or two to roam.”

At the sound of Fives, Reg goes as still as a rabbit in a hawk’s sightline. “Wasn’t hiding.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Fives circles to Reg’s side. “Everyone keeps telling me you like your privacy, Reg.”

Reg turns his droid face away.

“Is this your droid?” the stall owner asks as she approaches. “It’s been staring for a while.”

“Yeah,” Fives says, staring where he’s pretty sure Reg’s eyes are. “Yeah, it’s my droid. And it knows we don’t have the credits for this, do we?” Reg almost succeeds at hiding his flinch. “So we should go.”

“What a skinflint,” the staller owner spits. “Spending money on a droid like that but you won’t buy it a new arm?”

“Yeah, thanks for the advice,” Fives grunts, as he puts a hand to Reg’s back and pushes. That much feels like flesh and blood through the quilted cuirass, and Fives realizes he hasn’t touched Reg once, not since tackling him on Sebiris.

Reg outpaces Fives’s shove, already aiming for the thickest clump of people to vanish into. “No, you don’t,” Fives says under his breath, darting after him and making a grab for his right arm. Fives’s hand closes around the join of metal and flesh, and Reg jerks his arm away as if Fives’s touch burns.

“What do you want from me?” Reg hisses, turning to face Fives while still backing away. “Why do I matter?”

“It’s the fact that you don’t want to matter, brother,” Fives says, cocking his head as he advances. “You really wanna do this out in the open?”

“You don’t know how fast these legs can go,” Reg says. Fives glances down; he hadn’t even realized Reg’s legs were metal, too. How much of himself has he lost?

“Yeah, a droid running top speed across the spaceport, that won’t attract any attention,” Fives snorts. “You’re asking what I want from you? I want you to tell me how you got that kama. And I want you to take off that karking helmet!”

“My—my kama?” Reg sounds genuinely surprised through the vocoder. “What about it?”

“Standard troopers don’t get kama. Standard commandos don’t earn kama, either. And none of the rest of your ‘Bad Batch’ wear them. So what were you, hm?” Fives herds Reg around the side of a short building, into the shade behind it. “Omega told me you were all trained together, but you’ve got more regulation in you than those other cousins in your squad. Maybe they pulled you from the 21st Nova Corps?”

“Told you, I’m Clone Force 99. Or was. There’s no more GAR, so what does it matter?” Reg asks, stumbling against the wall. Fives cages him, an arm to either side of his head.

“Demoted captain?” Fives presses. “Maybe they let you keep the kama for old times’ sake.”

“Stop.”

“Took it off a dead brother, maybe. Some misguided attempt at paying tribute, and landing on stolen valor, instead.”

“Stop it!”

“Or maybe—”

“It’s just a piece of armor!” Reg shouts. “Why are you so fixated on it?”

Fives squeezes his eyes shut. He knows why. He knows.

“Fives.”

With his eyes closed, it’s Echo.

“Fives?”

“D’you ever wish for the impossible?” Fives whispers, eyes still shut tight. Like maybe he can pretend Echo is with him, just for a little longer.

“All the time,” Reg whispers back.

“Even for the dead to come back?”

Reg doesn’t say anything this time.

“There’s a lot I keep thinking about,” Fives says, opening his eyes. He keeps his head angled down, talking to Reg’s boots. “The chips. Nala Se. How I ended up on the edge of the galaxy.” He takes a deep breath. “And—and what if I had just turned back? What if I’d disobeyed orders and—and found him? What if he’d still been breathing, just long enough that I could have saved him?”

Reg is still silent.

“What if he died, alone and in agony, because I—because I was a good soldier, who followed orders?” Fives chokes on the sob that fights to escape him, teeth grinding.

“What was his name, brother?” Echo’s voice asks him from above. Not It’s me, Fives. I’ve been here all along.

“Echo.” Each letter is a knife across his tongue.

“Tell me about him. Tell me about Echo.”

Fives sniffs, scrubbing the back of his hand across his upper lip. “Take off your helmet.”

“Can’t do that.”

“What, is it welded on?” Fives asks, with a broken chuckle. “Tell me how you earned your kama.”

“It matters that much to you?”

“It does.”

“Alright.”

Fives finally looks up. Reg’s droid helmet is still firmly affixed, but he keeps fidgeting, his scomp spinning with no discernible pattern. Involuntary, maybe. Anxious.

“I was an ARC trooper,” Reg confesses. “And then this—all this happened to me.” He holds up his scomp, uses it to point to all of himself. “They don’t let you stay an ARC trooper when more than half of you is machine parts. But,” Reg adds, his smile crooked and sour, “they let me keep my kama.”

“I’m sorry, vod,” Fives says, swallowing around the new knowledge that Reg was an ARC trooper, too. Doesn’t mean they would have known each other, in the Before. Doesn’t make him any closer to being Echo, except that it does, because he wants it, so, so badly.

“It’s fine,” Reg says, with a shrug. “I mean—not fine, but I wasn’t decommissioned, was I? Slated for it, until the Bad Batch accepted me as part of their squad.” A second shrug, deeper than the first. “Another broken vod. Easier to just say I’ve been with them from the start. Less humiliating.”

“I don’t think it’s humiliating,” Fives says, and he means it. “You survived.”

Another shrug. Reg crosses his arms, though the scomp doesn’t quite tuck under his left arm.

“What happened?” Fives asks. The chance that Reg will tell him is low, but—

I was blown apart by an explosion. Couldn’t remember my name or designation. Got a new one. Even as Fives imagines it, he already knows it’s a stupid fantasy.

“Not my favorite topic,” Reg says, as expected. He pauses, then says, “You look clean.”

Fives snorts. “Clean enough. Should probably get back before Wrecker realizes I gave him the slip.”

“I’ll comm him,” Reg chuckles. “That way we’ll be able to head straight to the ship.”

The walk back to the ship is spent in silence. Reg has no questions for him, and Fives doubts he has any answers for him, either.

“You asked me about Echo,” Fives says, with the Marauder in sight. “I just—I keep hearing him when you talk, vod.”

Reg stops at the bottom of the ramp, the tinted transparisteel of his droid helmet giving nothing away but Fives’s own reflection. Fives holds his breath.

He climbs aboard without another word, leaving Fives to watch him disappear into the cockpit.

Coruscant fills the windshield as the blue streaks of hyperspace drop away, and dread pours into Fives’s lungs. Tech is focused on making sure his bootleg clearance codes get them through, though he doesn’t seem worried, or even affected by the tension of everyone else crowded into the cockpit.

The dread spills into the rest of him, growing with every klick closer to the surface. Tech flies them toward a portal shaft, dropping the ship through the center of cross-level traffic, a move Wrecker doesn’t appreciate. Each level flickering by only paralyzes Fives more, the dread resolving into something more tangible.

This is where Fives had—not died. Close. This is where Fives had been strangled by fear, paranoia, by Nala Se’s drugs coursing through him. Where he had held a blaster against brothers, where a brother had pulled the trigger on him.

“Fives,” Echo’s voice says, quiet and urgent on his left. It’s not Echo, it’s not Echo. Reg touches his hand to Fives’s shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Fives says, the words coming out garbled. He puts his hand over Reg’s, meaning to push it off, and finds he can’t. Won’t.

“I’m sure Rex will be happy to see another 501st trooper,” Hunter says, looking straight ahead. “We’ll be there in just a moment.”

Get it together. Fives nudges Reg’s hand away, closing his eyes and breathing so deeply it makes him dizzy behind his eyelids. Get it together. He puts his shoulders back, takes another deep breath, exhales before he overdoes it. Get it together. Get it together.

Fives opens his eyes. It’s going to be okay. It’s Rex.

The Marauder finds its way onto a platform on a level in the 1300s. This is deeper than Fives ever went. Deeper than any Corrie would go, he thinks. He hopes.

“I thought they were landing that somewhere else,” a woman’s voice says, before the ramp even finishes opening.

“Tech won’t have let them be followed,” comes the answer in a clone’s voice. And this voice offers Fives no confusion.

“That is correct,” Tech says, exiting after Hunter and Omega, Wrecker behind him. “I acknowledge my ship is somewhat distinctive, but—”

“Oh, your ship, is it?” Hunter laughs, echoing outside the ship.

It’s just Fives and Reg left in the cockpit. “Go on,” Reg says, hand on his back.

“Thought you brought me a trooper,” Rex calls out. He knows it’s Rex. Even if he can’t trust himself, because he also knows Echo’s voice.

Footsteps clang up the ramp, and Hunter’s head pops back into the cockpit. “Everything alright?”

“Peachy,” Fives says, faintly, before clearing his throat. “Fine. Everything’s fine.” He strides toward the ramp before he can think better of it.

And there he is. Rex, still as towheaded as ever, grinning up at him from the bottom of the ramp.

The grin slips away. “Fives?”

“Don’t think I’m anyone else,” Fives says, stopping halfway down.

Rex takes a slow step forward. “I—” He takes a second step, foot resting on the bottom rung. “I watched you die, brother.”

Fives shrugs. “These things happen.”

Rex climbs to meet Fives, a gloved hand reaching up. He brushes his thumb over Fives’s tattoo, taking in the whole of Fives’s face.

“You look like hell,” Rex says, eyes wet as his grin returns, his hand cradling Fives’s cheek.

“You try catching jungle rats for dinner with your hands for a year or two, see how you look,” Fives huffs, but he can’t help but grin, too.

Rex wraps him in a sudden, tight embrace, right on the ramp, and it squeezes all the dread out of Fives. Fives hugs him back, clinging to the most normal he’s felt since Tup’s death.

“And to think,” Rex says, breaking away to clap both hands on Fives’s shoulders, “of all the brothers I could have asked to take this mission, it was Echo who found you.”

Fives tears away from Rex’s hold, staggering back a rung. His head swims with responses, like That’s not funny, Rex, and What the fuck is wrong with you, Rex, and What do you mean? and Where is he? and Fuck you! Fuck you for saying that! None of them make it to his lips, Fives swaying as he stares at Rex in horror.

Rex has the audacity to only look confused. “Fives? Why are you looking at me like that? Fives—” Rex steps down to turn, looking at Hunter. “Did something happen? Where’s Echo?” he asks, with a growing sense of alarm that makes Fives want to fucking scream. Stop! Stop screwing with me! Stop!

Hunter hesitates. “Ah... Echo was being a little squirrelly when we picked up your trooper, see. We’ve been calling him—”

“Reg?” Fives says, falling back against the ramp as his legs buckle. “Reg is—?”

“I don’t understand,” Rex says, and the words sound muffled, everything coming to Fives as though he’s been plunged underwater.

What was his name, brother?

One boot hits the rung behind Fives’s head, then another. Fives looks up at Reg, standing over him.

Tell me about Echo.

Not Reg. Not Reg.

Echo.

Echo.

ECHO.

Fives surges up, twisting toward Echo with both hands. Echo doesn’t pull back in time, and Fives brings them crashing to the floor of the cockpit together.

“You’re not Echo!” he roars, straddling Echo’s waist and slamming his shoulders down, the back of his helmet bouncing against the floor. “Echo would have told me! Echo would have shown me his face!” Fives’s fingers scrabble for the catch at the bottom of Echo’s bucket, pushed back again and again by one hand and one scomp. The sound of many feet rushing up the ramp rings out behind Fives, and just as many hands pull at his shoulders, at his arms, his waist.

“Echo wouldn’t have let me keep thinking he was dead!” Fives’s voice breaks across the last word, raw and scraping. “You’re not Echo! You’re not him! You’re not my fucking vod! Echo would have told me! He would have told me!”

Rex and Hunter together pull Fives off Echo, and Echo skitters back, a miserable pile of armor and metal limbs tucked halfway behind the nearest chair.

“I’m sorry, Fives,” Echo says, breathless and shaking. “I’m sorry.”

Chapter Text

Rex whirls on Echo before the Marauder’s ramp even finishes closing. “What were you thinking?!” he bellows, advancing fast to crowd Echo against the far wall of the cockpit.

“It doesn’t matter,” Echo grunts, turning to slip out from under from Rex’s glare. Rex only punches the wall, blocking Echo’s way with a stiff arm.

“Don’t give me that bantha shit. Hunter just said outside you asked the squad to call you by a different name in front of Fives, and gave them some cockamamie story behind it.” Rex raps his knuckles against the top of Echo’s helmet. “I need to hear a reason you’d ever do that, whether it makes sense or not.”

“Or what?” Echo squares his shoulders, bottom of his bucket tilted defiantly. “You’ll write me up? Demote me?”

Rex groans, pressing the heel of his hand into the hollow of his eye. “I’m just trying to understand, Echo. Even setting aside what a boneheaded stunt this all was to begin with, what did you think would happen when you got here? That I’d just, what, telepathically know what you were up to, like a Jedi? And go along with it?”

Echo knows he’s pouting. He’s a cadet caught outside the barracks after lights-out, Where did you think you could even go? and he hates it. It just seems so pointlessly humiliating to corner him, and ask him questions Rex already knows the answers to.

“Echo.”

“Knew you wouldn’t go along with it,” Echo murmurs, when Rex gives his shoulder a shake. “So I didn’t...didn’t comm ahead.”

“And what was your plan for that? You knew I’d be here. The garage is the command center right now, that was the whole reason I had to ask you boys to fetch a brother.”

The disappointment in Rex’s voice says even more. You’re the strategist, so where’s your strategy? How could you be this stupid?

“What do you want from me, Rex?”

Rex doesn’t reply, not at first. He steps back, releasing Echo from the cage of his arms, just looking at him. “For you to not hold me at arm’s length, vod.”

“Which arm?” Echo asks, holding up both of his with a weak laugh.

Rex doesn’t laugh. He sighs, instead, and says, “At least tell Hunter, I suppose. He’s your leader. He deserves to know, if I don’t.”

“Maybe.”

Rex palms the ship’s ramp controls with one more sigh, and leaves without a look back. Echo considers just staying in the ship until Omega pops her little head in.

“Echo. You coming out? You’ve been in here a little while.”

“Nah. Not like we’re staying long.”

“Oh.” Omega purses her lips in thought, then darts off. She reappears moments later, and says, “Hunter says we’re staying the night.”

Echo scowls under his helmet. Of course Hunter said that. “Suppose I could use the fresh air, then,” Echo says, making a show of sniffing the air and waving it away. “Think the ship could use it, too.”

“Smells like soldiers!” Omega chirps, grinning.

“Yeah, smells like old socks and buttcrack,” Echo agrees, meeting her at the top of the ramp. “Let’s get some food in you, how about?”

Echo keeps his eyes trained forward, watching Omega trot ahead of him toward the garage’s kitchenette and adamantly ignoring the eyes he can feel burning through his armor like blasterfire.

There aren’t too many clones in the garage, most of Rex’s forces deployed on their own rescue missions. The clones who do hang around tend to be fresh rescues, recovering from their recent surgeries while Rex figures out where to assign them. There’s only one brother in the kitchenenette, overseen by a sharp-eyed Rafa Martez.

“Well, look who it is!” Rafa says, folding her arms as Echo follows Omega in. “The littlest clone, and the drama queen.”

“Just came to see if there was anything to feed the kid, Rafa,” Echo sighs.

“Oh, for Omega? Anything she wants,” Rafa says, gesturing at the cabinets. “But you can wait to eat dinner with everyone else.”

“Think I’m good on that,” Echo mutters. “Omega, why don’t you ask Rafa what you can have?”

“I said anything,” Rafa scoffs, but she smiles for Omega anyway, and shows her a small hoard of shelf-stable foods. The clone at the counter glances up as Echo leans against the wall.

“You just came in?” he asks. He’s working through a small pile of cabbages, making slow, rough slices and filling a huge bowl on the other side of him. His hands flash with more jewelry than Echo has ever seen on a clone, silvery durasteel on every finger.

“Won’t stay long,” Echo says with a nod. Rafa pulls down a box of actual candy bars—where did she get those?—from the very top shelf of a cabinet, and Echo holds up a single finger when Omega looks at him. One candy bar. “That’s Omega,” he says, “and I’m Echo.”

“Oh, you sure about that? Sure we shouldn’t call you Reg or some other silly shit?” Rafa asks, snidely, and Echo wishes she could see the nasty look he’s giving her. He’s not risking taking off his bucket, though.

“Just Echo,” he reaffirms, sighing.

“I’m Fold, sir,” the other clone says, before he stills. “I mean—not sir—”

“At ease,” Echo says, with a merciful little smile. There’s a telltale bandage still taped to Fold’s skull, and his forehead is free of lines; he wonders how recently this brother might have been a cadet. His smile shrinks when he wonders how long Fold had as a soldier before the fist of the Empire descended. “You’re a flashy one, eh?”

“What do you—” Fold starts to ask, until Echo gestures with his hand at Fold’s accessories. “Oh. No, uh, no flash. Not trying to be.”

“It’s so his fingers stay where they’re supposed to,” Rafa says, ripping open the top of a candy bar when Omega can’t find her way into the packaging, and handing it back. “Trace made those for him,” she adds, with an unsubtle amount of pride.

“Where they’re supposed to...?” Echo asks, frowning.

“I’d show you, sir, but I’m busy,” Fold says, and then locks up again. “Supposed to stop saying sir.”

“I like saying sir,” Omega says, wiping a smear of synthetic chocolate from her mouth.

Fold pauses in his slicing, looking at Omega and Echo with methodical intensity. “So... So you’re both clones?”

“Yeah,” Echo is quick to reply, voice rough with defensiveness. Not for himself, of course, but for Omega. Of course.

“And you...” Fold starts slicing again, just as slowly as before. “You fight? For the clone rebellion?”

“Yeah!” Omega says, before Echo can respond. “In between jobs.”

“Jobs?” Fold asks, like he’s learning a new Huttese word.

“She means to say it’s one of the things we do,” Echo says. “Why?”

“Oh, just...” Fold scoops cabbage shreds between both hands, dumping them into the bowl. “Glad a clone like me might be useful someday, too. To the rebellion, I mean.” Fold gives Echo a shy smile, revealing tiny, gapped teeth.

“A clone like—?” Echo starts to ask, before he can think better of it, and he’s shamefully relieved when another person enters the kitchenette, cutting him off.

Until he sees it’s Rex.

“Echo. With me.” This time there are no questions, no desperate probing. Only a simple order, one he knows Echo won’t disobey in front of the shiny.

“Sir, yes, sir,” Echo huffs. Rex nods at Fold, at Rafa and Omega, before marching back out with the unspoken expectation that Echo had better follow.

“Gonna interrogate me again, sir?” Echo asks, as soon as they’re out of Fold’s earshot.

“Don’t push your luck,” Rex warns as they enter the garage proper. Howzer confers with the rest of the squad nearby, though they pause to watch Rex and Echo. Further confirmation this is going to be more of the same.

“Rex,” Echo says, as he sweeps the garage, and what he can see of the hangar beyond, “where’s Fives?”

Rex keeps walking, without so much as turning his head.

“Rex. You’re not putting me in a room with him.”

“Actually,” Rex says, as they reach a door, “this is my operation. So that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He throws the door open to a storage room, with Fives sitting next to an empty chair in the center of it.

“No. No, I’m not talking about this,” Echo says, already backing up. Fives leaps up immediately, watching with hard eyes.

“Not your call, trooper,” Rex growls, gripping him by the bicep. The right bicep, squeezing unfairly just above his prosthetic. Echo tries to twist out of it anyway, snarling.

“If Reg doesn’t wanna talk to me, he doesn’t have to,” Fives says, spitting the false name.

“Don’t know anyone by that name,” Rex says, finally hurling Echo inside. Echo staggers against Rex’s momentum while Rex boots the door closed, taking a wide stance in front of it. “But you two are talking or I’ll beat the both of you until neither of you remember your names, how about that?”

Fives balks; he’s been gone long enough he doesn’t know if that’s a bluff. Echo, though, Echo rolls his eyes and drops into his designated seat. “Fine.”

Fives stalks back to the other chair, sitting slowly as he stares Echo down. “I don’t have any proof but your word that this is Echo,” Fives says, cocking his head. “How can I trust someone who refuses to take off their bucket?”

“Fives!” Rex snaps. “Echo did wrong by you, but don’t you do wrong by him.”

Fives crosses his arms, huffing as he slides down in his seat. Rex turns to Echo. “Well, Echo?”

“You—you want me to start this?” Echo asks, pointing to himself with his scomp. Habit. He brings his scomp down quickly. Rex only lifts a single brow at Echo, arms folded. “I don’t—I don’t know. It was stupid of me. Sorry, alright?”

Fives scoffs. “Sorry?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m saying so right now.” Echo shrugs. Something in the back of his head says he should be better at this sort of thing. It says he’d expect better out of Omega. That something just keeps getting drowned out by the burning in his mind every time he looks at Fives.

Fives doesn’t look anything close to regulation, but someone—probably Rex—trimmed away the bulk of his beard, and it brings him nearer to the Fives Echo had left behind at the Citadel. The Fives who had left him behind, uncharitably.

Truthfully.

Fives’s eyes linger on Echo’s scomp. Echo tucks it behind his forearm, trying not to squirm.

“I mean it,” Fives says, voice flat in a way Echo doesn’t like. “I don’t know that you’re Echo, even if I want to believe Rex. My Echo has been dead for years.”

“Fives,” Rex warns.

“What was our squad name?” Fives asks.

“Fives, stop it,” Rex says, louder this time. But Echo deserves to be interrogated.

“Domino.”

“Who died first?”

The eel had been fast for an animal of its size. “Cutup.”

Fives tilts his head. He regards Echo wordlessly, brown eyes betraying nothing. Maybe Echo is answering too fast, because when Fives finally speaks again, all he says is, “Could’ve read that in a report.”

Echo wonders how different this conversation would be with his helmet off, his pain of remembering on display. He doesn’t so much as reach for the catch. “You—you needed red paint. For the eyes, and the tongue. I traded for it with a Corrie.”

That sets Fives back in his seat, mouth working silently as he takes Echo in all over again.

“I know,” Echo says, eyes on the floor to block out the way Fives is staring, “it was stupid. But I recognized you, Fives, and—and I couldn’t believe it, because I asked about you. I asked Rex.” This time Rex avoids his gaze, and Echo turns it back to the floor. “He wouldn’t even tell me the whole story until after the war was over. Of how you died, or why.”

Echo looks up when Fives says nothing, and finds that Fives is staring at Rex, now.

“But there was no one else you could be. No matter what had happened to you, you were still Fives. Are still Fives. But you couldn’t recognize me, not the way I recognized you—”

“I gave you my name!” Fives interrupts. “My designation! My battalion, for kriff’s sake! And you, you gave me a—a—a false identity! You spun up some bantha shit story about being one of the 99ers out there, and then some other story when I called you out on that one!” Fives pauses. “Think it’s worse, actually, that your second version was so damn close to the truth, vod. Ex-ARC trooper? They let you keep your kama?”

That one had been mostly the truth. Echo had never tried to go back to being an ARC trooper, though.

“Oh, I coudn’t ‘recognize you the way you recognized me,’ is that the story now?” Fives laughs. Echo flinches into himself at the sound. “Fuck you! You watched me rip my fucking chest open for you, about the Citadel, and you never once broke character! ‘What was his name, brother?’ ‘Tell me about Echo, brother!’ Fuck you for thinking one sorry could take back all of that!”

“Echo,” Rex says, “is that true?” Echo is met with the frown of a disappointed CO.

“There aren’t enough sorries in the galaxy,” Fives says, “for doing that to me. For fucking with me.” He spits, landing it just shy of Echo’s boots. “You had every chance to tell me. I kept fucking hoping you would because Echo! Echo!” Fives shoots to his feet again, towering over Echo. “You listened to me say so! You heard me wish the fucking dead would come back to life, you heard me talk about you, and you chose not to give me the very thing I was fucking begging for, brother!”

Echo’s breath catches in his throat, helmet angled up at Fives, who looks like he wants to crack Echo’s head against a hard surface again.

“And through all of this you still won’t show me your fucking face!” Fives grabs for Echo’s helmet again, and Echo takes a dive off the chair just to dodge, landing hard on his hip. Rex rushes in, barking Fives’s name as he wrestles him back into his seat, before turning on Echo.

“For kark’s sake, Echo! Just take off your bucket!”

Echo stands, breathing deep against his hammering heart. Just another part of the Echo machine. Rex’s eyes soften, one hand squeezing Fives’s shoulder. “It’ll be alright, Echo.”

It won’t be, but there’s no other way through this. If Echo tries the door, Rex will block him. If he escapes successfully, Rex will only chase him down. If he gets offworld, out of the system, out of the galaxy, this conversation will still be waiting to bleed him out.

Echo unseals his helmet, the collar under his headpiece hissing as it extends. For a brief moment, he cannot see either Rex or Fives past the helmet’s filters.

And on the other side of the helmet, Fives is staring at Echo with—

With horror. And it grows by the second.

“Echo survived the Citadel,” Rex says, still pinning Fives in place. “But we didn’t find out for... For too long.” The guilt that suffuses Rex’s voice only makes Echo want to put his helmet back on.

Fives’s eyes bounce from Echo’s face to his ports, to his headpiece, to his scomp, to his legs, to his ports, to his scomp, to his headpiece, to his face—

“Echo?”

That’s not how Fives should sound. Plaintive. Scared. Nauseated.

Looking at Echo made him sound like this. Made him look like this; like he wants to run away.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? Echo can tell himself he doesn’t know why he lied to Fives. He can say he only wanted Fives to recognize him under his own power, to know him anywhere, anyhow. But the last time Fives had seen his face—

“I wanted you to remember me the way I was,” Echo says, turning his helmet over until the visor faces him, throwing his own mutilated face back at him. “You’re the only one who could.”

Rex flinches so deeply he lets go of Fives. Fives is back on his feet in an instant, tottering back without Rex’s steadying hand. Hyperventilating, wide eyed, unable to tear his eyes away from Echo.

Fives vomits.

It splatters between his feet, coming in waves that bend Fives’s body in half, white-knuckled hands clutching at his knees. Rex takes him by the shoulders, Whoa, brother, as Fives coughs through the aftershocks.

Echo feels like the droid he looks like when he slots his bucket back on and marches from the room, double time.

Come dinner time, the Martez sisters and the handful of clones in the garage all line up in the kitchenette with empty bowls, waiting to receive their ladleful from whatever brother pulled mess duty. Except Echo, this time.

The only word Echo can think of to describe himself, half-curled in the copilot’s seat with his helmet on, is loser. He’s alone in the Marauder’s cockpit, listening to the din of clones finding places to eat around the garage and digging in. He hadn’t even told Hunter with actual words that he wouldn’t be eating with everyone else, typing out the message before holing up. Tech forbade him from closing the ramp in a separate message, minutes after Echo fired off his, but otherwise he’s been left to his devices. His own very boring devices, once the shock has worn off.

He shouldn’t be surprised Fives wouldn’t be able to stand to look at him. Someone throwing up at the first sight of him, though, that one is new. That it debuted with Fives only twists the knife.

“Permission to enter, sir,” comes a clone’s voice from the ramp. There’s only one brother in the garage who would unironically call Echo sir.

“Granted,” Echo says, and is proven right when Fold climbs the rest of the way up the ramp and into the cockpit, holding two bowls.

“Rafa told me you weren’t eating with everyone else,” Fold says, “so I brought you a bowl.”

“Thanks, soldier,” Echo says, getting up to take the bowl when it’s clear Fold won’t advance any further into the ship. Echo takes his seat again, expecting Fold to already be on his way.

He’s not.

“Something else you need?” Echo asks, bowl balanced on his lap with his scomp braced against its side.

“I’d like to request permission to eat with you, sir,” Fold says, eyes cast down. “If that’s alright.”

“The last trooper who saw my face lost his appetite quick,” Echo demurs. “Think you’d be better off eating with the rest of the boys out there.”

Still, Fold will not leave. He takes a hesitant little breath, and says, “With respect, sir, I’d rather not. Please?”

“On your head be it, then,” Echo says, nodding at the chair behind his. “Pull up a crate.”

Fold slides over a crate of Wrecker’s munitions, and Echo puts down his bowl to reach up and take off his bucket while Fold arranges himself in the chair.

“Did you make all of this?” Echo asks, retaking his bowl and pretending he doesn’t feel Fold’s open staring. “Looks good.” The soup looks a little thin, in truth, but it’s hot broth with cabbage and noodles, and anything is better than another stolen Imperial ration bar.

“Did my best,” Fold says, quiet as he stirs his spoon through his own portion. “Not fit to help out any better than this.”

At that Echo looks up, frowning. “What’s that mean?”

“I-I only mean—” Fold quails, and Echo wonders again how old this brother is, that a few sharp words have him so unraveled. “I’m a liability in the field, sir, as it stands. The natborns here have helped me with my hands, but I haven’t gotten—” Fold gestures at Echo. “Fixes. Upgrades.”

“Up—” Echo blinks furiously, blindsided by Fold’s logic. “What do you think happened to me, trooper?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sir.” He so obviously regrets speaking up, eyes downcast again, shoulders pulled in. “My apologies. I spoke out of turn.”

Echo sighs. “No, it’s fine. It was just a... A surprise,” Echo decides, “hearing my cybernetics described as upgrades. Or fixes.”

“Oh.”

“Why would you need upgrades, anyway?” Echo asks. “You look healthy enough.”

“That’s what they said on Kamino,” Fold says with a snort. “Think they wanted me KIA before any officers noticed how deficient I was.” A beat, in which he must realize that doesn’t answer Echo’s question, and then he adds, “Bad joints. Fatigue. Fainting spells, seizures. Some other stuff they wouldn’t tell me, but I think it’s got to do with tumors.”

Trying to sneak subpar “product” into the GAR doesn’t sound like the Kaminoans Echo once knew. “How old are you, trooper? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Not as old as I ought to be, is what I gathered from them out there,” Fold says, nodding at the ramp. “Got decanted, eh, maybe about a year before the end of the war. In the field something like six months after that?”

That seems too quick, though again Fold has failed to actually answer the question posed. “What about before that?” Growth jars were graduated in size, after all, and little cadets got their introductory training between growth stints.

“What do you mean, before?”

“Before training as an adult. When you were smaller. D’you know when you were first decanted?”

Fold only looks confused. “I’ve been decanted just the one time.”

There’s distress on the edge of Fold’s confusion, and Echo’s not going to be the one to push past that edge. “Alright. Just—don’t get your hopes up about cybernetics, brother. I didn’t ask for what I’ve got, and now I just put myself to use as best I can. Same’s true for you.” He finally eats a spoonful of soup, noodles slithering past his tongue. “Force knows I couldn’t cook a meal like this without help.”

“Aw, it’s not much,” Fold says, but he doesn’t seem quite so wound up anymore. They finish their soup with minimal chatter, Echo putting his helmet back on the moment he’s taken his last bite. Fold gathers both their bowls to take back to the kitchen before bidding Echo a good night.

The rest of the Bad Batch filter onto the ship a few hours later, with Hunter mentioning they’ll be leaving in the morning after he has one last meeting with Rex. A sleepy Omega complains that she missed Echo at dinner, climbing into Echo’s lap to fall asleep with her cheek plastered to his chest.

Echo doesn’t remove his helmet again until the Marauder’s ramp is closed and locked.

Hunter sets off in the morning to rendezvous with Rex, leaving the rest of the squad to either wait on the ship or find other ways to kill time. Tech elects to stay on the ship, with Omega watching him work over his shoulder. Wrecker’s been hailed by Rafa, who wants his help shifting unspecified heavy objects. Echo, for his part, starts off with scrubbing Omega’s drool off his quilted cuirass.

He thinks, as he scrubs, of how easily Omega attached herself to him, as much as any of the other able-bodied Batchers. She never seems any more intensely curious about his cybernetics than she does about the rest of the world, and she’s obviously comfortable enough around his piecemeal body to claim him as furniture. Even when it leaves circular dents on her face from where his chest ports poked through all his layers of clothing.

He thinks, as he rinses, of Fold’s flabbergasting jealousy of Echo’s cybernetics. He’d looked at Echo and seen not a freak, but a fellow defective clone who’d been given a second chance through the power of robotics.

Maybe it had just been shock. Not that Fives had known it at the time, but Echo hadn’t exactly handled the revelation of Fives’s survival smoothly, either, and he had the advantage of—well, of not being out of his mind in a distant jungle for far too long.

And Echo knows he’s a walking horror story for any rank and file, a far cry from the strong, healthy ARC trooper Fives had fought alongside. It’s understandable, really, that Fives would throw up. With time, he could probably get used to Echo’s skull ports, and maybe even forgive him for lying.

With time. Like the past several hours. Echo pats the wet spot on his cuirass as dry as he can, shrugs it back on, and heads out to the garage with his helmet on.

“Oh, Echo,” Hunter says, on approach from the opposite direction. Which means they’re leaving as soon as everyone’s back on the ship, damn it all. “Rex wanted to see you before we head out.”

Hard to tell if it’s good or bad news, with Hunter’s neutral delivery. “Heard,” Echo says, with a short salute before continuing on his path. He has no intention of going straight to Rex; Rex can wait.

“You seen Fives?” he asks Howzer. Howzer purses his lips, shaking his head.

“Looking for Fives,” he says to Wrecker, when he passes Echo on his way back to the ship. “Is he over where you were?” Wrecker only shrugs, though he won’t quite look at Echo.

Trace isn’t far behind Wrecker, as Echo continues mapping the garage. “Is Fives around?” Echo tries.

“Oh, uh... Rex is looking for you.” She bites her lip, tapping the toe of her boot against the duracrete floor.

“So I heard. Fives?” Echo asks again.

“There you are, Echo,” Rex says. “Thought I told Hunter to send you my way.”

“He mentioned it. I just wanted to find Fives first.”

Trace takes the opportunity to slip away, leaving Echo alone with Rex.

“Let’s talk, Echo,” Rex says, putting a firm hand on Echo’s shoulder.

“I don’t think you heard me, Rex,” Echo says, pushing Rex’s hand right off. “I’ll talk to Fives first, then you can tell me whatever you like.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Echo scoffs. “You were the one so desperate for Fives and I to talk yesterday you threw me in a room with him and blocked off the door. Where is he?”

“Echo,” Rex sighs, one hand on his hips as he massages his forehead with the other. “Fives doesn’t want to talk.”

“Bantha shit. You just feel embarrassed about how yesterday went.”

“That’s enough!” Rex barks. “You’re not talking to Fives. He’s been in a spiral ever since yesterday, so yeah, maybe I am a little embarrassed at how things went to shit after I told you it would be alright!”

And Rex had, hadn’t he? Echo burns with yesterday’s shame all over again.

“I am sorry, Echo. I am. I didn’t mean for you to be put on the spot like that, even if you fucked up quite a bit yourself. That wasn’t anything I wanted to happen.”

“And what did you want to happen?” Echo wants to know, despite himself.

“I dunno, Echo. I just wanted to see you two together again, I suppose. Feels—feels like a miracle to get you both back, you know?”

“Yeah,” Echo murmurs, “yeah, I know.”

“I’m sorry, vod,” Rex says. This time when he rests his hand on Echo’s shoulder, Echo lets it stay.

“Fives told you himself he doesn’t want to talk to me?”

“Yeah. I know it’s not ideal, but—”

“Right.” Echo steps back, Rex’s hand slipping off. “Best get back to the ship.”

Rex nods. “Best you do.”

Echo barely registers his walk back to the Marauder, numbness spreading through his body with each step. He’s the last aboard, though Omega takes one last chance to wave goodbye to Fold, who seems to have come to see them off. Echo salutes with his scomp, and Fold salutes right back, fingers glinting.

If he sleeps the whole way back to Ord Mantell, he won’t have to think much longer about losing Fives a second time. He just has to hope he won’t dream about him, instead.

Chapter Text

It’s the clanging somewhere to his right that brings Fives into full, alert wakefulness, tense and already turning toward the sound.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rafa warns, hands on her hips. Behind her, Trace is pulling various parts off the shelves, each one as loud as the last as she drops them onto her cart.

Fives subsides, tucking himself deeper into the corner. It’s fine. He’s fine. “Where’s Rex?” he asks.

“Not in here.” Rafa thumbs over her shoulder. “I let Rex have his little meeting of the minds in here yesterday, but this is a business we’re running. This is a storage room, not your sulking pod or whatever you clones had, so move it.”

“He’s not bothering me,” Trace offers, both hands on her cart now. “And I’ve got everything I need now, so...”

“It’s fine, she’s right,” Fives says, pulling himself up on the wall. At least there’s no trace of his vomit from yesterday; he can’t imagine Rafa would be even a quarter as civil if she knew. Rex tried to do the cleanup alone, but Fives wouldn’t let him. Wouldn’t let Rex baby him.

“You see, that’s what I like about these clones,” Rafa tells Trace, as Fives leaves the room. “Agreeable. Not like your little friend.”

“Ahsoka’s agreeable!” Trace protests, and Fives pulls the door shut behind him.

He only makes it a few meters before he’s intercepted by another clone. Howzer, if he remembers anything from Rex’s rapidfire introductions yesterday. “Trooper,” Howzer says by way of a greeting, with a nod. “What say we take care of that mess on your head?”

They don’t walk far, Howzer gesturing to a cheap folding chair set up near the refresher. He pulls Fives’s hair back and ties it off; like a tourniquet before amputation, Fives can’t help but think. “You don’t want the length anymore, right?” Howzer asks, open shears paused. “Not like, ehh, Hunter.”

It takes him a shameful moment to connect the name to the corresponding brother. “Honestly, vod, regulation’s fine by me.”

“Aren’t you easy,” Howzer says, with a grin Fives can hear. The shears saw through the tension of his drawn-back hair, and suddenly not only does Fives’s head feel lighter than it has in years, but there’s a haphazard ponytail being dropped in his lap.

There’s a thought creeping in, so Fives opens his mouth. “So d’you just stay in the garage, or—” Maybe not the best tack. Fives closes his mouth.

Howzer laughs, right before the clippers buzz to life in his hand. “Been on what passes for R&R for the past handful of rotations, yeah, but I do my part, same as any other trooper. Those of us planetside help the Martez sisters, as well as play welcome wagon for incoming clones.”

“Like that brother in the kitchen,” Fives says, waving a hand. He frowns. “With the bandage.”

“The band—? Oh. Yeah, Fold.” Howzer makes the first pass with the clippers, and hair tickles the tops of Fives’s ears as it falls away. “He’s a real shiny.”

“And you’re getting all these clones’ chips out? Just like that?”

The clipper guard glides along Fives’s scalp. “What’s the alternative, brother?”

Fives holds the ponytail with both hands. Tup’s hair had been about this long.

“How many so far?” he asks instead.

“Rex has those numbers.” Buzz. “We don’t always get every clone we set out to rescue, but we get a fair amount. More chips are failing or fading every day, I reckon.” Buzz. “You, Rex and Echo are the only 501st, though.”

Echo’s not 501st anymore, Fives doesn’t say. Nobody is. “What about—”

“You should ask Rex these questions, when we’re done here.”

“Right.” Not like he knows what he would do with the information, if he did find out Fox was alive and de-chipped. “Okay.”

Howzer is quiet as he works, which means Fives is out of defenses against his own thoughts.

Fives pictures Echo and he sees two faces, shifting and overlapping. The same square, brown face of any brother, free of ink or any other signifiers of identity favored by vode across the galaxy. Smiling, brave, proud. Pale, hollow-cheeked, studded with bone-piercing metal. Tired. Ashamed. I wanted you to remember me the way I was.

His fingers tangle in the disembodied ponytail. Of course Echo had lied to him. He’d made Echo listen to his pathetic regrets—what if I had just turned back?—while Echo had been the one to survive the consequences.

Rex was cagey, when Fives had asked him about those consequences. How much of his original body did Echo lose? Legs, mid-femoral amputation. Right arm, replaced with a scomp link. Is that it? No. How long did he wait to be rescued?

Too long.

Of course Echo had pretended to be anyone else. Fives was part of the past that had failed him.

“Can hear your brain working too hard,” Howzer remarks, giving Fives’s ear a soft flick. “Rex told me you were the one to discover the chips, you know. Without you, a lot of vode would still be under the Empire’s thumb. It’s thanks to you that we’re doing any of this.”

“Tup would have liked it here.” It comes out before he even knows he’s talking. “Think he and the shiny in the kitchen would’ve gotten along real well.”

“I have no doubt.” It doesn’t matter whether Rex told him who Tup was or not; Howzer understands carrying the ghosts of fallen brothers as much as any clone. “You’re all set.”

It’s only after he leaves Howzer, who waves him off when he offers to sweep up, that he realizes he doesn’t know what to do with the ponytail. He’s still holding it when he finds Rex.

“Aren’t you a blast from the past,” Rex says, his grin spreading fast the moment he spots Fives. “Nearly up to regulations, eh trooper?”

“Nearly,” Fives says, rubbing at his short beard. “Dunno, what do you think of the beard?”

Rex snorts. “All I’ll say is I never much liked the underbite goatee.”

“Now why lie?” Fives says, grinning in turn despite himself. “You were never shy about your opinions during the war. You never said a sideways word about my goatee, but everyone knew what you thought of Crys and his hair color.”

Rex’s grin droops into a scowl. “I told Cody that in confidence.”

“Like Cody wasn’t going to spread that one,” Fives laughs, but only for a short moment before he sobers, chuckles fading. “Listen, Rex—”

“Know you weren’t too social yesterday,” Rex interrupts. “Don’t blame you, but I can take you around now, properly introduce you to the men who’re here, instead of just pointing ‘em out. Got some more coming back from a mission later today, too, with any luck.”

“Rex. I should talk to Echo.”

Rex sighs, rubbing across his forehead. “And tell him what?”

Fives takes a sharp breath, ready to fire off a retort—and comes up short. His shoulders slump.

“I’m not saying you oughn’t, Fives, just—” Rex glances behind him, at the cluttered path that leads to the hangar beyond. “Echo’s gone, brother.”

“Gone?” The bottom drops out of Fives’s stomach. “What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean he’s not here. Don’t look at me like that, Fives.”

“Alright, then, where is he?” Fives demands, gesturing wide. “When’s he due back?”

A bigger sigh from Rex. “He’s not. Due back, I mean. Scooping you was a favor to me, Fives, he’s not part of the network here.”

“Bantha shit. Echo wouldn’t stay on the sidelines. Where is he?”

“I don’t know, Fives. Honestly. He takes jobs wherever he’s sent.” Rex pauses. “You told me you didn’t want to talk to Echo, and I upheld that. Now you tell me the opposite.”

“Because I didn’t know he was leaving! I thought I’d, I dunno, get a moment to—to catch my breath!”

“Catch your—?”

“Rex. Just give me a planet. A system. A fucking sector.”

But Rex only shakes his head. “You both need to cool off. I know it’s all a lot to take in, brother, but there are bigger things in the galaxy right now, and it won’t help either of you anyway if you come in hot with—” He stops, pursing his lips.

“With what, Rex?”

“Let’s just get some breakfast in you. We can talk about this later.” With that, Rex turns, neatly exiting the conversation.

And for a moment, all Fives wants is to hit him. To clench his fist, to cock back his arm, to swing as he lunges at Rex’s back. To bring his former captain crashing to the duracrete and keep hitting him.

Fives relaxes both his hands, and follows Rex to the kitchen.

What Rex seems to have forgotten is that Fives does not stop for anything short of—whatever happened to him on Coruscant. A blaster bolt, he thought. And so he takes breakfast with Rex, and the shiny who seems to be on permanent mess duty, and listens to Rex tell the shiny stories from the battlefield, mostly ones Fives lived through himself. He politely asks the shiny about himself, under Rex’s approving gaze, and smoothly hides the way he balks at what the shiny shares.

He follows Rex around the garage, lets him introduce him to the handful of vode resting between missions. He listens with a thoughtful expression when Rex muses on the locations his network has been scouting for a new base, one not right under the Empire’s nose. He laughs at Rex’s jokes, fires back at least a couple zingers.

And it’s not like he doesn’t mean any of it. Just as strong as his desire to hit Rex is how badly he missed his captain. His friend. Rex was never quite Echo, with the distance inherent to any commanding officer and his subordinates, but Fives holds the private opinion that of all COs in the GAR, Rex made that distance the shortest. He doesn’t think Rex can even help it.

There’s a twinge of guilt that trails after Fives, when Rex is hailed by the men coming back in from a mission and apologizes to Fives as he busies himself. Not a problem, Fives assures him. He understands, of course he does. He’ll find something to do.

Rex keeps his belongings tidy, as any captain would. He also, as Fives expected, keeps his datapad locked, the screen filling with a password prompt as it wakes. Fives tucks the pad under his arm and slinks away to find a dusty corner to hide in; if Rex comes back, he won’t like Fives’s answer for what he’s doing.

It won’t be anything obvious. Not anyone’s name, he doesn’t think. Nothing short, either, though “501” would also qualify as obvious. And stupid.

He types in Rex’s designation, just to rule it out. The password prompt flashes red before the field clears. The number 4 appears below the field.

Fives is tempted to try CC-7567, but with limited tries, he doesn’t think Rex is that full of himself. Then again…

Another red flash. The 4 is replaced with a 3.

He thinks of the way Rex’s face had crumpled when he first saw Fives. The disbelief warring with unbridled joy. ARC-5555

The field clears with another angry red burst. 2 tries left.

Some unnamed emotion comes clawing up through Fives’s chest, but he swallows it down. He’s busy. And in an army of billions, there have been bigger tragedies in Rex’s life than Fives’s not-death. He can think of one he had a hand in.

ARC-1409

Wrong again. Only one chance left.

Fives growls, thumping the back of his head against the wall, as if that might give him any ideas. Rex wouldn’t choose an obvious password, no, but he was sentimental enough to choose some memory of his past over something impersonal and actually secure.

CC-2224

He waits for the red flash, for the password prompt to be replaced by a lockout dialog. It was as stupid a guess as any other, really, and maybe even more far-fetched.

The password prompt vanishes, and instead the screen fills with Rex’s files.

No time to dwell on that. Fives finds the holocall log and opens it, with Rex’s ongoing call at the top. It hasn’t ended yet; there’s still time, and he’s grateful because the logs are packed. And with the illicit nature of Rex’s doings, everything is anonymized, with no way to tell who Rex has been talking to. Even the timestamps are missing.

But Rex is still just a man, one who needs some semblance of organization. Either that, or he hasn’t figured out how to scrub the coordinates from the calls in his logs. And there are so many calls coming from one set in particular.

If it were Cody, Fives thinks he still knows his captain well enough to think Rex would have mentioned getting Cody out. If it were Cody—well, maybe he’d still be Rex’s password. But no, Fives doubts these calls, both incoming and outgoing, are with Cody.

Which means Echo.

Some sensible part of him reminds Fives that Rex has a second in command in this operation of his. Gregor? He’s pretty sure that’s what Rex said. But a second in command would call from anywhere, receive calls anywhere.

Echo. Echo’s at these coordinates.

Fives almost reaches for a vambrace he hasn’t had in years, muscle memory ready to input the coordinates. He doesn’t have his own datapad, either, not even a piece of flimsi or a pen to write with; all he has is his own withered brain. But he has to talk to Echo, so he starts muttering the coordinates to himself, looping them mindlessly even as he closes the logs to cross-reference the coordinates with a map of the galaxy.

Ord Mantell is a Mid-Rim den of crime and general skulduggery. The holonet, or at least Rex’s encrypted, limited, low-data access to it, tells him the Republic-turned-Empire hasn’t hooked their claws in the lawless planet, despite some quiet attempts. As unsafe for anyone as it would be for a rogue clone, or a band of them.

He swipes back to Rex’s call log, just to check. His current call ended almost two minutes ago. Fives clears his holonet history, though he’s pretty sure Rex will figure out his trajectory with or without it, and locks the datapad again as he rises.

Rex is within eyeshot when Fives reaches his belongings, dropping the datapad back in because he’s not so rude he would just leave his CO’s sensitive data lying around. Rex holds a hand up in greeting, right before his eyes narrow, tracking the movement of something falling from Fives’s hand.

Fives hustles toward the hangar, ignoring Rex calling his name. It’s when he sees Rex following him that he breaks into a run.

“What the hell is this?” Rafa’s voice says as Fives whips past her, booking it for the first ship he slaps eyes on.

“Fives! Fives, get back here!” Rex bellows, while Fives barrels up the ramp of the little shuttle. “What are you doing?”

“Robbing you,” Rafa snorts, just as Fives hits the ramp control. Over the edge of the closing ramp, Fives spots Rex speeding into an all-out sprint, locking eyes with Fives with a burning glare. Fives breaks away to throw himself into the cockpit, shaking the rust off his flight training as he starts flipping switches. Rex slams against the closed ramp, fists beating against the durasteel.

“Fives!” Rex’s muffled voice comes through between beats. There’s only a short pause before Rex appears in the edge of the windshield, climbed halfway up the shuttle nose. “Fives, get out of there right now!”

Fives mutters the coordinates again as he punches them in, pointing his eyes anywhere but at Rex, who pounds against the transparisteel, demanding Fives look at him.

The engines thrum to life, and Rex’s face falls when Fives finally looks up. “Fives. Where are you going?”

“Rex!” another voice calls, from somewhere in Fives’s blind spot. “Rex, get back!”

“Don’t do this,” Rex begs. “I told you we’d talk later. Fives. Fives, brother, please.” He twists, snarling as he bats away another clone’s hands trying to pull him down. “Get off me!”

“Sorry, Rex,” Fives says, and he means it. Just not enough to stop what he’s doing.

“Fives, get out of this shuttle, that’s an order!” The undercurrent of desperation only bleeds the authority from Rex’s words, and Fives shakes his head.

“Get clear, sir,” is all he says, before the faceless clone behind Rex successfully pulls him off the ship’s hull.

Fives punches it, the shuttle lurching out of the hangar with a hot blast of the engines. He might have heard a cry of pain; he chooses to believe otherwise. The shuttle drops for one harrowing moment as it clears the landing platform outside, and then Fives is pulling the ship up, up, up through the crisscross of traffic through the portal.

The comm buzzes angrily, flashing as Fives pops out of the underworld portal. He has no doubt it’s Rex; he reaches over to silence it. He brings the nose of the shuttle up, now that he has room to ascend properly, and aims for the sky. The comm buzzes again.

This time, Fives accepts the hail. “Not coming back,” Fives says, as soon as the channel opens.

«Wherever you think you’re going to find Echo, it’s not worth what you’re doing. And you won’t find him,» Rex says. «Get back here before someone spots you. Right now.»

“Can’t do that.” The closer Fives gets to breaking atmo, the better he can see the Imperial ships playing checkpoint at the edges of it.

«I’ll order you back. I will.»

“You already tried that. No GAR, no ranks, no orders. I know what I need to do.” Fives chews his lip, wondering how fast those Imperial ships can be. A shuttle like this can be nimble in the right hands, but Fives hasn’t piloted in years. He doesn’t even know if he wants to count his foggy memory of hijacking a flight pod on Kamino.

«You’re going to compromise the whole network. Even if you don’t, you’ll get yourself killed. You don’t know what the galaxy is like now. Please, Fives.»

“Been there, done that. Didn’t stick.” The checkpoint is coming up quick; Fives starts priming the hyperdrive. “Goodbye, Rex.” And he closes the channel.

When the comm buzzes again, he knows it’s not Rex. Fives gives it a few rings, gaining as much distance as he dares before he answers the hail.

«Rho-class transport shuttle, you have entered a checkpoint zone. Slow your speed immediately and submit your chain code for verification.»

“Sorry, fellas, can’t slow down in this old girl,” Fives says, doing his level best to flatten out his accent into something less obviously vodish. “’Fraid she comes to a complete stop if I don’t hit a minimum speed, and this is about it.”

«Rho-class, either slow your speed or pull out of the lane and halt, or we will take punitive action. Submit your chain code now.»

“Pull over? You sure? I don’t see space for that.” Fives checks the hyperdrive; nearly there. He doubts the Empire’s newest ships take even half as long to make a jump. “But hold on, I’ll see where my chain code’s at. Don’t have it memorized, you know?”

«Rho-class. Pull out of the lane now.»

“Come on, we’re all Imperial citizens here, right?” Fives says, even as he pushes the shuttle just a little faster. “No need to throw manners out the window. I promise, I’ve got that chain code.”

«Rho-class, if you do not comply within the next 30 seconds, a tractor beam will be activated and your vessel will be searched and impounded.»

“30 seconds? That hardly seems fair.” The hyperdrive indicator flashes, and Fives grins. “For you.”

The stars blur into stripes outside the transparisteel as Fives makes the jump. There’s a moment of nausea as the Imperial checkpoint follows through on their tractor beam threat, catching a wingtip of the shuttle, but hyperspace is a stronger force. The tractor beam loses its hold, slingshotting Fives into hyperspace with a bite taken out of one wing.

The instruments beep in protest at the damage, but it’s superficial. Besides, all he needs is to get to Ord Mantell’s surface; what happens after that is a problem for future Fives.

Fives hunkers down in the pilot seat and focuses on the hypnotic blues of hyperspace. The comm doesn’t buzz again.

Ord Mantell looks like everything Fives expected it to be. Frankly, it looks and feels like every Huttspace armpit he’s ever had the misfortune of standing on; it’s almost surprising that it’s as close to the Core as it is. When he lands on the outskirts of the city, he’s already close to Echo’s coordinates. He sits for a moment in the shuttle’s cockpit, weighing his need for transport against keeping Rex’s network safe.

Fives opts for a pry bar, applied judiciously to the navicomputer until it comes out in unusable pieces. He locks up the shuttle regardless, but if anyone feels crafty enough to break in, they won’t have any of Rex’s coordinates.

Rex kept a spare set of civs in the shuttle, and Fives wears them now, complete with a hood billowy enough to rival a Jedi’s robes. He pulls the hood up as he makes his way into the city, his very regulation face and haircut cast into shadow. Without a vambrace or a datapad, Fives relies on the map he stared at on the ship, translating markings into real world landmarks that he hopes match up.

It takes him longer than he’ll ever admit to find the source of Echo’s calls. He knows better than to ask for directions, but he doesn’t like being seen making wrong turns, either. Looking lost paints a target just as brightly as asking for help, in places like these. That’s why he also swallows his sigh of relief when he finds his destination. After all, he still has no confirmation that this dingy parlor, set into an even dingier side street, is the right place.

If the parlor has busy hours, they’re not happening now. The mood inside is sedate, with the loudest conversation coming from a rowdy Weequay and Ithorian at the bar. Some of the tables are occupied, but there’s a sense that nobody here is a big spender.

Fives doesn’t spend long at the door; staying in motion is another rule of keeping targets off one’s back. He heads for the bar and hops onto a stool, away from the day-drunk aliens flirting badly with each other.

“I’m tired of you mysterious types,” a voice says as its owner approaches. Fives tips his face up just enough to see a Trandoshan bartender, wiping down glasses like they owe her money. In a place like this, maybe they do. “No skulking. No waiting around. Order something or get out.”

Fives pats down his borrowed civs, and finds a little cache of credits in an interior pocket. He only takes a quick scan of the bottles behind the Trandoshan before he puts down a couple credits and says, “Shot o’ the Coolant.”

The bartender snorts. “Surely. Barely worth my time.” But she picks up the money, inspecting it in the dim light before reaching for the piss-yellow gin bottle. “Sagrona, or whatever. Don’t nurse that.”

“One more thing,” Fives says, just as she begins to walk away.

“Oh! One more thing, he says. This oughta be good.” The Trandoshan leans on the bar on one elbow, eyes bored and mouth flat. “What else can I getcha?”

“I’m looking for someone.”

She rolls her eyes. “Not a matchmaking service. And not interested in helping bounty hunters who can’t do their own work, either.”

“No! No, not—” Fives leans in. “I just want to talk to them. Some—some clones. One of them has a droid arm?”

The bartender stills, looking Fives up and down with a serious expression. “You’re a clone, too.” Not a question. Fives supposes in a galaxy so used to clone warfare, it’s hard to pretend he’s anything else. “You’re not some kind of rat, are you?”

“No.” Fives settles back onto his stool, curling a loose hand around his shotglass. “No, all I want is to talk. No trouble, I promise.”

The Trandoshan grimaces. “You clones are nothing but trouble. There’s not more of you coming, are there? I’m not running a clone bar, here.”

“It’s just me.” Unless Rex follows him, which he might be fool enough to do, despite his many responsibilities to the clone underground. But she doesn’t need to know that.

“Don’t take it personally, alright? Clones either means Imperial bantha shit, or whatever you and those other boys are doing, which could attract the wrong kind of Imperial attention. Which I don’t need.”

“Right.” Fives doesn’t want to dig any further into that. Doesn’t want to think of how many millions, billions of brothers are still under the Supreme Chancellor’s control. Or—or the Emperor, whatever the fuck he’s calling himself. Evil in a human wrapper. “So where are they?”

She gives him a hard look. “You think I’m just gonna tell you? Just like that? Tuh! You’re as funny as the rest of ‘em, and by funny I mean stupid.”

“Guessing that means ‘not here,’ then.”

“They trained you to shoot, not to think, huh?” she chuckles.

He could ask when they’re coming back, but his next guess is that she’ll only give him a similarly unhelpful answer. Fives sighs, and lifts the shot to throw back the whole thing. He pants as he slams the glass down, head shuddering involuntarily, and says, “Can I wait here, or do I have to keep ordering?”

The Trandoshan laughs again, loud and hearty. “I don’t think you can hold your drinks, funnyman. But keep up the comedy act and maybe I’ll let you clean some stuff around here, how’s about?”

“Can’t think of a better offer,” Fives says, picking at a sticky spot on the bartop.

“If you’re gonna wait, don’t do it at the bar. Barnacles scare away new customers.” She shooes him toward one of the tables in the back, where the lights have gone out.

“What customers?” Fives grumbles, but he does as he’s told. Absent any information—like, say, how long Fives will be allowed to wait before he’s put to work—he watches the other handful of patrons. The Weequay and Ithorian are still at it, putting moves on each other that Fives thinks aren’t getting through to either of them. Either that, or they’re very good at some kind of roleplay where they both pretend to be oblivious, and have made the rest of the bar party to their weird sex game.

There’s a little droid that’s been in and out of the back of house, and Fives tracked its movement in his peripheral vision from the moment he stepped inside, but he hasn’t paid it real attention until now. Most food service droids walk on two feet, like a LEP or one of those luxury droids that patrolled 79s with trays of drinks, but this one floats at hip height, zipping along so quickly the food and drink it carries threatens to tip right off the tray.

Huh. Looks like—

“Apologies for the wait,” the droid says, as it sets down the tray at a table of two Pantorans. “But your order was so dull I was not motivated to complete it quickly. I have put together this order many times before.”

“If you’ve put it together so many times, it should have been easy to bring it out on time,” one of the Pantorans growls.

“You would think so. And it was, once I decided to actually do it. But might I entice you to order something more interesting next time?” The droid shoots back as the angry customer swipes at it, blinking its wide backlit eyes. “Please do not touch me. I am working.”

“You need to be reprogrammed,” the other Pantoran says.

“Untrue. My programming is excellent. I am simply programmed for a higher calling than serving you food and drink.” The droid gives an insouciant little spin of its body, independent of its head. “You have your order. Please enjoy it. Goodbye!” And it zooms away, leaving the two customers dumbstruck.

Fives imagines there are thousands of active AZI units in the galaxy. He imagines plenty of them have attitudes fit to drive any customer up a wall, judging by the way the Pantorans still seem to be seething.

He can’t imagine AZI-3 wasn’t melted down after aiding and abetting a rogue clone. One who had attempted to assassinate the Supreme Chancellor—and doesn’t Fives wish that had been true? He watches the AZI unit blow out of the kitchen and considers how much more disappointment he’s willing to swallow. He supposes that this not being the droid he’s looking for rates pretty low on the disappointment scale, though. “Waiter,” he calls.

The AZI unit looks right at him, tilts its head, and continues on its path back to the bar.

Maybe the Pantorans had been right to be so riled up. Fives reaches over to a table that hasn’t been bussed yet, and grabs a fork that he tosses out onto the floor, right into the droid’s path.

The Trandoshan looks up with a sharp glare, but the droid stops short, just as planned, and picks up the fallen utensil. “Sir, that is not where this belongs,” the droid says, and then scoots off to take the fork back to the kitchen. Fives doesn’t know if leaving the table unbussed helps or hurts the case that it might be AZI-3.

“Droid!” Fives tries again, when it comes back out, with a whistle added for good measure. “Boltbag!”

That gets the droid’s attention properly, at last. The AZI unit floats over at a quick clip. “Most organics prefer the turn of phrase ‘bucket of bolts’, so I must give you some credit for your creativity,” the droid says. “I have noticed some droids who call organics ‘meatbag’; perhaps this is your inspiration?”

Fives pushes his hood back, despite his earlier precaution. The droid only stares at him, some internal part of it whirring softly.

The AZI unit tilts its head again. “Hello, Fives,” AZI-3 says. “This makes no sense.”

Fives can’t help his grin. “Hello, AZI-3. It doesn’t, does it?”

The little droid spins his body again. “You were declared dead. Nala Se was quite insistent on that fact. They would not let anyone see your body.”

“Well. I’m not dead, I’m here.” Fives spreads his arms. “Though now I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“How are you alive?” AZI-3 asks, floating a little closer.

“Hey!” the Trandoshan calls from the bar. “Back to work, droid. Your friends still owe me.”

“I must get back to work, but I would like to hear about how you are still breathing when my work is complete,” AZI-3 says, and turns away without waiting for Fives’s response.

And that’s the fuck of it, isn’t it? He doesn’t remember. He barely remembers his last awful day in Coruscant, in a mental tar pit after Nala Se drugged him. Begging to be heard, burning with the truth—and gasping his last breaths in Rex’s arms. He remembers that part more clearly than any other.

And then he’d woken up alone in the jungle, stripped of his armor and dressed in patient scrubs. No indication of who had brought him there, or how. No rations, and no communication devices either. All he knew was that when he touched his head, his hair was already growing out.

Everything between that day and the day “Reg” found him is a blur. All Fives has done since trying to warn Rex and General Skywalker is exist like an animal. He puts his face in one hand and considers buying another shot, or some more substantial drink.

He does, eventually, while watching AZI-3 be a piss-poor employee and more customers filter in. The Trandoshan, who he learns is named Cid, beckons him as the place starts to fill up for the night, and sets him to work as a server in AZI-3’s place. So much for catching up. AZI-3 waves at him before disappearing into some deeper recess of the bar.

By the time Cid tags Fives out—and takes a cut of the meager tips he made—Fives has been awake for nearly 24 hours standard, if her chrono is right. Echo and his squad still haven’t come back, and he doesn’t trust the Trandoshan to wake him if he’s asleep for their return. Fives posts up at one of the many now-empty tables, watching daylight try to claw its way into the dank room through the thick film on the windows, and massages his temples.

“Hello again, Fives. I am ready to be updated on how you stopped being dead,” AZI-3 says, and Fives is tired enough to startle; he hadn’t seen the droid coming.

“I dunno, honestly,” Fives says, shrugging. “I’m more interested to hear how you ended up here. How you even remember me, for that matter. Thought they would’ve scrapped you for going along with me.”

“That would have been a waste of parts. Once you were taken off Kamino, I returned to my duties in Nala Se’s lab.” AZI-3 touches a finger to what passes for his chin. “The answer to your other questions is all the same, however—I am here, and retain my files recording our interactions, because of Omega.” He pauses. “You do not know Omega. She is a young clone—”

Fives holds up a hand. “I’ve met her, actually. It’s—it’s her squad I’m waiting to see.”

“Then you will be waiting for some time. Clone Force 99 and Omega are currently completing a job set to them by the owner of this establishment. They are not always fast in completing these jobs.”

“How long is ‘not always fast’?” Fives asks, scowling.

“Clone Force 99 has been known to take up to two weeks, galactic standard. There have been times when they return within a single rotation, but by my calculations, their average time is closer to five rotations—”

Fives groans into his hands. “That big lizard will never let me stay that long.”

“That big lizard has ears,” Cid says, her voice carrying across the empty bar. “Keep that up and I’ll kick you out right now. No one ever appreciates my generosity, especially not you clones!”

“Is that supposed to mean you’ll let me stay until the squad gets back?” Fives calls back.

“Don’t push your luck, beardy!” Cid huffs, before pulling a drawer full of credits out from beneath the bartop and heading into the back.

He’s left alone with Cid’s indecipherable response and AZI-3, whose conversational skills are making Fives’s headache worse, no matter how glad he is to see the droid still functioning. He gathers that Omega made illicit copies of AZI-3’s internal drive before Nala Se had him restored to a backup predating Tup’s “illness”, and then Fives taps out, putting his head down on the table that still smells like stale sani-water.

Cid comes out an hour later. “What are you doing? I’m not leaving you in the bar while I’m asleep.”

Maybe the shuttle hasn’t been totally stripped yet. If he can find his way back, maybe he can nap in there. Maybe he can swipe a blaster on his way back to hold onto in his sleep. He gets up slowly, rubbing at his eyes.

“Stop. I didn’t tell you to leave,” Cid says as he trudges toward the door. “If I know those other clones, then if you wander off and get killed because you were stupid enough to come looking for them right after they left, they’re gonna blame me. Even if I don’t tell ‘em, I know their little droid will snitch on me.” She points a claw at AZI-3, who looks surprised to be mentioned. “And then I’m never gonna hear the end of it, not from any of them but least of all Bandana, and I don’t need that kind of noise in my life. All you clones are so whiny, you know that?”

Fives sighs. “Okay. So what am I supposed to do?”

Cid stashes him in a side room so tiny it barely deserves to be called a room. She hurls a musty blanket at him, then slams the door shut, plunging him into darkness. But he’s not being kicked out, and that’s all that matters.

“AZI-3,” Fives whispers, when he hears the droid float past the door. “Promise you’ll wake me if they get back while I’m asleep?”

“I will ensure it,” AZI-3 agrees, before buzzing off.

True to AZI-3’s calculations, Echo and the rest of his squad don’t return the next day. When Cid opens the bar, she’s not immediately interested in putting Fives to work. She snaps at him when he talks to AZI-3, and banishes him again to the darkest back table when the bar starts getting busy.

Alone in a crowded bar, it’s too easy to slide into maudlin thoughts. For every handful of idiots puffing their chests at each other over petty, drunken bantha shit, there’s way more people actually enjoying each other’s company. Chatting, smiling, laughing. Clinking glasses, losing at dejarik. Flirting, sometimes. When he looks too long at any one pair, all he sees is Echo and himself, hitting up 79s in full ARC gear just to make sure other vode knew exactly who was at the bar.

Rex had tried explaining what Echo went through, but it didn’t make sense to Fives at the time. Echo had been captured by the Separatists; he understood that much, and the guilt strangled him. Echo had refused to talk; of course he wouldn’t. Echo was too strong for that. Is too strong. Echo’s body had been torn apart by the explosion, and Fives understood that, too. But when Echo didn’t talk, the Separatists sold him—like a slave? No, Rex had clarified, because a slave is still considered a living being, and Echo was less than that to them.

Echo had refused to talk, and so his new owners simply bypassed that by connecting directly to his brain. Fives didn’t—doesn’t understand, even now. Echo is a man, a clone just like any other. Organic. But the enemy put ports in his body and put machines under his skin, and kept Echo in a state that only kept his valuable brain alive while everything around it wasted away.

It makes no sense. Fives shoves his way through the crowd to get back to the bar counter, and Cid gets the rest of yesterday’s tips as he orders drink after drink.

On day three of waiting for Echo, Cid makes more than a few comments on “human stink” and throws him into a refresher with a barely-working shower. When he comes out, AZI-3 is waiting for him with a set of civs that look like they belong to Hunter. Cid barges in when he’s half-dressed, tells him not to fucking cry in the bar tonight if he’s going to be hanging around. Fives doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that he doesn’t remember crying.

She only lets him buy a few drinks that night. For the best, really, because there’s not much left to Rex’s credit cache.

On day four, Cid says she’s tired of looking at him moping around the bar. “Alright, Numbers, I’m putting you to work. And not as a server, because that was a one time thing, and I don’t want people getting the wrong idea.”

“Let me guess: the wrong idea is that this is a clone bar,” Fives drawls, one cheek flattened against the bartop as he looks at Cid.

“Now you’re gettin’ it. You’re gonna run some errands for me around town and get outta my scales. Plus I don’t have to hear you bitching and moaning about Killjoy.”

“Killjoy?” Fives asks, arching his brows. “That’s what you call Echo?”

“If the boot fits, buy it,” she says, snorting. “Maybe you’ll be the one to pull the stick out of his skinny little ass.”

As much as Echo had memorized the regulations, giving him a reputation for being unbearably rule-abiding, Fives had always known Echo to look for the loopholes in those regs. Echo bent the rules until they creaked. Had Echo been so changed by his experiences that Killjoy fit him?

The errands are all the kind of shit Cid isn’t interested in doing herself. Bring this thing to that guy. Meet this other person and pick up those supplies. Shake a couple o’ yutzes down for the credits they owe Cid. Cid only arms him with a shitty comm and a knife; the blasters in her office are for her protection, not his.

He’ll give her credit where it’s due; he’s not thinking as much about Echo when he’s pretending to be hired muscle. Maybe pretending is a strong word for it, but Cid barely pays him, says room and board is payment plenty. He’s sure she knows the money she does give him will only return to her pocket, anyway.

Day five. Shower. A shot. Pressing AZI-3 to comm him if the squad returns. Errands. A beer. No Echo. Reactor Coolant on the rocks. He tells some Rodian woman he fucked up bad and she buys him a bantha blaster while telling him true love finds a way, amid other slurred platitudes. AZI-3 forces him to eat before he rolls into the closet Cid lets him sleep in.

Day six. Shower. A shot. AZI-3 promises to comm him. Errands. A Besalisk doesn’t like Cid sending “the help” to settle their business and slashes Fives’s chest; all Fives sees is Krell cutting down his brothers and he takes off the Besalisk’s arm with the man’s own vibro knife, which he keeps. A beer. No Echo. A beer. A beer. Losing at dejarik. AZI-3 shoves a sandwich at Fives’s face until he agrees to eat it himself. The worst Yub Nub he’s ever drunk. A beer to wash it down. AZI-3 bandages his chest as he falls asleep in the closet.

Day seven. Throwing up. Shower. No shot. Can’t find AZI-3. Errands. Bar food that doesn’t settle his stomach. A beer. No Echo. No Echo. No Rex, either, because Fives is a jackass who deserves to be lost in the galaxy again. AZI-3 reappears. So does the Besalisk with three arms, and he uses one of those arms to slam Fives’s head into the wall before Cid levels a blaster rifle at his ballooning wattle. AZI-3 patches the gouge on the back of his skull while Fives pictures going back in time to wrest the blaster from Cid and splattering the Besalisk’s brains. But he can’t risk his position, waiting for Echo. He goes to the closet early.

Day eight. Shower. Stand in shower with water off. What if Echo knows he’s here and is just waiting for him to leave? A shot. Walk past AZI-3. Errands. Man crying because he can’t afford a Cid shakedown. Children hiding. Walking away mid-shakedown and restricting a panic attack to a luxurious 30 seconds. Fives finds the Besalisk one more time and beats him unconscious, takes his wallet. Counts out the crying man’s share. If he doesn’t kill the Besalisk, he probably won’t stop coming for Fives. Wookiee-wango; awful. Two fingers of Deep Core, neat. Two more. No Echo. Cid looks like she wants to ask where the credits are coming from. Three fingers of Deep Core. No Echo. No Besalisk. Fives is fucking irredeemable. Echo is waiting for him to leave. AZI-3 reminds him Cid didn’t want him crying in the bar, while sliding a miserly tray of bar food in front of him. No Echo. Fives doesn’t remember going to sleep.

Day nine. Throwing up again. Can’t hold his liquor like he did in the GAR. Crawl back to closet. Dragged out again by the collar by Cid. Cid gives him a stim shot she says is going on Killjoy’s personal tab. Errands.

Fives has only opened the door a crack when he hears it. Clone voice. Deep and a little rasping, but definitely a clone. His breath catches as he aims his ear at the interior of the parlor.

“I’m not being sentimental. I’m saying I’m glad you’re back because I want you to take your latest little clone friend and get him out of my face, you understand?”

“What clone friend?” That’s a different clone, a little smokier, smoother than the first.

“He didn’t comm you, huh? You’re all idiots. All he’s been doing this past week is crying about you, Killjoy. I put him to work but I can’t take another day of this shit.”

“About—about me?”

Echo.

“Don’t look at me like that. I told you everything I’m gonna tell you, I’m not gossiping with you. He’ll probably be back soon and then I want you to take him somewhere. Anywhere. Just not here. You understand me?”

A deep sigh from the second clone. Probably Hunter. “Yeah, we read you, Cid. Come on, lads, let’s—”

“Outta the way,” someone grunts behind Fives, right before a big green arm knocks him sideways and into the bar. A Falleen woman storms past him, scoffing as he finds his balance.

Fives freezes under the stares of Clone Force 99. Of Echo, his bare face slack with shock.

“Anywhere but here!” Cid repeats.

“I’ll—” Echo swallows. “I’ve got him.” He takes a step toward Fives.

Hunter hooks a hand around Echo’s elbow. “You’re sure, vod?”

Echo nods. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve—” He glances at Fives. “I’ll be okay.”

Hunter nods in return, releasing Echo. Echo, who comes up to Fives. Echo, who curls his only hand around Five’s bicep when Fives doesn’t move toward the door with him. Fives shakes himself back into motion, and Echo’s hand falls away.

Fives follows Echo back to the Marauder, where Echo opens the ramp and waves Fives up behind him. Echo closes the ramp, and Fives should feel glad to have privacy, but the part of him that’s been leading the charge these past nine days only notes how his quick exits have all been cut off.

Echo sits in the copilot’s chair, turned expectantly toward the pilot’s seat. Fives reminds himself that Echo probably sits copilot with his new squad, and it probably has nothing to do with him. With their past as pilot and copilot.

“Was starting to think you’d never come back here,” Fives tries as he sits, his laugh coming out stilted. Echo doesn’t laugh in return.

“Fives...” The tip of Echo’s scomp link rests in the center of his palm, in his lap. “How long have you been on Ord Mantell?”

“Today’s day...” Fives scrunches his nose. “...Nine. Little over a week, yeah.”

“Why?”

He stops the What do you mean, why? before it can escape his throat. Even if Echo knows why, he wants Fives to say it. At least, that’s how the Echo Fives knew operates. “I didn’t know you were leaving Coruscant so soon. I—I needed to see you.”

“But you didn’t want to talk to me.” This version of Echo is frustratingly closed-faced, watching Fives with a clinical interest.

“That was when I thought I’d get to talk to you, I dunno, later that day, Echo! I just needed a little time, a little space!”

The cold façade cracks, a hairline fracture across Echo’s eyes. “To get used to—” His scomp link stutters, an aborted gesture toward his body. “Yeah. I get it.”

“No, brother. Not that.” Fives shifts to the edge of the chair, leaning forward on his knees just to get a little closer. “I’m sorry. I am.”

“For what?” Echo angles his face down, until Fives can’t meet his eyes without getting on his knees.

“For how I reacted. I didn’t—it was involuntary.”

“I know.”

“No, no you don’t know!” Fives groans. “I’m not disgusted by you, Echo! Even after all this time, you have to know me better than that! Did we treat 99 this way?” He doesn’t wait for Echo’s reply. “Of course not! No, it’s not about what you look like, vod, you—you could be a head in a jar on wheels and I’d just be happy to see you!”

Echo chuckles bitterly. “Think I’d wanna kill myself if I were a head in a jar.”

“On wheels,” Fives reminds him.

“Right, well, the wheels make it better, don’t they?” Echo says. He still won’t look up. “Let’s say I believe you, then. Why wouldn’t you talk to me? Why did you need space? Why did you—you know—”

“Throw up like a cadet after his first flight sim?” Fives says.

“Yeah. That.”

Fives takes a long, hesitant breath. “I guess... I dunno. I was in the middle of being so fucking angry at you for lying to me, for pushing me off the way you did. All I wanted was for you to be alive, for us to be alive together. A-a-and, and, I had some sense that something had happened to you, obviously, but I don’t think I really processed it until the moment your bucket came off.” Fives tangles his fingers together between his knees. “How bad we fucked up. How bad I fucked up. How much you suffered because I didn’t turn back.”

Echo is quiet. Fives shuffles off the pilot’s seat and onto his knees, crowding into the space at Echo’s feet so he can look up at him.

“I was so angry at myself, Echo. Knowing I was leading a life we both should have been having while you were being tortured. Even now, knowing that life was a lie, I—I failed you, Echo. I didn’t do enough.” He’s too dehydrated and sober to cry again, and he’s thankful. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

Echo squeezes his eyes tight, thumbing at the moisture beaded along his eyelids. When he opens his eyes again with a deep sniff, they’re faintly red. “I never blamed you, Fives,” Echo says, in a small voice. “Rex pulled me out of that hellhole and all I cared about was that he came back for me. That anyone came back at all for what was left of me. I was never—” Echo swallows. “I was never angry at any of my brothers on Lola Sayu. But least of all you.”

“Oh.” Fives leans forward, rests his head against Echo’s knee.

Echo stills beneath him for a breathless few seconds, and then his hand finds its way into Fives’s curls, an echo of a cadethood memory.

“What happened back here?” Echo asks, a sudden sternness to his voice that breaks the solemnity of the moment.

“What?” Echo’s hand grazes the patch AZI-3 applied. “Oh. Ah, well. I’m guessing you already know the risks of working for Cid, huh?”

Echo snorts. “You mean the low intel, sending us half-blind into bad situations?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Fives laughs. “That was one unhappy Besalisk, I tell you what.”

“Of course it was a Besalisk you pissed off.”

“And Cid. I heard her say she’s tired of me,” Fives adds.

“She said you were crying for a week straight?” Echo asks, his mouth curling at the corners. For a moment Fives looks at Echo and he sees the cadet and ARC trooper he trained with. When it fades, though, he knows this is that same Echo.

His Echo.

“I was not fucking crying for a week straight!” Fives protests anyway, pushing himself back to his feet. “I’m not gonna lie to you and say I was taking decent care of myself, but—look, all the problems Cid has with me were because I was moping around waiting for you, and you’re here now, so—”

“So now you can cause her fresh new problems, is that it?” Echo cackles. “You’re a headache for anyone in charge of you.”

“Yeah, and a hearty, loving, same to you,” Fives says, blowing a raspberry as he flops back into the pilot’s chair. “Fuck you.”

Echo laughs, harder than Fives’s words warrant, going limp with it in his chair until Fives laughs with him. By the time they subside, Fives’s face is starting to go sore from smiling so hard.

“Ah...” Fives glances at the Marauder’s instrument panel, realization finally hitting him.

“I should call Rex.”