But he owed Echo more than what discomfort the coming talk might bring. Nearly a week had passed since the Marauder had docked, since the feverish arc had been carried unconscious across the hanger, since he’d seen his friend absent the prosthetics that had nearly let Rex forget the monstrosities he'd been subjected to. He’d looked small. And everything about that had been so… so wrong.

“He’s awake, you know.” Rex's gaze snapped back to see Kix trailing behind him, fresh caf steaming from the unmarked cup in his hand.

“I figured.” Rex replied quietly, both relieved and annoyed at having been caught. Because now he couldn't run even if he'd wanted to… “I don't suppose that's for me?” He said, glancing pointedly toward the mug.

“Kriff, no.” Kix scoffed. “I just walked halfway across the damn level to find a pot that doesn't leave an inch of sludge at the bottom. You can just send a shiny off to get one for you, Captain.” Rex let out a short huff, lips pulling into a smirk. It helped; being treated like that – like ranks might be forgotten beneath the deeper bond of a brotherhood no nat-born could ever really understand, and Kix knew that; knew how much relief even a tiny moment of levity might offer just as he knew why Rex was really here; why he’d stayed away for so long.

“I don’t think he’s seen it, yet.” The medic murmured, voice quiet, his words chasing the glimmer of a smile from Rex’s lips before he could vie for an indifference neither would believe.

“Good.” He replied, allowing himself a few seconds to remember how to breathe amidst the suddenness with which that weight returned to his chest; gripping, crushing. “I was hoping that pilot of theirs wouldn't mention it… at least not until he was through the worst of…” He motioned vaguely to the doorway looming far too near.

“He got ‘through the worst of it’ days ago.” Kix retorted, sparring his friend no reprieve veiled in denial, and Rex's expression twitched into a grimace he couldn't quite bite back. He nearly shot the medic a scowl, tempted to hide his guilt beneath feigned offense… but there was little reason to waste the effort…

“I know…” he mumbled on a low sigh. He hated this; hated the hesitation keeping him from one of his closest friends… With an almost growled breath, he stepped forward, movements quiet but not meek, stance just as rigid and confident as always despite how his heart pounded.

“Down the hall.” There was a gentleness in Kix's voice, now, but there was also a cruelty, a withdrawing of what distraction he offered that Rex might finally take those last few steps.

“Yeah…” He murmured on a low breath, gloved hand creaking slightly from how his fingers tensed.

Being planetside was wrought with endless complications, but the innate rhythm of night and day was something everything with a pulse craved. It granted a permission for exhaustion that seemed unnervingly absent in space. Chronos marked the passage of a time that was suddenly bereft of true meaning; it’s hours and minutes a promise of order maintained on a planet so far away as to be nearly inconsequential.

Medbays took that liminal illusion of time even further. There was no façade of night or day or some twilight in-between. The activity was constant. The exhaustion was constant, because the wounded couldn’t wait for standard operating hours; the war didn’t care if you’d just pulled a double or a triple and had begun tripping over your own feet, and Rex loathed that added rush of guilt that seized him every time he came here; that driving need to find some way to help, but there were never enough medics; never enough supplies or credits or body bags.

Rank didn’t matter here, and he would never think to press something so useless as a mandated salute, instead shifting to hug the walls as clones rushed passed him with equipment he only vaguely recognized.

“Kriff, is that for bed 3?” Kix demanded from somewhere behind him. “I was only gone for ten kriffing minutes!” His voice receded quickly, his footsteps adding to the endless others as he disappeared somewhere in the haunted maze of stretchers and fabric walls, and Rex had to grind his teeth as he listened to them fade, cursing that sense of helplessness. There was no divine calling drawing one clone to become a medic and another a captain. It was predetermined; a matter of mere numbers that felt painfully miscalculated, and though there was nothing he could do to fix that, he still felt the weight of that insufficiency as though he’d set the parameters himself.

His own footsteps sounded painfully out of place as he finally continued on, too quiet, too slow; his shoulders aching from the tension constantly drawing the muscles taut. It was almost a relief to reach Echo’s room, to distance himself from the surrounding havoc nearer to the main entrance as he entered the recovery wing. Patients had real rooms here; small, but the solid walls offered a rare, precious privacy for the wounded to recover mentally as their bodies healed.

Tap, tap.

His gloves nearly muted the soft rap of his knuckles against the durasteel, but the heavy sigh from within confirmed that Echo had heard him, and Rex let out a soft chuckle at the sound.

“This a bad time?” He teased, as the door slid open

“Rex!” The surprise in Echo’s voice made that guilt twist even sharper through the captain’s chest. He should have come sooner… before Echo had all but given up on seeing him entirely…

He was still in bed; still a shade too pale, haunted eyes sunken amidst heavy bags with enough extra blankets strewn atop him to nearly obscure the definitive lack from his knees down. Rex silently wondered if Kix had mentioned the arc’s dislike of the cold to another medic once only for word to spread like wildfire.

It wasn’t until Echo’s hand tightened around the overused cloth at his waist that Rex realized he’d stared at the too empty half of the bed for a beat longer than he should have, his jaw clenching at how quickly any air of excitement on his friend’s face had been lost beneath disdain.

“I get it, alright…” He growled quietly. “Did you just come here to yell at me, too?” He couldn’t respond for a moment, breath caught, struggling to make sense of the defeat in Echo’s voice. Nothing could have prepared him for that; for the man who, moments after finding out he’d be brutalized, butchered, used as a weapon against his brothers, had joked. He’d smiled… laughed despite being too weak to hold up what was left of his body all while facing mechanical limbs and organs and neurons that he’d never consented to.

“No.” He hummed gently. “I didn’t come to yell at you… Sounds like you got plenty of that from the others, anyway.” Echo was still for a beat longer, as though expecting Rex to change his mind, to chastise him for how stupid he’d been to hide this; to let it break him so absolutely… but his old captain merely waited, quiet concern screaming from the subtle tilt of his brows and faint downward tug of his lips. The mound of blankets shifted silently with a slow, deep sigh that robbed the arc of what feeble strength that flare of defensiveness had granted him.

“Just Tech.” He admitted. “Wrecker tries to be here whenever he… visits… but…” He gave a one-sided shrug.

“For as strong as he is, that big guy can be a damn pushover…” Rex muttered, earning a humorless scoff before carefully beginning to push himself up. He was captain of the most renowned company of the GAR… he’d fought and killed and suffered more than his share of injuries… but the way his movements jilted with uncertainty in that moment, hands flaring before snapping shut in indecision as he jerked a half-step forward would haunt him just as mercilessly as every scar that forever ached with a pain bacta simply couldn’t heal.

“I got it.” Echo mumbled dismissively, pointedly avoiding the gaze of the man beside him as he shuffled unsteadily up, balance faltering only slightly from the still foreign absence of weight. Rex cleared his throat quietly, as though it might ease the stiffness there.

“Hmm… the… the others aren’t giving you trouble? Figured that sniper would be no end of torment.” He found himself snapping his lip between his teeth at the heaviness that left Echo’s head sinking, his breath lurching ever so slightly before replying.

“I haven’t seen Crosshair since before we landed.” He answered, voice barely a whisper. “Hunter’s only been here once… and…” He didn’t try to force the words out. It didn’t matter. Rex understood, and his guilt at pushing his own visit off left his own breath near shaking.

“I’m sorry…” Rex murmured, fists clenching as he let out a tense sigh before crossing the handful of feet between him and the single chair at Echo’s bedside where there should have been several more. Echo shook his head.

“It’s my fault.” There was that defeat again, the sound of it just as cloying and wrong and driving Rex to find some way to fix it.

“Yeah.” He said instead, painfully aware that false promises and empty comforts would mean nothing between them, and the tiny huff it drew from the broken soldier before him more than justified the risk of such a brusque reply. “But you can’t change that, so just… get better and make it up to them.” An edge of awkwardness touched the added words, somehow bolstering that tiny huff in an airy chuckle.

“Thanks.” Echo groaned, eyes rolling, but some of that heaviness had eased from him, and Rex found a way to smile in turn. The fleeting pause that followed held something of an apology, driving the arc to absently trail his thumb over the faint ridge of bandages encircling the blunt end of his thigh.

“So, you didn’t come to yell at me. And I don’t see any ‘get-well’ presents…” He pressed with a final note of lightness before whatever topic held the captain’s tongue might rekindle that oppressive tension. Rex’s stance shifted, throat bobbing as he swallowed back the lingering urge to forget why he’d come, to merely enjoy a quiet moment and pretend… but that wasn’t fair.

“Some shabuir decided to try their shot at fame by throwing us in the mud…” It was almost dismissive, but he couldn’t quite keep the pang of just how deep that hurt cut from his voice. “They… singled out a few by name.” He continued, and the way Echo went still assured him that he didn’t have to explain further. “I didn’t want you stumbling on it without a warning…”

“Let me see it.” Blank. His expression was so carefully empty; tone utterly void of even the faintest lilt. Rex didn’t hesitate because of that, though. He wasn’t worried that the man would break. Hell, maybe it would be easier if he did break, even if only for a few minutes. But that wasn’t Echo. He knew his friend would take the coming anguish in stride; that he would bury the anger and remorse and regret, and rage forward into another mission, another fight, always another fight, rather than let himself break. Because that’s all they knew. Clones didn’t mourn their fallen brothers; they merely marched on. And each step they took grew heavier for it.

“I looked up the guy that wrote it.” He fiddled with his datapad too long, as though the article wasn’t already loaded and waiting, blaring on the screen in offensively clear common. “His dad broke some scandal about two Senators kriffing or some osik. He’s been… stretching the truth most of his… career,” The words cloyed over his tongue, rancid and sickly as he reluctantly passed the small device, as though it had been contaminated from merely displaying the would-be journalist’s mockery at news, “but there’s enough people out there with less than fond feelings toward us clones, that this damn thing has been getting around.”

Rex’s stomach sank as he watched Echo’s eyes flit over the text, jaw tensing as every passing second left his friend’s demeanor growing even colder, still, absent of any hint of emotion, and he found his lungs aching from how he held his breath; waiting.

“’Invasion’?” He said it quietly, “’claiming loyalty’?!” but the disgust was no less encompassing for it. It dripped from scowling lips like even the aftertaste might leave something burning in the back of his throat. “We were created for this by his government – how many clones have to sacrifice themselves to prove we’re trying to help?!” Rex didn’t respond, teeth grinding as he stared blindly through the sterile tiles underfoot, knowing there was worse to come. And then Echo went still. And he had to let out a carefully even breath to maintain his silence, to let the man before him process the damning words.

“That part about the assassination attempt against the chancellor… the clone that went ‘rabid’… He’s talking about Fives.” It wasn’t a question.

“He… gets more into it.” Rex conceded. He wouldn’t have blamed Echo for scanning only a few more lines before throwing the entire pad against the wall, but that’s not the kind of man Echo was. Fives would have done it, had their places been reversed. If someone had written half the slander about Echo in the wake of his death that was written about Fives, Rex would have needed to subtly request a guard be placed on the “author.” He’d have had a handful of brothers waiting beyond the doorway just to ensure the arc didn’t drag himself from the hospital bed to go after the writer himself. He’d have needed to wrestle the fiery man back onto the bed until that rage quelled into the grief he’d never been too proud to express, the grief that had haunted him through his final breaths from the loss of his brother.

But Echo was a very different man. His rage burned cold, and it was far more terrifying for it.

“How the hell did he get that kind of detail about the Battle of Geonosis when he can’t even spell Fett’s name right?” He growled suddenly, and Rex didn’t try to silence his scoff. “Anyone reading this osik doesn’t care about that, though.” He added, voice dropping into a low whisper that wanted to send a chill down the captain’s spine.

“No.” He confirmed. “People only read things like that because they want to justify whatever shabla prejudice they already have… Problem is: there’s enough truth in there to make everything believable… especially for anyone who wants to believe it.”

“Tell me what happened, Rex. What really happened.” His heart sank, shoulders dropping beneath the knowledge that there was nothing he could say that would offer his friend even the façade of the closure they both so desperately needed.

“… I don’t know.” He sighed, each word weighed beneath too many months of unanswered questions and regret and guilt. “The Kaminoans-”

“I know what they say; a virus.” He spat, face twisting with disgust. “A virus that somehow stopped after just two clones? Two clones from different batches among a squad of over a hundred others?” Rex met the quiet fury in Echo’s eyes with a sympathy born of too many nights kept awake with that same anger. “You can’t tell me you believe that!”

“You didn’t see him, Echo!” The suddenness of his shout caught them both by surprise, and the regret that stole through him was so sharp he had to catch his lips between his teeth to steady himself enough to simply drag a half-breath into his lungs, remorse screaming from him at the hesitation that stole through the arc. “He wasn’t… he wasn’t well.” Rex tried to explain, but something kept trying to break his words, some deep-seated doubt he’d never been able to shake. “He was a wreck – feverish, mumbling to himself; I don’t… kriff, I don’t know what happened…”

“They kept us locked up for over a week after… the whole 501st.” He continued, jaw stiff. “Only let the damn long-necks and nat-borns near us. Checked every one of us every day – vitals, blood samples… If the General hadn’t stepped in, we’d probably still be in some hole with those damn scientists just waiting for one of us to break.” He had to suppress a shutter at the memory and felt a pang of concern at the far-away look that settled in Echo’s haunted eyes.

“By the time we got out,” He said with a heavy exhale, eager for them both to be done with the memory, “They’d already taken Fives back to Kamino… wouldn’t tell us a damn thing after that.”

The silence returned, cruel and writhing and horrible, but not in the way Rex expected. Echo wasn’t waiting for him to cave; he wasn’t willing that silence to press him to admit some hidden truth that didn’t exist. It was a quiet born of mourning far too painful to scream, of an understanding of roles and limits and illusioned rules rife with consequences far too great for what miniscule relief might be found in their breaking. There were truths. And there were lies. And the sacrifice needed to breech those lies wouldn’t bring his brother back. It wouldn’t change the simple fact that they were soldiers fighting a war that, regardless what monsters lurked about the shadows eager to twist and manipulate and cheat any coin they could from whichever side paid the most, needed to be won. Still…

“Something’s not right about this…” Echo murmured, hushed like merely speaking it might put a target on his back. “They’re hiding something… and they used Fives as a damn scapegoat.”

“Yeah.” Rex breathed, “but we don’t have the freedom to deal with it now. We’re stretched too thin as is. Trying to figure out whatever Nala Se and the others are covering up isn’t something we can deal with while the damn clankers are turning out new threats every few days.” It felt like he was bartering, trying to find a compromise for something that deserved far better… someone that deserved far better…

“I’m not dropping it, though.” Rex added, almost begging Echo to believe him, to trust him. “I’ve got friends keeping an ear out… When the war ends, we’ll push for more, but… for now…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, to voice the simple fact that they had to live with the way Fives’s memory had been tarnished just to keep something quiet… but he didn’t need to.

“He’d be pissed.” Echo muttered, and the scoff it drew had far more mirth than Rex felt any right to feel.

“Kriff, he’d be a nightmare…” He groaned as though the mere thought was enough to bring on a headache, but Echo’s almost sympathetic huff granted just enough forgiveness to bring the beginnings of a lilt to his lips. It was heavy, weighed down by a lifetime of regret, but the way his brother looked up at him with the same broken smile… it was better than pretending that hurt wasn’t there.

“Remember that night at 79’s – Fox threatened to lock us up if you didn’t come get us?” The wistful glee in his voice was almost enough to keep Rex from scowling at the memory.

“When he almost got court-martialed for stealing Commander Bly’s armor and ordering his entire battalion to change barracks with the 41st while Gree and his man were on a mission…” Echo didn’t say anything, lips tight with a smirk he barely even tried to hide, and Rex needed only a moment for the truth to dawn on him.

“I had him covering inventory for weeks because of that!” The arc was laughing before he could finish the choked reprimand. “He barely even tried to fight it!”

“He was with that togruta you caught in my bootlocker!” Echo admitted through a massive grin, “He’d spent ages trying to make up for that – didn’t want to risk scaring her off again by asking her to vouge for him.” Rex just scoffed, eyes narrowing into a disbelieving glare. “I helped him with the counts.” He added with a little shrug, and, finally, Rex found himself laughing alongside his bedridden brother.

When the quiet eventually returned, they might think over that night again; wonder if that girl still thought fondly of her late lover, if she believed the wretched things told about him or held onto the man she’d known him to be, and Rex would find a new regret in not seek her out himself – in letting her learn of his death through callused headlines and cruel rumor. But for what few hours they might steal in the feigned privacy of his hospital room, they delighted in memories far less painful, because that was the only way they could truly honor their brother; by remembering him as he was: loyal and brave and so delightfully idiotic for the incredible intelligence he flaunted through taunts and schemes and pranks. It wasn’t enough… but it granted at least a moment of softness, of the joy Fives would have yearned for them far more than the ache certain to follow.

Next Chapter

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