Work Text:
When Echo wakes, he is warm and snug and blissfully pain-free, with the sound of his brothers sleeping around him, and knows immediately something is dreadfully wrong.
He stumbles out of his bunk, legs tangling in the GAR-issue blanket as he wrenches himself free. He catches himself on the metal bunk frame with his right hand, breath frozen in shock, before pushing himself abruptly away and towards the bunkroom door. Echo trips over unsteady legs that don't respond the way they should, the noise loud in the quiet of the bunkroom.
As Echo desperately barges out into the hallway beyond, he collides with a clone trooper - mostly white armour with only the smallest of blue detailing - whose armour clatters against the durasteel wall.
“Fives?” they say, surprised, as they go to grab for Echo’s unarmoured wrists.
Echo flails backwards out of their grasp, heart hammering in his ears. The trooper raises their hands placatingly.
“Hey, relax vod. It's me, Tup,” they say gently, to which Echo shakes his head.
“I'm just going to call the Captain,” the trooper, Tup, adds, likely aiming to be reassuring but Echo feels anything but.
Echo pins the trooper's vambrace arm with his left hand before he manages to raise it. His right arm is pressed across Tup's chest. His gaze drags on his right hand.
The trooper squeaks. “Fives?”
Echo needs them to stop using the name of his twin. The words stick in his throat. “Not, not Fives,” he manages to choke out.
“Okay,” Tup replies, confusion and concern spreading across his features. “Okay, but you need the Captain or Kix, vod.”
“Fives?” another voice calls from the bunkroom doorway before Echo can respond, to which Tup shakes his head rapidly.
Echo swivels, pulling the blaster from Tup's holster as he pivots away, turning towards the newest threat. This armour he knows. He can't raise a blaster at them, though his body twitches at the conflicting thoughts running through his head. Vode, or enemy?
“Rex,” he breathes, before mentally shaking himself. “Simulation,” he mutters, “he's not real, trooper.”
Not-Rex's head tilts, his eyes full of concern as he looks at Echo. Echo wants nothing more than to be home, but this, this isn't home. He takes in the marks on Not-Rex’s armour, and is positive some of them are newer than he remembers. Tup watches on, seemingly nervous as his gaze flits between the two of them.
“Sitrep, vod’ika,” Not-Rex asks, taking a measured step towards Echo.
The blaster twitches in Echo's hands. Not-Rex stops and waits.
“You're in my memories,” Echo states firmly, ignoring the terrified quiver growing rapidly in his chest. “They're mine,” he growls.
Now it's Not-Rex’s turn to look confused, before he smooths his expression. “We’re right here, vod'ika,” he reassures.
“A simulation,” Echo retorts, “you only want me as an Algorithm to have my brothers killed.” Echo considers the blaster in his hands. It's the closest he's gotten to a weapon in some time since his capture. He wonders if he can die inside his own mind.
“I won't let you hurt them anymore,” he says resolutely, his decision made.
His hands move as a look of horror crosses Not-Rex’s face and his Not-Captain lunges forward. The movement of his limbs come to a sudden halt. Echo strains against the force holding his arms in place, trying to suppress the sob threatening to escape from his chest.
“I knew it,” he whispers, distraught at the moment of release being dangled in front of him. Tantalisingly close. And yet, as far away as his vode have been since the explosion that took him from them.
Not-Rex gently removes the blaster from immobile, trembling fingers. His eyes are full of sorrow.
“Fives?” Commander Tano says carefully, as she steps into Echo's view. The Force releases its hold, and Echo slides down the smooth wall behind him as defeat rushes through him.
“They're my memories,” he murmurs, hollow, “my family.”
He pulls his legs in close, tucking them in to his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his chest pushing against them. He presses his face into his knees, knees that he knows no longer exist, the pressure creating starbursts behind his eyelids. The corridor stays silent around him aside the hum of the ship in hyperspace. The familiarity of home burns his eyes.
Someone slides down the wall next to him, their shoulder just brushing his. Another on his other side. The sound of scuffing as another person sits in front of him. He hears someone else a little further away. Boxed in by vode, and yet Echo feels the loneliness drowning him.
“You feel different,” Tano says softly, gently prying Echo's fingers from where they are clenched into his legs.
Echo huffs sadly, the ache carving through his chest. “Yea,” he says blithely. “Losing your vode and your limbs will do that.”
The shoulders pressed into his stiffen. Echo keeps his face pressed firmly into his simulated legs. It's almost like being home if he ignores that gaping hole in his heart where his family once was.
“This is what I once was,” he adds, voice muffled against the smooth sensation of his bodyglove, the smell of his ta'vod. “I hope that you are all still alive though. This is nice. Even if it's not real.”
The grip on his hands tighten. “You feel like someone we lost,” she whispers.
Echo raises his head, taking in the haunted wonder in his Commander's eyes, and the confusion of the vode bracketing him.
“They never took my name, Commander,” he promises. “I never gave them anything, and then they plugged me in, made me into the Algorithm. Took everything they wanted. But my name is mine.”
Rex and Kix are looking between him and Tano, and Tup is watching nearby, holding tightly to Jesse. Echo takes in those that he loves, and the vod that made a home in his memories that he can't remember.
“Echo?” Rex asks, the question barely a whisper, yet loud in the quiet stillness of durasteel corridors.
Echo nods. His voice lost.
“If you're here,” Commander Tano says quietly, “then where is Fives?”
Echo's thoughts stop.
“He's not here?” he asks, panic clawing once again at his heart.
The sound of a clatter startles him as Jesse bolts for the nearby refresher. There's a crash, and Tup chases after Jesse. Jesse returns promptly, Tup in tow, their boots skidding on the floor. He crouches down next to Echo, between Kix and Tano, and thrusts something in Echo's face.
“Jesse!” Kix scolds without any heat, “you can't just unscrew mirrors from the fresher!”
Jesse shrugs unrepentantly. “What?” he says, “how else is he going to see himself?”
The image that looks back at Echo is his ta'vod. He's slightly different than Echo remembers him; a few more creases on his forehead, a haunted expression that isn't just the product of Echo looking at his twin through his own eyes, and hair slightly dishevelled. A few tiny scars have made their home on his twin's body, from battles they have not shared. Fives’ body feels tired.
“I don't understand,” Kix says after a long moment to Tano, an echo of Echo's own thoughts. “If Echo is in Fives’ body, then where is Fives?”
The repetition of Tano’s earlier question lodges into Echo's brain, which recoils in horror.
“He's in mine,” comes his horrified response. “Tambor,” he whispers, voice strangled in his throat. “He's with Tambor.”
When Fives wakes, he is cold and disoriented and in agonising pain, without the sound of his brothers sleeping around him, and knows immediately something is dreadfully wrong.
He tries to climb out of his bunk, the metal beneath him chilling him to the bone. Panic builds in his chest as he can't move his limbs, his body restrained to the surface beneath him and pain so encompassing, he doesn't know where it starts or ends. Fives doesn't recognise the room around him, the unfamiliar space at complete odds to where he fell asleep.
There's no-one nearby. No vode, no Jedi. He can barely concentrate for the pain overloading his senses, and looks around wildly in his need to comprehend his current situation. A horrifying moment of clarity cuts through the agony as he looks at his body. Or at least, the remnants of it. His stomach churns, vomit splattering over the side of the surface he's restrained on, as his mind catches up with reality. Fives doesn't understand, and when the doors to the room opens and someone enters - understanding still doesn't come.
When Fives opens his eyes, it's to Rex looking at him with eyes full of concern, and Kix gently attending to his physical injuries. Behind them are more vode in 501st blue, interspersed with 212th gold. He, his armour, stands to one side, visor watching the proceedings silently, fingers trembling against their kama. Fives blearily regards the hallucination of himself, the slight oddness of how he's standing, before Kix pulls his attention back to him.
Kix apologises before gently administering something that runs cold through his veins, and before Fives can shiver in response, his mind follows the cold into oblivion.
When Fives wakes, he is warm and snug and blissfully pain-free, with the sound of his brothers sleeping around him, and knows immediately something is off.
The dim lights of the medbay greet him as he sits bolt upright, reaching for limbs that are healthy and whole. His head aches fiercely, and he doesn't know why he's surprised that his right hand is there when he goes to massage his forehead.
The nightmare felt so vivid, so real, that he's convinced his limbs should be missing, metal sticking into his body, and the cold that penetrated and the agony gripping his soul. He leans forward, clutching at his head with a groan as his fingertips dig into his scalp.
It's Kix’s turn to sit bolt upright, immediately swinging his legs off of the medcot next to him.
“Fives?” he asks. And Fives frowns at him from behind his hands, unsure of why Kix has framed his name as a question.
“Yea Kix,” he says confused, “why am I in the medbay?” Fives pauses for a moment. “I had the most bizarre dream,” he adds, rubbing his head again. “Well, nightmare.” He shudders. “Definitely a nightmare,” he mutters.
Kix nods. “You're in the medbay because what you experienced was real,” he says.
Fives’ head snaps up to properly look at his vod. “What?”
Kix sighs before hopping up next to him. “I’m going to need you to let me get to the end of what I’m going to say before you interrupt,” he says, holding Fives’ confused gaze.
“First of all, Echo isn't dead.”
Fives coughs, choking on the anger filling his chest. “That isn't funny, vod,” he growls.
“Isn't meant to be,” his vod retorts, “Echo isn't dead and what you thought you dreamt was you experiencing being in Echo's body.”
Fives’ mind stutters. “I - what?”
He sees Kix’s face, the horror in his chest reflected in his vod’s haunted eyes, and the need to vomit starts to creep up his throat.
Kix presses on, “Echo was in your body, panicked, we figured out what had happened and came to rescue you in Echo's body.”
Fives loses the fight as Kix thrusts a bowl to intercept his body emptying his insides. His body shakes, chest heaving, and all he can hear is the sound of ringing in his ears. The hand rubbing circles on his back helps ease the nausea. He goes to wipe his mouth but is beaten to it by Kix gently wiping it with a clean cloth.
“Thanks,” he murmurs.
“Would you like to see him?”
Fives nods shakily. The walk across the medbay to the private side-room feels like it stretches on forever. The vod ensconced on the medcot, piled high with blankets and with Rex asleep propped awkwardly on a nearby chair, feels like a dream of its own.
Fives sees the face of his long lost ta’vod and his legs go out from under him, fingers tightly gripping the side of the cot in a desperate attempt to cling to reality. The sound of him colliding with the medcot wakes its occupant, their eyes opening and a smile stretching across the face that Fives has kept close to his soul.
“You’re home,” Fives sobs, and his ta’vod nods with that smile he’s missed so damn much.
“We’re home,” Echo agrees softly.
Jesse comes barrelling into the room, skidding in his socks on the smooth durasteel. “Fives!” he shouts, “where have you hidden everyone's boots you bastard?”
Fives freezes in shock as Rex attempts to stifle his laugh by coughing.
“It's not me!” Fives protests, “why does everyone always blame me?”
“We caught you on holocam. Just because you swapped to Echo's body doesn't mean we don't know it's not you.”
“What?” Fives squawks.
“How could you, Fives?” Echo says, face carefully held in a deadpan. “Give our vode back their boots.”
“Captain!” Fives says, as he ducks behind Echo to hide from Jesse’s lunging attack. Echo sidesteps him, leaving him open to being bodied by Jesse.
“Echo's pretending to be me inside his body, that's not fair!” Fives complains from underneath Jesse’s bulk.
“I don't appreciate you using my body like that to steal boots from unsuspecting vode,” says Echo.
Another squawk from Fives is heard from beneath Jesse, before Echo feels his leg yanked out from under him. He hits the durasteel with a clatter as a yelp escapes him.
Rex sighs from somewhere above their tangle of limbs. “Boys, I don't care who stole the boots,” he says, attempting to be stern but failing miserably. “But please return them so that we aren't subjected to the smell of the Lieutenant’s feet.”
Jesse’s head pops out of the tangle. “How dare you, sir,” he says, offended. He dives out of the pile as Rex dodges, before darting out of the door. Jesse chases after him, sliding across the floor, with Rex laughing further down the corridor.
Fives wriggles his limbs, trying to escape from under Echo's body. Echo flops, going boneless on top of his twin.
"Ugh," Fives huffs, "you're a menace."
He closes his eyes, concentrating hard.
"Oh no you don't," Echo says, feeling his ta'vod's attempt at swapping bodies to gain the upper hand.
Fives grumbles in complaint. "My leg's going to sleep."
Echo relents, helping Fives back to his feet. He's immediately repaid for his kindness with a headlock from his brother. The betrayal.
"Now then, these missing boots, ta'vod of mine," Fives says cheerfully.