please, come back

even as a shadow

even as a dream - eurypides, herakles

ECHO & FIVES for @the-bi-space-ace in honour to the end of The World Tumbles Down.

Everything I've Wanted

my little Halloween story @the-bi-space-ace, @saturn-sends-hugs, @spicy-tomato-sauce. This does tend to happen when you watch The Truman Show and Wandavision in a row.

✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧

The sun is brighter than usual through the curtains when Echo opens his eyes. The hour is well advanced in the morning. He rolled his eyes, feeling an arm over his waist. 

His twin, Fives, is still heavily asleep, snoring as usual. And he dared to say he never snorted. 

Echo wakes him with a grateful pillow on the head, making his twin hide even further in the bed.

“No, I’m not getting up…”

“As if you could skip breakfast. A shame, truly. I was planning to make pancakes. Well, I guess it will be only me.”

The one-eye of Fives on him makes him laugh, the other hidden by the pillows. His twin still complains at the idea but does get up, following Echo in the kitchen. 

“I was planning on going swimming today,” Echo declares as he starts to pull the ingredients on the table. “Wanna come?”

“You bet I do. And this is almost Halloween. Watching a movie and giving treats to the kids is plenty enough?”

His twin nods. “Make the caff,” he asks at Fives. His twin executes himself while Echo is focused on the eggs then pulling the utensils. Behind him Fives is putting the table and the orange juice.

“Fives,” Echo hiss suddenly, a sudden sharp pain stopping him from all the preparations he was doing.

His twin runs at his side, helping him to sit, slowly and gently. “It will pass,” Echo assures his best friend.

“I know. But I still worry. What would I do if I didn’t worry about you?”

“You’ll be bothered,” Echo teases, between two deep breaths, hand squirming Fives’ one, his anchor. “You would make the house explode.”

“Never with you around.”

He snorts, feeling a head against his temple and silence for short minutes before he shakes his head, signalling to Fives that he feels better. He gives him a suspicious look, dropping it though.

“Echo. Thank you. For being my brother.”

He rolls his eyes, knowing perfectly that Fices is intentionally annoying him, “Yeah, yeah. Come on, di’kut I am hungry.”

✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧

The young man, sometimes, imagines things - he’s convinced of that. Sometimes there’s a name on his tongue that he can’t recall but means much for him. 

“We should invite, you know…you know,” Echo tried to say, snapping his fingers together. “Our brothers. The pair, always together like us.”

Fives sent him a sceptical look. Right, Echo will need more details. 

“One of them is…a, a doctor or something like that. Come on, Fives, he’s terrifying!”

“Like you?”

He shakes his head, while Fives smiles all the same, looking at him with the same deepness, rarely blinking, finishing to put the table. “Come on, help me. I’m doing everything here.”

“For once,” Echo retorts, getting up and enjoying every moment of this peaceful life. He has the feeling that once it seemed out of reach, for reasons he doesn’t recall anymore. Yet, it’s happening now. Sometimes, when he’s alone, he thinks that there are still things missing (blond hair, a sweet giggle, goggles, someone's sneaky voice, an impressive giant and the comforting sight of a tattoo) but that’s because he feels lonely or is bored. He always was the most inventive of the two of them, he knows. No wonder he imagines all those feelings - he’s practically convinced that his memory is never too good to forget a giant tattoo on someone.

“Bon appétit.”

And then, as always, the name comes back on his mind when the person appears in front of him. Echo feels stupid to have bothered Fives for trying to find names he always knew.

“Jesse!”

His brother grinned like a madman as always, and pulled him in a hug, entering the house, Kix behind him, hugging Echo as well. 

“It’s been far too long,” Jesse exclaims. How long? Funnily enough, Echo has no idea. Months or years? Perhaps simply weeks? Jesse and Fives do have the same flair for being too overdramatic di’kuts. Kix rolls his eyes while Fives enters the house at a good time, face illuminated when he sees them all in the main room. They trade stories and anecdotes about how life goes peacefully when they’re travelling (how could Echo even forget that those two are already moving from place to place?). 

“Glad you have stopped by,” he says

“Oh, you know. It’s hard not to ob-come…when we're expected.” 

“No idea of what you’re saying,” Echo shrugs with a smirk.

 Jesse looks at him blankly for seconds, who appears longer to Echo, his brother’s eyes on him without blinking. He searches in his brother’s face for anything wrong. 

Then, abruptly, Jesse explodes laughing.

 Always the trickster, Echo recalls. 

Yet as he laughs, he wonders how he had once forgotten Jesse’s smile: frank and nice to hear, the comforting laugh found again, almost reassuring him that nothing has changed. 

✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧

Echo’s mornings are rather quiet and often the same. Part of his daily routine is leaving the house for a fresh walk, his twin with or without him, considering how Fives sometimes disappears for hours and passes in front of his neighbourhood.

“Hi, Echo!”

He turns and waves at Reel, the kind Twi’lek, as he walks back home. He needs fresh orange juice now.

“Hi, Echo!”

He turns, frowning. He must have seen him waving. “Hello there,” he salutes. The words are vaguely familiar to him.

Two steps done toward the house and:

“Hi, Echo!”

This time he’s sceptical and stops for a few seconds as Reel returns to his duties, completely forgetting him. Uh, he thinks before walking again toward their apartment, at him and his twin. Weird.

✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧

The house has the sound of meat and tomatoes cooking, the cinnamon rolls put aside, and inflating before being put in the oven to be cooked. Echo’s alone at home, enjoying cooking as he always does, Fives being elsewhere visiting the neighbourhood. At this point, he has read almost every book in the house. 

He watch the hour and realises it’s time for him to put the cinnamon rolls in the oven, after checking they’re big enough. By the time he has opened the furnace to put the cakes in, a quick face, similar to his with tattoos on his cheeks is watching him blankly, eyes devoid of any life and burned like meat. 

“Osik!” Echo scream, the plate of rolls escaping his hands, a sudden pain in his back. He looks again and all he sees is the usual piece, no burned face staring at him.

“Echo?” 

The door closes, as Fives appears, face surprised, all stiffened. “Echo, what happens, are you alright?”

“No! The cinnamon!” He whims, blinking several times in a row to force the image out of his mind. Fives seems relieved that it’s nothing else, his arms relaxing immediately. When Echo tries to help him get the rolls, he cannot restrain the hiss of pain, jerking in reflex. “My back…” he says to his twin. 

“Alright, let’s get you seated, alright?”

Echo shakes his head, trying to understand when he could have injured his back so badly. A tensed muscle perhaps? 

“Echo?”

“Hum?”

“You should sleep. I’ll take care of the rolls,” Fives smiles, helping him to stand and then sitting on his bed. 

“Don’t overcook them,” he mumbles. “Don’t put the house on fire either.”

Fives’ little mocking laugh is enough to lull him into sleep.

✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧

The door closed and Echo angrily turned at his twin, crossing his arms. “What the fuck is going on around here?”

“What do you mean?”

The angry twin gives him a “are-you-serious” face, his hands raised in the air. “Don’t. Fives, tell me. What have you done? What the fuck is happening? Why do the neighbourhoods are acting weirder and weirder? Something’s wrong here!”

All that his best friend does is give him a confused, puzzled look. “Echo…I…”

“Don’t lie to me. You’re about to lie to me, I can fucking smell it.”

Fives shakes his dead, slowly, a small frown on the tired lines of his face. Echo wasn’t sure how, in the blink of an eye, Fives seemed exhausted. He walks slowly toward Echo, heading his hands toward his twin ones, silently asking if he can take them. He nods.

“Fives, what’s happening? I mean, fuck. I’ve got better memory than most of the people I know but I can’t fucking recalls anything. I couldn’t recall our own brothers' names until they appeared right in front of us the last time. I keep thinking about stuff that never happened. Everything’s weird here. It doesn’t feel real…you know? The way everyone speaks to me either. And fuck Fives, why don’t we have medications? For my pains? Why is there I’ve felt so much pain but there’s nothing on my body to explain it?”

“Fives, am I, am I going mad?” Echo croaks, panicking at this idea. 

“No!” His twin violently protests, his forehead against his, hands cupping his cheeks. “You are my twin, Eyayah. Isn’t that enough for you? To have this life here, with me, like we always wanted?”

Echo breaks free of the comforting hug, shaking. “That’s the thing, Fives!” He rumbles, an invisible pain in his back again. “I don’t remember anything and I w-fuck!” Echo hiss, the pain jerking him, forcing him to use the wall as a support.

“Echo!”

He stops him from coming closer by extending his hand, trying to breathe in and out, forcing himself to stand to confront his twin’s panicking face. “I want to remember Fives, what’s happening. Where are we?”

The door closed and Echo angrily turned at his twin, crossing his arms. “What the fuck is going on around here?”

Fives chuckles. “You know, I think we’ve landed in the weirder area possible of Naboo,” he says. “They almost make us look weird, right?”

Echo silently agrees, glad to know that his twin is always on the same page as him. 

“I think we should go eat then sleep. I can see how tense you are, little brother. And, by tomorrow, everything will be better, I’m sure of it.”

“A good night won’t fix my disappointed memory,” he growls.

“I bet it will. Also, we need medications, from Kix preferably. Don’t give me that look Eyayah, you can’t stay in pain all the time and I’m no blind man.”

His twin rolls his eyes, and Fives pulls him in a hug. It’s the safest place to be for Echo, whatever his mood is. “I’ll make dinner,” Fives decides. 

“You’re weird too. Do you have something to apologise for? Or is it again one of your intrigues against me?” Echo asks 

“No intrigues. Just glad you’re still with me until the end of the road.”

Fives elbow him teasingly, signing him to put the table on while he starts to cook.

✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧

“Really?”

Fives appear, hands on the dual blasters, dressed up like an ARC when he goes out of the vision. “You really think that your ridiculous attempts will succeed, Rex? Here’s my advice to improve: stop it.”

The man he once followed ‘til the end of the world stands in front of him, clearly surprised by his arrival, signing half of the 501st to stand down, his familiar Jaig eyes nowhere to judge him with the coldness of a soldier.

“You can’t keep doing that, Fives!” He screams to cover the worldly distance between Fives and him, who has stopped cautiously far enough to see the first fool to go physical against him.

“I don’t think you heard me, Rex. Stay out of our lives. I’m not the one who destroys everything it touches. At least, here, everyone’s safe.”

“Listen to what you're saying, Fives! All of this is fake. Your life is fake. The people there are just illusions, puppets under your commands when you don’t outright take them as hostages. It rings a bell, doesn’t it? You stole Echo. You stole him as simple as that. I know you’ve suffered-”

The eyes of the ARC have changed from brown to red for a single, ephemeral moment, at the evocation of a monster. The reason why Fives has lost practically anything he ever had in his life. 

“Don’t you dare compare me to this monster. At least here, I can protect my brother, something you have repeatedly failed to do for years. We have all we ever wanted. You aren’t taking that. Again.”

“You can’t recreate every brother Echo will remember sooner than later,” the Captain tries to argue. For all answers, Fives put in his smug face, one that Rex used to find annoying, hands on his dual blasters but relaxed otherwise. He doesn’t plan to shoot but he will, if forced to. 

“All this time I have been incredibly patient with you on Echo's name, for the fond memories he had for you. But you are making it incredibly difficult to go on like that. So, this is my last warning. Stay out of our lives, Rex.”

“Fives! Fives!”

He’s about to go in again when he hears a blaster fire before he feels his skin burn, a side of his right arm touched. Rex looks as shocked as he is to the shot, turning toward the clone responsible for it.

“Bad move, Rex…” Fives chuckles as he touches the frontiers of his world. Take them too. 

✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧

It’s past the hour to sleep when Fives goes home, walking immediately to the bathroom, unafraid to wake Echo with the number of sleep pills he has given him, not by choice. That’s not that he wanted to do it, never. But he needed his twin deep asleep for tonight as Fives got rid of his gear, hiding it along with Echo’s. He takes a shower, to get rid of the blood from his face and hands, and pulls bacta over minor injuries, nothing that the ever-observant Echo should notice. He remains alone in the bathroom, looking at the mirror and his distorted face. Did he ever have this look? He awaits until bacta as an act and the wounds have all but gone away, leaving only after he assures himself there are no traces of blood (or smell of it) in the home. 

He planned to sleep in his own room when he heard Echo shaking breaths, and whimpers coming out of his throat. He turns to see his twin, closing his eyes at the view of what the Techno Union did to him.

“Oh my god!” He screams, turning away in the blink of an eye, forcing himself to breathe slowly. Focus. It’s Echo all the same again, with a healthy appearance by the time he turns again, his twin still fighting battles in his dreams - ones that Fives wished he could have helped with. He doesn't hesitate, taking the hand of the only person in the world he cares about, lying behind him on the bed.

“Rex,” Echo let out. “Rex, no,”

“It’s alright, Eyayah,” Fives reassures, whispering in his twin’s ear, feeling the cold hands of his vod’ika. “Nothing will happen. You're home. I’m here.”

And he’ll make sure that Echo will never be out of his sight for too long. 

He kisses Echo’s temple and rubs his hand, rearranging his curls. He notices a bit of blood near his thumbnail that he scratches until it has gone away, a ghost of it, still making sure to help his twin get out of his nightmares. 

“Fives…” Echo muffles, turning to hide in the crook of his neck. “Rex, whe’r…Rex?”

“Sleep, vod’ika,” he hushes him. “I’m right here, alright?”

“Rex-”

“There’s no one with that name here,” he adds. “Go to sleep, Eyayah. I’m here. Everything's fine.”

His twin is already back to sleep, silent this time. Fives curses everything who has pushed his twin to nightmares, taking him away from home, from him. He closes his eyes and goes to sleep too, dreaming of nothing, appeased only by the breathing of his twin by his side. 

That’s all he ever wanted.