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Fives wakes with a startled shout, heart hammering in his chest, lungs heaving gasping breaths. He lurches upwards and away from the tangle of blankets, hands flailing blindly for the edge of the bed, and away from the nightmares. The memories, the ones that are always lurking at the edges of wakefulness, the guilt and horror and terror and shame.
He stumbles away from the bed, one hand twisted against the skin of his gasping chest, as if he can wrench the hole in his skin out and cast it far away. To prevent what happened, what always comes. The patch of skin where the blaster shot went through aches and burns beneath his sweaty palm, skin slick and clammy.
It wasn't anyone's fault, he tells himself as blood rushes in his ears. It was all Sidious; not Fox, not himself, or Tup, or Kix, or Rex. Nala Se who had drugged him, leaving him disoriented and volatile, and of course Fox shot him when Fives' addled brain fumbled for his blasters, desperate to make them listen, to make them understand. They needed to understand.
Fives couldn't have helped it. He knows that, deep down. But that doesn't halt the shame and anger that burns through his veins, of that loss of control. Of an ARC losing control. That had to be stopped.
Fox couldn't have helped it. Faced with an impossible situation, orders that he had to follow. Because good soldiers followed orders. That Fox is as shaken as Fives is; the guilt chases him too, haunts him as it haunts Fives. That moment when the blaster fired. When Umbara repeated in the derelict warehouse deep on Coruscant, as marred in shadows as the shadow world itself. Brother against brother.
A shadow pursues Fives from the bed he has just vacated in his disoriented panic. Reaches out for Fives' sweat-coated wrists, warm fingers curling around them firmly, dragging him close to the sound of a steady heartbeat.
"It wasn't your fault," murmurs the sleep-laden voice of Fox, arms wrapping tightly around Fives' shaking frame.
Fives sags into Fox’s warmth, his rumpled clothing and ruffled hair. "It wasn't yours, either," he mumbles into Fox’s shoulder. Fox needs to hear it as much as Fives does. Fox squeezes him in acknowledgement, the words stuck in his throat the same as Fives' are.
Fox exhales shakily across the top of Fives' head. "He'll be home soon," he says quietly.
It's always hard when Echo needs to be apart from them, when the three of them are separated by a galaxy that still needs the clones to help them. But Echo is one of the best of them, and he always returns to Fives, no matter how long it takes. Rex will always bring him home to them.
"I miss him."
"Me too."