The shinies walked in step.
Even when they didn’t mean to, even when they weren’t running drills or storming battlefields, even when GAR life fell away for a moment. Those moments always seemed to happen with them. They walked in step, even when they didn’t mean to. Not like marching. Not like war. Like familiarity, or home, like their feet don’t know how to move unless the other one is by their side.
They weren’t shinies anymore, but they still walked in step. Their faces blended into the rest of the legion now, no longer sticking out just a bit too far or standing just a bit too tall, as if they expected to be left behind before they could realize what had happened. They painted their armor together, in the 501st blues like everyone else did, but their patterns mirrored the other one’s. They have the same goals, without having to talk about it, and they’re both convinced the other one picked the dream - they’re following, because he’s a force of nature, because I can’t laugh without his smile.
They’re ARCs, finally, their armor still painted with eels and handprints and fives and memories, and still they walk in step. Jesse swears he’s never seen them on opposite feet, never seen a moment where one of them is confused after finding the answers in the other’s eyes. When they settle under the thin sheets for the night rotation, one of them traces the future into the other one’s skin and they whisper their promises in their ears. They don’t have to say them, they know them by heart, because they were made and settled before it was time to acknowledge that they were there. They walk in step, their heads tilted towards one another like they can hear the other one’s thoughts, like there’s an open comms channel between them that’s never closed and the only feedback is heartbeats and breaths and love. They understand each other better than they understand themselves. They walk in step, because there’s never been a moment when he hasn’t been nearby, because I don’t know how to breathe if he’s not there to show me how.
And then one of them is gone.
And the other can’t walk, can’t laugh, can’t breathe without him. The promises fade, the memories stab, there is no one to meet his eyes or smile at the jokes he can’t make anymore. He is shattered, watching his broken pieces on the ground and afraid to pick them up lest he cut himself. He’s traded so many of them to the other one that he can’t tell whose are whose anymore, but they all hurt. They found themselves in each other, and now the only way he can guess at himself is in the shadows where the other one’s pieces used to be.
He cannot walk in step anymore.
His feet must learn to walk alone.
OUCH. I think it feels wrong to wish you a happy Clonetober Day 25 now, because it physically pained me to write this (want more? or to find something a little more lighthearted? go visit the lovely @clonetober for the prompt list).
Fives and Echo were my original duo, and though I've fallen hard for Jessix they'll always hold a very special place in my heart. Those two just understand the other one like no one else ever can; they'll happily trade the world if it means the other one will be all right. I think it's their greatest strength, and also their greatest source of pain. Fives builds his identity around other people. Echo's bravery is the kind to leap over bridges without a second thought.