Fives wakes up on a beach. The sand isn't bleached white, like in so many Holovids and the water isn't a crystal-clear blue. It's just a beach like any other with a horizon that was endless. To say he was confused, was an understatement.

A small broken wooden boat lay next to him, hull cracked in two. A small "V" was etched into the left side unevenly. Fives frowned and checked himself. Body was still in order, armor was still in order. He wasn't thirsty or hungry so he couldn't have been passed out for too long but he had no idea how he had gotten where... wherever this was, at least.

A quick turnaround didn't reveal much behind him either. A desert-like landscape with coarse dry rocks and not even a tumble weed in sight. Only one sun above him and except for the small wooden boat and his armor, everything was still. Unchanged. Like no man, not even an animal, had been here before.

ARC-Training kicked in as Fives made a quick survey of his surroundings nearby for anything useful. He didn't find any supplies and he confirmed that the seawater was undrinkable. He needed to find shelter. Something that would aid him. Staying out here meant certain death.

So, without further ado, Fives started walking up the coast. By all logic, Civilizations were more likely to be close to the sea than inland in a desert. He'd just need to hope he'd find something soon. And so he walked. The sun set, and rose, and stars glimmered in the sky but they weren't familiar to him. And it repeated. Again, and again. And by the third day Fives noticed that he hadn't stopped walking. Not once. And he still was not tired or hungry or exhausted. It bothered him. It bothered him even more, that it didn't bother him enough to set alarm bells off ringing.

Something wasn't right. But he wasn't sure what. When he pinched his cheek, he felt that. But there wasn't really heat in the sun or cold in the night. So Fives began to run. And ran as far as his legs would carry him and even further and still, he didn't feel exhaustion or thirst. Feeling a bit lost in all of this, he stumbled to the ground to take a moment to think and just make sense of things because nothing made sense.

Groaning in agitation - this was getting him nowhere - he continued. A ship, broken in two lay at the beach. Fives ran forward. Legs full speed ahead and thoughts of caution forgotten. Finally he had found someone else. His voice carried his greeting, his name, his wants. Loud and desperate for anybody to hear but it seemed to carry too far. Far beyond the beach he was rapidly moving towards.

The broken wood was eerily familiar, and the unevenly scratched "V" was sign enough, to tell him that this was his boat.

So he was on an Island. An Island that he had walked around in seemingly- It had only taken him- His thoughts stuttered. He didn't know anymore how many days it had been or taken. Too many. But he was still here. How was he still here?

Nothing had changed around his boat. The sea was calm, no traffic in the distance, no sign of animals or anything to indicate civilization. But if there was nothing at the coast, there might be something in the middle. So Fives started walking out again. What had he to lose?

He tried to count the days. He really did, but he wasn't sure why his mind couldn't seem to keep the time. Minutes would work. Hours too. But days were a struggle. He kept his course by the sun, made sure to walk straight across, hopefully through the middle of the Island. He kept his eyes keen and tried to make sure that no sign of something living escaped him.

Stumbling across his boat on the other end of the island was disturbing. But the unevenly scratched "V" on the side and the distinctly broken hull-

Something inside his soul tugged him down to sit and he pushed his mind to think. Where could he be. Last he remembered, he was looking for answers on the chips. It had been a mess. He had been close, Fox had been there and he had been so close and then- nothing.

Fives bit his lip. He still felt pain. Should he still even be able to do that? Could this even be- but it explained enough...

So what now?


Fives tried to walk around the island a few more times, tried to find something but he always ended back at "his beach" as he started to call it. Funnily enough, he could walk as far as he wanted to, so far that time stopped and he either walked right past everything to return "home" or he turned back and he'd be "home" far quicker than what should be possible.

It was a tugging in his gut, that made him start staying on "his" beach. It was a surety that grew that there was something there that would come. And it would arrive here, to his beach. Fives just had no idea what it was.

He'd spend his days walking, waiting, sometimes going for a swim. The water was murky and there was only sand beneath the waves. No fish, crabs, nothing he could see. He grew bored. But his need to move kept him repeating habits over and over again.

And as he grew more and more bored, he learned to be bored in an abstract and distracting way. He lulled is mind into a particular head space where time didn't really seem to flow. Sometimes days seemed endless, sometimes they passed within moments. Most days he sat next to his boat in the coarse damp sand, waiting.

He'd wait, and wait, and wait some more. He didn't know what for. Something was coming. He just couldn't put his finger on what. It was like a forgotten thought at the tip of his tongue but no matter how hard he searched his mind, he came up blank.

In the distance, sometimes he'd see other small boats floating by. The first time, he had shouted himself hoarse. When that didn't work, he threw off his heavy armor and ran into the water, intent to at least swim towards the distance. But just like when he walked miles and miles on land, till time stood still and not even the sun moved anymore. As soon as he turned back, within only moments he was back at his beach again.

The whales were his favorite. He'd never heard of anything like this existing. Not on his time on Kamino, nor travelling the war-torn galaxy as a soldier. They come one day, from the left corner of the sky. Impossibly large, swimming around scattered clouds in a small herd. They floated, played with the water, then dashed into the air with powerful strokes to turn around the sun. Weightless and shimmering like rainbows. Pearlescent white eyes filled with indescribable wisdom of the universe. Fives was sure, that these creatures had been there, when time began and they would be there, when it ended. It was a belief he felt to his bones.

Once, a small child, a calve had swam close. Almost close enough to touch. Fives had stared speechlessly, frozen in place mid movement, as it swam around him in the air before those eyes, so young but paradoxically old at once, and by the call of it's back, herding back the strays, it quickly hurried back to what he could only assume was their mother.

To date, he had seen them 3 times. He had counted 8 distant ships. He couldn't count the days though. Something wouldn't let him. He had tried a few times in the sand, but the waves or the sea breeze washed away his markings. He had once carved them into the wood, but no matter how deep he carved the lines, they never stayed. He must be in the hundreds by now, that's all he could tell. Might be more.

Fives let himself fall back into the sand, arms spread wide and staring into that foggy blue sky. It all felt like a dream but it lasted too long. He'd thought about taking time to reminiscence about the past. What else was there to do? Wasn't that sort of what one was supposed to do? But except for bitter tears and the feeling of your lungs being crushed by your own heart and guilt, he hadn't gotten anything good from it. So he didn't really bother much.

He mastered his abstract-boredom sort of thoughtlessness, that let the days pass by quickest. That let him blink and a new sun would rise or turn his head, and it would already be setting. Only the crashing waves and the lull of the wind kept him company. But somehow it felt okay. Fives knew he was supposed to be here. To wait. For something. He just didn't know how long it would take or what would happen after.

It was a day like any other, when things changed. He woke up, he looked at the sun. He shifted positions, and stared out at the sea. He got antsy, he went for a brief swim, but soon got bored playing with the waves and turned back to land again. He sprawled out, looked at the endless desert land behind him. He looked back at the sea. A boat. Oh so distant, like a mere speck on the horizon, heading to some far off unknown destination in this odd little bubble land. He smiled. Maybe they knew where they were going, unlike him. He took his time, following that little boat in the distance with his gaze before closing his eyes, relaxing and taking his thoughts back into that bottled-nothingness. When he opened them again his stare wars towards the sky.

It was the waves crashes that changed, That was hist first hint. His ARC-trooper senses had dulled with the dreary repetition of the days, but he knew those wave crashes. The rhythm in the never changing weather. He frowned but listened more intently instead of springing up. The sand shifting was his second indication that something had changed. Footsteps, curious but hesitant. Fives sat up, and stared at a figure before him, the first one he had seen since he arrived here. Gangly, and dark with pale skin that had lost its healthy pallor somehow and a crude broken-droid like prosthetic that seemed to brutalize the amputated wound more than assist it.

Whoever this was, they froze and stared and then started shaking, trembling, falling to their knees.

"Fives?" Their voice was shaky, His name spoken in a frightened whisper. As if anything too loud would make it disappear. Spoken too carelessly and it would be lost.

"You're gone. You were gone. You-, this-" Fives didn't get it. "This isn't real, it can't be!" Their head was frantically shaking, whispering things to themselves as their eyes were pinned to the ground trying to figure out something, that was beyond Fives scope of knowledge.

Fives was completely lost. He remembered his life well enough to usually know the people he encountered again. The one he had hoped to find was gone and this-

No, that wasn't right. This wasn't right. Something was off and that feeling, that tugging in the back of his head, on the tip of his tongue crashed in his ears now.

He crouched down in front of the sad little thing, with his missing hand and broken armor. Armor that looked eerily familiar to his old trooper units but colored all wrong. With a Kama around his hips but so many, too many things off. Just shaking, heaving breaths that were kept together by arms wrapped tightly around their torso. All heading towards panicked gasps before incredulous eyes caught his again and drank him in. Like a dying man in need of water. Those eyes darted around with a frantic pace of remembering, searching, recognizing, and categorizing.

And that's when it clicked. That's when everything clicked. He opened his mouth to say something but too much wanted to come at once. Too much choked him up as he stared at Echo. His Echo. His long-lost brother who is dead. He closed and opened and closed and tears gathered at his eyes and didn't hesitate to stop as they continued down his cheek and he couldn't even blink because maybe he had finally lost it. His hands moved on their own accord, carefully, oh so carefully, as if not to scare away a wild mirage of dreams, before coming to rest on Echo's shoulder. And what he felt broke him.

It was solid. Echo was solid- Is solid. And not just a ghost and not just an imagination but here and-

Neither of them could tell who had moved first. Arms and limbs entangled themselves as they cried into each other's shoulders and necks, stroking hair, arm face, armor, making sure the other one was fully here. Solid. And present. And here. And when fives had reaffirmed that his brother wouldn't disappear within the next moment of a stray thought, he grabbed Echo and pressed his forehead against the others. He needed to feel his brother. Like old times, when they had been scared together. He needed to feel. And Echo mirrored those movements, holding onto him, forehead to forehead. Making sure the other was there, breaths mingling, breathing each other in and making sure, both were present, both were grounded, both were here.

When no more tears could fall Fives gave a choked broken laugh. "What took you so long?"

And Echo, in all his incredulous glory, gave him a water smile. "Got lost on the way."