Fifty One

Fives was walking back from ordinance when his wrist comm alerted. He stopped and stepped out of the way of another brother and looked at the message coming through.

Kriff.

Annoyed, he headed straight to his dorm, men moving aside as they watched the figure loom down the corridor, his chiseled jaw set tight.

He swung into the room with only two cots, one hadn't been used for months.

CT-21-0408.

He knew the numbers as well as his own.

The bed had not been touched since the last time he slept in it before the mission to the Citadel.

Fives had made sure of it.

In fact everything was as it was before they left, even his foot locker remained unopened and unused, no one prepared to take on the grieving ARC.

Until now.

The message had forewarned him. The GAR had finished with ARC trooper Echo months ago, it was now his best friends time to do the same.

Fives had fifteen standard minutes.

Fifteen minutes to say good bye forever to his cadet brother, fellow ARC trooper and best friend. He stopped and stood for a moment, his legs not wanting to step through and deal with the physical removal of his brother's belongings. What always surprised Fives was how everything had just kept going as before. The Republic Army had continued as if Echo had never existed.

How is that possible?

Battles were fought, more brothers had died, and they were still no closer to an end. It was like Echo never existed and now Fives had the unenviable task of removing every part of him from the room they shared on Coruscant.

He looked again at the perfectly made bed. That was Echo, and he smiled as he tentatively sat down on it. Fives blew out a long breath.

That wasn't so hard.

Steeling himself for the locker at the end, he leaned forward and opened it. There was nothing personal, everything packed as if he was looking at a new recruits belongings. That was Echo also, he prided himself in keeping everything in perfect order. Fek he was a good soldier.

Anal retentive sheb.

He reached in and pulled out a flimsie copy of the regs. It was the only thing in the locker that looked well used. Echo carried it with him everywhere, reciting in detail the minutia of the GAR, from how to deactivate a droideka through to reloading and firing a 12A a-p r using the MM9 mini conc rocket system.

Fives laughed, the sound unfamiliar in the small room.

He then remembered how Jesse would ask him to look things up. "Hey Echo," Jess said on the Intrepid one mission waiting to hit dirt, "does it say in there how one should go about evacuating ones bowels at zero G?" Echo had flicked through to the index before he heard the raucous laughter from the other 501st troopers. Fives shook his head smiling. Echo always took it on the chin though, there was never a hint of malice, not once. Fives held the manual to his chest plate and looked around. This was it. This was all he had left of his friend.

He stood and inadvertently dropped the booklet on the floor in front of him.

"Osik," he muttered as he bent down to pick it up.

Lying in amongst the schematic diagrammes of the AT-AP was an image of Echo and Freya. Fives looked at the angle at which it was taken.

A selfie?

He couldn't help but smile at his friends expense. The pair looked so incredibly happy. He tucked it back in between the pages, deciding there and then that he would deliver the manual to Freya and the child. She was back on Corellia with her family and Echo's son. A boy. The GAR couldn't take that away from him. Echo had won against the lot of them, he had made sure he would always be remembered.

"We are all Uncles now ner vod," Kix had said when he told them of the news.

That's when he saw the page he had stuck the image in. There were paragraphs highlighted in yellow.

"where by an ARC reaches and survives thirty concurrent missions or the War ends,

he will have the choice to be transferred to Kamino to become an instructor to new recruits

or he can choose to be retired from the Army permanently."

Fives had to re read the sentence again.

Why had he never seen this?

Simple reason that he never read the manual like Echo did. He was planning to get out, to have that future he was building with Freya.

It all made sense now.

Fives was brought back to reality when he heard a brother clear his voice at the door.

"Hey, you ARC trooper Fives?"

Normally Fives would sneer and be smart mouthed in his reply, but now, now he had something to work towards. A personal mission of his own. He owed that to his best friend.

"Yeah," he said standing and extending his hand.

"ARC trooper Keogh."

"Sorry," he said stepping aside, "this is your cot and I'm just clearing out the locker."

The trooper wearing emerald green on his kama moved forward and placed his kit on the bed.

"Need a hand?"

"Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks," Fives said, happy for the first time in months.

#

Fives was spurred on and armed with this new information he headed to the one person who would also be happy to hear it.

Tash turned the corner, talking to the nurse walking along side her when she noticed the secretary looking particularly uncomfortable. Stiff necked and eyes goggling almost out of her head she followed the woman's gaze to the man in the waiting room.

In full armour the ARC looked more than intimidating to the people seated waiting for their appointment to be called.

"Hey," Tash said, "what brings you down here," she said slowly handing the file she was carrying to the nurse. "Come on in." It was rare for the ARC to head into the hospital and Tash knew it must be something important to bring him down town.

She closed the door and he moved fast, grabbing her and swinging her wildly around in his arms. She let out a girlish giggle, "Fives! Fives, what in the blue blazes - ?"

"Come on, let's get out of here," he whispered into her neck.

"What! I can't Fives, I have patients."

"Tell them you have an emergency."

"Fives. We've been through this all before," she sounded annoyed and then stopped waiting for the inevitable display of annoyance from the trooper.

He stopped and looked at her. She was beautiful, professional and all his.

"OK," he said, a crooked smile crossing his face, "I'll wait."

Tash was dumbfounded, this was a major breakthrough for the ARC. The one she treated nine months ago for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following a mission that saw him broken and alone. The GAR had appointed civilian doctors to accompany and help the overloaded Republic physicians. HQ thought the ARC's, having cost them money to train, were worth more than a B1 tinnies opinion on their mental state. They didn't want one going rogue - no, that had been done before. Dr Tash Belling was resolved to make a difference, even if it was with only one soldier.

Initially he was angry but she was on to him, the first person trained to spot the mental manipulations of the mind he was playing. He would leer at her, constantly trying to undermine and intimidate her. None of it worked. Tash was determined to beat this one at his own game.

And eventually she did.

#

Together they left the hospital suite and instead of going back to the apartment, where things would inevitably lead to the bedroom, Fives surprised not only himself but Tash in offering to take her out to dinner.

"The only thing is, you have to pay," he smiled up from under his brow. Fives had no shame. He knew he couldn't pay, but would make up it to her in later.

"OK, I give up!" Tash stopped and looked at the trooper. "Where's ARC Trooper Fives? What have you done with him? Which one are you? Really?"

"What?" He laughed as he pulled an arm around her waist and guided her into the cantina. She hadn't heard him laugh in such a long time, it was music to her ears.

"Come on, you're as slow as a Bantha going backwards."

"Bantha's can't go backwards?"

He smiled, his teeth perfect white against his tanned skin. "I know," he implored, "we've got lots of things to talk about."

#