Echo finds her curled up in her little blanket nest, clutching Lula and staring out at the stars. He climbs up next to her, sitting cross-legged a foot or so away.
For a few minutes, they just sit and watch the stars go by, blurring in front of their eyes. Echo is tired.
“What are you and Hunter fighting about?” she asks Lula’s ears.
Echo blinks. “What do you mean?”
“You and Hunter have been mad at each other for a while now. I can see it. Why are you fighting?” Omega presses Lula to her face.
He shifts, sighing and finding a more comfortable position to sit in. “Hunter and I are just different people, Omega,” he begins. “No, actually, Hunter and I are very similar, but we’ve had very different experiences. We don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”
Omega is quiet for a moment. Then, she sniffs and pulls Lula away from her red face, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “Is that why you left him there?” Her voice breaks.
“What? No! No, Omega, not at all.” Echo turns to face her head-on. “I would never do that, Omega. None of us would. You never have to worry about that.” His stomach turns at the thought of using something like that as a punishment.
A tear slips down her face. She clutches Lula to her chest like a shield. “Then why did you leave him behind?” she cries, squeezing Lula so hard Echo thinks she might burst.
“Oh, kiddo.” Echo opens his arms. “Come here, yeah?”
She hesitates for a moment, eyes still burning with angry tears. Then, the need for comfort wins out and Echo has a lapful of distraught kih’vod. He hugs her, crushing her against his chest and letting her bury her face in his shoulder. She and Hunter do the same things when they cry, he realizes.
“I left Hunter behind because he was right when he said it was the best way to keep the team safe. Trust me, kiddo, I didn’t want to. As much as Hunter and I fight, as angry as we get with each other, he’s still my little brother and it breaks my heart to think of letting him get hurt.” He puts a hand on the back of her head, carding through her hair like he used to when Fives broke down. “I let him go because there was nothing more I could do, not without putting the rest of you in danger.”
Oh.
Oh.
Echo thinks of being eleven, of being a slave to every one of his emotions and feeling like anger would kill him and sadness might make him collapse. He thinks of Hunter looking past Echo’s shoulder and saying, ‘I’m doing what’s best for my team.’ He thinks of Fives and the lengths he would have gone to‚ fuck, did go to to keep him safe.
Beyond the gates of insanity, Echo thinks. Beyond the gates of death.
“He’s just trying to keep you safe,” Echo tells her. “That’s all he wants. To keep his family safe.”
“I want him to come home,” she sniffs. “I don’t want him to die.”
“I know, kiddo. I know.”