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Chapter Text

Prologue - CX2

There is the girl. She is

Falling through a haze of fog

And no clear sign of the circumstances of the landing.

There is the prisoner who was dead

Until he was not. Hacked

And turned against his own.

There is the strong one.

Holding on only to

Reach futilely into the empty as he shrinks away.

There is the leader.

Forever fighting

To stop fighting.

There is the traitor and he

Fell or perhaps

No one caught him.

There is pain and the echo of purpose

In the form of the girl’s face swimming in and out of focus but she is

Then and now, here and nowhere and everywhere.

There was pain and rage and purpose

In the form the traitor

Who had his chance.

There was falling

But

Perhaps this is more condition than circumstance.

There is falling and there is failure

And the only choice left to climb back up.

It is really… quite obvious.

Part 1 - Lynx

The whole of the retrieval team stares intently at Commander Wolffe, who’s got his bucket under his arm and his eyes fixed on the former Captain Rex who really ought to be dead.

The whole of the team – except Lynx. He keeps his gaze steadily on Hilo at the commander’s right side.

The air is thick with the tension of the standoff, made all the more oppressive under the veil of Teth’s amesthyne-rich atmosphere. They’ve lost men – Rex’s band, for all their curious composition between the child and the hound and the decidedly non-regulation troopers, have pulled no punches in effecting their escape. It’s yet unclear if there were any survivors from the second dropship.

Rex’s crew have lost men too, and while that may have been the singlehanded work of the volatile operative they seem to have likewise dispatched, judging by his conspicuous absence, Lynx doesn’t imagine they’ll be generous enough to make that distinction if accusations and grievances start flying.

Hilo leans in to warn of an inbound vessel, and they edge ever closer to the precipice.

The breaking point.

The moment Lynx has been watching and waiting for. But Wolffe somehow eases them through it, past it. Lets them go, and Hilo complies with his orders. Protests more at the respect paid to the fallen of their quarry than letting them leave in the first place.

Cable flies them back to the monastery, drops off half the team to start sifting through the debris for intel, for bodies, and then takes Hilo back out to the upper jungle with the other half of the team to scour the trail from the escape vessel’s crash to the extraction point.

Lynx regrets the bodies – can tell the others do as well, Dapper fiddling with a console still standing but it’s fried, the operative was thorough in his destruction ahead of the strike team’s arrival. Wolffe’s frustration heightens as they collect the victims and carry them out to join their fallen brethren in the landing field.

And then Ven gets on the comm. “Commander, there’s… something you ought to see back in the command center.”

Between the debris and the fried power, it took Ven and Toa some minutes to claw their way into the last remaining room they’ve got a hope of accessing, adjacent to the one they caved in while the operative ignored them and sent the whole operation careening into chaos.

There’s a body inside. But it’s…

“They might be clones,” Ven grumbles. “But looks to me like they executed a bound prisoner.” Another clone goes without saying.

Wolffe stares at the body for a long minute before stating simply, “That is not Rex’s style.”

“He’s a traitor,” Ven points out.

“Hm,” Wolffe considers, and Lynx senses them inching closer still to that nebulous precipice.

They collect the dead operative’s body along with all the others.

They’re almost done clearing the spire when the dropship returns. Hilo reports some stunned and recovering stormtroopers, a few casualties – still more lost to the crash – as well as one of Rex’s men, and finally…

“Found him near the wreck,” Hilo gestures at the surviving operative laid out in the middle of the hold. Lynx would have thought he was dead, if it weren’t for the mask affixed over his face to assist his breathing. “Don’t think he started there.”

“Where’d he come from in the first place?” Toa asks, and they collectively peer out into the ruined landing field, as if it might yield some clues.

Wolffe just shakes his head, expression unknowable under his helmet. “He just said classified. Contrary bastard.” But then he pulls his helmet off, tucks it under one arm, and wipes tiredly at his face with his other hand, consternation and regret resting heavy on him. “If he’d only followed orders…”

Ven pipes up from where he’s planted himself in his jump seat and tugged his own helmet off, mission accomplished and ready to go. “Maybe they were both prisoners and this one got away.”

Hilo whips around to look at the commander. “Both?”

Behind him, Ven just shrugs and continues with his hypothetical. “Wouldn’t be the first time a clone lost a brother and went a little harder on the revenge than the mission.”

“But this one’s not a clone,” Toa points out, nodding at the unconscious figure on the ground.

Lynx steps up closer to get a better look past the breath mask. Wolffe does the same, kneeling down to peer at the slack and scarred face smudged with dirt and littered with scrapes and cuts. Lynx thinks on the assessment that he’d worked his way back to the crash rather than fallen there. But, “Isn’t he, though?” Wolffe murmurs softly, more to himself than in response to Toa, and Lynx takes a second, better look and still is not quite sure.

Wolffe straightens, pops his bucket back on, all business once more, and orders the rest of the casualties brought aboard.

They don’t actually reach the critical moment, the breaking point, stumble up to the edge of the precipice as it crumbles away beneath the squad’s feet, until they’re back at the staging vessel a short jump away. Lynx sticks close by Wolffe, and Wolffe tolerates it, because he’s learned well enough by now that protest won’t get him anywhere.

Hilo expresses reservations that Wolffe refrains from including reference to the operatives in their report. His reservations grow stronger when Wolffe summons a medical droid to them in the hangar, rather than take the surviving operative to the cruiser’s infirmary.

The explanation of, “Best err on the side of caution, what with the classified status,” buys Hilo’s cooperation a little while longer, while the rest of the squad contends with the fallen.

When the operative regains consciousness, he does it all at once, going from limp and unaware to swinging at the hovering droid scanning him with explosive force. The droid crashes into the ship bulkhead and the operative is up before it’s even righted itself, sending their unit medic Holdup crashing to the ground with a swipe of his leg before –

A stun blast staggers him, drops him to his knees. He sways as he fumbles for weapons no longer on his person, stares defiantly down the emitter nozzle of Wolffe’s pistol and snarls a little before a second shot has him out cold and collapsing backwards once more.

“He shouldn’t be here,” Hilo notes in the silence that follows, save the whirring of the indignant droid’s repulsors as it hovers forward to resume its scans. Wolffe ignores him, cross-armed and brooding, by the set of his shoulders and the downward turn of his helmet. “Whatever his mission –”

“Imprisoning and experimenting on our brothers,” Holdup recalls darkly as he levers himself back upright with a grunt, followed by a tone from the droid as the scan completes and it begins rattling off:

“With the exception of a fracture to the patient’s right femur and improperly set dislocation of the patient’s right shoulder, the patient appears to be in no immediate medical danger.”

Lynx can’t contain the snort. “Oh, is that all?”

“No,” the droid answers his sarcasm in programmed earnest. “There is an anomalous implant in the patient’s lower right rear molar; I am unable to discern its purpose at this time.”

“Can you remove it?”

“Sir,” Hilo protests, but Wolffe is fixed and Holdup’s reminder of Rex’s ominous words are echoing through all of their minds.

Holdup holds the operative’s head steady while the droid works carefully and efficiently. It’s only the work of a minute before it’s withdrawing its extension attachments from the slack mouth, a flat disk captured in its grasp. “Further analysis will be required to assess the function of the implant.” It’s placed into a vial that disappears into a hatch on the droid’s chassis.

But Lynx knows. Wolffe knows, Holdup knows, even Hilo surely knows despite his rising agitation at this highly irregular medical workup. “Cancel that,” Wolffe says after a lengthy and awful silence descends. “Give it to me.”

“Sir,” Hilo starts again as the droid brings the vial straight back out.

Wolffe slips it into a pouch on his belt. “I want answers.”

“Classified was your answer, Commander,” Hilo retorts, hand drifting to settle by his weapon. Wolffe just watches him, unmoving. “You let the traitors go and I trusted you had your reasons, but this has gone far enough.” Still, Wolffe doesn’t move, not even when Hilo curls his fingers around the grip of his holstered weapon. Holdup’s gaze bounces wildly back and forth, hands unconsciously held up in front of him, like he’s frozen in the middle of an effort to urge calm. “I’m going to have to relieve you, sir.”

“Hm,” Wolffe says.

The moment Hilo’s weapon clears its holster, Lynx drops him with a single stun blast.

The droid emits a frantic little tone of alarm and spins off into a corner. Holdup swears and tugs their problematic patient’s feet out from under the unconscious pile of commando. Wolffe just turns that unknowable gaze on Lynx instead, quiet and waiting and weathering this crumbling precipice with every bit as much stoic grace as Lynx should have always known he’d have.

Lynx holsters his weapon, tugs off his bucket, and stands there vulnerable and unarmed while he tells his commander at long last, “It’s time, sir.”

“Time for what?” Wolffe asks, head tipping incrementally sideways.

He swallows, glances at Holdup, runs down the list of the names he’s collected and it’s short, too short, brothers who are ready, brothers he’ll trust to join them, and answers –

“Time to wake up.”

Holdup wasn’t on his list, but he rises quickly near the top of it when he reaches, not for a weapon in the wake of the brief confrontation, but for the droid cowering in the corner of the hold. A flip of a switch at the base of its neck cuts off the rising protest and has the thing crashing down to the durasteel decking with an unholy racket that’s the least of their troubles now.

He tugs off his bucket and asks, “Are we deserting?” in a breathless gasp.

Wolffe follows suit, tucking his helmet under his arm before resuming his steady and considering stare, eventually prompting mildly, “Corporal Lynx?”

“I can get us to friends, but we have to move quickly.”

“Friends. Brothers?”

“Yes, sir.” More silence while the commander peers at him like he endeavors to read every last secret thought tucked away into the darkest recesses of his mind. “They did something to us, sir. You know they did. You’ve… fought it, because it’s too awful to consider. That maybe it was wrong, maybe it was always a lie, what they made us for, what they used us for…”

Wolffe’s mouth twists unhappily; his eyes pull tight, and then he looks away, looks down on the unconscious body lying in blissful unawareness of this fracturing in progress.

Experimenting on our brothers…

“Holdup?” Wolffe asks.

“I, ah…” He’s nervous, but who wouldn’t be? “I trust your judgment, Commander.”

“Any others, Corporal?”

He rattles off the ones he’s sure of, and regrets the ones they’ll have to leave behind. “Toa, Dapper, Sav. Cable and Smiley. And… anyone you’d trust to have your back without question, sir.”

Wolffe harrumphs a rueful noise low in his throat and says, “Just you, Lynx.” He turns away before the unanticipated wave of emotion slams into Lynx. “Holdup, secure us a vessel. And bring the droid. We might need it. Lynx, find Cable first, send him along to check for transponders before we blast out of here.”

A long sigh escapes him and he sighs, turns his gaze once more down to the unconscious operative. “And grab me some binders. He’s coming with us.”

Lynx bites his lip. That proclamation does somewhat complicate the defection plan. “He’s dangerous, sir.”

“He’s a Ninety-Nine,” Wolffe acknowledges, and it means something to Lynx in an abstract sort of way, he knows of their existence, and their reputation in the war, but he’s never worked with one, never even met one. He doesn’t entirely understand, until Wolffe explains:

“And so were the clones he was chasing.”

Chapter Text

They alternate meeting spots. Keep eyes on them in between and cycle back ‘round when they feel confident as they can no Imperial forces are going to come in an attempt to sweep the lot of them up.

It’s sensible, in a galaxy gone mad. Safe as possible, in dark and dangerous times.

But Cody does wish he hadn’t had the bad luck of drawing the Tolyu Moon rotation. Miserable place; good for hiding. Hot enough they can only rendezvous on the dark side, and have to clear out or at least be shipboard before sunlight hits. Stable ground, but not quite solid, and it takes several minutes to grow accustomed to the sense of sinking a few centimeters with each step. Devoid of any native life they’ve found, save the stinking fungus that thrives in the dark crevices and craters. Breathable atmosphere, but why would you want to?

He could hand it off, swap it out, but the moment Det said, “It’s Lynx; he’s coming home,” he knew he’d be along for the meet.

Wolffe’s steadfast commitment to the Empire had been more surprising than most, considering his years-long devotion to Master Plo. A bitter surrender, when Cody decided he would not be lured into questioning the Empire’s methods before deploying to head up his new strike force.

When Crosshair doubled down, Cody finally conceded it was useless. They were bred and trained too well – orders were orders. Following them and having purpose was a hell of a lot easier on the psyche than wondering why they hadn’t paused and wondered before. But he found others, once he finally gave up and ran. Formed a tight-knit network with a handful still inside.

And now he waits to see if Lynx has finally managed to coax Wolffe into opening his eyes.

Once the shuttle touches down, he doesn’t need to wait long. Wolffe is first down the ramp, bucket under his arm and Lynx close behind. Det straightens from where he’s leaning with affected nonchalance against one of the hydraulic ramp supports as Cody steps forward to meet him.

Wolffe clasps his arm, grasps his shoulder like they’ve just returned from any other hairy mission at their generals’ sides, and a piece of Cody’s shredded heart mends. One tiny little piece of wrong in the galaxy righted; more than one, he amends inwardly when he turns to greet Lynx and sees two additional troopers hovering at the top of the ramp. “You brought friends.”

“Five more, Commander Cody, sir,” Lynx informs him, and that is a habit that’ll need breaking sooner than later. “And, um.”

Cody tracks his uncertain look at Wolffe, exchanging introductions with Det, and prompts, “Sounds like there’s a story.” There always is, when they manage to pull a brother out. And not usually a good one. “We’ll ditch your ship for now as a precaution, take everyone in on the –”

But Wolffe grimaces and confesses: “We have a hostile on board. And… I think you might know him.”

Wolffe says hostile and then Clone Force Ninety-Nine and Cody can only, naturally, think of Crosshair.

The dread that rises in him as the wrongness of that assumption is made clear is all-encompassing, nauseating, numbing. “Tech,” he breathes, kneeling down by the bound figure who’s pressed himself into the closest thing to a corner he can find aboard the shuttle. He takes in the black armor, the leg that’s resting a little funny. The way his chest is heaving far too quickly, and it could be pain or fear or panic.

The way he’ll only look at Cody sidelong, his face tipped away, contorted in a miserable scowl. The absent goggles make his face look smaller, Cody thinks at first, before deciding that no, he’s drawn and a little gaunt under the unfamiliar scars, the newer cuts and bruises.

“He was – he called in an assist on a mission. A… target retrieval,” Wolffe says delicately, and a glance upwards shows some shame in the eyes of the medic standing watch over Tech who Lynx introduced as Holdup. “He went rogue; jeopardized the mission, killed most of the rebel cell before we even arrived. Rebel… clones.”

That catches Cody’s attention, and he hears Det murmur something behind him. But he just shakes his head, he doesn’t understand, “They deserted. Clone Force Ninety-Nine deserted straight away, except for Crosshair.” Tech twitches; Cody risks laying a hand on his arm and moves it again when he shrinks away as best he’s able.

“Cody, they were the ones he was after.”

A harsh breath explodes out of him and he shoves up, leans in close, and asks Wolffe, “He killed them?”

“I… the only bodies we recovered were… they were all regular clones. When we caught up to them, I recognized the big guy, and their sniper. Maybe another. They’ve got a girl with them, a kid – a clone, she was the target we were sent to retrieve. And…” Cody’s still trying to process the claim that Crosshair might’ve made it back to his brothers after all when Wolffe drops an unfathomable bombshell into the center of everything he thought he knew about this terrible and unmade galaxy.

“It’s Rex, Cody. He’s alive.” All he can do is stare and shake his head, mouth opening and closing and no words to be conjured forth. “Warned us about a base called Tantiss, and I think this,” he gestures down at Tech’s hunched figure, “is connected.”

Cody follows the gesture and starts to find Tech turned and staring at him wide and unblinking. Holdup steps around and kneels down, starts to ask him some questions now that he’s showing signs of responsiveness and gets headbutted for his trouble.

Holdup falls back on his rear and swears viciously, touching a hand gingerly to his nose. Det steps up and starts laying out ideas for securing their prisoner, their unwilling and hostile recruit, but Tech shakes off the disorientation from the blow and looks back up and gasps out a ragged, “Cody.”

He thinks about donning his bucket, decides it’ll backfire, and kneels back down. “Talk to me, Tech.”

“Go.”

“We… we’ll go, Tech, we’ll figure this out.”

He starts fighting the restraints, tries to push up from his awkward position and bites back a groan when he moves his injured leg. “They’re coming,” he grits, pained, thumping his head back against the bulkhead and then doing it again, and again, until Cody risks reaching for him, staying him.

“Tech.”

“There’s no escape, they’re coming, you have to…” he sucks in a ragged breath and lets it out closer to a sob.

“Who, Tech? Who’s coming?” No response. “Tantiss?” The fight leaves him all in a rush and he slumps back in his corner, eyes closed and chest heaving. “Trackers?” he asks blankly into the somber silence of the hold.

“He’s clean,” someone replies from somewhere over his shoulder.

Tech bashes his head backwards again – smashes Cody’s hand against the wall – and moans, “Inside. Cody, it – go.” And softer, so low he has to lean in and strain to hear: “Nowhere to run.”  

Inside.

“We’re leaving,” Cody declares to the whole of the ship. “Right now.” Tech’s breath hitches and there’s dampness on his lashes. “Holdup, give him… give him something.” He doesn’t even know, something for the pain, something to calm him, something to sedate him, just something to get him from one vessel to the other. “Det, go start plotting the longest jump you can think up.”

Tech tries to reach for him, he thinks, by the jolting of his shoulder. “It’s no good,” he begs, “Go.”

“They’re tracking you?” He blinks up at him, eyes wide and red and fearful, and then recoils when Holdup leans around to jam a hypo into his neck; Cody can’t really fault him for abandoning all pretense of beside manner. “Then we stay on the move until we figure it out.”

But he’s already slipping – apparently Holdup opted for the easiest choice. Slumps forward until Cody catches his shoulders, holds him up while his eyes go wild and heavy all at once as he fights the sedative.

The last intelligible thing that comes out of Tech’s mouth is the slurred suggestion, “Have t’kill me, Cody,” before he surrenders to unconsciousness.

Cody doesn’t even realize his own cheeks are wet until he blinks up at Wolffe and Lynx and finds them blurred through tears.

Moments before the retrieval ship makes the jump to lightspeed, Det starts and swears, staring at the sensors for a long minute before reporting, “Sirs, something just hit the vessel on the surface, it’s… gone. But I don’t… I’ve got nothing on scanners, there’s -”

“Get us out of here,” Cody barks, and a second later they’re lurching into the safety of hyperspace.

Somewhere in the background as he mulls the situation, Tech separated from the Batch, hunting the Batch – Rex out there alive and fighting –

Somewhere in the back of his mind he concedes that he won’t be sad to scratch Tolyu Moon off the rendezvous list.

It’s not exactly a fully-kitted infirmary, but the shipboard medpod serves its purpose in securing and scanning Tech. All it confirms are the same injuries Holdup already mentioned from their botched mission on Teth, of all places. Plus some new scrapes and gashes where he’s been trying to yank himself free of the restraints.

Some of the dread starts to fade back and fade away, but only because it’s being steadily replaced with a cold fury as he reads the report and listens to Wolffe’s fuller recounting of the events leading to their defection. As he slots into place some of the pieces that confused them, from Teth to Tech to here and now.

“Rex managed to capture one, but I’m guessing it’s not the first one he’s encountered. Must’ve known they were rigged with the tooth implant. Took it out, thought he was safe, took him to his operating base.” Wolffe hums a steady agreement – has apparently already made these same deductions. “He wasn’t there for your target at all, he followed the other operative. He was there to stop intel from falling into enemy hands.”

The pod finishes its scans but there’s nothing there, no beacon, no signal. “Nothing, sirs,” Holdup reports with a grimace.

“We need a higher level scan.”

“Not gonna get one without bringing more of… him… down on our heads,” Lynx concludes grimly from the background where he’s leaned against the doorway watching the goings-on with a scowl on his face. Cody swears and runs a hand through his hair. “He knew you, Commander – the first he’s done anything besides lash out and sulk was when he recognized you. Maybe…”

But he doesn’t finish the thought, prompting Cody to tear his eyes away from where the pod is shifting to position its charge in anticipation of the bone-knitter injection. “Lynx?”

Reluctantly, he straightens up. But he glowers down at the ground, mouth twisting unhappily, before squaring himself and meeting Cody’s eyes when he bluntly explains, “Maybe he’s starting to break through a little – whatever friend he once was. But maybe the brother in him knows… it’s a lost cause. He told you to kill him, sir – he’s trying to save you.”

“No one’s killing him. Everything the Empire’s done and all the brothers they’ve gotten killed tightening their fist around the galaxy, and Tech is alive, his squad is still out there, he’s the smartest clone – the smartest being I’ve ever known, and I’m not going to be the one to…”

A horrible thought dawns and he trails off as he chases it, works it over, works it through. “Cody?” Wolffe nudges.

Inside.

“Wake him up,” he breathes. Holdup grimaces, but toggles a setting on the pod. It should be gentle, in theory, a gradual adrenaline boost to bring the patient back to consciousness, but Tech goes from out to frantic in the blink of an eye, arching against the restraints, gasping and terrified. “Tech,” Cody leans in, rests his hands on his shoulders and tries to urge him down, still, before he hurts himself. “You’re safe. We’ve got you.”

“No…” he moans, pressing his eyes closed tight like he can make it all go away if only he can’t see it, if only he can return to the bliss of unconscious unawareness.

“Tech, you need to tell me how it works. How they’re tracking you. How to make it stop.” No response, save the ragged breathing and straining muscles. “You said I should kill you.” Tech relaxes back, opens his eyes, and looks frantically every which way around the room before he finally rests his wild gaze on Cody’s face. “If you die… it stops.”

There’s fear in Tech’s eyes, fear he cannot reconcile with the cocksure squad he once knew and grudgingly admired.

There’s longing there, and the fury rises. “Tell me,” Cody begs.

“Parasite,” Tech rasps. “Bio-electrical parasite.”

“How do we stop it?”

Something in his inflection, under the ragged and rasping voice, sounds like an echo of Tech’s old self when he bites, “Kill the host.”

Holdup’s already pulling up the heart monitor readout, bio-electrical, and Cody understands, but… “For how long?” he demands doggedly, and only earns a pained groan from their patient. “They’re out there, Tech, and I’ll be damned if I have to chase them down just to tell them you died on my watch.”

The sob that tears from Tech’s throat has his own tightening up and he refuses, after all the brothers he couldn’t help, couldn’t save, he refuses to lose this one. “M’already dead, Cody. Don’t…” his voice catches and he presses his head back against the soft mat, tears slipping past his lids and sliding down the sides of his face into his hair. “Don’t tell them… what he made of me…”

After a moment’s deliberation, Cody takes a risk and unlatches the closer restraint. By the way Holdup takes an instinctive step back, by the whisper of movement he knows without even looking is Wolffe resting his hand on the grip of his blaster, they’re expecting another vicious retaliatory explosion.

But he lets Cody take his hand, clasp it firm in his own, and even grips back a little despite the fresh surge of fear in his eyes when Cody gestures for Holdup to put him back under.

When the tension bleeds back out of his body and he drifts back into unconsciousness, Cody lays his hand back down by his side, takes a long moment to steady himself, to steel himself, before speaking into the heavy, oppressive silence –

“Holdup – what do we do?”

Chapter Text

It’s perhaps not what Wolffe was envisioning, when Lynx stunned Hilo and offered an out it hadn’t occurred to Wolffe he might want or need until he found himself trying to reconcile his service with the dire warnings from a trusted friend, a dead friend, resurrected and turned traitor. Finding himself barely a rotation later, listening to Cody fill in the sorry lot of them on the situation, the stakes, the plan. Cody, who deserted and Wolffe scarcely believed the news when he’d heard it, who he never fathomed he’d see again.

It’s perhaps not what he was envisioning, when Cable finishes prying out the med droid’s Imperial network uplink and loyalty matrix before bringing the thing back to the makeshift medbay so Holdup can start arguing with it about how best to achieve their objective.

Their objective – to kill a man, and the assurance that they quickly thereafter intend to bring him back does little to stay EY-2’s objections. “My base medical programming does not allow for –”

“Then we’ll switch you right back off and screw it up ourselves,” Cody barks. Which at least grudgingly convinces the droid. It hovers forward and plugs into the medpod system so it can access Tech’s vitals while Holdup explains as best as any of them understand, “There’s some kind of transmitter beacon masked by his heart activity. If you can find it…”

But if EY-2 could, it’d have done so already, back at the staging base. “You will need to override the medpod’s automatic response processes,” it informs them, and Wolffe doesn’t think he’s imagining the judgment in its modulated tone. “If your objective is to induce cardiac arrest, the pod’s programming will fight you, and it will win.”

But Holdup’s fidgeting, glancing anxiously about, hesitating. Wolffe places a steadying hand on his shoulder and assures him quietly: “This is… something we’ve never before encountered,” he murmurs. “Something twisted beyond our wildest imaginings.”

If it’s true, he can’t help but hysterically wonder. If the Empire he’s proudly served since the day of its inception is truly capable of this.

Holdup swallows audibly and worries, “What if…? Sir, what if –?”

“It’ll be the Empire’s fault,” Cody flatly answers the question he can’t quite get out. “Not yours.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be here for this,” Wolffe has the audacity of suggesting to Cody as Holdup finally reaches with a trembling hand to shut down the requisite parts of the medpod.

“Maybe I should kick your shebs back to flight training,” Cody rejoins mildly, and that’s that.

Holdup and Cody strip the irregular suit and exchange it for the disposable medical fatigues stocked in the kit. Wolffe takes the suit and scant armor it had offered, throws the lot of it in a locker in the main hold, and comes back to find Cody staring on with a hypo clenched tight in his fist while Holdup paces a bit around the cramped space and talks himself up a little more.

EY-2 is plugged back into the medpod, its auto-system warnings and recommendations feed gone dark and only a display of Tech’s vitals skimming across the primary monitor. “Shut the door,” Cody orders tersely, and as soon as it whooshes closed prompts, “Holdup?”

It’s not what Wolffe was envisioning, when he listened to Lynx and took a leap of faith.

It’s not what he anticipated, something almost anticlimactic in the electric charge administered and the prompt cessation of cardiac activity. The steady line that had only moments ago shown the rhythmic thrum of a strong heartbeat.

“His… his heart’s stopped,” Holdup says unnecessarily into the awful silence that descends. “But there’s no sign of –”

A faint pulsing signal interrupts the flatline. Almost too faint for the monitors to catch. Cody grips the side of the pod with his free hand and stares at the readout but it’s there, the barest of lingering electric pulses in steady intervals. “Those cruel karking bastards,” he breathes.

EY-2 hovers close and frets, “If we are to revive the patient, then time is of the –”

“No,” Cody cuts it off, voice a little strangled. “He called it a parasite, it’s drawing energy somehow from him – we have to starve it out.”

They stare at the monitor with breathless anticipation, not least because it allows them to avoid looking at the lifeless body in the pod.

By the tenth or twelfth pulse, they’re notably coming slower and slower. By the twentieth, Wolffe has the morbid sense of a wounded creature’s dying gasps, of a fish flopping about on shore and futilely flexing its gills.

It takes the better part of ninety seconds for the signal to fade away and die.

Another thirty seconds and he’s about ready to call it himself before Cody finally snaps, “Go,” and Holdup switches the medpod’s full function back on.

A frenzy of hypos and chest compressions ensue – there might be another shock administered, but Wolffe hovers back out of the way, ready to assist and ultimately unneeded, when the activity ceases all at once as the steady rhythm of a regular heartbeat begins to once more flit across the monitor.

When EY-2 declares the patient to be, “Stabilizing,” and Holdup slumps back against the wall with an hysterical broken laugh and sigh of relief, Cody gets up and makes for the door without a word.

The freighter isn’t huge, so there’s likely not one of them who doesn’t hear him heaving in the refresher, but they all have the good grace to pretend otherwise.

Det plots a course for another one of Cody’s quiet rendezvous locations – this one a veritable paradise after the stinking moon where Lynx took them, vast expanses of salt plains extending out from jagged mountains in whose shadows Det sets them down.

It feels like letting out a breath Wolffe forgot he was holding, as they finally take a moment to sit and distribute rations, to discuss what lies ahead, and an offer it didn’t even occur to him to expect –

“Anyone’s looking to just walk away, wants no part in our operation – say the word now and we’ll get you somewhere you can start over.” A couple of anxious looks pass between his men, but they stay collectively silent. “Alright. Eat, fight over the racks in the crew cabin if you like – I’m going to comm base and check in.”

Det never takes his eyes off the scanners the whole time they’re set down, because they’re really waiting to see if it worked, if Imperial pursuit will follow them from Tolyu Moon, if being ambushed here instead is the price exacted for a well-meaning turn, for their quest for answers.

Answers he now suspects will only come from the unconscious operative who recognized Cody and begged for death.

Six hours later, they’re on Coruscant.

Tech regains consciousness thirty hours later, and doesn’t speak a word for the better part of a fortnight.

The base is deep beneath the Refinery District, run out of a decommissioned distribution facility that won’t raise brows with the coming and going of vessels. It’s a smart setup, Wolffe decides as Cody takes him on a tour after they hand the men off to the welcoming committee on hand, after he gives his medic Garm a rundown of the situation with the new patient dumped unceremoniously into his lap. A lot of forcibly-retired clones, Cody says, wound up working offensively dull jobs in the vast operation that was managing Coruscant’s water, waste, and fuel infrastructure – a few more clones roaming around the adjacent levels doesn’t turn any heads. 

But what Wolffe hasn’t yet gleaned – “What is it you’re after, Cody?” Cody lets out a world-weary sigh and turns to lean against the railing of the catwalk overlooking the main bay where a good couple dozen brothers are milling about, settling their new arrivals, checking on comms, ducking out for caf. “Is this about opening your brothers’ eyes, or is this about starting a fight?”

He scoffs. “Don’t have those kinds of numbers,” which doesn’t exactly answer the question. “Before you turned up? I’d have said the former.”

“And now?”

“Answers, Wolffe. I want answers. I want to know what happened to Tech, how, who; I want to know how Rex survived and why he never came back, I want…” He trails away, stares blankly around the rusting durasteel-plated walls for a long minute before running a hand over his face and swearing. “I want to know what they did to us. Why don’t you?”

Us, collective. Not the shadow operatives, the dead one on Teth, the mystery assailant they narrowly avoided over Tolyu Moon, the one they killed themselves and are yet uncertain what version will emerge in the resurrection.

Us, the clones, all of them, and Wolffe doesn’t understand, or…

“Sorry,” Cody mutters gruffly. “Sorry. M’just glad you’re here now, Wolffe.”

…Or maybe he just doesn’t want to.

Cody’s operation goes on around them while Cody’s days largely revolve around Tech. They’ve got him contained in a sophisticated enough treatment room, with regular check-ups from Holdup and Garm and under constant monitoring by EY-2, but he only moves the barest amount necessary and doesn’t say a word, not even when Cody hauls Wolffe and Lynx along on day three to recount the confrontation with Rex and the Ninety-Nines at his side.

“They’re out there, Tech,” Cody says.

You didn’t kill them, is what he means. Not all of them, anyway. None of them, at least based upon the dead collected by Hilo in the jungle and himself at the monastery, those same lifeless faces with untold battles to their names, victories and scars and defeats, only to meet their brutal end in such unjust fashion at the hands of a twisted and tormented brother.

The silence persists. Cody starts and ends each day with an hour just keeping mostly quiet vigil with Tech. Wolffe checks in with each of his men every day, they gather without fail for a midday meal, and tries to gauge how their abrupt shift in circumstances sits with them.

Lynx has already thrown himself into Cody’s operation, but Wolffe supposes that was to be expected. Any nerves Holdup might’ve had during the brief confrontation with Hilo were apparently assuaged by the brief but horrifying experience aboard the freighter and his vital role in it thrust unceremoniously into his lap.

Toa and Cable, he can’t help but get the sense that they’d been struggling with their loyalty for a long time. Sav’s been with him almost as long as Lynx and seems to take everything in easy stride, following their lead.

Dapper and Smiley, he worries over. Sees the weight settle more heavily around their shoulders, the question of what they are, if they are not soldiers. Of what they’ve done, if it was not in the interests of the greater galactic good.

Of what will happen, to those they left behind.

Truthfully, much as Wolffe would love to reassure them – the same questions plague his mind with every waking and usher him into each night’s dreams.

On the tenth day, Cody finds him over communal breakfast and asks if he’ll come try again. Wolffe has watched his nerves fray a little more every day, senses as well as he that a window might well be closing, Teth and Rex, Clone Force Ninety-Nine, this Tantiss place about which none of Cody’s quiet queries have yielded any answers. Or even recognition.

The door to the treatment room is open when they arrive, and Wolffe can’t help but rest his hand on the grip of his weapon. Cody just cocks a brow and steps through, meal tray in hand.

They find EY-2 deactivated and upended on the bed, looking not unlike a patient itself. And if the droid is the patient, then Tech makes the medic, sitting on a stool with a datapad in hand that’s connected to a port in the droid’s head, his loose papery medical garb swapped for a set of blacks.

A wry smile tugs up the corner of Cody’s mouth as he sets the tray on the closest countertop. Wolffe doesn’t quite share the amusement, but feels like he understands so much more about the whole situation when Cody points out mildly, “That was locked,” with a meaningful look at the door.

“Please,” Tech scoffs. He tilts his head around just enough to take in Wolffe from the corner of his eye before he goes back to perusing whatever data he’s yanked off the med droid.

“It’s good to see you, Tech,” Cody says, quiet but earnest, and Tech pauses mid-swipe over the screen, visibly considering the words. “You remember Wolffe?”

A soft sigh precedes the powering down of the datapad, tossing it onto the bed beside the droid. He turns a little more fully towards him but still won’t quite meet his eyes when he says, “You made some quick and difficult deductions, Commander, and I… owe you my thanks.”

Wolffe finds himself flummoxed for a reply, that this is the volatile and rogue operative who wreaked such havoc on what would be both of their last mission as agents of the Empire.

“Forgive me,” Tech continues on, more vaguely to the room. “I have… concluded this to be a tangible reality. Most likely,” he adds in little more than a whisper.

Wolffe watches the way Cody’s good cheer collapses in a heartbeat. “Tech,” he sighs. “I want to help you; I want to get you back to the squad.”

Tech hums and stares down at the floor, lips pressed thin. Wolffe looks from him to Cody, who glances helplessly back over at him until Tech starts talking, quick and quiet, like he’s spitting out something well-rehearsed, and Wolffe supposes he must’ve been using the past ten days’ silence for something.

“There is a window of opportunity here and a great deal at stake if I do not seize it. Hemlock might wonder if I broke free and found a solution, but he will not know, and there is little he can do to defend Tantiss against what knowledge of it I have. If I can locate my vessel in the Teth jungle, I can extract the coordinates and make a covert infiltration in order to –”

“Tech,” Cody holds out his hands. “Whoa. Slow down. You… are in no condition to –”

“Would you like to test that assertion, Commander Cody?”

Wolffe resists the urge to rest his hand atop his weapon again, but only just. He watches Cody straighten and school his face into a careful neutrality – unaccustomed to such challenge even in this life removed from the GAR.

All Cody says, after a terse beat is, “No commanders here, Tech. Just brothers trying to… to make the galaxy better. Whatever that looks like, no matter how seemingly insignificant…”

“Then you understand I cannot waste this. He is after Omega and I do not even know why. He made me into… this,” he spits, “and I cannot even fathom how. He has been collecting prisoners since the effect of the chips began to weaken and the clones began to question, and I cannot say how many or what it might take to extract them. I am returning to Tantiss, Cody – with or without your sanction or assistance.”

He’s bracing for argument, clear as day, but Wolffe’s looking to Cody and finding his own confusion mirrored in his longtime friend’s face. He turns back to consider Tech’s impassioned, righteous stare, and asks, “What chips?”

The furor melts away all at once. Tech straightens up in his seat and blinks between them, genuinely surprised for only a fleeting moment before his expression collapses into crestfallen.

“Oh,” he frets. “Oh dear.”

Chapter Text

He’s wasted time, Tech knows, while waiting for reality to stabilize around him. The treatment room set up at Cody’s base – Coruscant, he decides, the more precise placement yet undetermined – is laughably at odds with the scattered images of Hemlock’s care, when he likewise ought have been dead instead.

But flashes of his scattered fracturing live on. Pleasant dreams collapsed into chilling nightmare, happy endings upended and consumed by flames. The faces of his brothers and Omega the last jealously-protected pieces of himself held close until eventually, inevitably, Hemlock stole those too.

He has them back, now, whispered impressions like ghosts of memory as he dragged himself out of the river, clawed his way up out of the ravine, that have taken stabler shape and re-rooted in his psyche.

He has them back now, and no one has tried to take them away.

He’s wasted time, but he finally sets a slow step on solid ground and trusts it will not give beneath the weight of his daring. He just does not anticipate so immediately upending their realities in turn.

It’s a short history he recounts, but the salient points therein. Kaller, Crosshair, Omega, Onderon and back. Rex and Bracca. Wrecker.

Crosshair again.

Cody listens with his arms crossed over his chest and his face tipped down towards the ground.

Wolffe loses the edge of suspicion the longer Tech talks, but the careful stoicism that replaces it is a commander’s façade in the heat of a battle gone catastrophically awry and naught to be done but endure.

“How did Rex survive?” Cody asks some time later over caf, the two of them alone sat in the command center once Cody’s done his initial processing of the revelation; while they wait for Wolffe to grapple with it, pacing the labyrinthine corridors of the old facility. “How did he know?”

“He was never forthcoming with the specifics.” Traumatically rings loud and unspoken. “My understanding is that the… the pieces of the puzzle that was the inhibitor chips were there, but –”

“Tup and Fives,” Cody realizes, flat and bitter. “Kark it all to hell, Tech.”

A long minute passes in uneasy silence. The logical side of Tech’s brain wants to assume it is… easier, with this understanding. That whatever weighs on Cody, has been weighing on him, has driven him to this current enterprise – and Tech thinks back on Anaxes and Cody’s Jedi general, and can guess easily enough, can only assume Wolffe is contending with much the same –

The logical part of him wants it to be easier, understanding at last the mechanism of their turn. Their easy acceptance, no questions asked, no hesitation. An out, of sorts, a chance for Cody to extend himself some grace and perhaps some day forgiveness.

Truthfully, Tech is aware all he’s done is further upset the foundations of his comprehension of the galaxy, the Empire, the entirety of the war and the clones’ very existence. “I’m sorry,” he offers eventually, and cuts off the instinctive objection. “For… asking of you the necessary but extreme measures in order to safeguard your men, this base.”

Cody smiles weakly overtop his cold caf. “I’d say any time, but, well…”

“Yes, let us endeavor to never require a repeat of that exercise.”

“You have to go home, Tech.”

Home is abstract as concepts go. Home was Kamino once, now a twisted pile of wreckage at the bottom of the sea. Home was the squad, with a wound at the heart of it since the day they fled and left one of their own behind. Home was the Marauder, even when they spent most of their time on Ord Mantell, and then home actually perhaps felt like it could be Pabu, until –

“They cannot be safe while Tantiss remains. And they will… resist, what needs doing.”

Cody frowns at him, almost disapproving.

“We simply are not the squad you remember. The Empire changed us, losing Crosshair and gaining Omega all at once… it changed Hunter. They already lost me, Cody – if I return to them now, they will not wish to risk a repeat of the events that… led us here in the first place. I can get myself in and out of Tantiss with the intel necessary to affect its undoing. To return with any less than that is… a complete abdication of my responsibility to safeguard their wellbeing, Omega’s wellbeing.”

He can see the reluctant acceptance and subsequent offer forming up on Cody’s lips. A gruff voice from the doorway extends it instead. “I’m in.”

They take twenty-four hours to prepare. It’s not until hour eighteen that Tech realizes Cody and Wolffe are planning on journeying beyond the crucial first step to Teth. “There are a number of reasons it is an unwise strategy to attempt an infiltration with more than just myself.”

“Noted,” Cody mumbles distractedly while scanning a comm from one of his teams out in the field. Wolffe doesn’t even look up from the projection of Teth he’s assessing with Cable in the cockpit of the nondescript hauler whose battered exterior in no way reflects its state-of-the-art engine setup and discreet but impressive weapons complement.

Cody’s supply man Ash, busy behind them taking stock of the onboard medkit, the field rations supplies, looks awkwardly around and then picks up the pace with his work so he can clear out before the brewing argument.

“The only vessel capable of slipping unnoticed through the Tantiss defenses is the one-man ship we hope to find undisturbed in the Teth jungle. The only way I might slip into the facility itself is, in essence, posturing as myself in the spare armor aboard said vessel.”

“We have the armor you came in with,” Cody points out.

“No helmet,” Wolffe quickly adds. Tech throws a pointed look Wolffe misses, because he’s looking at a projection of Teth with Cable. “Could paint a helmet.”

Tech sighs. “If we might be serious.”

Cody finally looks up and sets down his datapad. Ash finishes his inventory checks, squeaks an all-clear, and hastens out of the cramped cockpit. Wolffe turns in his seat and glowers over, though Tech thinks the aggression in him is simply on a constant simmer in search of an outlet and less directed at the conversation at hand, at him.

“We’re serious, Tech,” Cody leans in. “Who do you think is going to be pulling together any subsequent extraction plan with the intel you’re hoping to capture?” Rex jumps instinctively to Tech’s mind, Rex and Echo, the encrypted intel with a prisoner register, CT-9904, a small enough team to get in and out – “Call it recon – and even if we can’t take you farther than the perimeter, it’d be… madness to send you in without any backup.”

For a jarring moment, he’s dangling over the mountains of Eriadu, the only impediment to the survival of everyone he loves. 

Falling was… really quite obvious.

Its consequences… unfathomable.

And still he cannot…

A hand touches his forearm and jolts his attention up. “There are… pieces I am yet struggling to reconcile. And the potential consequences, if I am simply failing to grasp some greater ramification, failing to see…”

“Tech?”

“Crosshair,” he confesses. “The mission where I was lost we hoped to discover the whereabouts of Tantiss; Echo captured a prisoner register with Crosshair’s number on it. Yet you say he evacuated Teth with Rex,” he directs to Wolffe while he twists his hands anxiously in his lap, “I remember facing him again and again, I remember nearly killing him there and yet –”

He blows out a heavy breath and tips his head back, wipes a hand over his face. “I watched them all die a thousand times in a thousand horrible ways until eventually, inevitably, I was the one committing the deed again and again and again until the recognition faded and a target was a target, an order an order.”

A glimpse of a face he knew, and any collateral acceptable, in acquiring the target and removing her to a place of waking nightmares. The images in his memory clear as they are discordant, Crosshair repeatedly hanging back, taking up their defense.

Perhaps he escaped, and found his way home.

But then why is Omega the target?

He probably ought have known that they would only double down further on seeing the mission through.

And he at least is confident as their slated departure ticks closer, as he watches Wolffe soothe Lynx’s objections and entrust him with the wellbeing of the rest of the men they’d brought along in their wake, that Cody and Wolffe understand the gravity of the situation, and the potentially cataclysmic consequences should something go wrong.

He knows Wolffe recovered the bodies, but as they revert over Teth all Tech can see is a graveyard. He grips the arm of the co-pilot’s seat and cannot help but trace the path of death and destruction he carved, from the spire to the scar they fly over where the escape vessel crashed to the rapids where some version of himself fought some version of his brother and has him floundering still with a tenuous grasp of what’s real.

Orienting from the ruined monastery, Tech manages to guide Cable within a klick of the Dagger vessel. If Tantiss ever made any effort to recover it, after its operative’s homing beacon went dark, then they have abandoned the search already. 

He rappels down into the jungle with Wolffe and Cody while Cable and Det take the hauler to more open ground near the river and monitor sensors while they wait on a status update. A quarter hour to locate the ship, ten minutes fiddling with the hatch access panel to ensure it is in no way rigged to transmit any beacons or data, and then an hour inside delicately teasing apart the interconnected communications and navigational systems.

Wolffe and Cody hover back in watchful silence, take in just how serious Tech was about it being a one-man ship, one-man mission, and then alternate periodic perimeter checks just for something to make them feel useful despite the obviousness of the fact that the Empire is done with the planet and Rex would never dare touch it again.

“Tantiss,” he grunts, fighting his way through circular layers of firewalls and encryptions, “only tracks the vessels through jumps. Any live beacons would risk compromising the stealth-shielding – and they’re more concerned tracking the operatives than the ships themselves.” Neither Cody nor Wolffe react audibly to that, but he can somehow hear their grimaces in the silence as they watch and wait. “The vessel knows its way home, the trick is to stop it from announcing that it is coming.”

“Can you do it?”

“I assume that is a rhetorical question,” Tech mumbles as he inputs one last... “Done.”

It occurs somewhere in the back of his mind, only a few hours later, that it might not have mattered either way.

They arrive to find Tantiss in the middle of a massive manhunt operation extending off of the western side of the mountain.

Tech takes them on an arcing sweep to the southeast before pushing in closer under the cover of darkness and finding a gap in the thick jungle canopy to set them down a couple klicks from the base of the mountain. “Did something get out?” Wolffe asks, leaning over the back of the seat and straining to peer into the ominous shadows rising up around them. “Or is something trying to get in?”

He doesn’t know – but all of his prior calculations about the feasibility of slipping into the base, accessing the CX division wing, decrypting his way into higher clearance intel… they’re all upended in an instant.

If all the typical routines are turned upside down, unfamiliar patrol patterns… if all eyes are outside the fortress rather than monitoring what is happening within…

“Cody,” Tech murmurs. “Gear up.”

He has the audacity of considering them lucky. Of finding good fortune in whatever crisis has befallen Tantiss, has drawn the eyes of Hemlock, his commandos, his other operatives, beyond the jealously-guarded internal workings of his secret facility.

“If someone’s escaped,” Cody murmurs over comms as they slip away from the ship, fade into the shadows while Wolffe stays back and stays ready to come collect them or cause a new distraction, should things go amiss. “We might be able to –”

“That’s not the priority,” Tech dismisses. He can feel Cody’s judgmental stare at his back as he picks his way north and listens for wildlife, for patrols. “The southern quadrant of the mountain is home to the CX division,” he begins a hasty sitrep that ought have happened en route, but he could not have predicted – “The only exterior access is via the hangar perhaps a third of the way up, and a landing platform at the highest level. I had thought to scale my way to the hangar but considering the situation at hand –”

A creature lets out a low, warbling howl somewhere to the east. An echoing cry carries on the wind through the trees, and Tech thinks to comm back to Wolffe, “Keep an eye out for the local fauna. It bites.”

They pause at a ventilation shaft near the base of the slope. Tech takes a minute to consider it, the access hatch, what appear to be deactivated sensors installed around the opening, and deduces, “The mountain is not simply hollowed out, but burrowed under.”

“What’s so precious that it has to be stashed underground at a base that’s already unheard of and impossible to find?”

But Tech shakes his head, peering up the slope and then as far around before the jagged terrain curves around on the eastern side. “That is not the salient question at present.” He plants a small detonator at the hinge of the hatch door, pulls Cody around to duck behind a jagged boulder, and scans the sky for any sign of activity. “There are any number of security mechanisms that should prevent unauthorized transit in or out via this point and all of them are deactivated. Why has Tantiss shut down its main reactor?”

They wait thirty seconds for any sign of a response after blowing the hatch before lowering themselves carefully down the ladder one after the other. At the bottom is another hatch that opens without the theatrics, and Tech drops down into a room that, at a glance, serves as a hub for monitoring and maintaining the air cyclers feeding the subterranean levels.

A single nervous technician stares at him and gets out a vague, “Um…” before a quick stun shot has him out cold. By the time Cody drops down behind him, Tech is dragging the limp figure away from the console so he can start fighting his way into the communications network.

And then the ground beneath their feet rumbles with some disruption within the mountain – he’d contemplate a groundquake, were it not for the obvious chaos already unfolding. “Tech?” Cody prompts, blaster in either hand trained on the closed door. “Talk to me.”

Updates flash by on the screen faster than he can process. He prioritizes emergency channels, filtering out the standard check-ins from the manhunt underway in the jungle, and feels his brows rise slowly up his forehead under his helmet. “Tantiss has possession of the Zillo Beast,” he murmurs, and then reconsiders as another distant rumble shakes the room. “Had,” he corrects mildly.

He digs back further in the comm chatter, searching for any hints as to the situation that will greet them beyond this room.

The report on Adm Rampart being detained gives him pause.

He skims, faster and faster, blood running cold as the words fly by on the screen.

Science vessel, orbital station, compromised –

Admiral Rampart and Clone Force 99 –

Search teams deployed to crash site –

No bodies discovered in the wreckage.

Clone Force 99 presumed to be advancing on base with intent to infiltrate Vault.

“They’re here,” he relays, voice blank, his whole body frozen and numb. “Cody…”

“Who?” But he’s shocked into silence, he cannot understand, he was too late, it is dawning on him with horrible despair, he left them behind, hunted and vulnerable in the jungle but…

But they’re trying to get in… not out.

Cody risks taking his eyes off the door long enough to come scan the reports that have reduced Tech to paralyzed shock. He doesn’t swear though, doesn’t panic, doesn’t fall into Tech’s state of confusion as the entirety of his schemes are upended.

He tips his head and, frown evident in his voice, asks: “If they’re outside trying to get in… then who released the Zillo?”

…intent to infiltrate the Vault…

“Oh,” he realizes, and the obvious path forward dawns.

He starts tearing through encryptions in search of schematics.

Chapter Text

Even protected inside the wall, the Zillo Beast’s rampage is awful. Even if it’s Hemlock’s worst lackeys suffering for it, smacked into control consoles with fatal force, and stomped on and, well…

Omega pulls Eva and Sami around to look away, while Jax mostly cranes around to check on Bayrn and scoff his incredulity as the baby drifts off into a peaceful slumber. She wishes there was some other way – for all the awfulness that was being brought to Tantiss, for all the surreal cruelty of the Vault, it was cruel in its isolation and monotony, in dangling the hope of home before them with no intention to see it through.

She hates being the one to expose them to this, but… it’s the only way to get them out. To find her brothers, they came, they must have done, and every resource Tantiss is forced to divert to the Zillo is something they can’t throw at Hunter and Crosshair and Wrecker.

A part of her might have once felt bad for using the tortured creature so, but it’s certainly holding its own and, as the attackers fall away, turns its attentions in the direction Omega really needs, to make this a mutually-beneficial rescue.

The Zillo starts looking for a way out. They’re deep in the mountain, she knows this, but the Zillo is smart, it’s angry, it’s free, if only its superior instincts and senses can guide it…

The beast freezes as it catches some scent or some current or something and cranes its long neck up, up…

Then it starts climbing.

They linger hidden away in the wall long enough to decide there are no other units coming to try to contain the Zillo. Either because they know it’s headed up and are re-deploying to counter it, or because they’ve exhausted their troopers, or simply because they know it’s useless – impossible to say, but by now she knows that they’ll know it was her, it was them, even Bayrn, all of Hemlock’s secret specimens gone and causing chaos.

Meaning… they can’t afford to linger long. It’s a balance and she has no way to know if she’s getting it right, as she decides the shock of the rampage has worn off enough to nudge them along, to guide them out of the hidden passage and into the wrecked containment chamber. Part of her wants to poke around for anything useful, but there’s nothing, not really. As much as she’d like to at least grab a dropped rifle, she’s going to need her hands free for what comes next.

Omega walks up to the wall where the Zillo scaled its way up higher and higher towards the promise of freedom – catches the glint of light above, spies the ladder that must be leading towards the door or hatch or vent that the Zillo sensed and clawed its way desperately to reach – and knows what they’ll have to do.

Jax confesses his fear of heights.

Omega thinks about Wrecker, brave and kind and devoted Wrecker, and promises him that he can do it. “Stay focused on what’s ahead,” she smiles.

He swallows back the nerves and steels himself. For what’s ahead, the chance of freedom, the chance to go home. For the unlikely squad found in the heart of the Empire’s evil, the five of them, even Bayrn, and unknown dangers between them and her brothers.

But they’re here, she knows they are, and if she can just find them… help them in so that they can help the children and the rest of the prisoners out…

If she can just find them, they can do it. She believes that.

She has to.

She’s barely put a foot on the first rung when the groan of scraping metal brings all of her hopes crashing down around her. Someone’s coming, they’re too late, they’re exposed and unarmed, unless –

Omega pivots away from the ladder, waves the others into the nearest corner and the weak pretense of cover it might offer, scattered debris and consoles torn up from the durasteel decking, and dives for the nearest trampled trooper and his rifle half-buried beneath him. She tugs it free with a clatter of plastoid armor and backs away as slow footsteps echo around the ruined chamber, modulated murmurs filtered through helmets.

Hemlock wants them; Hemlock needs her, even if she doesn’t truly understand the science behind the why. They’ll set for stun, be reluctant to bring too much force to bear at once. She can use that, maybe, for a time. Can maybe pick off a few as they come into sight, but there’s so little cover and once she gives away her position that’s that advantage gone. She has four defenseless children counting on her, that she led here, and the bitter taste of failure threatens to rise up into her throat and choke her as she catches the first glimpse of armor peeking around the corner.

She fires a shot just past the wall and the helmeted head ducks away. “Stay back,” she orders, forcing calm she does not feel, fighting to keep her voice and her hands steady with every ragged breath from a terrified Sami huddled behind her.

“Omega,” a voice says – a clone voice, free of the helmet vocoder. “Wait.” The grip of a blaster slides into view and lowers to the ground, and then another. The trooper nudges them away with his foot before he sidles cautiously around the wall with his hands empty and displayed. “I’m a friend of your brothers.”

She takes in his appearance – he’s a reg of course, little to distinguish him besides a long scar curving around the left side of his face. Standard armor, except for some grey paint. It could be true, but she knows there are some clones still serving Hemlock, they aren’t all prisoners, and it’s a smart trick if he wants them alive and unharmed. “I don’t know you.”

“No,” he agrees, eyes roving curiously over her as so many do upon learning she’s a clone like them. “But it’s true. My name’s Cody. Commander Wolffe found me – he let you go, on Teth, he had… questions. Found me, and told me what Rex said about Tantiss.”

All that means is that he had talked to Wolffe; Wolffe might regret letting them go. Might have been detained for letting them go, and confessed the whole of the encounter. She tightens her grip, steadies her feet, and shakes her head. “I don’t believe you. We’re not going back to the Vault.”

It’s the genuine bafflement that flashes through Cody’s eyes that gives her pause long enough to consider he isn’t trying to trick her. “We?” His gaze finally slides past her, to where Eva is peering out over the top of an overturned console, and the breath leaves him all in a rush. “Oh no. How many of you?”

She gnaws on her lip, lowers the weapon slightly, tries to decide what to believe, and admits, “Three kids and, um -” Bayrn chooses that timely moment to fuss himself awake with a disgruntled cry. “The baby.”

Cody turns and murmurs urgently to someone else out of sight, too quiet for her to catch the words; when he turns back, Omega has her aim steady at his face once more. “Omega, we have to –”

“Who else is with you?”

“I,” he glances sideways, takes a step towards her – pauses as she tightens her grip and narrows her eyes – raises his hands in front of him and winces. “It’s… complicated. I need you to trust me.”

“Let them go,” she steps away from the scant cover, two big steps back towards the ladder. “Let them go and I’ll cooperate.”

But it’s useless, she knows it is, Jax and Eva and Sami know it is by the strangled cries of protest, they don’t have her training, the best they might hope is to reach for the top and find her brothers waiting for them. It’s a desperate chance, but it’s the only chance she can fathom in her frantic calculations, and if she can just hold off their pursuit long enough to cover their climb, then…

“It would really be safer if –”

“I don’t trust you,” she snarls. “I don’t want to hurt you, but –”

“Omega,” another voice cuts in – distorted, wrong, and her lungs freeze in her chest when the operative steps around behind Cody and moves up to his side. Hands held out in a show of peace, but she can see the pistol on his hip, the sniper rifle on his back, she knows the ruthless persistence of the clones Hemlock’s taken and tortured and turned into this. “Breathe.”

But her throat tightens as the failure washes over her; she struggles to keep her aim steady as her eyes blur with tears, and her voice catches on some useless protest when the operative moves, when he reaches for his helmet –

When he tugs it off and –

The exclamation dies on her lips as her arms drop automatically, as the weapon slips out of her hands entirely and clatters to the deck. She’s gone mad, she –

“Omega,” Tech pleas softly, and it’s his voice, it’s his face, scarred and gaunt but it’s him, it’s – “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He takes a step forward; she stumbles one back and he freezes, crestfallen and guilty. “No,” she gasps. “No, you – you fell, you…”

It takes a minute though, for the full ramifications to truly sink in. As she tries to slot together the pieces, Cody and Wolffe, Rex, the rebellious clones, deserters and resisters, and how, how could he have survived, why he never came home, but it…

It’s wrong, the picture that takes form, and she summons the bravery to really look at the pieces and assemble them properly.

The horrible black armor. Hemlock with the goggles on Ord Mantell.

Wolffe and Rex. He let them go, but if he didn’t go back to the Empire…

“You fell,” she breathes. “On Teth.” Tech stares at her sadly. “You tried to kill us.” Devastation crashes over his expression as he closes his eyes and balls his fists at his sides. Her voice hitches around a sob. “We left you. Left you and let Hemlock…”

“Omega, no, you… you couldn’t have –”

“Tech,” she gasps, and stumbles forward until she’s crashing into him, throwing her arms around him, that dreaded operative’s suit and all. He gathers her up in turn with only a moment’s hesitation, kneels down so he can do the thing properly as she sobs out the grief and the fear and the shock for a precious minute’s pause on the pressing urgency of escape.

“Omega,” he murmurs by her ear. “We need to get the children out. I didn’t know.”

She pulls back and wipes at her face, hiccups a final sob as she drinks in his own tear-streaked cheeks. “The others?”

“Somewhere in the jungle, we think.”

“You think? You didn’t… come together?”

A strangled laugh escapes him, is echoed from Cody as he finally braves stepping forward to coax the others out from their hiding spot. “Would you believe not? An opportunity presented itself, in Wolffe’s turn, in my recovery. We thought to seize it, gather intel so we might plan a proper assault on Tantiss.” He touches a hand to her cheek, cautious, like she’s fragile – or like he simply cannot believe his eyes. “We were too late. He already found you.”

But, “No,” she determines. “Not too late.” She looks around at Sami stepping out last while Cody looks Eva over before turning to Jax and Bayrn, taking stock of their wellbeing. “We’ll do it together.”

Tech smiles faintly, leans forward to ghost a kiss against her forehead, and picks up his helmet again with great reluctance in his movements. “Get your weapon,” he instructs, before hiding himself away once more in brutal anonymity. “We’re leaving a different way.”

Omega swallows thickly and turns, realizes she’s beaming despite everything as the others look uncertainly to her for guidance. “It’s going to be okay,” she says, and realizes she means it.

And then the same screech of warped metal heralds the arrival of somebody else.

“Back,” Cody urges them, picking up his discarded blasters and placing himself solidly between her and the other children and the doorway. Omega tucks her rifle under her arm and ushers them out of sight, grimacing as Bayrn goes back to fussing. Sami hurriedly starts to unfasten the makeshift sling around Jax so she can take him, try to keep him quiet.

Omega returns to the corner where she presses herself out of sight – cannot read the look Tech turns her way underneath the chilling helmet – and holds the rifle up close as the door gives with a final grunt of exertion.

The last voice she’s expecting offers a faint gasp of surprise before a cautious, “Stand down, troopers. Doctor Hemlock sent me to assess the damage.”

“The chamber is unstable,” Cody conjures easily enough while Omega can only clutch her rifle close and despair. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but for your own safety –”

A shriek from Bayrn pierces the air. Cody and Tech’s demeanors pivot in an instant, weapons held aloft, while another voice out of Omega’s sight repeats, “Stand down. The specimens are Doctor Karr’s concern and the project at hand classified. She will see them back to the Vault.”

Omega sighs and rounds the corner. “Emerie,” she pleads. Rifle held ready but pointed down, while Tech and Cody have their weapons trained on the stormtrooper at her side. “Please, just –”

“Omega?” the stormtrooper exclaims, his own aim directed at Tech faltering.

Omega startles and straightens in surprise. Cody and Tech do much the same. Bayrn shrieks again and the trooper visibly deliberates before tucking his weapon under his right arm so he can reach with his left to pull off his helmet and –

“Echo?” Cody holsters one of his blasters and tugs off his helmet in turn. “What…?”

Tech holsters his sidearm and takes a cautious step back. Echo’s eyes dart between the three of them, confounded and lost for words, while Emerie bites her lip and glances about anxiously at the sounds of Bayrn’s rising discontent, the sounds of Sami and Jax trying to shush him still.

“Cody,” Echo realizes blankly. “What are you…? How did you…?”

Cody shoots a look at Tech, who looks to Omega, who can only shake her head and shrug helplessly before stepping up close to him, curling her hand around his arm. “Echo…” she starts, watching the way he tenses at their proximity. “Hemlock um…” she swallows, throat suddenly tight. “On Eriadu, he.”

But she can’t say it. It’s too awful. Echo looks from her distraught face to the black mask tipped down to look at her and pieces it together anyway. “No,” he breathes, but belies his refusal by stepping slowly forward towards them. Emerie takes the opportunity to sidle nervously past Cody to go collect the children.

Omega just clutches Tech’s arm as Echo looks him up and down and asks faintly, “…Tech?”

Tech sighs and lifts the faceplate without fully removing the helmet. Grief and relief and rage and self-recrimination fly across Echo’s face even as he reaches over and grasps Tech’s shoulder, looking for a moment like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. “There’s no time,” Tech murmurs and Echo grunts and nods, short and terse, swallows back those same suffocating feelings still bubbling just below the surface of Omega’s outward calm. “Echo, are the others still in the jungle?”

“I expect they’ll make for the Zillo’s point of egress.”

“And I expect Hemlock will expect that. Cody?” Tech looks around. “Change of plans. We’re taking down Tantiss today, right now.” Cody’s pauses a moment, shrugs, and pops his bucket back on his head. “Echo,” he reaches in a pouch on his belt and withdraws a small comm, “take the children and the doctor up,” he cranes around and peers up at the distant destruction wrought up top by the Zillo, “wherever that leads. If it’s clear, use the comm to contact Wolffe for an extraction, get the children out, top priority.”

“Wolffe?” Echo repeats.

Tech ignores him. “I need to deal with the conditioning chamber, and the lab.”

Emerie comes up behind them, Bayrn in her arms, the other three children clustered nervously around her. “What about the prisoners?”

Omega’s heart swells and she can’t help the grateful smile she throws at Emerie even as she braces herself against the inevitable objection when she offers the only sensible solution. “I can take Cody to the detention level.”

Cody looks cautiously from her to Echo to Tech and back. “Do you… know the way?”

“I used to sneak down to visit Crosshair when I finished my work early.” 

She’s not expecting Tech to recoil in horror. Not expecting the look he throws at Echo, almost accusatory, and realizes, “Oh. You didn’t know.” It’s somehow more devastating than all the rest of it, the way the fury broadcasts so openly on his face when she admits, “He found us just after… after,” she can’t say it – she can barely believe it, all things considered. “It was months before Crosshair and I finally escaped.”

Chapter Text

Their entire approach to navigating the mountain has to be reimagined, with the young ones in tow. Echo can still masquerade as a stormtrooper, and Emerie’s access opens all of the doors they need, but the children shuffling along nervously in their wake won’t stand up to much scrutiny, and any report of their passing, however unconcerned and casual, will give away their position, their route, their destination.

So Echo grimaces and sets for stun, which is frustratingly cross-purpose to the day’s ultimate objectives but, well –

They’re terrified enough as it is. Were stolen from their homes and hidden beneath this mountain some unknown duration of time ago. Have persisted bravely today after putting their faith in Omega, and it’s daunting somehow, to be the successor to that trust. To have them look to him with hope in their eyes simply because he is Omega’s brother and she told them he’d help.

And he will. Obviously, he will.

But they’ve already been forced to witness the Zillo Beast’s rampage, and he doesn’t have it in him to kill anyone else so dispassionately right in front of their eyes. So he sets for stun, feels the great weight of this task he’s unexpectedly taken on, and carefully leads them on at Emerie’s murmured guidance.

“That trooper…” she murmurs as they clear another eerily abandoned corridor. “He was – that’s Tech.”

With how readily she recognized him… with how absolutely Omega’s life was upended on the heels of that grief… he can only imagine the tales Emerie must have heard about Tech, too. “Yeah.” Another open door, another empty room behind it, some sort of maintenance hub. He supposes he’d hurry to evacuate the subterranean levels too, with the unfolding calamity shaking the mountain around them. “Did you know?”

“No.” She says it quickly enough that he risks looking around. Whatever complicated emotions are flitting across her face though, it’s not dishonesty in her tightly-drawn eyes, her thinly-pressed lips. “I’m sorry.”

Doing my job, Emerie had justified, excused, despaired.

The children, Echo knows, were a recent discovery. The truth of the Vault kept hidden from her during the long months of Omega’s imprisonment and for however long before.

He can’t help but wonder how long she’s had the sense of waking up. Of the hundred little things catching her eye, tugging at her conscience, sparking questions she so determinedly buried behind a lifetime’s conditioning.

He wonders when she really knew it was all a lie.

For the first time, he starts to suspect it’s not altogether dissimilar from watching clone brothers turn on their beloved Jedi commanders, and the spiraling series of events and revelations culminating in the extraction of their inhibitor chips on Bracca.

It occurs suddenly how oh-so-very differently things might have played out. If he had made it out of the Citadel in one piece, at Rex’s side, and only found himself taking aim at the Jedi with all the rest of them and the dawning horror of the gradual awakening.

A hundred answers he wants from Cody and Wolffe and Tech, impossibly him, impossibly here – but Cody, he knows from Crosshair, walked away a long time ago. And Wolffe…

It strikes him all at once, the implications of timing and circumstance.

And there’s no time to deal with it. “Wolffe,” he murmurs instead into the comm when they’re in the relative safety of an enclosed lift. “It’s Echo.”

“I read you, Echo. It’s… I’m glad you’re safe.”

He swallows back bile at the realization, of how Tech and Wolffe came to be here together. “Likewise, sir,” he grunts. Old habits. “How’s the situation outside?”

“Quiet on the southern face. Think the Zillo was generous enough to keep the party focused to the west.”

He glances around at the ragtag bunch clustered in around him and Emerie and sighs. “I’ve got four younglings and a scientist, a… friendly. We’re on the northwest side trying to follow the Zillo’s path out and could use a pickup.”

The way Wolffe doesn’t even ask any clarifying questions, Echo can tell he’s been sitting on his hands resisting the urge to break his cover and come rushing in, blasters blazing. “I’ll scout it out.”

Echo double clicks an acknowledgement, secures the comm, pulls the rifle back into his hand and nods at Emerie to get them moving. “You kids are doing great,” he says, as gently and reassuring as he can manage to sound under his helmet, dressed the way he is. “Just a little further.”

He only had to stun one brave pair of guards down in the Vault; up top, the situation is equally dire for Tantiss. “Most of the forces were sent in pursuit of the Zillo,” Emerie scans her datapad clutched tight in her hands. The baby is slung on the Mirialan boy’s back, and when he has a moment to actually breathe later, Echo looks forward to hearing how the kids managed it, how Omega managed to rally them with such fierce determination and dedication and bravery in so short a time.

“He won’t have left this undefended,” Echo mutters as they creep along in dim hallways illuminated by backup power strips. Cast into ominous shadow by the flashing of red emergency lights, descended into uncanny silence as he expects the wail of alarm klaxons to accompany and finds them nonexistent or shorted out or cut. He’d be grateful for the silence not stirring the baby again, but wonders if they wouldn’t be better served by something to mask his unpredictable cries instead. “Wolffe?” he prompts, handing over his rifle for a moment to a startled Emerie so he can fish the comm free once more.

“There’s a helpful hole in the mountain, alright. Landing field, by the shuttle wreckage I clocked on a fly-by. Multiple gunships headed off into the jungle along the path of the river but if there’s any activity at the site I’m not picking it up from the tree line.”

“Alright. Then we need to hurry.”

He starts to swap the comm for the rifle when it crackles back to life with an urgent, “Wait – Echo –!” that’s cut off again when a rumbling beneath their feet heralds an explosion close at hand, too close, noise and heat washing down the corridor from the compromised point up ahead.

The thing about unanticipated explosions near a ruined hangar, with fires burning and potential fuel spills, is that it could be – well. As near to nothing as they might hope.

The report of distant blasterfire undermines that hope before it has time to properly set in.

“Think we found your squad.”

He swears, hurries the kids along down the empty hallway, looking for somewhere he might stash them away from the vulnerable exterior walls, weakened by the creature’s bid for freedom and… whatever Hunter and the others are up to. “Abort,” he tells Wolffe. “Cody?” There’s a click of acknowledgment, so he assumes he and Omega are moving more cautiously on their particular mission. “Wolffe’s going to start scouting an extraction point for the prisoners. Let him know what you need when you can.”

Another click and he pockets the comm before shoving the children unceremoniously in a supply room. “I need to go ahead and make sure it’s safe,” he tells them, tells Emerie apologetically. “Just – stay here and stay quiet. Lock it if you can. I’ll… I’ll be back,” he says, and hopes it’s a promise he can keep.

He slips through a set of bay doors that are stuck open a meter, groaning on their tracks, sparks still flying from the control panel. Follows the heat and flames, ducks around a ruined shuttle, and it’s quiet, beneath the flicker of burning fires, beneath the ambient noise of straining generators and the distant jungle, it’s too quiet, they –

A shot slams into the shuttle behind him and he swears, drops and rolls and ducks behind the cover of another ship.

A crackle of energy catches his ear and then a strangled roar from Wrecker. He follows it through the labyrinth, takes aim at a – he’s not even sure, another operative like Tech but better armored, and the energy staff he’s trying to impale Wrecker upon is unlike anything he’s ever seen in the hands of an Imperial trooper.

The shot distracts him enough at least for a twitching Wrecker to drop the staff and swipe at the trooper’s ankle, bringing him crashing down half-atop him and opening up a path for Echo to come around and look desperately for the others.

He sees Hunter first, being secured by another dark trooper, limp and unconscious – he hopes unconscious. “Crosshair,” Wrecker gasps, voice worryingly weak and ragged, but Echo’s able to follow his line of sight to find Crosshair pinned on the ground, flailing futilely against an operative outfitted like Tech and it’s discordant as Echo takes aim, shooting at that same empty mask that only minutes ago slid up to reveal the face of his dead brother.

But the operative raises a blade above Crosshair’s desperately struggling arm and Echo swallows the reservations and fires.

It catches him in the shoulder, sends him spinning to the ground. Crosshair lunges, snatches up the sidearm he was fumbling for, rolls over on his belly and fires three shots into the trooper’s chest and that’s that.

As Echo pivots though and takes stock of Wrecker’s situation once more, he realizes quickly that it’s the only victory they’ll have. There’s four of them in the same intimidating armor, energy weapons poised and waiting and only too obvious in the threat implied.

Wrecker on his knees and panting, his helmet torn off and discarded so they can see the angry snarl warring with the haze of pain and it’s not just the staff, Echo notes in dismay, deep gashes torn into his chest armor he doesn’t dare imagine don’t extend into the vulnerable flesh beneath.

Crosshair stumbles up by his side, weapon up and ready, gasping and overexerted. “I hope you’re Echo,” he snarls, aim pivoting wildly from the trooper poised behind Wrecker, pair of charged bolas swinging ominously in hand; to the one holding a blade desperately close to Hunter’s exposed throat, his face terrifyingly slack.

“Don’t think your hand’s complaining either way,” he mutters back, tipping his head as one of the troopers starts to circle around them, double-barrel blaster leveled steady in their direction. “Not winning this one, Crosshair,” he keeps looking around but there’s nothing, there’s no one else, there’s Hunter and Wrecker vulnerable and a moment from death if they don’t cooperate.

Crosshair’s voice is trembling but firm when he argues, “If I cover you, you can slip back through, you can still save her, Echo, you have to –”

“Omega’s safe,” he assures him softly. “Safer than us, certainly.” Crosshair finally risks tearing his eyes away from the lives of his brothers dangling in the balance before him while he’s utterly helpless to save them. “She’s with a friend.”

“Who?” Crosshair demands, but Echo’s already reaching slowly down to lay his weapon on the ground. “Echo…” He fumbles discreetly for the comm in his belt and drops that on the ground, too.

But to the best of his knowledge, Tantiss doesn’t know about Tech and Cody, and he shakes his head, nudges Crosshair’s aim down with his scomp, and raises his hand (and scomp) up in the air. “We surrender,” he calls, perhaps a little prematurely as Crosshair swears and only then drops the sidearm with a clatter.

“This is a bad idea,” Crosshair grits out at his side. “You know what he wants from us.”

He swallows thickly as two of the troopers advance, and thinks he might know better now than Crosshair imagines. “Trust me,” he says, taking a step forward and crushing the comm beneath his boot.

Cody and Omega should have long made it to the detention level. By now, he expects as many prisoners to be armed as they can incapacitate the guard troops and steal their weapons. They don’t need a miracle, they just need the backup, they need an opening, they need…

They need Emerie and the children to stay safe and patient until Echo can circle back around to collect them.

The troopers reach them then, no concern for gentleness as they yank off their helmets and toss them aside, as they wrench their arms behind their backs and secure them. At the first explosion of panicked breath from Crosshair, Echo wonders if he hasn’t failed to grasp just how deeply rooted this fear is, if Crosshair will be able to stay alert for the moment he’s hoping they’ll be able to seize.

The distress only intensifies as a soft, slippery voice carries across the ruined landing field. “A wise decision.” He recognizes Doctor Hemlock as he approaches, unarmed, unconcerned, only a single commando over his shoulder as escort. “You must be… Echo,” he offers an imitation of a smile that looks wholly unnatural under his cold, cruel eyes. “Forgive me – we did not have the good fortune to meet back on Ord Mantell.”

The way his eyes rove over Echo’s head and scomp in fascination makes something crawl beneath his skin, and he can only imagine what experiments this twisted bastard would have in store for him, given the opportunity.

Crosshair snarls a little, earning the butt of a rifle to his shoulder, but Hemlock just turns his placid somewhat-smile on him. “Welcome home, CT-9904.”

In the background, Hunter’s being loaded up on a hover cart and floated away. Two of the troopers march Wrecker along after him, and Echo eyes his stumbling, unsteady gait and feels his eyes tighten worriedly.

Hemlock chuckles. “We’ll take care of them, CT-1409. Don’t you worry.” He nods their escort on, and he and Crosshair get paired shoves forward to urge them along. “Omega is still missing,” Hemlock laments. “But you clones are nothing if not predictable. She’ll turn up.”

“You so sure that’s a good thing?” Echo mutters.

Hemlock chuckles. Unlike the smile, he hears something genuine in the amusement, and cannot entirely comprehend why considering the waste already laid to his fortress – until they step back through the battered blast doors and discover –

“You’ll cooperate,” Hemlock predicts serenely. “And Omega will hand herself over.” Crosshair’s eyes blow wide at sight of Emerie and the children huddled under the threat of their armed guard, the baby held tight in Emerie’s arms again, blasters trained on the children’s vulnerable little bodies. “Your loyalty to each other is the most troublesome part about you, as a species.

“But today,” he gestures the guard on; Emerie catches Echo’s eye and he sees her terror, but there’s resolve too, and he dares to hope she hasn’t given the game away, “that devotion will serve me quite nicely.”

Their escort ushers them along to the head of their miserable procession, past the cowering children, past the cart bearing Hunter’s unconscious form, past a worrisomely unaware and wheezing Wrecker. They set off, towards the detention level Echo can only assume, he hopes, because Omega and Cody went there to release to prisoners and they’ve surely done so by now, they’ll be walking into an ambush that’s admittedly more complicated with the younglings in tow but –

“Time to begin your reeducation,” Hemlock says as they begin the trek.

At Echo’s side, Crosshair trembles violently.

Chapter Text

Everything hurts.

Something’s not right in his chest, he knows that, has known it since he struggled back to foggy awareness in the jungle. And his back, come to think of it, but that pain is more familiar after years of fighting, explosions and crash-landings. Crashing through the hillside on Eriadu.

Something’s not right in his chest, but then again that’s been true since Eriadu and he just needs to hold on a little longer. Like he held on for Hunter, all those long months searching, pulling him back, making him rest. Like he’s tried to do for Crosshair, to help him see he’s got something worth fighting for, worth staying for.

Like he has to do, now, so they have some hope of finding Omega and taking her away from this place for the last time.

Like he failed to do for Tech.

Like he has to do somehow, now, despite the pain in his back and something cold and just wrong in his chest, because Hunter’s down and Crosshair’s shaking with panic, because Echo hasn’t stopped fighting like hell to make up for what the Techno Union did to him and Wrecker will be damned if Hemlock gets another go.

Because they came for Omega and they can’t fail this mission.

Because otherwise, as he stumbles along with one of the monstrous troopers on either side and blinks in and out of the railcar dangling over the mountain pass –

He drops Tech again and again and each time will have been for nothing if it all ends here. He just doesn’t – doesn’t know how. With Hunter down and Crosshair panicking and Omega missing and Echo staring stiffly straight ahead with defiance in his gaze and his gait.

With the children rounded up and marched along behind them, the scientist Omega talked about almost like a friend, a baby in her arms.

Too many bystanders. Too many unknowns.

Incalculable variables, Tech would have said.

But he works it over again and again, aware of the tension in his wrists, the scant pressure it would take to snap the binders if he only knew what comes next. They’re a squad, a team, a family – and Wrecker holds on even as he can feel the ragged edge of his breathing, even as the cold slides worryingly into numbness, because he can see them breaking, he can see them falling, one-by-one, and the one thing he knows is that whatever might come to pass, wherever they’re headed…

If he can’t hold on and keep them together, then the very least he can do is fall first this time.

He can tell they’re nearing their destination by the way Crosshair’s terror starts to win. Fighting the binders, enough it’s got to be killing his wrists and shoulders. Gasping for breath, without the helmet to muffle it at all, to even out the unsteady whine. It’s enough to break Echo’s concentration, but Crosshair won’t look over to meet his worried gaze, won’t look back to Wrecker who can only watch his brothers be marched ahead of him to whatever fate scared Crosshair enough to hide his lead back to Tantiss until Omega was taken, again.

Wrecker glances around at the escort flanking them, thinks back to the operative who killed most of Rex’s men and chased them all the way to the extraction marker on Teth, and supposes he knows already.

He can tell they’re nearing their destination…

And the sorry, sniffling parade of them stops entirely. But he’s not quite right, dazed and desperate, and almost crashes into Crosshair before a trooper grabs his shoulder, halts him with a grunt that he doesn’t realize right away came from his own throat.

He looks up –

And finds their path obstructed by a single one of Hemlock’s dark troopers. Standing in the corridor outside an open set of blast doors, rifle held pointed low but ready and Wrecker can see Crosshair trembling with fear; can see the way Echo shifts his posture, watchful and wary.

Hemlock and the commando at his side react almost the same. The other operatives are still and quiet around, them, waiting for orders.

The silence stretches on some span of time Wrecker has lost all chance of estimating. Something has confused Hemlock’s plan – all Wrecker can see is one of the vicious weapons that attacked them on Teth, that stole Omega on Pabu, that pinned down Crosshair before Echo turned up at just the right moment.

The silence stretches on, and it’s probably shorter than it feels, seconds at most, before Hemlock says, “So - you survived, then.” He raises a hand – signaling the guard to fire on his own operative, Wrecker thinks, until he startles and snarls, makes a cutting motion to call them off, and it’s Crosshair’s strangled exclamation that forces Wrecker’s eyes over to –

Omega.

Coming through the blast doors, a stormtrooper’s rifle in one hand and something clutched in her other fist Wrecker fuzzily, absurdly, thinks might be a remote detonator. Walking out and planting herself at the operative’s side.

“Hold your fire,” Hemlock grits, because he needs her and they don’t understand why. “You’re outgunned,” he notes, voice vibrating with frustration. “And have far more to lose.”

More to lose, the whole lot of them rounded up and wrapped up neat and tidy. They’d die for Omega, every last one of them – he hopes she knows that, however much she’d fight it. But it’s not just them at stake, it’s the scientist she thinks of like a friend, it’s the four younglings who are whimpering behind him –

“Wrecker.” He blinks away from Omega’s furious gaze to where Echo is peering back over his shoulder. A sad sort of smile on his face, but it’s reassuring too, and Wrecker lets himself be reassured, comforted in the thought that he has a plan, of course he does, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s followed orders and caught up along the way. “Plan Seven, big guy.”

It’s not what he’s expecting to hear.

It doesn’t matter. He breaks the cuffs with an almighty tug and, since he’s right up close behind Crosshair, follows through and snaps his in the same vicious motion. The guards move to shield Hemlock, lower their weapons in a moment’s uncertainty while Hemlock worries over Omega falling to errant blasterfire, but it doesn’t matter because Wrecker –

Dives the other way.

He barrels into the trooper at his back, hurls him around with an almighty roar and sends him careening into the wall head-first. The doctor and the children shriek and shrink back as he lunges for the cart holding Hunter’s unconscious figure, tipping it to upend him into a pile on the floor with a clatter of armor before whipping the cart around the other way with as much energy as he can muster.

One of the advancing stormtroopers goes down as it swings around and catches him at thigh-level. Another stumbles back and trips over yet another, sending them both down in a heap. Wrecker yanks the thing, pulls it over on its side so it crashes down to the ground, and drags it up close behind Hunter’s limp form, the best he can buy him for makeshift cover. “Kids,” he barks, sweeping out his arms and pulling them in and down in a ragged pile around and atop Hunter, before he throws himself over the scientist who instinctively tucks the baby closer in her arms.

He covers them as best he can like that – no weapons, just a shield, a body between the whole vulnerable lot of them and -

An almighty explosion blasts a wave of heat from the chamber out into the corridor. He flinches in close, feels the shaking from the kids more than he can hear their cries. Ears ringing, he cranes around in time to see Omega similarly bundled up and shielded between the operative’s body and the far wall before they unfold and straighten up, weapons in hand.

Omega picks off two of the stormtrooper escort while Hemlock’s men are still reorienting, floundering for orders, for priorities, for permission to salvage the situation. 

The operative kicks a blade to Crosshair, on the ground in the wake of the explosion. Crosshair snatches it up, rolls around to break the connection of Echo’s binders that he holds out and offers as best he can from his prone position, before whipping the thing with deadly precision at the first of the recovering troopers to take aim.

Echo kicks off and shoves hard into Crosshair, rolls them into the wall as a retaliatory blaster bolt misses them by mere centimeters.

The knife thrown at such close quarters hits its mark where blasters against reinforced armor fell short. With a gurgle and a gush of blood pouring down his suit, the fierce trooper with that awful electrostaff collapses to the ground, and prompts Hemlock’s snarled order at last to, “Withdraw!” as his defenders fall away.

Wrecker braces himself for a last almighty push. To defend his vulnerable charges, when Hemlock inevitably gets it in his head to use them as hostages again, as leverage –

It never matters.

Because when he turns back around to take stock of the trembling children, of Emerie and the baby, of Hunter’s form only just starting to twitch with signs of consciousness – coming up the other way, the same way they did, crept up behind them in the distraction, is a group of six ragged prisoners, faces drawn and unkempt, all of them armed with trooper rifles. And at the head of them all –

“One chance,” Commander Cody tells Hemlock, the commando and last two stormtroopers, his two operatives left standing.

Wrecker watches them freeze and glance around. Omega and the friendly operative moving forward past the twisted metal and shattered glass blown out of the chamber that scared Crosshair so much, moving forward to cover Crosshair and Echo. Except Crosshair scrambles for one of the dropped stormtroopers and tosses his rifle to Echo, snatches up another for himself, and plants himself decisively in between Omega and her unlikely ally.

The moment stretches on, suspended tension and half-raised weapons. He can see the failure dawning on Hemlock’s face as he realizes their pinned position, seven armed opponents at their front and four at their back. He can see Hemlock’s look slide sideways to him, unarmed, covering his vulnerable charges.

He can see the moment Hemlock decides he might as well take as many of them with him as his final, cruel revenge. He growls – tries to, anyway, but it’s hard to force the air from his lungs in his cold and aching chest. His breathing is loud, it occurs, and not in the fun sort of way that means they’ve been wearing themselves out fighting, making a game of it, taunting battle droids on after them and taking them flawlessly down.

Wrecker shoves up to standing and plants himself between the weapons and the children, the unarmed scientist, his unconscious sergeant. “Wrecker…” Cody says, but he’s got eyes only for Hemlock whose hand is inching towards his commando’s sidearm…

The ground rumbles beneath their feet – another explosion, more muted, distant – and the pinned hostiles explode into motion in the moment’s distraction, weapons rising –

“Down,” Cody barks, and Wrecker has a sense of Crosshair dragging Omega to the floor out of the line of fire, of Echo shoving the operative sideways into the wall.

Wrecker pivots and throws himself back down over the children as a flurry of blasterfire erupts in the corridor. A shot scorches the wall half a meter above them and he pulls the children in closer as they whimper and try to shrink away. A blaze of fresh pain erupts in the back of one shoulder and he cannot tell if it is a new wound or simply the cascading effects of too much collapsing around him, inside him all at once.

The corridor falls silent again and Cody – maybe, maybe Echo, maybe a prisoner, it’s hard to tell over the ragged gasp of his own breath – calls, “Clear,” and he’s relieved to see Hunter’s face twitching with pain before he shoves off and away. He’s belatedly aware of the feeling of falling and then already landing with an Oomph of fire lancing out from his shoulder; some seizing ache radiating down his spine suggesting the damage is only getting worse.

“Wrecker,” he hears Omega gasp and then she’s there crashing to her knees at his side.

He reaches for her, except his arm’s too heavy and he settles for smiling hazily and promising, “M’okay. Just gotta… catch my breath.” She stares at his damaged chest plate and then looks frantically over the rest of him. “Check on… on Hunter,” he asks, but there’s already someone, Cody maybe, helping disentangle him from the terrified kids.

And then the helmeted head of the operative is swimming into view and he can’t… keep straight who’s who, who’s an ally and who’s not, and he groans and tries to summon one last burst of energy so he can –

Gloved hands descend on his shoulder and, “Don’t move,” he hears Echo fret, and “Omega…” Crosshair warn before the operative is unclasping his helmet and pulling it up off over his head.

Tech’s face swims into view, scarred and scared, and he’s lost his goggles somewhere but it’s Tech’s face and Tech’s voice who murmurs, “Hold on, Wrecker.”

Hold on. He can do that. He has to.

But all he manages is a vague, “Huh,” before the dark edges around his vision finally drag him down into the blissful peace of unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

His body feels like one big bruise, and he’s back on Kamino, collapsing in his bunk in the safety of their barracks after a hard day’s drilling battle tactics.

A rumble and a wave of heat washing over him and he’s back on Itar 7, watching on in helpless horror while Wrecker throws himself between him and Tech and Crosshair and the detonator they’ve just tripped.

The sounds of children whimpering in fear and he’s on Pabu, realizing they were too late, realizing what they’ve brought down on the hidden sanctuary that embraced them.

He aches and he cannot move – strains to even open his eyes. Can hear a familiar voice in the way that all the regs are familiar underneath the slightest shifts in unique pitch and cadence. Can hear grunts of exertion that he knows are Wrecker and Crosshair without knowing how he knows, the sounds of their distress are simply implanted in his psyche.

Can hear a voice that is unmistakably Hemlock, a voice he will never forget. The man who tortured Crosshair, who captured Wrecker and taunted Tech’s death and stole Omega away. The man who sent his minions to steal her again and he claws his way desperately towards full consciousness, he has her, they came for her, they must be so close –

“Hunter,” a quiet voice murmurs near the side of his head. “You have to relax, you’re wounded.” She almost sounds like Omega, and she doesn’t. “It’s going to be okay.” Another whimper close at hand and the voice pauses to gently soothe the child – why is there…? – “You came to save Omega and now Omega came to save you.”

The ground shakes and another rush of shouts and shots ensue. He grunts as a weight presses into the bunch of them he decides must be piled close together on the hard ground, the voice in his ear and the crying children – and then it’s over.

Omega’s voice rings out in the silence that falls.

Hunter fights to bring his mind and his body back online. His squad needs him.

“ –lab’s completely destroyed, I don’t know –”

“ –Nala Se said she –”

“Has anyone seen –?”

“He’s coming around.” Hunter squints against the flashing red lights and flails a bit pathetically, trying to brace himself, shove upright, get up and – “Whoa there. Easy. You’re alright.”

“Hunter!”

The pain soothes away and he tries again, forces his eyes open, forces them to adjust and finds her tear-stained face peering down on him upside-down. “Omega,” he rasps and the smile that erupts through her tears is worth it. He blinks the closer visage better into focus and it’s a reg but one he can easily – “…Cody?”

“Getting that a lot lately.” A hand wraps firm around his bicep. “Can you sit up?” He groans and casts around while he considers it, sees a young Iktochi kid peering anxiously down at them being corralled off, looks over Cody’s shoulder and sees a few figures clustered around something or someone. “Got a couple shuttles secured for evac but we need to move. We’ll put you back on the hover-cart if we have to.”

The grunt that escapes him doesn’t quite come out as a specific refusal, but he braces himself with his right hand, clasps Cody’s forearm with the left, and lets himself be hauled up to sitting. From there, he can better assess the chaos – and the carnage, stormtroopers and operatives dead on the floor – Hemlock left ignominiously amongst them, and part of him wants to know who had the satisfaction before he just as quickly decides it doesn’t matter.

Echo’s crouched down and murmuring to a trio of nervous children next to a woman who can only be Emerie, a baby – a baby – held squirming in her grasp.

A great organized effort between several clones in prisoner jumpsuits gets Wrecker hoisted on the hover-cart in question and his chest freezes up as he grasps for Omega. “Wrecker –”

“He’s… he’s going to be alright,” Omega says, more defiant than confident. “We have to get him out of here. But… Hunter…”

“Crosshair,” Echo barks, and Hunter cranes around to see Crosshair standing some paces removed, standing uncaring amidst the dead, staring and trembling.

For a moment, as Hunter follows his gaze, he thinks it’s fear for Wrecker – wonders if Omega hasn’t underplayed his condition.

But then the cluster of prisoners parts and he has a clear line of sight to the last person left kneeling beside the cart, head tipped low to listen to Wrecker’s breathing. It’s the suit that first catches his eye, unmistakably one of Hemlock’s operatives. A black-gloved hand tugs Wrecker’s massive arm up to tuck in close against his body so it isn’t hanging off the cart, turns to look up at the prisoner hovering at the controls of the thing –

“Wha -?” he gasps and shoves upright all in one almighty burst of energy. Cody swears and hurries to grab his arm as he staggers, Omega clutches at his hand and only a few scant meters away, attention drawn by the sudden activity –

Tech turns to look at them, a very complicated expression on his face before it fades into something almost scared, scared and vulnerable.

“Tech,” Hunter breathes.

Tech just tips his head down in terse acknowledgement, glances meaningfully towards the numb and frozen Crosshair, and then climbs to his feet. “Time is a luxury we ought not assume we possess, at present.”

Echo’s already been privy to this revelation, by the way he takes charge of Emerie and the children and leaves the rest of them to get sorted. Omega as well, by the way she takes Tech’s silent instruction and doubles back for Crosshair, picking her way uncaringly past Hemlock’s fallen figure and taking the tremoring right hand tightly in her own and tugging him along with her.

“Time for stories later,” Cody murmurs, and Hunter doesn’t even have it in him to shrug off the support he lends to his unsteady steps out of sheer pride. “Let’s go.”

They collect a handful of prisoners standing guard at every major junction as they make their way to a landing field. Cody keeps a hand hooked firm under Hunter’s arm the whole way, and he tolerates it because he’s too busy casting wildly from the slumped Wrecker being carted along in front to the pale and haunted Crosshair coming up behind, led by anxious Omega.

To Emerie with the Tarlafar baby and two prisoners who have collected the Mirialan boy and the Pantoran girl – the little Iktochi insisted on walking on her own, taking two steps for every one of the rest of them and her little hand wrapped around Echo’s elbow just above his scomp.

To Tech leading the way with a sniper rifle in his hands and wearing armor that tells its own story in gut-punching, heartbreaking detail. Hunter stumbles on in a horrified daze, guilt rising up in his throat and choking him –

Until they reach the evac shuttles and are greeted by Wolffe, directing the children one way, the cart with Wrecker another and he… suddenly understands Crosshair’s stunned state with a little more clarity. “We’ll go to Rex,” Cody murmurs as the evacuees sort themselves and board. “Echo says he was… standing by for intel on Tantiss.” He smiles a little lopsided at Hunter’s dumbfounded stare. “Guess that’s one mission he gets to sit out.”

Omega and Crosshair finally catch up and Cody leaves Hunter to go confer with Tech and Wolffe before they split up, Wolffe following Echo and Emerie aboard the first shuttle while Cody and Tech pivot towards the second.

Omega doesn’t wait for an invitation. “C’mon,” she grabs Hunter with her free hand and pulls them both along, aboard the ship and away from Tantiss once and for all.

Hunter and Omega and a prisoner who introduces himself as a field medic named Lex do what they can for Wrecker with the lacking supplies in the onboard medkit while Tech and Cody go up to the cockpit and get them on their way. Bacta and medpatches and a rebreather to help push oxygen into his struggling lungs and Omega’s calm and collected and crying all at once while she helps carefully pull his torn armor away.

He has a vague sense of the ship lurching to hyperspace, but they keep working. Crosshair’s still in his horrified stupor, but he peels the backs off of bandages and hands them over as Lex finishes doing what he can to clean the wounds. “He’s… he took a rough blow in the jungle,” Hunter confesses to Omega while they work. “He might need a real medbay, he’s probably broken some ribs at the least.”

Soft footsteps approach before someone kneels stiltedly by his side. Hunter pauses, shoots a careful sidelong glance at the hunched and terse figure, a strange sense that if he moves too fast, if he speaks too soon or too loud, he’ll scare him off.

Tech waves a medscanner over Wrecker’s head and chest, exhales a noisy breath through his nose, and agrees, “There is significant internal damage beyond our capacity to treat in transit. Echo says Rex should have the resources on Pantora to ensure that Wrecker and any prisoners in need of medical attention are well-tended.” He hesitates there and Hunter risks a longer look before glancing up around to Crosshair’s haunted expression, over at Omega’s wide and wet eyes, over to the prisoner medic assisting them, who blinks once and clambers to his feet.

“I’ll just…” he sidles awkwardly backwards to join the close-huddled collection of his fellow liberated clones who mostly appear to be in shock at their abrupt turn of fortune.

“And… the children,” Tech continues in a low mumble. “They will need to go home of course. If… if they have a home to which they might return, I don’t – perhaps Omega or Doctor Karr better understands their circumstances, there was not time when we discovered them, the…evolving understanding of the situation, the priorities we –”

“Tech,” Hunter lays a hand on his arm, on that awful dark suit. “I don’t…”

“I’m sorry,” Tech mutters, soft and despairing, one hand gripping Wrecker’s slack arm like a lifeline. “I wanted – I tried to… to make it right. But it was too late.”

Behind them, Crosshair swears under his breath and stomps off, followed by the sound of him sliding noisily down against the nearest bulkhead. Omega tracks him, her beseeching expression either unheeded or unseen at all. Tech just hunches in on himself even further. “I do not know how to… how to express my – ”

Hunter shifts around and drags him in close. Feels his subtle trembling, the raggedness of his breath with his composure hanging by a thread. “How?” Hunter croaks against his shoulder.

“Quick thinking by Wolffe,” Tech doesn’t exactly return the embrace, but he doesn’t pull away either. “Creative thinking by Cody.”

It’s not necessarily the how he meant, the one that has guilt and horror vying for dominance in his heart. How it’s possible at all, how he could have possibly survived.

Maybe Tech misunderstands; maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s simply too awful. But he takes Tech’s lead and refocuses his attention to more recent exploits, which are only slightly easier on his own conscience.

“You were on Teth.” Tech’s whole body hitches in a silent sob. “Tech…” He pulls back and catches Tech’s shoulders as he curls in on himself, cups his face with one hand and then the other. Stares at Tech’s miserable face, the hints of what he’s been through etched in new scars, in the damp tracks running down his cheeks, in the way his gaze is determinedly cast down in his anxious shame. “You weren’t too late. The squad needed you, terribly – and you were right on time.”

Voice thick with tears, Omega mumbles behind a curtain of hair as she leans over to check on Wrecker’s breathing, “That’s what I said. He found us, Hunter,” she looks up, eyes shining and lip wobbly. “He and Cody. We made a plan, tried to distract them, tried to find a way out because I knew you’d come, Crossha –”

“I missed,” Crosshair snarls. Hunter watches Tech glance uncertainly from Omega’s faltering face to Crosshair, hiding away with his head in his hand. They’re the first words he’s heard from Crosshair since the blast knocked him out. “I let you go, and then I missed the shot.”

He slams his trembling hand against his thigh in frustration. Hunter sees Tech follow the motion, sees the moment he realizes – and Crosshair sees it as well. He braces for the explosion, because Crosshair is hurt and confused and vulnerable, and it has always been his nature to lash out at such times. A quick glance around shows the prisoners huddled in the hold are at least putting on a decent show of not paying attention to the squad’s implosion in a very confined space.

Still, he tries. “And you figured it out anyway, Crosshair, you still –”

“And you,” Crosshair jabs a finger at re-tensed and wary Tech. “You’re impossible.”

“Crosshair!” Omega exclaims.

“They track their operatives,” Crosshair reminds them, eyes wide and wild and wet with tears most would simply mistake for angered exertion. “It’s what lured him to Rex in the first place, or have we forgotten that?”

“The homing device was dealt with,” Tech says, halting, a little uncertain, like he cannot quite discern the root of Crosshair’s outburst.

“It’s not that simple.”

Tone going abruptly cold, Tech snaps, “I said nothing about simple, Crosshair. Cody and Wolffe did what had to be done.”

The quiet that falls over the hold betrays just how much, indeed, every last person occupying it is listening to their grief unfold.

The two of them glower at one another for the span of ten heartbeats before Crosshair blinks first, swears and turns away, turns his face down to glare at his right hand he’s compulsively massaging with his left. A very complicated blend of worry and sadness, guilt and frustration, flickers across Tech’s face before he drags his attention back to Hunter and Omega, valiantly trying to hide her sniffles in the wake of the sudden bitter tension.

“We’ll be alright,” Hunter murmurs. “It’s – it’s a lot and we’re all bruised and exhausted –”

“And worse,” Omega adds miserably, watching the weak rise and fall of Wrecker’s chest under all the bandages.

“We’ll get patched up at Rex’s new base.” All of them undoubtedly, in their ways, and plenty of them not even physical. Tech flinches and ducks away a little, makes a show of smoothing out the bandages so he doesn’t have to look at them.

Hunter sighs. Not so simple, indeed – nothing easy. But somehow, impossibly, they’re together. Hemlock’s dead, can never again come for Omega, got every last bit of deserved comeuppance for the hell Crosshair endured, for the unfathomable horror that became Tech’s existence instead of the death that seemed the only possible outcome.

They’re together. They’re going to see the children and the prisoners to safety, get themselves sorted, and then –

Then, Hunter realizes with a sudden rush of calm, a hitherto unfathomable wave of peace – he plans on taking his family home.

Chapter Text

The two hours’ heads-up Echo comms him with nothing more than, “Two vessels coming home, bringing friends, mission accomplished,” wouldn’t have been enough time to sort the support and supply from Senator Chuchi, had they not already been in constant contact and on edge after Rex helped Echo steal an Imperial shuttle, returned to base to gear up, and then didn’t hear from him again for thirty hours.

Rex suggested the senator might best keep her distance until they have a better grasp of the situation, of what’s transpired during the long comm silence. But she’s standing two meters to his left with her principal bodyguard hovering over her shoulder, her arms crossed over her chest while they stare out at the distant lights of Pantoran City coming alive with the setting sun.

Two more guards finish loading the last of the supplies off the nondescript shuttle they brought from the government center to the makeshift base she’d generously offered in a decommissioned armory when he decided Coruscant was growing too tenuous. He’d thought it too risky – and been proven terribly correct – but he and Gregor, Howzer, and Echo are still getting their feet back under them after Teth.

Now they stand at the open blastdoors of the half-covered rooftop berth, expecting they know not what. Mission accomplished ought have meant the coordinates for Tantiss, but he has an incredulous sort of hope that somehow it means, well… Tantiss itself, and has begged the senator’s help, gladly given, to stock up to hypothetically feed and make comfortable the number of known prisoners pulled from Nala Se’s datapad.

Senator Chuchi changed the requisition to double that, just to be sure, and Rex glances at her to his left and Gregor and Howzer to his right and hopes they aren’t getting their hopes up for naught. For the third or fourth time since receiving Echo’s message, Gregor asks in flat disbelief, “Did Echo raid Tantiss without us?” and just as every other time, Rex can only shrug in reply.

The first vessel descends into view, hovering over the rooftop before maneuvering under the cover and turning so it’s nose out. An Imperial shuttle but distinctly, Rex can’t help but notice, not quite the same model of the one he’d helped Echo acquire – he checks his chrono – thirty-two hours and twelve minutes ago.

Chief Rachi murmurs on his earpiece and Rex takes note of the two guards posted in the berth placing their hands on their weapons, at the ready. But then the ramp lowers and it’s mere seconds before the first cautious footsteps are descending into view and Rex finally confirms, “Gregor – Echo raided Tantiss without us,” and starts forward.

After three paces he stops again when the third prisoner to come haltingly down the ramp has a Tarlafar youngling in his arms. “Oh, hell,” Howzer mutters behind him before snapping into action, hurrying forward in time to greet the Mirialan boy and Pantoran girl who venture down hand-in-hand.

The second ship comes into view and settles carefully at its companion’s side. Rex starts to shift his attention that way, clasping wide-eyed and stunned but smiling brothers on the shoulder as he passes, Senator Chuchi and her men stepping in to conduct more of a triage. Echo’s appearance with a young Iktochi holding his arm just above his scomp stops him right where he is.

Unlike the other nervous children, the girl beams right up at him and says, “Hi, I’m Eva.”

Rex blinks at Echo, his headpiece missing and in bright white stormtrooper armor; Echo glances meaningfully over at the other ship. Kneeling down to Eva’s level, Rex takes her little hand in his and shifts around, points her towards Howzer with the littlest one in his arms and Lieutenant Chakhu talking with the others. “That’s Howzer there, and Lieutenant Chakhu, they’re going to take you kids somewhere to rest and eat and see what else you need, okay?”

She shoots a last look at Echo, braces herself at his reassuring nod, and hurries off at Howzer’s beckon and smile. Rex climbs back to his feet, opens his mouth to start demanding what in the nine Corellian hells happened – and snaps it closed just as quickly when the final pair come down the ramp behind Echo. A uniformed woman with her head ducked down a little, avoiding eye contact and – “…Wolffe.”

“Rex.” He’s got his bucket under his arm and his eyes drawn tight, he looks so somber Rex is sure someone must have died. But Wolffe just says, “I heard you, brother. About all of it.”

He smiles weakly – glances around in disbelief, gladly returns the forearm clasp – and points out, “When I said you could stand with us, I didn’t mean go do the thing yourself.” But Wolffe’s mood doesn’t lighten. A bit of commotion from the second ship is maybe indicative of why, one of the senator’s guards hurrying forward with Gregor to help maneuver a hover-cart down the ramp unmistakably bearing Wrecker. “Echo…”

“He’ll be alright.”

“The others?”

“All fine.” Indeed, Crosshair and Omega come down next and don’t even spare a look around while Gregor guides them off inside to their cobbled together excuse for a medbay and the 2-1B the senator brought along as well. “This is Emerie. Don’t think we’d have all made it out if she hadn’t stepped up to help.”

Rex hears what Echo’s saying under the words. That she knows the part she’s played, but that she renounced it of her own free will. That she’s with them now, whatever that might come to mean.

It’s similar to the path tread by plenty of clones come to join their side – and in some ways, it’s very much not. Her whole life’s circumstances, Rex suspects, will be a tricky thing to untangle, but in the meantime – “Welcome, Doctor Karr. I’m sure Senator Chuchi would like to talk to you soon, but,” he waves her towards the huddle of prisoners still collecting the last stragglers from the second ship, “Go settle, catch your breath. You’re safe here.”

When she’s gone from earshot after a grateful nod, Rex takes a moment to take stock of the chaos. Twenty, maybe twenty-five prisoners in varying states of emotional overwhelm, chatting lowly with each other, staring out at the distant city lights, exchanging quick words with the guards; four younglings, looking exhausted but excited enough, turning every which way to take in the scene, the little Pantoran talking earnestly to the somber senator.

With Gregor, Wrecker, Crosshair, and Omega disappeared inside, it just leaves him, Echo, Wolffe, and a conspicuously absent Hunter. “Care to explain?” he prompts mildly to both of them, either of them.

“It’s a long story.”

“Echo, I left you in a stolen shuttle thirty-two hours and,” he checks his chrono, “sixteen minutes ago to come back to base and wait for your call.” Echo’s mouth presses into a peeved line. “Now that’s a long time to wait for a call, but not so long the story can be all that complicated – let’s start with the highlights of the post-action report, hm?”

Echo raises his brows and jerks his head over towards the second shuttle. Rex follows the gesture impatiently –

The air punches out of him. He crosses the distance between the two ships so fast it leaves Echo and Wolffe scrambling along in his wake, stopping at arm’s length to look him over, familiar scar, unfamiliar armor, its bright accents exchanged for sober grey.

A sad sort of smile on his face as he shakes his head. “How is it you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Cody demands. “You’re supposed to be dead, brother.”

Rex lets out a strangled laugh and reaches out finally to clasp his shoulder – Cody pulls him closer, like he’s still confirming the evidence right in front of his eyes. “Crosshair said you walked away,” Rex murmurs.

“Should have done it sooner.”

He pulls back – sees the awful understanding in Cody’s eyes, raw and grieved. “They used us, Cody; stole our humanity.” All the brothers he’d known, fought beside, trusted with his life, every last one of them reduced to the single purpose of Order 66 until it claimed their lives, one and all.

“They didn’t stop there.”

Cody’s got the same heavy somberness Rex noted in Wolffe, and he takes a moment to look at the lot of them, Echo and Wolffe hovering nervously close at hand, Cody standing between him and the ramp, almost like he’s blocking the way. “Making me nervous, lads.”

It’s Wolffe who speaks up. “My team went back to the monastery, Rex – on Teth. Found the – the operative you captured.” Rex shifts around to frown at Wolffe, uncomprehending. “The other one, the one who came for him – he survived the falls.” Echo blows out a harsh breath and rubs tiredly at his forehead. “Clawed his way back up out of the ravine half-dead and we recovered him. After that, after you, I had… questions it seemed unlikely the Empire would be willing to answer. One of my men was in contact with Cody’s network.”

Any other situation and he’d jump on the phrase Cody’s network but for now his impatience and frustration are warring for the greatest foothold in his reaction. “One of you, cut to the chase.”

“It’s Tech, Rex,” Echo grunts, face turned down to the floor but the emotion thick in his voice anyway.

“…Tech?” Their silence is their only affirmation. “I don’t –” He doesn’t even know where to begin processing that and its downstream implications. “Okay. So what does this mean?” He thinks about Hunter, still nowhere to be seen and sighs. “Do they all know, Echo?”

Echo blinks at him, confused. “What? No, Rex, he’s – Wolffe got him to Cody, he…  I don’t know if it was seeing the squad or… getting blown up and dropped off a waterfall or just being away from Tantiss long enough to start breaking free, but…”

For a moment he takes it to mean Tech is at Cody’s operating base, wherever that might be – but then reconsiders Hunter’s conspicuous absence paired with the way Cody is half-blocking the ramp and demands, “He’s here?” He stares up into the shadows of the dim hold. “They can track them, he –”

“No one left to track kark-all,” Cody promises. “Anyway,” he adds darkly, “we took care of it,” and there’s definitely an unhappy story there.

Rex looks from him to Wolffe to a deeply-unhappy Echo, glances back up at the dark and quiet ship, and tries to piece together the complicated puzzle of events and encounters. “And then you lot went to Tantiss.”

“Found the kids just before Emerie and I did,” Echo says. “Damn near got in a shootout before Omega stood us down.” He grabs Rex’s elbow and pulls him around, leans in close. “Look – they thought they were going for intel; Tech never expected to end up here. Not now, anyway, not yet, not like this.”

“Echo –”

“Hunter could really use a onceover in medical and I wouldn’t hate getting one for Tech too, if he’d cooperate, but afterwards if you’d rather –”

“Echo. Just – relax.” He pinches at the bridge of his nose, tries to work through the implications and complications – and takes the coward’s way out. “You deal with,” he waves vaguely up into the quiet shuttle, “this. Just take care of everyone, whatever they need. I’m taking Cody and Wolffe to catch up with Howzer and the senator to start figuring out where we go from here.” He raises his brows and fixes Echo with a stern look that has him straightening unconsciously like a shiny. “And then you are going to explain to me exactly what happened with Rampart.”

Echo shrugs and chuckles a little guilty, a little rueful.

“We’ll talk after that, alright? Once everyone’s had time to…” To what? To sleep and refuel? To calm down? To grapple with yet another example of the Empire corrupting and using them to their twisted ends? “…We’ll talk.”

It’s a complicated cloud on an unexpected happy ending. And for the Batch, he realizes, a complicated happy ending on the cloud of the tragedy of Teth still hanging over them all.

A piece of him wants to find affront in Echo’s nerves – no brother they’ve coaxed into walking away is without his share of guilt for deeds committed under Imperial orders. Echo’s own guilt for being turned against his brothers still motivates and weighs on him every day, as much as he tries to pretend otherwise. Whatever was done to Hemlock’s operatives, it was worse than the chip and Rex remembers only too keenly the desperate struggle, fighting against the compulsion long enough to relay the intel that ultimately saved him, and doomed his men to die.

There are desperate few of them who don’t share in that coerced culpability, even those of them who do not know, who don’t understand. Tech was one of the lucky ones, his chip extracted before it might overtake him, and there’s a compounded cruelty in this revelation and he wants to head it off, assuage his fears, but…

He and Wolffe and Cody reach the old canteen – the kitchens aren’t yet functional, but there’s an assembly line for food on one end and another for basic kit, blacks and bedrolls and personal supplies. He takes in the sight, a couple dozen brothers freed from hell itself, chatting and laughing, the kids sitting amongst them and every bit as excited…

He spies Howzer sitting at the end of one table talking with Emerie. Howzer, who was bound for Tantiss, who separated his conscience early from the inhibitor chip’s coercion – who pulled men along in his wake and watched most of them die before Echo and Gregor could extract them, and Rex knows he only just made a tentative sort of peace with Crosshair’s role in it.

Losing the last two members of his Ryloth squad on Teth is a raw wound Rex suspects will never fully heal.

It’s not different, not really – it shouldn’t be. They’ve embraced clones who have agonized over the terrible things they’ve done compelled by the chip, done under orders while grappling with their purpose and their loyalty, and Hemlock’s conditioning was a step well past that. That was obvious long before they had confirmation of what the operatives even were.

But whatever role Tech played in the undoing of Tantiss – a huge one, from the hints he’s piecing together – Tech’s never going to see it more than a grasp for atonement forever out of reach. And Rex realizes, as Gregor slips in the room, catches his eye with a cheerful smile that tells him he missed Echo and company down in medical – expecting Howzer and Gregor to rationalize easy absolution and extend a welcoming hand is an unreasonable ask.

Cody clasps his shoulder, stirs him from his brooding, and nudges him into the room. “Come on, Rex – a lot of very grateful brothers are waiting to meet you.”

“I can’t believe Echo raided Tantiss without me,” he mutters, and lets himself be led.

A full rotation passes before he manages to carve out time to track Tech down. Aside from Omega, who’s flitted in and out to check on the kids, to play with them and help them feel more at home, more at ease, to help them trust their new hosts while they wait to go home – the others have mostly stuck close to the makeshift med bay where Wrecker is bandaged and braced and peeved to be on bedrest.

When he does finally make it down though, it’s just Hunter and Crosshair sipping caf while Wrecker devours a bowl of spicy Pantoran dulrice like it’s the best thing he’s ever had.  “Hey, fellas – how we getting on?”

“Never better,” Wrecker declares, and Rex believes him, monitors and bandages and all.

Crosshair tips his mug towards Hunter and says, “The Two-One-Bee told him to avoid caf for a week.”

Hunter takes a defiant sip and ignores him. “Echo and Tech went to go play around on the HoloNet. Something about finding the little one’s home.”

He finds them in the communications hub with Emerie. Tech with a datapad linked in to the HoloNet port while Emerie relays something quietly, until Tech pauses and points out, “We could just track down Bane.”

“Yeah,” Echo snorts, “because that worked so well for the squad last time.”

“What…happened last time?” Emerie asks, looking like she isn’t quite sure she wants the answer.

Rex taps on the doorframe before Echo and Tech can start bickering about that incident. He catches Echo’s eye when he cranes around, nods vaguely at Emerie, and Echo takes the hint, nudging Emerie up with, “Let’s let Tech work,” that’s not at all subtle, considering Rex’s arrival.

He goes and settles himself in Emerie’s abandoned seat and listens while Tech launches right into it. “Echo and I have built an algorithm to scan planetary emergency channels for reports of a missing Tarlafar youngling in a three-day window on either side of Doctor Karr’s reported handoff with Cad Bane.” Rex hums and leans over to peer at the datapad. “The Tarlafar people are unfortunately quite dispersed through the galaxy since the days of the Tahladrian Crisis, in consideration of which the algorithm has prioritized its search based upon population statistics in descending order.”

“Makes sense.”

“Finding the other children’s homes will be easier.” Indeed, Senator Chuchi had already located Sami’s in a small farming community on the other side of the planet. “But I fear they should not… go home,” Tech frets. “If a bounty hunter identified a target then in all likelihood someone close at hand called in the tip.”

“We know, Tech.”

“Relocation will be a daunting prospect most likely but is, I suspect a… price happily paid in exchange for reunion.”

“The senator will help.” Tech lets out a slow breath, hand hovering over the datapad, like he wants to busy and distract himself with something else and can’t quite fathom what. “Tech?” He gets a furtive sidelong look and an unhappy scowl. “I’m glad you survived – and I’m not saying that because we have a connection, or because you took it upon yourself to deal with Tantiss, but because we always knew Hemlock’s operatives were victims, too. We just – didn’t know how to help them.”

So soft he has to strain to hear it, Tech mutters, “We killed them all, Rex. Knowing that fact better than anyone – I did not even hesitate.”

“All the action you boys saw in the war, you know damn well – sometimes it’s just down to saving the ones you can. And I’ve got a couple dozen smiling brothers upstairs who never thought they’d have hope again, let alone actual freedom.” Tech props his elbow on the console and rubs at his forehead, breath coming in forcedly even rhythm. “Everything that happened on Tantiss, all the effort here – you can’t fix it, Tech. You can’t fix it, because it wasn’t your fault. Okay?” He twitches – not quite a flinch – and says nothing. “When we recovered Echo, nobody started tallying the bloody cost of the Separatists using his strategies – and if he walked back in here right now and told me he was done, I’d say it was a well-earned retirement.”

Tech straightens and shifts his chair around enough to catch his eye, if only fleetingly. “And if I said I cannot help but feel I owe it to you, or to Cody – to your mutual purpose – to stay and help where I can?” He smiles sadly and rests a careful hand on Tech’s forearm. Tech reads the answer in his eyes and answers the question himself, resigned but not surprised. “Too close to home, as it were.”

“Tech, I would tell you what I wish I could have told Echo the day we pulled out of Anaxes. What I wish was even fathomable to us then.” Tech looks up at him a little more squarely at that. “Your mission is to go home, because you have one that desperately wants you back. Your mission is to heal, because you have time, and there is no next battle to rush into.”

Rex sighs sadly as the first tears finally slip past Tech’s tight-pressed eyes. Leans in so close they’re almost forehead-to-forehead and urges him, “Your mission is to let them take care of you, because you have a family that has a chance they’d thought they lost forever to be whole.”

Chapter Text

On the fifth morning after their arrival on Pantora, Crosshair stands with Omega up on the covered rooftop deck and watches while two ships settle one after the other in between the Tantiss shuttles and the Remora.

Bouncing on their heels with excitement off to their left are Eva and Jax, gently staying hands on their shoulders from Rex and Cody, until the ramps begin to lower and they let them go. At Rex’s other side, Senator Chuchi laughs a little, and a little sadly, and Omega discreetly wipes away a tear.

And Crosshair grudgingly decides, watching Cody and Wolffe’s men newly arrived from Coruscant with their charges in tow – watching Eva go flying into her father’s arms at the base of one ship and Jax into his uncle’s at the base of the other – that it is, indeed, when he dares to admit, quite touching.

Rex and the senator lead them inside to go join Sami and her mother and start discussing next steps. Next steps that Crosshair isn’t ashamed to be glad won’t be his problem, their problem, the squad prepping for its own return to Pabu. Cody and Wolffe move to greet their men, to introduce them to an ever-eager Omega, and those are just the ones that could be spared from whatever setup Cody’s running.

He catches up to Omega in time to get the last introduction from Wolffe. “This is Lynx. A lot would have unfolded very different, he hadn’t stepped up and guided our way.”

Lynx takes the hand Omega offers and tells her sincerely, “It’s good to meet you properly – and under far better circumstances than last our paths crossed.”

Omega and Wolffe see the new arrivals inside for introductions over caf. Cody hangs back on the hangar deck and comes to hover at Crosshair’s side, following his gaze to the Remora where Hunter and Tech are carrying supplies aboard and Echo is chasing Wrecker off the other way yelling at him about not doing any heavy lifting.

“I’d have taken you with me, you know,” Cody fires into the semi-silence, whip whipping through on the heels of an overnight storm, Hunter’s voice echoing and bouncing down from inside the ship. “At the smallest hint of a sign you were willing to go.”

Crosshair sighs and glares down at the ground but concedes, “…I know.” Knew it from the moment Rampart said Cody walked away. There are… countless what-ifs lurking somewhere in the darkest recesses of his mind, desperate could-have-beens he’s learned enough to leave locked away and unexamined. But the one that’s too constant, too loud, has been since the day he discovered what his good turn had wrought – “Thank you,” he forces out. “For helping Tech.”

It’s not a righting of the universe’s wrongs. A belated and cruel course correction, if anything, and however undeserving Tech is of his silence, his distance, the compounding weight of guilt and regret is suffocating. An unnavigable minefield that chokes him, chokes off the words they’re all waiting for him to find.

I’ve made mistakes, he finally forced out for Hunter in the wake of near calamity once more at the Outpost. What can he possibly say to the beneficiary of every last unintended and unforeseen consequence of them?

Cody claps his shoulder. “You boys are going to be alright.”

“You so sure about that?”

He chuckles under his breath. “I met Omega five days ago after she fired a warning shot about ten centimeters from my head. She was ready to take on Tantiss single-handedly to get those kids out, to find you boys. I don’t think she’ll let you not be.”

It occurs to Crosshair that they’re going to be untangling the confusing series of events on Tantiss for weeks. But, “Yeah,” he grunts, “fair.”

Crosshair sits at the base of the Remora’s ramp while the squad gets their last farewells out of the way. Exhausted his sentiment with Cody and just wants to get going and endure the mirrored scene of eager greetings for their triumphant return. But Omega exchanges tearful embraces with the three children, and then does it again before turning to Emerie with Bayrn and having a soft conversation that has Emerie pulling a grateful smile as she nudges her on.

Hunter and Wrecker have a long, earnest chat with Rex and Cody while Tech offers somber gratitude and farewells to Wolffe’s man Lynx and the others who made the run from Coruscant. Inside the ship, Echo finishes the pre-flight prep and comes down to hover by Crosshair’s side, a silent and unhurried signal that they’re ready for liftoff.

While they’re walking them over to the ramp, Crosshair catches Rex mid-sentence, “…kids and their families settled, we’ll shuffle a ship along to you boys.”

Hunter nods his gratitude. “Thanks, R –”

“Shuffle a what to whom?” All eyes turn to Tech, coming up from the other side, his brows furrowed in consternation before the lingering silence has his eyes narrowing into accusatory slits.

They all blink around at each other with the realization.

Omega, probably understanding she’s the most difficult target if Tech decides to start laying blame, stammers, “The ah… the Marauder got… well…”

“She got blown up,” Echo finishes flatly. “When the Empire came for Omega. Probably…” he frowns down at Crosshair, considers, and decides, “Yeah, probably by the operative I shot when I found you boys getting your shebs handed to you?”

Crosshair looks quickly away from the blank stare on Tech’s face and grumbles down to his lap, “I shot him more.”

Tech pats his shoulder as he starts up the ramp, a light touch, barely there and gone again.

With a tired sigh, Crosshair shoves himself to his feet so he can follow, so they can be on their way, so he can start figuring out… everything – but he barely makes it two steps before hurried footsteps come flying into the hangar and Howzer calls out, “Fellas, hold up a second.”

He stutters to a stop and braces himself. Shoots a quick glance up at Tech, hovering tense and uncertain while Howzer approaches, before turning himself. “What?” he demands with no real heat in it.

They’ve… avoided this, mostly. Hiding away with bedridden Wrecker. Tech flitting around behind the scenes without particularly asserting himself in the process of debriefing the prisoners, sorting out what they want moving forward, keeping everyone comfortable and safe.

It doesn’t take Tech’s mind to fathom how severely unimpressed the onetime captain is to have learned that Crosshair withheld the information that ultimately led them back to Tantiss. He can’t even imagine how he feels knowing that the operative who singlehandedly killed most of Rex’s squad effected a huge part of the Tantiss mission himself, however accidental that conspiring of circumstances.

Sometimes he thinks the only reason he doesn’t find it more discordant himself is that he vividly remembers pinning them all down in a Venator engine and ordering it brought online.

There is something hard in Howzer’s eye, and gruff in his voice when he tells them, “HoloNet search came through – think we’ve got a likely match on Bayrn’s mother on Caraad.” He tips his chin down in a quick acknowledging nod, gaze fixed above Crosshair up at Tech. “Thought you’d want to know.”

He pivots and leaves again, abruptly as he arrived, before anyone can do more than nod.

As they make their approach over the island, Omega leans over Echo’s chair, bouncing with excitement while Tech takes them in. Nobody says anything about the zigzag flight path as Tech flies low near the destruction of the docks, brow furrowing, before arcing them around and up to set down near the Archium, opposite the colonnade from the Providence.

“I negotiated us a quiet welcome,” Hunter assures them as the Remora settles into place. Tech’s hand hovers over the hatch control as he cranes a curious look around, awaiting elaboration. “Just Shep and Lyana.”

“And in exchange?”

Hunter smiles, lopsided. “Dinner at Shep’s with everyone who wanted to be here?”

Tech considers a moment before shrugging and resuming the power-down sequence. Probably decided it’s enough time to trek up and down the island surveying the damage and drawing up preliminary plans to sort it all out, Crosshair muses drily, and then muses on it some more and decides it’s probably the truth.

Lyana launches herself at Omega as soon as Omega’s feet are on the ground. They’re laughing and maybe crying, and if intelligible words are coming out of either of their mouths they’re beyond Crosshair’s power to interpret.

He hangs back. Leans against the open hatch and watches Shep shake Hunter’s hand, clasp his arm fondly with nothing but joy and relief in his expression, his voice, his bearing. Concern starts to creep in when he turns to greet Wrecker, takes in the brace he’s still got around his neck, but the boisterous enthusiasm with which Wrecker practically shoves Hunter aside to say his own hellos, as if he’d been gone more than a handful of days, eases the worry back.

When Shep turns to Echo, Lyana spies Tech and dashes forward – definitely crying now – and stops just short of throwing her arms around him. “Dad said you were coming back,” she beams through the tears. “We missed you, Tech.”

Crosshair hangs back and watches – watches and expects Tech to redirect her, to hedge and equivocate, as awkward and out of place as he clearly felt on Pantora. Instead, Tech smiles, small but sincere, and lays a brief comforting hand on her shoulder while he assures her, “I missed you all as well,” despite the fact that he didn’t have the capacity to miss anything for most of the torturous duration of his absence.

Crosshair hangs back and watches Tech step back into a life he gave up on a fool’s errand; compares his own arrival and all of his taciturn avoidance and snappish tone and what a poor replacement he must have made.

The Empire, Shep assures them, left them alone after they had what they wanted. Hunter assures Shep in turn that Hemlock is in no position any longer to be sending agents anywhere in search of anyone. They get a quick sitrep on the status of the island – the docks and the skiffs; the status of the people – yet nervous, but resilient; and the status of Batcher – well cared for by Deke, Stak, and Mox in the squad’s absence.

And then as expected, Tech requests a tour of the damage and, at a resigned shrug from Hunter, Shep leads the way.

Hunter drifts back to join Crosshair at the back of the bunch as they start their way down the winding paths of Upper Pabu. “What’d you tell them?” Crosshair mutters.

“The truth.” Hunter’s tone is challenging, stubborn, dares any argument. “That he was a prisoner.” Crosshair grunts, wonders if it’ll last before deciding it wouldn’t matter anyway, not to the people who embraced him on nothing more than the credentials of his onetime squad and Omega’s enthusiastic say-so, even when Wrecker and Hunter were more cautious. “Crosshair, you have to talk to Tech.”

“You know that’s what Omega said to me about you, that first morning here?”

“Do you think there’s a lesson maybe, to be found in that?”

Utterly deadpan, Crosshair posits: “That I’m not much of a conversationalist?”

Hunter snorts and knocks his elbow into Crosshair’s arm.

A flurry of exclamations ring out just before they round the last corner to Shep’s terrace a couple hours later, mostly consisting of, “Batcher!” and, “Wait –!” before she’s loping around the house and bounding up to them, tongue lolling out in her excitement, pivoting wildly from Hunter to Wrecker to Echo before licking a giggling Omega’s face and finally taking a moment to sniff curiously at Tech.

Tech weathers it with as much dignity there is to be mustered – it’s not a lot – and tries to hide his cringe at the enthusiastic lick to the hand Batcher offers when she apparently decides he’s an acceptable addition to the party. Once satisfied, she loops around to assert herself at Crosshair’s side. He scratches her behind the ears and braces himself for the rest of the welcoming committee.

Deke, Stak, and Mox are expectedly exploding with questions – their investment in Tantiss’s undoing, in Hemlock’s fate, far more personal than the rest of Pabu’s abstract understanding of the particular brand of Imperial evil that stole Omega away the first time, that terrorized their home the second.

Hunter gently herds them back, but Tech endures the awed greetings and heard all about yous from the boys who’d only known him as the tragic, fallen hero, the absent puzzle piece at the heart of the squad. “I have… heard about you boys and your impressive survival as well,” Tech looks them over, and then glances sharply around when Wrecker exclaims:

“Aw! You fixed Gonky!”

A path finally clears to let them last of them through the gate and onto the terrace and there’s Gonky, honking his excitement and shifting from foot to foot while Wrecker barrels up to him, wraps him up in his arms and –

“Wrecker!” Echo barks. He winces and gently lowers the droid back to the ground. “Three days. You promised us three days being good.”

“Sorry,” he sidles awkwardly away after offering Gonky a quick pat. The fruit and juice already laid out on the table seem condolence enough, and as he steps out of the line of sight, Crosshair finally glimpses Phee leaning against the far wall of the terrace, arms crossed over her chest and a shrewd look on her face.

“I fixed Gonky, thank you very much,” she clarifies overtop the general hubbub of excitement. “MEL helped,” she amends. Her lips quirk as she unsubtly considers Tech for a long moment before offering a simple, “Well, then – welcome home, Brown Eyes.”

Crosshair raises a brow at Hunter and then Wrecker, who both determinedly avoid his stare, and then looks at Tech and has no idea what to make of the tinge of pink risen in his cheeks beyond that he has indeed missed a lot.

He’s restless that night, listening to his brothers’ deep breathing where they’re all piled into the crew cabin aboard the Remora. He’s not the only one, by the way Tech rises and slips noiselessly out of the room on uncannily silent footsteps.

It takes him maybe another three minutes trying and failing to ignore Wrecker’s snores to realize that his own insomnia had not gone unnoticed and the departure had been meant as silent invitation. He’s changed, Tech – in some ways that may ease back closer to baseline with the passage of time and in others that will be permanently engrained, and Crosshair supposes there’s some bitter irony in Tech being the one to recognize the futility of persuasion, as they escaped the sunken city, only for both of them to be so completely altered by the same cruel man in a complete divergence of experience.

And there’s something simultaneously touching and infuriating and completely and utterly suffocating about Tech, even still, recognizing when he needs rescued and endeavoring to show him the way.

He cuts across the courtyard to intercept Tech and Batcher making a slow circuit around the colonnade. Falls into step with the buffer of the hound in between them, has no idea what in blazes he’s possibly supposed to say, and is consequently dumbfounded to hear coming out of his own mouth: “You recognized me, on Teth. Told me I chose the wrong side.” Tech shoots him a furtive, sideways look and keeps his mouth pressed closed. “Was that you, Hemlock’s puppet, or was that you, trapped in an impossible situation and realizing there was no one to blame but me for what had to happen next?”

Tech stops all at once and turns to face him, mouth twisted in a peeved scowl. Batcher’s head swings between them, sensing the excitement of the rising tension and unsure where to direct her energies. “What was it like for you, Crosshair?” he asks with forced calm. “He put you in that machine again and again and again, didn’t he?” He snarls and turns; Tech snags his arm and holds him fast. “You all died a thousand terrible ways in my head, before my eyes, by my hands, as my squad and as strangers and eventually as enemies. What was once more?”

He wasn’t necessarily expecting an answer to the question; much less so brutally honest of one. He shakes his head and swears, yanks his arm free, and steps over to the arched columns lining the perimeter so he can lean against one and stare out over the vast expanse of ocean gleaming under the nearly-full moon, the innumerable stars woven in unfamiliar constellations.

He should learn the constellations, Crosshair thinks and, Tech probably already has them memorized. Or did. He wonders what’s been lost – wonders if Tech would even know the difference.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Tech confesses as he comes to take up a mirrored position against the adjacent column and follow Crosshair’s gaze. “I don’t know what you want me to say. You made your choices – we made ours. I… made mine.”

As if it had been any kind of a choice, taking that shot. “It was bad enough that you couldn’t listen, that you died for it,” Crosshair forces out, a burn settling behind his eyes he refuses to let build. “It drove Hemlock to distraction, you know – the why. The first he hurled the word defect at me, it was like a point of pride,” he spits. “Stronger than the regs, more resilient – but he wasn’t comparing me to them, he was comparing me to you.”

There’s something like amusement in Tech’s voice, dark and twisted and satisfied, when he points out, “Well, Hemlock likewise made his choices,” and Crosshair finally breaks.

“They left you,” he whirls and snarls, “on Eriadu.” Tech’s eyes blow even wider in the dim moonlight, and Batcher hunches down in watchful wariness. “Omega and I left you when we fled Tantiss, and then somehow yet again on Teth, we left you behind.”

“That is not fair,” Tech protests. “It is every bit as unfair as me asking in turn what you’d sacrifice to undo it all and grant you comfort of conscience.” The dam breaks and he scowls, looks down and away but Tech ignores his ineffectual efforts to turn away from the question, to hide the first angry tears slipping down his face. “Your continued suffering in that place? Your life, when he finally gave up? Hemlock’s work still out there, the prisoners, the children?”

“You’ve made your point,” he snaps.

“The cadet boys, whose kindest possible fate was surely slowly starving to death in the jungle, recovered in the hunt for Tantiss?”

“They never should have –!”

He cuts himself off at the sound of his voice echoing across the stone courtyard in the eerie stillness of the night. At the low rumble building in Batcher’s throat, not quite a growl, but a clear enough sign of her rising distress. His breaths come quicker and quicker and his hand tremors viciously just to add insult to injury. Tech glances down at it, brows furrowed in consternation, before sighing, “Crosshair…”

“I don’t need your pity.” One of Tech’s brows arches, skeptical, and Crosshair cannot suppress the rage and resentment bubbling up inside him, however irrational he knows them to be. “I’ve been where you were,” he bites and hates the satisfaction he feels in the way Tech’s eyes dart away, anxious and uncertain at the reminder. “I’ll take the broken hand over the broken mind.”

It’s quiet for a long time after that. Part of him expects Tech to just walk away; he would have done, once. Left him to his fit, left him to work it out, picked up some minutes or hours later like nothing had happened.

But Tech is different; they all are. When he organizes his thoughts into a response, he is careful with his words, measured, like he’s rationalizing it to himself as much as he is for Crosshair’s benefit. “I can at once wish dearly it had never happened – what transpired on Eriadu, and then on Ord Mantell, and all of the downstream effects – and also be glad that Omega accomplished the mission we set out to do that day, in guiding you home. While laying the fault where it belongs, with Hemlock and the Empire. We are none of us gifted with the luxury of foresight as to the consequences of our actions. We are all,” he adds faintly, “only cognizant of the cards held in our own hand and can only play them accordingly.”

He hears the echo of Cody’s words, standing in the shadow of the memorial for the clones who existed to be forgotten, and isn’t sure that the morbid irony of that ever fully struck him until right now, standing in the shadow of the Archium being lectured by his not-dead brother.

“Do you want to know what I think, Crosshair?”

“Oh,” he grumbles, “was I not already being accorded that high honor?”

Tech ignores his attitude, braces himself, and hurls a live detonator in between them. “I think a choice was made on… on Onderon.”

“No.”

“A choice that saved Omega and lost you.” He pivots and tries to shove past; Tech catches his elbow hard enough to bruise and murmurs close by his ear. “Logic suggests she’d have, at best, been transported to Hemlock’s staff that much earlier and begun her work at Doctor Karr’s side. And Tantiss would still be a threat but not to us, and Omega would be only as okay as she tolerated the confinement, but why should we have ever thought about her again? Why should we care? Just another of the countless victims of the Empire’s undoing of the galaxy.”

Crosshair tests the grip and it only tightens even further.

“We made a choice, Crosshair. You had to live with it, more direly than the rest of us, and you made sure we did not forget it when the chance arose to make it right.” He thinks idly about taking a swing, and wonders whose side Batcher would come down on if it came to blows between them. “I think,” Tech says slowly, carefully, “that you spent months in a cell obsessed with the fact that if you had only boarded the damn ship that day – none of it would have happened.”

He presses his free hand over his face and is incensed to discover that one, his left, is presently trembling, too.

“I had hoped that your message meant you forgave us,” Tech murmurs over the sound of Crosshair’s hitching breaths. “And I think, perhaps, you were only just beginning to convince yourself that they forgave you, before she was taken again.” The hold on his arm relaxes but Tech doesn’t let him go, won’t let him go. “I think some part of you found it easier – if only because your unyielding nature is and has always been reserved first and foremost for yourself – to know that wound could never fully close. An earned and deserved guilt to forever taint every last piece of happiness you’d even think of letting yourself claim.”

“I thought about leaving her,” he finds himself confessing, shaking his head wildly back and forth with his face still hidden behind his hand. “After we escaped, I thought about -”

“But you didn’t.” It’s not that simple, he wants to snarl, it will never be so simple as – “And then you faced your worst fears to bring her back again.” Tech lets go of his arm – only to grab his shoulder and pull him in for an embrace, which at least shocks the histrionics out of Crosshair because Tech is not a hugger, Tech does not do this.

Or, perhaps, as he wraps his arms around him and props his chin on Crosshair’s shoulder – as Crosshair raises his own trembling arms to cling back, like if he lets go he’ll again lose him or once more be lost – it is more of a desperate times, desperate measures situation. “And if you truly need to hear it, Crosshair, then I forgive you.” Tech pulls back enough to look at him, waits for Crosshair to blink him blearily into focus and states flatly:

“Now with that established, there is really no excuse not to find your way at last to forgiving yourself, ideally sooner rather than later?”

The laugh that bursts out of him is tangled up on a sob – or perhaps it’s the other way around.

“M’sorry about the Marauder,” Crosshair tells him while they make another mostly silent circuit so they might collect and calm themselves before once more attempting a semi-night’s rest.

Tech lets out a put-upon sigh but concedes, “I suppose Gonky’s survival is what’s important.”

“…You know Wrecker probably could have made it to the water before the explosion, if he hadn’t tried to save the damn droid.”

“It is a wonder,” Tech sniffs, “that any of you made it this far in my absence.”

Crosshair thinks about his choking guilt and despair and desperation approaching the mountain, shoves it forcibly aside, and goes for lighthearted. “You’re not wrong.”

Tech’s just shakes his head back and forth, but Crosshair catches the slightest suggestion of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Crosshair sleeps latest the next morning, marvels that the others crept out quietly enough not to wake him, even Wrecker. When he steps out of the cabin though, he can hear the chatter and laughter drifting in from the open hatch and he goes and stands and takes a moment to observe the scene. The cadet boys running around near the maya tree playing with Batcher. Gonky and MEL in the shade of the Providence with AZI hovering around them, talking about… whatever it was droids had to say when left to their own devices.

Closer at hand, scattered amidst the breakfast that’s been laid out right there on tarps and blankets on the ground…

There’s Omega, chattering away with Lyana, completely undaunted by the recent trials, her kind and forgiving nature undiminished, and an open joy about her that Crosshair hasn’t seen since the day she started a food fight on their behalf.

There’s Echo, off to one side having a low, earnest conversation with Shep – fighting still, Crosshair suspects, for the clones recovered from Tantiss, plenty of whom will have no fight left in them at all and are in need of safe haven.

There’s Wrecker, cheerfully loading up a plate with fruit and sweet buns, a brace around his neck and a crushing weight lifted from his shoulders ever since he woke up on Pantora to the same impossible face that ushered him into unconsciousness on Tantiss.  

There’s Hunter with a cup of caf in hand, gazing serenely around the lot of them and across the colonnade and up at Crosshair, offering a quirk of a questioning brow and a faint tip of his head in invitation.

And there’s Tech. Listening to Phee recount some tale complete with wild gesticulation that tells Crosshair it’s probably their approach to Erebus, his expression more intrigued and less alarmed than it ought to be.

Crosshair looks at the lot of them individually, and then considers the bigger picture and, for the first time, forgets the squad and simply sees… family.

He sees them with the friends who helped them in trying times, in this place that took them in; feels the specter of his long absence among them and the tangled knot of the guilt lodged firmly inside himself, and finally considers that perhaps the jagged discord he’s felt since his and Omega’s escape is not intrusion upon their peace so much as the shape of the space he simply has not yet figured out how to fit himself to fill.

But the contours of it are suddenly clearer, he supposes ruefully, eyeing the empty plate with an upturned mug perched atop it sitting in the space between Wrecker and Tech, waiting on him.

And with a sense of accepting something – and perhaps of letting something else go – Crosshair makes the obvious choice – the only choice – and descends at last to join them.