Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It shouldn’t have gone like this. None of it should have gone like this. The Bad Batch had come for their brother, not for Crosshair of course, but for Hunter, that much had been according to plan, but they hadn’t listened to him when he tried to explain that they were on the wrong side. Contrary to popular belief Crosshair didn’t want to have to kill his brothers, he didn’t even want to kill the girl. 

Oh his thoughts told him to kill them, but Crosshair’s thoughts had been muddled ever since the chip had activated. They twisted and writhed like snakes in his head, all KILL THE TRAITORS and GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS. Whatever the Kaminoans had done to his chip had only made it worse, it felt like they had burned a hole in his head, seared the words into his brain so thoroughly that even once the chip had to be removed the commands, the compulsion still remained. 

So he was following orders…until suddenly he wasn’t. It hurt to disobey, but when his squad rebelled it was on instinct that Crosshair chose his brothers over his directives. He hated himself for it, for that pathetic loyalty to people who didn’t give a kark about him, but the deed was done. 

The plan went further astray as the live fire training bots activated and then even further when the Empire started bombing Tipoca City. Eventually there was nothing left of it and Crosshair was left scrambling for his life along with the rest of them.

All the words his brothers and…sister…said to him felt like lead slugs shot into his brain. They rattled around and tore things open, but even then Crosshair couldn’t forget the one fact that trumped everything. They had left him. They had left him over and over, never even once tried to rescue him, and yet the second he had Hunter in a snare they all came running. He hated them for it, he hated himself for how much he wanted to forgive them.

And then Crosshair had saved the girl and his brothers had shown him just how they truly felt. It was with bitter rage that he tossed his firepuncher to Wrecker, just so his own brothers would lower their weapons. How pathetic would it be for them to shoot him dead after he’d just saved their beloved little sister.

He hated her too. Hated her because his brothers loved her so fiercely when Crosshair hardly even rated their attention. It was petty and immature and he’d rather die than admit to it, but that was how he felt.

It was because of all that that Crosshair told them to leave him behind. That small pathetic part of him wanted them to fight him on it, wanted them to override him and prove that they really did care, at least a little, but the majority of him beat with that same drum of GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS. His mind was in such disarray. 

He needed to report back. The Empire would have things for him to do, if he reported his brothers as having been killed in the siege on the city then he wouldn’t be sent after them anymore and could be put to actual use, could put the whole matter behind him.

To Crosshair’s pathetic disappointment it seemed that his brothers really would let him go. One by one they boarded the Marauder, even though the girl left him with those cutting words. 

“You’re still their brother, Crosshair. You’re my brother too.”

Did it matter? They wouldn’t fight for him, even when he had fought for them, even when he had turned on his own elite squad for them, they still wanted to leave him behind.

Then there was Hunter. He had argued just like he’d been arguing the entire time and it seemed like he was leaving but once Omega walked up the ramp he turned back to Crosshair and gave him a pleading look.

“ Please Crosshair,” he begged, his voice low and steady. Crosshair turned away from him, not wanting to see all the tiny things in his expression, in his posture, things that somebody without Crosshair’s eyesight would miss. “Don’t do this. You’re not a mindless tool, you’ve never been a mindless tool even with the chip in. That’s what they want to turn you into, they want to use you until there’s nothing left and then discard you like trash.” Crosshair folded his arms over his chest, his shoulders hunching. It hurt to hear, but at least so long as he was useful they’d have a place for him. There was no place among his brothers. Omega had taken that place. 

Hunter’s frustration was palpable, “The Empire doesn’t care about you, Crosshair! Rampart doesn’t care about you! You’re just a number to them, no better than a droid! If you would just listen —“

Ironically, Crosshair had stopped listening, although really he’d stopped as soon as Hunter had said Rampart’s name, because that was something that hadn’t occurred to Crosshair. 

He’d be going back to Rampart.

Rampart with his staring calculating eyes, his spidery hands, his extracurriculars. Crosshair couldn’t get it out of his head, the sensation of the Vice Admiral’s fingers scurrying across his bare skin, the way his lips tasted as they twisted in a smug smile against his own, the sound of his voice as he gave Crosshair indisputable orders. So many orders, always more and more.

“Open your mouth.”

“Hold still.” 

“Kneel!”

KNEEL!

Crosshair’s knees buckled as the command rang through his hectic mind, clattering loudly against the sides as it bounced back and forth, almost lost in the swarming shrieks of GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS!

He felt his pulse fluttering in his throat like a trapped little bird, his body shuddering like it was about to shake itself apart completely. It was just an echo, he tried to reason, the chip was gone and this was all just an afterimage. His mind was his own, it was his , and yet it was still so full of the same clamoring as before, full of Rampart’s dripping voice, his scuttling touches, his eyes staring, and the constant scream of those words over and over.

GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS!

GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS!

GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS!

He shook his head, vainly trying to clear out the racket, and clutched at it, just short of clawing himself apart, as if he could physically hold his thoughts in place, hold them down so he could make sense of them.

Something about going back to Rampart…

Rampart. It had never really occurred to Crosshair that he was away from Rampart in the first place, much less that he’d be coming back, and yet somehow the idea was terrifying. If he went back, Rampart would hurt him, but what other option did he have?

A hand landed on Crosshair’s shoulder and he lashed out automatically, still afraid, still confused, wrapped up in his own head, but Hunter caught his wrist before Crosshair could actually stab him with the boot knife he’d drawn.

He didn’t apologize, although some part of him wanted to. Did it matter? They didn’t trust him anymore anyway, they’d proved as much when they’d all turned their weapons on him when he’d saved the girl. They never even came back for him. Oh they had come back for Hunter sure, had come back even though they had known it was a trap, even though they had no way of knowing Tipoca was practically a ghost town, but apparently Crosshair didn’t rate a rescue. Not even when his mind wasn’t his own, not when Rampart ran a blade over his skin for his failures, not when he ran his fingers over the same skin as a ‘reward’ for his successes. They had never come for him.

Crosshair wished they would just go away.

He shivered and shook and panted, not even really putting up a fight when Hunter divested him of the knife. Crosshair’s older brother spoke to him in a hushed tone, the way he spoke to frightened animals, but the words didn’t process, drowned out by the noise .

A pathetic whine slipped out of Crosshair’s throat as Hunter tried to drag him up. He hated himself for it, but then again what didn’t he hate himself for these days? Hunter tried to drag him along towards the Marauder and this time Crosshair did fight, if only weakly, half-heartedly. They didn’t trust him, didn’t want him back enough to fight for him. Hadn’t come for him even when he’d so desperately needed them. He couldn’t forgive them for it, even if he wanted to.

Eventually Wrecker intervened, appearing from nowhere to scoop Crosshair off his feet into his arms like he weighed nothing at all. Crosshair snarled and tried to shove himself out of his brother’s grip, tried to get away, but the thought that he had nowhere else to go stifled the strongest of his efforts. It was either this or Rampart and he knew he couldn’t go back to Rampart.

Wrecker brought him onto the Marauder, gently shushing him when another whine escaped, squeezing him slightly when he tried to worm free, not as a warning but as some attempt to quell his anxieties. Despite his loud personality and huge stature, Wrecker was a soft touch, Crosshair knew that. 

And the part of him that said he should tear his brother’s throat out with his teeth? That afterimage of the chip squalling in his head at being so close to these traitors ? Crosshair tried to ignore it. They’d deserve the violence, but he couldn’t give it to them, didn’t have the heart for it, and he hated himself for that too.

The most fighting Crosshair did was when Tech came forward with a hypo in hand. Crosshair made a frightened undignified sound somewhere between a hiss and a yowl and tried valiantly to free himself from Wrecker’s ironclad grip, half ignoring and fully not hearing whatever his brothers were saying to him as his blood pounded in his ears, but Hunter was there and so was Echo and together the three traitors held him down enough for Tech to press the hypo into his neck. Crosshair went limp, all fight leaving him as swiftly as his brothers had left him that first time around and every time since. The last thing he saw before the blackness swallowed his senses was the girl’s pinched expression from where she peaked out from behind a curtain they’d put up over the gunner’s nest.

Chapter Text

Hunter wasn’t sure what to do about Crosshair, or even what to think. The idea that he’d had his chip out for some time cast all their recent interactions, all of Crosshair’s behavior, into a decidedly bad light. But when exactly had he gotten it out?

That wasn’t the only thing that concerned Hunter about the claim though, because Crosshair was scared , and more than that he was in pain . Hunter had known the second his brother had come within spitting distance of him. He could smell the increased cortisol in his sweat and hear the way his normally slow and steady heart pounded like a drum. Crosshair was the calmest of them all, especially under pressure, and yet he had been almost desperate to get them to listen, desperate like Hunter was desperate, although he hid it well.

Crosshair had been on edge like that the entire time, which wasn’t unjustified given they barely managed to escape the fall of Tipoca City, but now somehow he was worse . Hunter watched as his brother stood on the edge of the platform facing away, hiding his face but unable to hide his pounding heart or shallow breathing, at least not from Hunter.

And then as Hunter tried one last ditch effort to talk him down from leaving, something in his vod’ika seemed to snap under some unseen pressure and Crosshair’s knees buckled, dropping him down to sit and shake violently on the platform beneath him. Wrecker had reappeared at the door to the Marauder when Hunter hadn’t followed them all inside and he took a concerned step down the ramp, but Hunter held out his hand to stop him. 

Nothing had become more apparent than the fact that Hunter did not understand what was going on with Crosshair and running into a situation with no intel was tantamount to suicide…but then again suicide missions were what the Bad Batch had been made for and Crosshair was worth the risk. Hunter couldn’t leave him again, not after he’d failed him so thoroughly for so long.

“Crosshair?” Hunter called carefully. His brother shook his head, but something about the motion seemed less like he was responding to Hunter and more like he was trying to shake something out of it. Cautiously Hunter eased his way across the platform, being sure to scuff the soles of his boots so Crosshair would hear him coming, as he edged towards his littlest brother.

Crosshair didn’t respond to his name when Hunter said it right next to him either, so he decided there was nothing for it but to reach out to shake his shoulder and be ready to dodge. As predicted, Crosshair startled and he startled badly, almost gutting Hunter despite how ready for it he had been. Once he had trapped his brother’s wrist Hunter looked Crosshair in the face, making steady eye contact. What he saw alarmed him. Crosshair looked like a wreck; his eyes were wide and glassy, his expression caught halfway between fear, pain, and anger, he shook like a leaf, and panted in short sharp breaths. 

“You’re alright Cross’ika,” Hunter told him quietly as he gently took the boot knife from his brother’s trembling fingers. The fact that no grumble of ‘karking reg osik’ came in response to the nickname Echo had given him was worrying just on its own. “Come on, let’s get you up.” 

Getting Crosshair back on his feet was a task and a half, the sniper didn’t really seem to be paying attention, screwing up his face or clutching at his head and mumbling rather than listening to what his older brother was trying to instruct him to do. Hunter heard the heart-stopping words, “Good soldiers…good soldiers follow…” in amongst the mumbling and resolved to have Tech search for any evidence that Crosshair had lied about his chip the second he had the man safely back on the Marauder and in hyperspace.

Wrecker dove in after it became clear that getting their uncooperative brother on board was not as easy as simply holding his hand and walking him up the ramp. With more gentleness than his stature would suggest he was capable of, Wrecker scooped Crosshair off his feet and started carrying him bodily back to the attack shuttle. Crosshair yelped in surprise and then snarled viciously in an old familiar way that put something at ease in Hunter’s heart and only served to make Wrecker give his little brother a grin.

The fact that Crosshair only barely fought to be let down was concerning though, the only time he ever put up with being carried was when he was injured and while he smelled like he was in pain, Hunter couldn’t smell any blood. “It’s gonna be okay, Cross,” Wrecker reassured as he strode up the ramp into the Marauder with Hunter on his heels, “You’ll see.” 

The look of surprise on Tech and Echo’s faces when they saw Wrecker carrying Crosshair in would have been comical under any other circumstances, but Hunter was too concerned to laugh. Concerned by his brother’s continued shivering and the shaking of his head, by the way he screwed up his face in pain, the way he panted with stress, the way he didn’t seem to hear any of them speaking to him, and by the lack of fight.

“Tech,” Hunter said softly. He didn’t want to say it out loud where Crosshair might hear it and panic, but this attack of whatever it was didn’t seem to be getting any better. Fortunately Tech was about a hundred steps ahead of him as always and was already pulling a hypo out of the medpac on the wall.

Then Crosshair fought. He yowled like a tooka that had been stepped on and elbowed Wrecker square in the jaw hard enough that even Hunter winced. “It’s okay Cross!” Wrecker tried to reassure him while also trying to hold the spitting, kicking, snarling man still. Hunter grabbed Crosshair’s legs and held them down with his bodyweight more than his strength while Wrecker clamped down around Crosshair’s chest and arms in a sideways bear hug and Echo wrapped his own arms around Crosshair’s head to open up a place for Tech to use the hypo. Hunter didn’t miss the frightened look on Omega’s face as she watched the proceedings from her room, but he couldn’t deal with that right now.

Tech got the sedative in him and Crosshair seemed to go limp all at once. The five of them sat in the sudden silence punctuated by the waves sloshing outside for a moment before anybody spoke.

 “What’s wrong with ‘im?” Wrecker asked softly, looking first at Crosshair’s face, pinched even in sleep, and then up at Hunter.

Hunter shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “but something is causing him pain, a whole lot of it and…” he glanced over at Tech, “I heard him mumbling ‘good soldiers follow orders’.” That made all of them stiffen.

“You believe he lied about having his chip removed?” Tech asked him sharply.

Hunter sighed, “I don’t know. I can never tell when Crosshair is lying, he keeps his heart rate too steady.” And he did, even this time when his heart had been pounding in his chest the rhythm had been steady as anything, all elevated to the same degree.

“Well I suppose we will just have to check then,” Tech said with a huff. “Wrecker let me see the right side of his head.”

Wrecker obliged, shifting his little brother’s limp body in his arms and then tilting Crosshair’s head so Tech could see. Hunter watched as Tech ran his fingers over the puckered scars, grumbled as he fumbled his light on, and then examined him again.

“I'm afraid that if he does have a surgical scar it is hidden by the other more severe scarring that has occurred, I'm going to have to build another scanner.”

“Can you do that?” Omega asked softly, Hunter had heard her hop down from her room and trot over so he wasn’t startled by her appearing at his elbow, but he still grimaced. She reached out and rested Lula on Crosshair’s chest, a small kindness so very like her that it replaced some of the dread in Hunter’s chest with a spark of warmth. Wrecker gave her a smile and settled Lula into the crook of Crosshair’s arm.

Tech gave her an offended look, “Of course I can.”

“That’s all well and good,” Echo interrupted, “But I suggest we get out of here before the Imperial scouts show up and send somebody to shoot at us.”

“Right, good thinkin’,” Wrecker agreed, shuffling Crosshair around in his arms a little more.

“Agreed,” said Tech as he turned and headed towards the cockpit. “Crosshair will be unconscious for several hours and hopefully he will be more agreeable when he wakes, but even so it would be best if we were in hyperspace when he does so, I don’t know about you, but I would prefer it if there was no place for him to run off to.”

“Agreeable? Crosshair? Never!” Echo said with a laugh that Wrecker picked up along with him.

“Go ahead,” Hunter told him as he hit the button to close the ramp so they could take off. Either way they weren’t letting Crosshair slip through their fingers again. 

Not this time.

Chapter Text

When Crosshair woke, it was slowly and in increments. Distantly he recognized the rumbling of familiar engines beneath him, then the old memorable smells of the attack shuttle and his brothers, then he heard the sounds of them moving about and talking quietly, although those sounds were distant and watery. Safe , some part of him knew, safe on the Marauder with your brothers . 

The rest of him rejected that notion violently. Not safe! It screamed, Never safe again! And everything came pouring back to him in a rush.

His head pounded as Crosshair tried to fight off the drugged sleep, but it was so heavy , and meanwhile the pounding in his ears was back, that ever present chant of GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS.

The Bad Batch were traitors and he was surrounded by them on their ship. Captive! part of him screamed. He shoved that part away, stifling the panic that clung to it. His brothers weren’t holding him captive, Crosshair had had a meltdown on the landing pad and they had taken the opportunity to shuffle him onto the Marauder while he was indisposed. The drugs were a little damning, but he understood the reasoning behind sedating somebody who was freaking the kark out in a small enclosed space where someone might get hurt. 

Crosshair resolved not to do it again until he could figure a way off the Marauder so he could avoid a repeat of this situation. Preferably he’d do it again never , but even he knew that was being overly optimistic. He’d had panic attacks since his chip had been removed, it was just that until now he’d always managed to find a place to hide so he didn’t have them in front of people.

“Crosshair?” came Hunter’s soft voice from close by. Crosshair didn’t manage to stifle the way his limbs stiffened in alarm, it seemed trust was scarce on both sides of the equation. Damn it though Hunter probably heard his heartbeat or breathing change when he woke up, he certainly couldn’t hear Crosshair’s thoughts, no matter how loud and clamoring they may be.

“ What, ” Crosshair snapped, for lack of any other way to respond. There was no point in pretending he wasn’t awake. He still kept his eyes closed, as if somehow the darkness would protect him. Maybe if he didn’t look at Hunter he wouldn’t have to face up to the fact that he’d had a mortifying freakout right in front of him.

Hunter sighed, “How are you feeling?” he asked slowly, cautiously.

Crosshair wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t. Instead he focused on the feel of the surface he was laying on. His bunk probably, since they had given the girl the gunner’s nest that meant they hadn’t given her his bunk, which was something at least. He could feel that his armor had been stripped off, leaving him in just his blacks, and that somebody had covered him with a blanket. He also felt something soft tucked into the crook of his elbow, he had a sneaking suspicion about what it was, but didn’t dare look. If he looked he’d be angry and if he was angry his head would get loud again.

“Just delightful,” he eventually answered, his voice grudging and flatly unhappy, “Like summer rain. Like fluffy pink clouds. Like—”

“Okay I get it,” Hunter interrupted with a huff. There was a pause and then a heavy sigh, “Will you look at me at least?” he asked. Crosshair hated the plaintive note in his voice, it didn’t suit him, he was supposed to be decisive, not trembling and emotional.

Irritably Crosshair snapped open his eyes, grimaced at the way even the dim light burned his retinas, and then cut his gaze over to where his brother sat at his bedside on a crate he’d no doubt dragged over for that purpose. Hunter looked awful, like he hadn’t slept in a year, like all he’d done since Crosshair’s episode was wring his hands and pace. That was probably exactly what he’d done. Hunter sighed again and ran a hand over his face. “You look better,” he observed, “Smell better, less pain. What happened?”

Crosshair bared his teeth in a snarl. Figures Hunter would cut right to the thing he most wanted to avoid. “Come on, brother ,” he hissed the word like an insult, “Don’t act like this is some new thing you’ve never seen before.”

Hunter frowned at him, “In Echo sure, but never in you. Since when do you have panic attacks?”

“Since you left me for dead,” Crosshair snarled back, just to see the way his brother flinched. Maybe he was being dramatic and maybe not, he didn’t really care. It was easy to hide within the anger, although that anger itself fed into all the noise in his head, heightening it, sharpening it, until it was again hard to ignore.

GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS

Traitors, the lot of them, they needed to be put down.

Crosshair shook his head to clear out the thoughts that didn’t belong to him. 

“And there’s the pain again,” Hunter observed, correctly, although he sounded less than happy about it. “What’s causing it, Crosshair? You’re not injured, we checked.”

Crosshair just glared at him and sat up, ignoring the way the soft pink blanket that they definitely hadn’t owned before he’d been left behind slid off him or how Wrecker’s stupid doll tumbled to the floor. Hunter picked the doll up and held it in his lap, but never took his eyes off his wayward brother. Crosshair still didn’t answer him, instead leaning past Hunter to see the blue streaks of light filtering through the open door to the cockpit, confirming his suspicion that they were in hyperspace. His other brothers…and sister…were nowhere in evidence, likely having cleared out as soon as Hunter had noticed he was waking up.

Echo always hated being crowded after he’d had a panic attack.

Crosshair found he hated being treated like anything had happened at all.

“ Crosshair ,” Hunter pressed, some motherly authority filtering into his tone, different than his authority as a sergeant. Crosshair wondered if this was the voice he used on the girl when she was acting up.

“It’s nothing I haven’t been dealing with for months,” Crosshair eventually conceded, “and it’s also none of your business.”

“You being in pain is not none of my business,” Hunter shot back immediately. A sliver of steel slid into his eyes when he asked, “It’s your chip isn’t it? Wrecker had terrible migraines when his was acting up.”

Crosshair scowled at him, noting that Wrecker had apparently had his chip activated, but mostly just annoyed at being asked a question he had already answered. “I told you, it was taken out.”

To his immense displeasure Crosshair could see that Hunter didn’t believe him. “When?” his brother asked him sternly.

Crosshair gestured at his scars, “Immediately after the ion engine burned off half my head, thanks for that by the way.”

He saw a look of guilt flicker across Hunter’s features for a second and Crosshair felt a sense of triumph, but it was hollow in the face of the fact that his brother clearly didn’t believe a word he said. “You were the one who started the engine, Crosshair, not us,” Hunter said instead of outright accusing Crosshair of lying. Good thing too, because Crosshair would have turned it into a brawl then and there if he had.

“If it matters,” was Crosshair’s retort. He stood up a little too sharply, hating that he had to grab the frame of the bunk above his (Tech’s bunk) to keep his balance. Karking drugs. 

“You should probably sit back down,” Hunter said as he also stood, idiotic doll still in his arms.

Crosshair waved the suggestion away like an annoying insect and marched out of the bunkroom into the main avenue of the ship, closing the door in Hunter’s face as he followed behind just to be petty. As he suspected the rest of the Batch were there, a game of sabacc spread out across a makeshift table made of a bunch of pushed together crates. Even the girl was there and it was clear that they had been teaching her to play given how she was frozen in the act of showing Tech her hand of cards.

“This is a fire hazard,” Crosshair snapped and then sidestepped around them all before they could respond, headed to the fresher and the only place he could hide for at least a few minutes.

***

It had become apparent rather quickly that Crosshair had underestimated the extent to which his brothers didn’t trust him. They never left him alone, with at least one of them watching him at all times, although they at least tried to be subtle about it. Not that they should have bothered, Crosshair wasn’t stupid and there were only so many times a person could end up in the company of others before they realize they’re being shepherded about. 

Crosshair had confronted them about it of course, but they all refused to give him a straight answer and even more so they refused to fight with him, which only made him angrier and that only made the clamoring in his head louder, and that made Crosshair act in ways that made the situation even more tense. Regardless of his own inner turmoil, this wasn’t how they were supposed to act, certainly not around him. He’d shot at them a few times sure, chased them around a bit, tried to fry them that one time, but he wasn’t a bomb . He wasn’t going to just explode and kill all of them in their sleep like they seemed to think.

Days of relentless pestering got Tech to finally admit that they were going to Ord Mantell to speak to a friend, but intended to stop a few times on the way there to search the markets for some electrical and mechanical parts. He probably would have let it go at that under any other circumstances, because Crosshair didn’t really care what they were doing so long as he could bail the second the Marauder touched ground, but he knew they weren’t going to let him out of their sight and something about the whole situation stunk . It made his senses vibrate with anxiety when he saw the way they all avoided the subject of what they were doing, never talking about it when he was within earshot, and only giving him the vaguest possible answers if he tried to press them for more information. 

His vicious cutting thoughts swirled around in his head, running razorblades across the inside of his skull as they howled.

This is a trap! they screamed at him, They’re going to hurt you! Kill them before they kill you!

He tried to push the thoughts away, to strangle them into submission or at least stifle them into a lower volume, into something he could ignore, but they were relentless. It made him tense, snappish in temperament and jerky in his movements. Crosshair could see the increasingly worried looks they gave him when he shook his head violently for no apparent reason or scrabbled at his skull like he could tear the poisonous words out with his nails.

Wrecker had started pulling Crosshair's hands away when he did that and holding them firmly until the sniper gave up on trying to tug them out of his grip, while Tech solved the issue less directly by offloading tools or various junk into Crosshair’s arms and giving him tasks to distract him. Echo had taken to giving him empathetic looks which made Crosshair furious just thinking about them. Hunter watched him constantly, his eyes sharp and nostrils flared like he was always checking on how wound up Crosshair was at any given moment, and the girl edged closer to him tentatively and backed off in alarm in equal measure. 

He hated all of them, why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

He didn’t want them to, but he felt like he should want that and his venomous thoughts screamed for it. He was so confused half the time that he didn’t know how he felt about any given thing. 

When they did land the ship, Crosshair wasn’t given the chance to escape. Each time they only stayed on the planet for a few hours or a day at most before moving on and Crosshair was constantly shadowed by Wrecker as he followed his brothers through the markets and in and out of establishments. Oh they plied him with gifts - foods they knew he liked, a new helmet to replace the one he’d lost, rifle scopes and other interesting mods, and paints for his armor (which he knew they were all hoping he’d repaint, but which he’d left the imperial gray out of spite) - but he remained strung tight as piano wire. Omega was the worst offender on that front, trying to earn his favor no doubt, but Crosshair wasn’t interested in being her little friend or whatever she wanted from him. He briefly considered interrogating her about what in the pit was going on, but he was never left alone with her and so he discarded the idea.

He continued to just get more and more wound up as time passed, swinging between sullen silence and heated outbursts that left Wrecker’s lower lip wobbling and the others shuffling Omega out of the blast radius before he could say something that cut too deeply. It was getting to be impossible to think for himself beneath the torrent of clanging ratting shouts in his head. All the scrabbling paranoia, the ever pounding GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS, the self-hate brought out by how little his brothers trusted him, and the fury at the way they were treating him tangled Crosshair into knots every waking minute.

Eventually Tech seemed to come to the correct conclusion that not knowing what they were planning was driving Crosshair up the wall and making his mental state much much worse. Big surprise when he was a good three or four times smarter than everyone else.

“I need these materials to make a portable atomic scanner,” Tech finally told him nearly two weeks into their trip. They were both seated on the floor of the bunkroom while he had Crosshair sort through the materials they had acquired so far and he himself disassembled some contraption they had bought with such ease he may as well have not even been looking at what he was doing.

“And why, pray tell, do you need such a thing?” Crosshair asked him with a mix of appreciation that somebody had finally given in and simmering frustration at having to pry the information out of his brothers at all.

“To ensure that your chip was truly removed as you claim,” Tech replied simply. 

Crosshair stared at him, feeling too many things at once and not sure which way he wanted to fall. On one hand he was furious because hadn’t he told them twice already? Why wasn’t his word enough? It should be! Then on another hand he felt blackest despair because he’d been right, they really didn’t trust him at all . And finally he was elated that they were going to all this trouble to ensure his condition, even if it was only for their own perceived safety, because it meant they intended to keep him . 

In the end he wound up in a confusing and slightly dull middle ground that left him making a noncommittal noise and digging through his things to find his toothpicks so he’d have something to chew on.

“I told you it’s gone,” he said once he had the little sliver of wood between his teeth, “But obviously my word means nothing.” It came out sounding a lot closer to dismal than he had intended and Tech glanced up from his work to give him a searching look. 

“Your behavior as of late has been decidedly out of character, Crosshair, and certainly if your chip were still active it would behoove it to make you lie about the matter. I assure you that this is not because we don’t trust you, but simply because we must be certain.”

Not because they don’t trust him, his shebs. “If my chip were active wouldn’t it behoove it to make me stab you in the eyeballs with that screwdriver until you shut your yap, traitor?” Crosshair hissed furiously. He wasn’t helping his case, but Tech was a traitor, even if it was only Crosshair he’d betrayed. Something in his head, something slick and foreign, was pleased by the conclusion. He was a traitor. They were all traitors. Crosshair resisted the urge to shake his head to clear the feeling away, instead biting down on his toothpick until he felt it splinter.

Tech blinked owlishly at him, unimpressed, “That is one of the many benefits of the goggles,” he said, “eye protection.”

Crosshair stared at him for a moment before giving up and going back to sorting the electronic components from the mechanical components. Echo would have been better suited for this task, but then they’d have nothing to keep Crosshair busy with and he certainly wasn’t about to teach the girl to play sabacc, which is what everyone else was doing out in the other room.

He didn’t particularly like the answer Tech had given him, but it soothed some of the rampant paranoia in Crosshair and that made his hackles lower just a little as they continued to planet hop looking for parts. His brothers clearly noticed, because they began apprising him of their plans for the day before they left the safety of the Marauder. Crosshair would rather die than admit it, but it helped and everyone could see it. The girl took to talking endlessly about their plans, worse even than Tech’s own habitual rambling. She told him how Echo was helping her fix her stupid medical droid, how much progress Tech made each day with the scanner, how she had beat Wrecker and Hunter at sabacc, and an apparently infinite number of other topics. Soon he felt like he knew everything there was to know about the happenings on the Marauder. He didn’t thank her, but that helped him a little too. 

The tenuous new routine had to come to an end unfortunately, when Tech came to the conclusion that he needed a part they couldn’t afford, not by a long shot, which meant they had to start working again. The girl had smiled that bright little girl grin up at Crosshair, apparently oblivious to how little he liked the sound of this plan and told him, “Don’t worry Crosshair, you’ll love Cid!” 

Somehow he doubted it.

Chapter Text

Ord Mantell was a dump. A dump full of scrap that all manner of mercenaries, bounty hunters, and criminals fought over like it would give them salvation. Crosshair decided almost immediately that he disliked the place.

Wrecker and the girl were excited for him to try something called ‘Mantell Mix’, their enthusiasm for which made him instantly suspicious. Apparently it was reserved for after they’d completed a mission, so at least he didn’t have to worry about it right away.

Regardless of that, Crosshair found, to nobody but the girl’s surprise, that he disliked Cid immediately. She took one look at him and nicknamed him ‘Twitchy’ which made Crosshair twitch every time she spoke to him, because he shouldn’t be twitchy, never used to be, but she had hit the nail on the head, much to his irritation. He was less of a disaster than he’d been for those first two weeks of the expedition to find Tech parts for his scanner, but that wasn’t saying much.

Wrecker had just laughed at his scowl and given him a clap on the back that nearly knocked him over. Hunter and Echo followed Cid into her office soon after while the rest of them stayed in the parlor. Tech was engrossed in his datapad and paid absolutely no attention to anything else going on around him, probably working on schematics for the scanner or whatever he had been doing recently on the thing. Wrecker and the girl slid into the booth across from where Crosshair had sat himself as soon as he’d escaped from Cid’s appraisal of his character.

Crosshair had his head down on the table, enjoying the feel of the cool surface on his forehead and ignoring the worried looks his brother and sister shot him. “On babysitting duty again, Wrecker?” He asked dryly.

The girl pouted, “I am not a baby,” she protested, small hands fidgeting with her haphazardly-painted trooper doll on the table. “I’m the eldest .”

“He was referring to himself I believe, Omega,” Tech said from his place at the bar, not even bothering to look up. Apparently he was paying at least a little attention to them.

The girl frowned, but kept whatever comments she might have to herself, thankfully. Crosshair closed his eyes to try and give his pounding head a break from the flood of stimuli always collected by his heightened eyesight. “ ‘M not babysitting, Cross,” Wrecker corrected him good-naturedly, “Just keepin’ you company.”

“Whatever,” Crosshair replied in a bland voice. He was tired of this place already. Part of him wanted to chew on a toothpick, but he’d have to sit up if he wanted to avoid stabbing himself with it and he didn’t feel like it right then when the cool surface of the table was helping him, even if it was paltry help compared to the amount of pain he was in. 

“Hey Crosshair?” The girl asked him suddenly, “Can I ask you something?”

Crosshair let out an expansive sigh and turned his head so it was his cheek resting on the cool surface of the table, but kept his eyes closed. “You just did.”

“Something else,” she said, apparently not put off by his attitude. She never seemed to be put off unless he was actively trying to hurt her feelings, an activity that never went over well with Hunter.

“Out with it already,” he hissed, “You’re making my headache worse with your reedy little voice.” The fact that Crosshair had even admitted to having a headache seemed to surprise both Wrecker and the girl, given how they froze up for a second. 

“Sorry,” she said, “Um I just wanted to know why you never call me by my name? You always just call me ‘you’ or ‘girl’ or ‘kid’, but not in the way Hunter calls me kid.”

“It’s because I don’t like you,” Crosshair told her honestly, not caring in the slightest if it hurt her feelings. His head was too full of noise to be having this conversation.

He heard her suck in a breath and Wrecker immediately admonished him with, “That’s not nice, Cross.”

He shrugged, although he wasn’t sure if they’d be able to read the movement for what it was when he was sprawled over the tabletop like he was. “I’m a cruel person,” he replied easily, “You should get used to it if you’re going to insist on keeping me around.” There was a question in there, hidden between the words, one too vulnerable and pathetic to ever ask them out loud.

“We’re keepin’ you, you get used to it,” Wrecker answered that question immediately with such earnestness that Crosshair felt something in his chest constrict. Wrecker played the fool most of the time, but what he lacked in book smarts and common kriffing sense he made up for in emotional intelligence.

“You’re not cruel,” the girl argued on the heels of Wrecker’s declaration, although her voice was a little smaller than before, a little less confident, “You’re just in pain, anybody would lash out if they’re in pain all the time.”

“If you say so,” Crosshair said with another shrug and a deep shuddering breath. There was a scraping feeling on the inside of his head, like his own brain was raking claws across the inside of his skull. It was distracting.

“Can…can I ask you another question?” the girl asked him softly, obviously trying to temper the volume of her voice now that she knew he had a headache, how kind of her. Crosshair loathed it when she was kind to him, it made it hard for him to remember why he hated her.

He just sighed in defeat. He was too rundown to chase her away and Wrecker would throttle him if he truly started being mean to her. “What now?”

“Well…” she started, suddenly sounding hesitant in a way that filled him with dread, “Echo said you were the one that painted everybody’s armor…and I tried to paint my trooper, but I don’t think I did a very good job…could you help me fix her? We bought all those paints and you haven’t used any of them yet…” she trailed off anxiously.

Crosshair actually opened one of his eyes and looked at her. The girl’s face was pinched with nerves, obviously preparing herself for rejection, he saw the way her pulse fluttered against the skin of her throat. He glanced at Wrecker and saw so much hope in his expression that Crosshair could only sigh and immediately cave under the pressure. “Fine, if it’ll shut you up, but not right now. My hands aren’t steady enough for it.”

The girl lit up like holiday fireworks and Wrecker grinned hugely for a moment before the second part of Crosshair’s answer registered. His hands were normally as steady as his heartbeat, but right now both of them were quivering and Crosshair could see the way the admission worried his brother.

“I can give you a painkiller if you really need it, Crosshair,” Tech spoke up again, he was actually looking at Crosshair now, his expression almost as pinched as the girl’s had been.

Crosshair waved the offer away with a sigh, “Save them for when somebody gets hurt.”

Tech’s eyebrows did something interesting, “Are you certain? We don’t have a huge amount, but there are low grade painkillers in our supply that are specifically for this purpose.”

More accurately they were for Hunter’s headaches, the ones he got when too many things assailed his heightened senses at once. Crosshair just turned his head away and Tech seemed to take it as the refusal it was. The last thing he needed was them wasting Hunter’s medicine on him, not when they were strapped for cash the way they were and couldn’t replace what was used. If he took painkillers every time he felt shitty he’d be on them all the time.

“If Twitchy dies on my table you all have to clean it up,” Cid groused when she returned from her office with Crosshair’s remaining brothers on her heels. Crosshair didn’t miss the worried look that crossed Hunter’s expression when he saw his littlest brother practically catatonic in a public place, but when he glanced at Tech the engineer just shook his head.

Crosshair also didn’t miss the subtle hand sign Wrecker flashed their leader when Hunter’s eyes turned to him next.

Pain  

Hunter’s frown deepened, but he didn’t make an issue of it, for which Crosshair was thankful.

“If I die in this dump I’m making it everybody’s problem,” Crosshair told the trandoshan flatly. Cid actually laughed as she went around behind the bar.

“At least you’ve got spunk,” she said, “I like that. How about you put it to good use and help make us all a little money huh?”

Crosshair actually lifted his head and shot his brothers a chilly look when they all froze as one. The implication was clear: they didn’t intend to let Crosshair help with the job, but didn’t want to outright tell him that.

Something in him seethed, because of course they didn’t trust him to have their backs. They had nearly shot him when he’d pulled the girl out of the sea on Kamino, so putting him in a position to shoot all of them was obviously out of the question…or maybe they were just worried he’d take the opportunity to run away.

“Woah,” Cid said, picking up on the suddenly chilly atmosphere as Crosshair glared daggers at his brothers and they all looked away guiltily, “Whatever this is I don’t want to be a part of it. Bicker somewhere else.”

Hunter sighed and gestured towards the door. “Expect us back in a week or two, Cid,” he said as he practically herded them all outside.

“Whatever,” Cid said as a goodbye.

Crosshair seethed all the way back to the Marauder, but didn’t explode the way he so desperately wanted to. Nothing would come of it, he knew that. All it would do was make his head louder and make the rest of them tiptoe around him like he was some rabid animal that might bite them at any moment.

Instead he simply stalked off to the bunkroom and tucked himself into his bunk, facing the wall with his back to whomever had been tasked with keeping an eye on him.

“Crosshair,” his brother said after a long tense silence. It was Echo this time. “You know it’s safer like this, you…you haven’t been acting like yourself and it’s dangerous to get distracted in the field, you know that.”

“You mean it’s dangerous to put me behind a rifle where I might decide to shoot you,” Crosshair bit out, not turning away from the wall. It was pathetic, going to sulk in his bunk like a child, no better than the girl, but it was either this or stab Hunter with his boot knife in frustration.

“We know you don’t want to hurt us Cross’ika,” Echo soothed. The implication that he might hurt them anyway wasn’t addressed, but it hung in the air nonetheless.

Crosshair snarled at him, “Stop calling me that, reg , I’m not one of your little shiny brothers that needs you to cuddle up with them.” Normally it wasn’t acknowledged that Echo was a reg, given that he’d fully carved out a place for himself in the Batch, but Crosshair wasn’t feeling good-natured at the moment.

Echo sighed and tried again, “This is temporary, Cross, once Tech finishes the scanner we can be sure, and if you still have your chip AZI can remove it for you. Then everything will go back to normal.”

“There’s nothing for Tech’s damn scanner to find,” Crosshair hissed, clenching his jaw and clutching at his head, “ All of this is a supreme waste of everybody’s time. I told you they took it out, I keep telling you that, but you think I’m lying . If I was lying don’t you think I would have tried to murder you by now?”

There was a long silent pause and then Crosshair felt Echo’s weight settle on his bunk behind him as his brother sat down. Crosshair could practically hear the hesitation in Echo’s movements, but eventually he laid his hand down on Crosshair’s own where he was scraping his fingers futilely down the side of his head, trying to dig out the crawling scuttling thoughts , catching and pulling his hand away. Echo was just as tactile as Wrecker, maybe moreso, which Crosshair had always chalked up as being some kind of reg thing. They were always all over each other from what he’d observed. 

Crosshair took it as some sign of weakness in himself that he didn’t yank his hand out of Echo’s fingers. Pathetic. He really was no better than the girl.

“If there’s nothing for Tech to find then what’s causing you all this pain?” Echo asked gently.

Crosshair growled at him, “The damn long necks did something to me,” he snarled back. He didn’t want to let Echo in on that secret, especially knowing his other brothers would immediately find out about it, didn’t want them to know that he was just plain crazy, but the words were burning a hole in his throat and he had to spit them out before they did permanent damage. 

He could hear the furrowed brows and frown in Echo’s voice when he asked, “What do you mean?”

Crosshair attempted to tug his fingers out of his eldest brother’s hand so he could get back to trying to dig a hole in his head with his bitten down fingernails, but Echo refused to let go. “They put me in the machine and did something to the chip, made it stronger, louder. The voices didn’t go away even after they took it out. They burned them into my brain .” He hated himself for admitting it, the words tasted like bile as they passed through his lips, but he couldn’t hold them in any longer. Crosshair was pretty sure he’d once heard somebody say ‘the truth always comes out, because it wants to be free.’

“I…” Echo started and then paused before trying again, “We still need to check, just to be sure, but why didn’t you just tell us that?”

“Oh of course ,” Crosshair snapped, “I guess I should have reassured you from the beginning that I’m not brainwashed , I’m just crazy. That’s a whole world of improvement on the situation.”

“You’re not crazy, Crosshair,” Echo admonished, “Even if they took the chip out and you still hear it, you’re not crazy.”

“It’s so loud,” Crosshair wheezed, trying harder to pull his hand back so he could tear his head open and scoop out the insides. Anything just to get them out .

“Shh,” Echo shushed, leaning his body into Crosshair like some kind of living weighted blanket, “You’re okay, Cross’ika,” he went on and squeezed Crosshair’s fingers gently. “We’ll figure out what’s wrong and fix it. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that,” Crosshair hissed, his anger weak against the warm weight of his eldest brother pressed against his back.

Echo sighed, “We’ll work something out. You’ll be okay, we’ll make sure of it.”

Damn sentimental reg, Crosshair growled to himself, but he was so tired, like the constant pain had sapped away his strength. Eventually he gave up and let Echo lean on him, and if he leaned into his brother’s comforting weight just a little? Well he’d deny it.

Chapter Text

Thankfully, if Echo did go tattle on Crosshair to his brothers, which he was certain he did, they had decided not to confront Crosshair about his chip or lack thereof when he awoke. Echo was nowhere in evidence when Crosshair blinked his eyes open, although the last thing he remembered before nodding off was his brother leaning on him, holding his hand and speaking softly to him in Mando’a.

Reg shit. 

The Batch had never been included in the brotherly comradery that manifested itself as the shared language and had only started to learn it when Echo had joined the squad and insisted on teaching them. Crosshair didn’t find it any more comforting than any other language, but it meant something to Echo and so he’d played along with it and learned just like the rest of them had.

Now Crosshair was alone in his bunk, although not alone in the bunkroom. Wrecker was clattering around in the back of the ship and Tech and Hunter were on the floor of the bunkroom, assembling the half-built scanner and sharpening all the knives they had respectively. Crosshair glanced up towards the cockpit, but even if Echo was up there he wouldn’t be visible from Crosshair’s angle.

“Finally awake?” Tech hummed when he sat up, expertly twisting together a set of differently colored wires.

Crosshair squinted at him. “What time is it?”

“Twelve-forty,” Hunter supplied, giving Crosshair a calculating look before returning his attention to the knives.

Crosshair scowled. They’d let him sleep in. Why had they let him sleep in? Was it because he’d been sleeping so little since they’d reclaimed him from the Empire or did this have to do with his talk with Echo? He found he was too afraid that the answer would be the latter, that it would lead to further questions, for him to ask. 

The girl appeared in the room before he was forced to think of something to say.

“You’re awake!” she cried, “How are your hands?”

Crosshair blinked at her for a second, confused, before remembering he’d agreed to fix her doll when his hands were steadier. With a sigh he opened and closed his fists and held his palms up for her to see. The tremors had gone while he was sleeping and they were steady as anything. The girl crowed with delight and then hesitated, fixing him with her big round eyes. “You don’t mind helping me paint her? We can do it later…”

“I have nothing better to do,” Crosshair grumbled and then shot Hunter a withering glare when the sergeant smiled to himself. Hunter countered the glare with a pair of innocently raised eyebrows and Crosshair gave up. He’d barely been awake five minutes and the day was already unsalvageable.

They ended up on the floor with everyone else. The girl had dug out all the paints and brushes in a whirlwind of energy before spreading the supplies out in front of Crosshair like some sort of crazed religious offering and plopping down across from him to hold out the doll.

With a sigh he dug out a toothpick, then accepted the toy and looked it over. Her paint job really was haphazard, but she was a child so it wasn’t any better or worse than he had been expecting. “What exactly do you want done to it?” he asked her.

The girl’s face lit up, as if she hadn’t expected she’d be allowed to give input. “Oh! Well I didn’t have paint so I used polish to turn her black like that and some red thread I pulled out of my clothes, but the polish has kind of rubbed off so if you could make her armor dark like all of yours that would be good.”

Crosshair blinked at her slowly, “Is that all?”

Her expression lit up a little more, apparently pleased to be able to make more than one request. “You all have stripes on your armor…well you did but you haven’t repainted yours yet, but everyone else does, so some red stripes please and maybe red greaves and vambraces…Oh and one red pauldron!”

“Right or left pauldron?” he asked.

“Right pauldron please!”

Crosshair sighed, “Alright, go get me a rag and some soap so I can get the rest of the polish out, it’ll ruin the consistency of the paint.”

“Right away, sir!” she cheered and ran off with a laugh. Crosshair glared after her, as if Wrecker’s boundless energy wasn’t enough now there were two of them.

“Thanks for doing this, Crosshair,” Hunter told him when she’d left the room, although he didn’t look up from his vibroblade and whetstone, “It might not mean much to you, but it means a lot to her.”

“Whatever,” Crosshair grumbled. She came back a moment later with a couple rags and some soap and water and Crosshair went about mechanically scrubbing away all the polish and then drying the doll back off. “You want to keep the skull on its chest?” he asked her, clarifying as much as he could before he started.

“Yes please,” the girl replied with a bob of her head, “and if you could put a ninety-nine on her pauldron or somewhere that would be perfect!”

Crosshair nodded and finally went about selecting a brush. “Fine.” It was true that he was the one who did all the painting for the Batch. He’d painted all their armor the first time around and then he was the one his brothers went to for touch-ups, but it had been a while since he’d painted anything. Not since at least a few weeks before the Order and that whole disaster had happened. The task was familiar and calming though, not unlike cleaning his rifle, and Crosshair sunk into that calm as much as he could. Mercifully, his clamoring thoughts were quieted by the focus required for the activity, as they were when he had to shoot, and he was able to keep his hands and heart and breathing steady, even in the company of his siblings.

He had the girl point out where on the armor she wanted the red stripes, but otherwise tried to ignore her as she chattered at him. This was a much smaller scale paint job than he was used to doing and at times he felt like all the brushes he had were too big. The most difficult detail ended up being the minute ninety-nine he put on the pauldron as requested and he was glad for his enhanced eyesight so he didn’t have to use a magnifier like Tech sometimes did while working.

When he finally finished, the girl was absolutely overjoyed with the result and he had to hold the toy away from her to keep her from snatching it out of his grip.

“It needs to dry for an hour,” Crosshair told her firmly, before relinquishing the doll into her custody.

“Okay!” she said, already distracted as she examined the details of his work. “Thanks a whole lot, Crosshair! She’s perfect!”

“Whatever,” he grumbled as he screwed the jars of paint closed and started on cleaning the brushes.

“Wrecker look!” the girl squealed with delight as she ducked out the door of the bunkroom, “Crosshair painted my trooper!”

“He actually did that?” Crosshair heard Wrecker ask in reply, his voice loud as ever, not that there was anything to stop the noise from reaching him with the bunkroom door open. Wrecker ducked into the room a second later with a hopeful expression on his face that made Crosshair immediately suspicious. “Since you’ve got all the paints out, Cross, couldya fix my chest plate?”

Crosshair just rolled his eyes and started reopening all the paints, which made Wrecker’s expression light up as he took it as an invitation to pull said chest plate off and thunk it down in front of his little brother. Crosshair repainted the scorched and scuffed parts obediently and then eyed his brothers. As expected Tech unfastened his left greave and right pauldron before passing them over without ever looking up from what he was doing with the scanner and then when Crosshair had finished those he did Hunter’s helmet. 

“I’ll ask Echo if he needs a touch-up,” the girl volunteered as Crosshair set Hunter’s helmet aside to dry with the rest of the newly repainted armor pieces and then a moment later she reappeared with Echo’s own chest plate.

“Your armor’s lookin’ awfully borin’ now huh?” Wrecker joked when Crosshair set that aside as well. Crosshair read the hopeful question in the words and answered it by firmly screwing the lids back onto the paint jars and setting about cleaning the brushes once again. His brother deflated at the refusal, but didn’t make a fuss over it. 

Crosshair didn’t want to paint his armor. It felt like he’d be admitting to something if he did, like he’d be agreeing to stay. His brothers knew that and that’s why they were so anxious for him to do it. He couldn’t, not…not yet.

They want you to stay, some quiet part of him whispered, while the rest of him yelled, It never stopped them from leaving you before!

He shook the thoughts out of his head, still relaxed enough for them to actually go when he did, and finished cleaning the brushes.

***

Things stayed quiet, both outwardly and inside Crosshair’s head, until they came out of hyperspace over a planet so unremarkable and out of the way that it didn’t even have a proper name, just a number. Like us , Crosshair mused. The clones had to make up their own names if they wanted something other than a number . Rampart had always called him by his serial number…

Crosshair shook his head violently, moreso than normal. The last thing he needed was to think about Rampart and have another meltdown. Part of him was hoping he’d be able to convince his brothers to let him help with the mission and if he had an attack of insanity they’d definitely label him as a liability and leave him behind.

“You okay?” Wrecker asked him softly from his seat opposite the thoroughfare. His siblings were always bothered by the vicious head shaking, it was a visual reminder that something was wrong with him, but Crosshair couldn’t help it. Anything to keep his thoughts in line.

Good soldiers follow orders , came the reminder, just a whisper instead of a scream this time. Get behind a rifle and pop their traitor heads like balloons. He shook his head again and his brother’s expression sharpened. 

“Crosshair?”

Crosshair gave him a venomous look in reply and Wrecker just put his hands up in surrender. 

Hunter gathered them all in the main room of the ship not long after and pulled up a projection of the planet so he could brief them. “This is B-351. It’s mostly jungle, with no large predators, but some toxic plants, so don’t eat anything.” He shot Wrecker a hard look at the last part and Wrecker was wise enough to look contrite. “We’ll be landing here,” Hunter went on, highlighting an area on the holo projection with a red dot and then zooming in and scrolling a few klicks to the east. The projection showed what looked to be the old ruins of a temple nestled amongst the jungle. “There’s some old Jedi ruins here, which is where we’re headed. Cid’s client has informed us that a band of pirates have been hiding out here. They’ve stolen something valuable from a medical transport that will sell for a truckload on the black market, an experimental strain of bacta, and the client is desperate to get it back. This job pays big, so we can’t screw it up.”

“About how many pirates are there likely to be?” Tech asked, adjusting his goggles and then leaning in to eye the projection of the temple.

“Thirty or so,” Hunter answered, “No really heavy weapons or vehicles as far as the client knew. The medical transport was under escort, but it was sabotaged to drop out of hyperspace early, where it would be alone. The pirates took it without firing a shot.”

“An inside job then,” Echo hummed, “Does that matter for us?” 

Hunter shook his head, “Probably not. That’s on the client’s side of things, so it doesn’t really affect us.”

“How are we doin’ this?” Wrecker asked enthusiastically. He and the girl slapped each other excitedly on the shoulder like the children they were.

Hunter gave him a thoughtful look, one that flickered over to Crosshair in a way he didn’t like. “You and Cross will be staying with the Marauder, be ready to pick us up if we need it.”

“You’re joking ,” Crosshair seethed, biting down on his toothpick until it splintered. He hated this plan already. Leaving him out of it was bad enough, infuriating enough, but they were leaving their heavy support behind as well? It was idiotic! “You’re bringing the little girl with you, but leaving me and Wrecker behind?” He had never heard a more insulting proposal in his life.

“Are you sure, Hunter?” Wrecker asked, sounding dubious.

“This is a low risk mission,” Hunter replied almost defensively, “Just in and out to steal the bacta sample back, mostly stealth. We shouldn’t be getting in any firefights and Wrecker is a little big for sneaking. Most of the time we’ll be inside as well, so long range support won’t do us much good. It’s better if you two are ready with the ship to pull us out if there’s trouble.”

It might have been vaguely reasonable if Crosshair hadn’t known it was total banthashit . “Wrecker has participated in stealth missions before and leaving him behind in the hopes that there won’t be trouble is cocky to the point of moronic!” Crosshair snapped, “And aside from that, even if you are inside the temple for most of the mission you still have to get in the temple and out of the temple and there is a non-zero a chance of getting caught while doing either which means I can and should be backing you up!”

Hunter gave Crosshair a sad look that made the sniper want to lunge across the projector and throttle him. “Just trust me, for once, Crosshair? This is for the best, I promise.”

“Oh like you trust me?” he snarled back. Every single one of his siblings flinched and Crosshair couldn’t take it anymore. He kicked the projector as hard as he could and stormed out of the room with a strangled yell, gripping his head.

They don’t trust you!

They don’t want you!

They shouldn’t trust you, you shouldn’t trust them!

They’re traitors! Kill them already, they deserve to die!

GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS!

Crosshair ended up locking himself in the fresher. Anything just to get away from his brothers since he couldn’t get away from the chaos inside his head. Wrecker tried to coax him out, but Crosshair curled himself up in the stall of the sonic and stubbornly ignored his brother until he gave up.

They went ahead with the mission without him. Crosshair felt the change in how the engines hummed as they descended into the planet’s atmosphere and then the bump as they landed. He heard the sound of his brothers opening the door and descending the ramp and then the silence as he was left behind again.

***

Crosshair sat in the sonic stall and drifted. Buried under clamoring thoughts to the point that he only barely heard his brothers talking over the comms. He was fairly certain Wrecker tried to coax him out of the fresher again, but he would be hard pressed to remember what his brother had said.

Everything was swirling inside him, raking claws against the soft insides of his body, running razor blades over his bones, screaming in his ears.

They don’t want you!

They don’t need you!

You’re dead weight, who needs a crazy person on a mission?

Who’d ever put you behind a rifle? You’re useless.

Around and around the thoughts went, all suffused with the hiss of kill them kill them kill them kill them and pounding to the beat of GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS.

They left him. Again.

They would always leave him when it really came down to it, wouldn’t they?

There was nowhere for him to go, but Crosshair was suddenly overflowing with the need to run. He couldn’t stay on the Marauder, not like this, not like dead weight, not like a pet more than a brother.

He stood up, ignoring how terrible he looked as he passed the mirror on the way out of the fresher. Wrecker was sitting on the ramp a few feet away and turned when the fresher door opened.

His smile was weak. He didn’t like being left behind either. Crosshair was worse than dead weight. Hunter felt like he needed to leave one of them to watch him, which made him not dead weight but an actual liability , weakening the team, making them vulnerable.

Crosshair stood there in the main avenue of the ship, adrift, but feeling the pull of, Run . Just run. It doesn’t matter where you go, they’ll only leave you behind anyway.

“Cross?” Wrecker asked, breaking through the noise just enough for Crosshair to refocus. He needed to show his hand a little, if he wanted to get away.

“Having fun on the bench?” He asked snidely. ‘How’s it feel to be the one left behind?’ said the undercurrent of the words, something that none of his brothers but Wrecker ever seemed to hear.

“It sucks,” Wrecker told him dismally, but he tried to force a reassuring smile onto his face. Looking at it made Crosshair nauseous. “But it’s just for now, Cross, until Tech finishes the scanner. Hunter’ll let us go on the next one.”

“I left my datapad somewhere,” Crosshair replied weakly, “Help me look.”

Wrecker perked up a little at being given something to do. “Where’d you see it last?” he asked.

Crosshair just shrugged, “I don’t remember, if you check up front I’ll check back here.”

“Sure, we’ll find it, don't worry!” Crosshair’s brother reassured as he stood up and headed into the bunkroom towards the cockpit. Crosshair waited until the bunkroom door had whooshed shut behind him before walking down the ramp and into the jungle.

It was better if he left them before they could leave him behind for real.

Chapter Text

The Jedi temple was a huge sweeping structure and the pirates were hard-pressed to guard it with their small numbers, which was good for the Bad Batch. Sneaking the four of them past the shoddy guard posts was as easy as waiting until the pirates turned their backs and scurrying past. The lack of proper training was plain to see, the pirates didn’t watch each other’s backs and the ground covered by their lines of sight had huge gaps. So far Hunter was a little alarmed by how easy it was.

The real struggle turned out to be finding their way through the temple itself. With how labyrinthine the place was, the Batch had to rely on Hunter finding the largest congregation of people via sound, so he kept his ears perked for the sounds of people, but the place was so large that every little noise echoed and it was hard to work out where they were coming from. A little band of monkey-like creatures that were hanging from a tree that had broken through the wall of the temple hooted at them as they rounded a corner and entered a large open area, a noise which had Hunter shooing his siblings behind cover and waiting for somebody to come running, but all that happened was the one guard in the adjacent hall leaned around the corner and cussed the creatures out before turning to walk away.

Hunter took that guard out with a knife to the back of his skull and caught him before his body could hit the floor with a thunk. He hid the body in the undergrowth that had broken through the temple walls and taken over the open hall where the monkeys were lounging. There hadn’t been a way to go around him without taking him out anyway. 

Down that hallway, through another open area, and then two more hallways they went. Echo scomped into a panel in the wall to get a set of doors open for them once they’d taken out the pirates standing on either side of it, and behind it they found the crates of cargo.

“Yes!” Omega cheered, although she kept her voice quiet as she did a little hop.

“Yes,” Tech agreed with a sigh as he adjusted his goggles, “I was beginning to think this would take all day. These pirates are sorely lacking in organizational skills.”

“They’re pirates , Tech, not accountants,” Echo pointed out with a chuckle as he, Tech, and Hunter started digging through the boxes while Omega stood watch by the door.

“This look like an experimental bacta strain?” Echo asked after a moment as he hauled a box about half the size of his torso into the open.

Hunter and Tech came over to check. The box was white and red with a handle on either end and a keypad lock. 

“Tech you want to do this lock, since I did the door?” Echo asked.

Tech sighed and knelt down in front of the box as he pulled a set of tools out of one of the pouches on his belt. “Easy,” he said after prying open the pad and rewiring it. The lock blinked green and clicked open, revealing a set of vials of blue slime packed in dry ice when they opened the lid of the container. 

Hunter wrinkled his nose. “Sure smells like bacta.”

“I’d say this is it,” Tech agreed.

 “Good job keeping watch, Omega,” Hunter said as he straightened up, “Time to go.”

Omega beamed and gave him a jaunty salute as Tech put the lid back on the box and reengaged the lock. 

“Uh guys…” came Wrecker’s voice over the comms.

“What is it, Wrecker?” Hunter asked as he grabbed one handle of the box and Tech grabbed the other. “We’ve found the bacta and we’re headed back now.”

“That's good ‘cause you’re gonna wanna come back…” Wrecker said, sounding guilty of all things.

“Why?” Hunter asked him suspiciously, “What’s going on? Is something wrong with Crosshair?”

“I guess you could say that since he’s, you know, gone .”

“What?” Omega gasped.

“What do you mean he’s gone, Wrecker?” Tech asked him urgently. “Where did he go?”

“I dunno! He came outta the fresher lookin’ like he got chewed up an’ spit out by a rancor an’ asked me to help him find his datapad, so I did, but when I turned back around he was gone. I checked everywhere, but I got no idea where he went.” Now Wrecker definitely sounded guilty.

“He tricked you in other words,” Tech snapped.

“Yeah…sorry…” Wrecker mumbled.

Hunter’s every nerve was on fire. He’d made sure somebody was always watching Crosshair, but somehow he hadn’t actually expected him to run. “We’re on our way back, Wrecker, stay with the Marauder.” 

They hustled back through the temple doubletime, almost careless in their movements, which Hunter had to temper when they turned a corner only to run headlong into three pirates and have to scramble to kill them all before they could bring their friends running. They went more cautiously after that, but he was still having a hard time paying his full attention to what they were doing. The longer they took, the further away Crosshair got, the harder he would be to find.

They made it back to the Marauder with the box of bacta samples safely, but Hunter hardly cared about the job anymore. Crosshair had run. Why had he run? He’d been upset that he and Wrecker had been benched, it was true, but surely that alone wouldn’t be enough to make him want to leave? Where would he even go? They were surrounded on all sides by jungle.

“I’m sorry, Hunter!” Wrecker cried when they made it back to the attack shuttle and handed him the box of samples.

“I know, but we’ll deal with that later,” Hunter told him, “When did he leave?”

Wrecker loaded the box in with their other crates of supplies and scratched his head. “I called you about ten minutes after I last talked to 'im. I searched all over first.”

“That gives him almost an hour’s head start,” Echo pointed out. 

“I imagine the terrain will slow him down to a degree,” Tech reasoned, “But part of his skillset as a sniper is navigating difficult terrain without leaving evidence.”

“He can’t cover his trail completely,” Hunter replied. He’d started at the ramp, shooing everybody out of his way; he could still catch the tail end of Crosshair’s scent inside the Marauder. He smelled more like he had on Kamino during his panic attack than he had in recent weeks. “He’s freaking out,” Hunter told them as he went back down the ramp, “Really high cortisol, really low serotonin, not quite enough to be a panic attack, but something close to that. Maybe…maybe I should have at least let him help, not given him anything dangerous to do, but given him something at least.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Tech pointed out, “The best we can do at the moment is find him.”

Hunter nodded, “You’re right.” He shooed them further out of his way as he checked around the Marauder. Mostly it was their own tracks that had disturbed the foliage and surroundings, but after a few yards Hunter caught a set of bootprints, just a scuff in one spot and an indent a few feet away, but enough for him to guess the boot-size, weight, and stride length. “Here he is,” he said, more to himself than his siblings. He looked back to where they were gathered behind him, all on the far side of the Marauder. “Echo, stay with the Marauder so somebody is here in case he comes back.”

Echo nodded and Hunter turned his attention back to finding his brother. Tracking him was significantly harder than it would be with a normal person. Crosshair was actively attempting to evade him, avoiding patches of mud, not scuffing his feet, and never touching the plants around him enough to break their stems or significantly bend them, but tracking was Hunter’s thing and there was little Crosshair could do to hide his scent.

“I don’t understand,” Tech said in a frustrated voice after a half hour of trekking through the jungle, “Why would he run? There is nowhere for him to go on this planet! He didn’t take any supplies, not even his weapons, and there are no space ports or major cities here, there aren’t even any smaller settlements! It doesn’t make any sense! ”

“Not a lot of what he’s done recently has made sense,” Hunter told him, “He hasn’t been himself.”

Wrecker made an unhappy noise, “You think this is a chip thing?” 

“What if it’s not?” Omega piped up before he could answer. Hunter actually paused, all of them coming to a stop as he looked down at her. She was smart, understood people in ways that the rest of them - except maybe Wrecker - didn’t, and she was observant.

“What’s your thought, Omega?” Hunter prompted when she didn’t immediately explain, “You think you know why he ran?”

Omega looked down at the ground, as if searching for the trail only Hunter was able to pick out, and fidgeted, “Well…I mean what if this is a test? What if…well he was upset that we never came for him before, even when we brought him back it was you we came for, not him, so what if he’s testing us to see if we actually come find him?”

“He’s been antsy ‘bout that,” Wrecker added, tossing in his own observations, “He doesn’t think we really want ‘im around.”

“He said that? When?” Tech asked with a scowl.

Wrecker shifted from one foot to the other anxiously. “Well he never said it…but you know how Cross is…he leaves holes in things he’s sayin’ an’ waits to see if you fill it in with an answer ‘cause he doesn’t feel like he can actually ask… ” he fidgeted with his helmet, “‘specially when he thinks he’s not gonna like the answer.”

“He’s been doing that again?” Hunter asked him. This was something he’d never gotten the hang of with Crosshair, his brother used doublespeak, leaving things unsaid and relying on the implications to communicate his thoughts when he was uncomfortable. Hunter had never been sure if he did it out of pride or fear, but it had always made him hard to talk to, at least when you were trying to get him to talk about something emotional. 

Hunter could hear the way Wrecker was frowning under his helmet, “Well yeah….”

“So he is testing us then, like Omega said,” Tech concluded with an irritated noise, “He is seeing if we will give up and leave without him.”

“Again,” Hunter couldn’t help but say, his heart breaking a little in his chest. They’d made their brother feel unwanted, had made him feel like he was useless, had let him think they would just abandon him on some deserted planet and fly away. It hurt him to think about, but if that’s what this really was, it was Hunter’s fault for having given Crosshair reason to feel that way.

They all deflated a little at the realization, each one of them feeling guilty. It was Wrecker who bounced back first, like always. “Then all we gotta do is prove we won’t leave ‘im!”

“Right!” Omega agreed just as firmly, “Let’s go find him.”

“If this is what it takes for him to feel secure then we have no other choice but to humor him,”  Tech sighed. 

Omega looked up at them with a thoughtful expression, “Do you think he’s on comms? He was wearing his armor…”

“Maybe,” Hunter told her as he knelt down to pick the trail back up so they could continue.

Omega made a determined noise and held her vambrace up to her mouth. Technically her old comms had been Crosshair’s, but his imperial armor had come with a set, so they hadn’t had to get him new ones.  “Come in Crosshair, this is Omega,” the stubborn hopeful little girl said, waiting a moment to listen to the empty static to see if he’d reply, when he didn’t she just went on talking. “We’re coming to get you. Just hang tight, we’ll be there soon.” More static, but having sent the message seemed to make her feel better, so Hunter figured even if Crosshair hadn’t heard her it wasn’t a waste of time. She continued to talk into the comms while they moved along. Hunter only paid half an ear to it, mostly focused on following the faint scent on the vegetation and in the dirt, pausing occasionally to examine a footprint or sniff the air. 

She told the empty static that might have had their wayward brother listening on the other end how they’d completed the mission and nobody had gotten hurt, how that meant they could go back to Ord Mantell and he’d get to try the Mantell Mix, how she really liked the way he’d painted her trooper and how excited she was thinking about how his armor would look when he finally repainted it. She reassured him that they weren’t angry and they’d be there soon. Told him that it was okay if he wanted to be alone for a while, but that he didn’t need to run away to get that. Told him that they were sorry for ever having left him in the first place. Listening to her helped keep their spirits from dropping too low as they trekked through the jungle.

When the trail ran straight into a large creek the group had to pause for a moment as Hunter sighed. It wasn’t enough to stop them of course, unless Crosshair had stayed in the creek for miles Hunter would be able to pick the trail back up on one or the other bank eventually, but it did mean that Crosshair was probably wet on top of being alone and panicky. Hunter paced first up and then down the bank on the side they were already on first, checking that Crosshair hadn’t gone into the water and then doubled back to throw him off, then they slogged through the freezing cold water to the other side. It was deep enough to reach Hunter’s waist and Wrecker had unceremoniously swept Omega up onto his shoulders rather than have her wade in water that rose up to her chest. Hunter was grateful that the climate was warm as he paced up the other bank looking for signs of his brother and then back down it, eyes glued to the ground.

The water was enough to throw off his sense of smell, but with enough searching Hunter found some underbrush with damp leaves, which was enough for him to pick his brother’s trail back up.

The next hurdle came when they reached a cliff that encircled a basin. The creek wound back around and flowed over the side off to their left in a roaring waterfall. Wrecker had kept Omega on his shoulders and he stayed well back from the edge, but Hunter and Tech both peered over the side. It was at least sixty feet down to the bottom, but the ground below wasn’t visible beneath the canopy of the jungle. 

“You don’t think he…” Tech said, his voice unnaturally tight. The thought was heartstopping, but Hunter didn’t let himself contemplate it, instead he squinted down at the clifface itself and then smiled in relief when he saw the way dust had recently been scraped off one of the jutting rocks only a few feet down.

“He climbed down,” he told them, not letting his voice shake. Tech let out a shuddering breath and rested his hand over his heart like he could still its pounding.

“I uh..” Wrecker spoke up, “That cliff is pretty high and those handholds are pretty small and I’m pretty big…” he said anxiously.

“Stay up here,” Hunter told him. Wrecker was heavy enough that there was a chance handholds that would work for the rest of them would just crumble under his weight, nevermind how frightened he’d be the entire time.

Wrecker let out a relieved sigh, “Right okay. I’ll be here.”

Hunter had Omega hold onto his back like a rat-monkey as he took to climbing down the cliff with Tech following after. He couldn’t go the same route as Crosshair, not when his brother was nearly six inches taller than him, but he figured it was a safe enough bet that he could pick Crosshair’s trail back up once they reached the bottom. When they finally had their feet back on stable ground he let Omega hop down and went back to searching back and forth for evidence of where his brother had gone.

A scuff in the dust put them back on track, but the trail didn’t lead them very far. Again they stopped at the creek, this time where the waterfall met the ground in a great pool that bled off further down the rocks. Hunter followed the same process as before, searching up and down each bank, but found nothing. Crosshair must have stayed in the water as he moved. Hunter heaved a heavy sigh and sat back on his heels, thinking.

Omega was fidgeting and after a second she pulled her vambrace back up and said to Crosshair, “Don’t worry we’re still on our way, you’re just really sneaky so it’s taking a while.”

Hunter almost didn’t hear it under the sound of the roaring waterfall, but something about the comm message echoed weirdly and he stood up, looking around, listening. “Say something else into the comms, Omega,” he told her.

She blinked at him in confusion, but complied. “You went in the water so you’re probably all wet and cold, like we are, but once we get back to the Marauder we can wrap up in blankets.”

There, that same weird echo. Hunter realized what it was with a sigh of relief. “There’s a cave behind the waterfall,” he told Omega and Tech as he strode off towards it.

“Naturally,” Tech replied blandly as he followed on Hunter’s heels, making Omega giggle while she trotted after them.

When they ducked under the freezing water into the cave they finally finally found Crosshair. He was sitting with his back against the cave wall, legs out in front of him. The musty underground air was suffused with the scent of anxiety and as they came over Hunter saw that he was thunking his head back against the stone wall every few seconds, not hard enough to injure himself, but in a way that looked like it hurt nonetheless.

Hunter gestured for Tech and Omega to stand back as he came and knelt next to his little brother. To his relief, Crosshair’s eyes - reflecting the dim light like a loth-cat’s - slid over to him, proving that he was aware that Hunter was there. 

“Omega told you we’d come get you,” Hunter said to him softly, “I don’t know if you heard her, but here we are.”

“How could I not hear her?” Crosshair replied dryly. His voice sounded almost normal, if not a little gravelly,  “With the way she was chattering over comms. She doesn’t even have to be here to talk my ear off…she’s worse than Tech.”

“I resent that,” Tech cut in primly, “I talk a perfectly normal amount.” Omega giggled but didn’t say anything.

“Time to head back, Cross,” Hunter went on, ignoring the commentary, “We’re all cold and wet and I’m sure you’d be just as happy to change into dry clothes as we would.”

“Enjoy the field trip?” Crosshair asked him. There was something in his voice, some tone that made Hunter think now was one of the times when he was asking more than just the words that came out of his mouth, but he didn’t know the right answer. He wished Wrecker had been able to follow them down, he’d know.

“No,” Omega said when Hunter didn’t immediately answer, “We were worried. You shouldn’t run off by yourself, Crosshair, I learned that when I almost got eaten by a nexu and even though there’s no nexus on this planet, you still could have gotten hurt, but…but we’ll come get you no matter what dumb stupid thing you decide to do. We’ll always come get you.” Somehow it seemed Omega had heard the question that Hunter hadn’t been able to pull out of the space between Crosshair’s words and he couldn’t help but sigh in relief.

“Omega is correct,” Tech added firmly, “Even though it may not be enjoyable, we will always come to get you.”

Hunter waited until Crosshair was looking at him to give his shoulder a squeeze and say, “We’re not leaving you behind again, Crosshair.”

Crosshair was quiet for a moment, his throat bobbing as he swallowed thickly, but before he managed to respond something else seemed to grab his attention and he cocked his head as if he was listening to a far off sound, then he screwed up his face with hurt like he’d just had something awful said to him and, to his siblings’ collective horror, slammed his head into the stone behind him. The noise it made was sickening and Omega let out a shriek before rushing forward to wrap her arms around his head to keep him from doing it again.

Hunter and Tech shared an alarmed look before Tech shuffled over and knelt down on Crosshair’s other side. “Whatever you are experiencing, Crosshair, I implore you not to hurt yourself, I can guarantee it won’t make anything better,” Tech told him shakily.

“ ‘s loud…” Crosshair mumbled into Omega’s stomach, her arms still wrapped around his head.

Social delicacy was not Tech’s strong suit, but he tried anyway, quietly saying, “Yes…Echo mentioned you have been…hearing things.” 

Crosshair laughed. It was a bitter sound that made his siblings share another concerned look.

“Hearing things!” their brother crowed in an unpleasant way, “Yes I guess you could put it that way!” He laughed again.

“It’s okay,” Omega told him softly, Hunter could see the way her lip wobbled and the unshed tears shining in her eyes. Her heartbeat was fast and fluttering, but nothing like the panicked pounding of Crosshair’s. “You’re going to be okay, let’s just go home and things will be better. We can change into dry clothes and wrap up in blankets and you can sleep or watch a holo with us. Whatever you want.”

Crosshair didn’t answer, but he did knot his fingers in the back of Omega’s tunic, just holding on. Hunter had never felt so lost. He didn’t know how to help his brother at all. This wasn’t like Echo’s panic attacks, short of sedating him Hunter had no idea what could be done.

“Let’s go back to the Marauder,” Tech agreed shakily, he looked just as lost, “I’ll make sure you didn’t just crack your skull open. If you’re in pain I can give you a painkiller and if you need help sleeping I can give you something for that as well.”

“Tempting me with drugs?” Crosshair mumbled, his tone too tired to be mocking the way he had probably intended.

“Only if you need them,” Tech answered.

“Crosshair…” Hunter mumbled and then put a little strength into his voice as he tried again, “Crosshair we can’t stay down here forever, it’s time to go.”

“Of course, oh wise and benevolent leader,” Crosshair sneered, but let them get him to his feet and even let Tech examine the place where he’d cracked his head against the wall, only grumbling a little when Tech shone a light in his eyes to check his pupils, as Echo brought the Marauder around to pick them and Wrecker up. 

Hunter wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned that Crosshair didn’t fight them joining Wrecker and Echo on the attack shuttle, or changing into dry blacks, or even when Omega bundled them all up in their entire stock of blankets and pillows so they could watch a holo while Tech brought the Marauder back into hyperspace. 

He knew they needed to talk about what was going on eventually, it was painfully obvious that ignoring it would be bad for Crosshair’s health, but Hunter simply wasn’t sure how to approach it, so for the time being he let them all sink into post-mission relaxation while he considered his options. When he looked over and saw Crosshair had nodded off with Omega half across his lap he felt his shaky nerves soothed a little by the calm rhythm of their heartbeats. Whatever this was, they’d fix it. So long as they stuck together it would work out, Hunter had to believe that.

Chapter Text

Over the next few days each of Crosshair’s brothers, at some point, asked him why he ran, but Crosshair always shut the discussion down immediately. He refused to talk about it. Like any other breakdown he’d had, he just wanted to pretend it never happened, thinking about his own mental instability made him sick.

He would never admit it out loud, could barely admit it to himself, but some jagged edge in his heart had been smoothed by his siblings jumping through all the hoops he’d left them just to find and bring him back. Moreso than that he’d also rather die than admit that Omega’s reassurances had made a difference. She wasn’t one of his brothers and so it had had a different meaning than it would have coming from them, but it was meaningful nonetheless. She had earned a grudging respect from him, even though he still hated what she represented.

Because of that, when Omega stopped playing with her dolls and edged over to him, he didn’t chase her away, although he did give her a venomous look when she got too close, practically sprawling in his lap like an overgrown tooka.

“What are you doing?” she asked curiously, eyeing the parts of his firepuncher that he’d neatly arranged in front of him on the floor of the bunkroom. “You’re not cleaning, I know what that looks like.”

“An astute observation,” he replied dryly as he examined one of his new scopes - one of the little gifts his siblings had got him when they were trying to earn his favor after Kamino - and then set it down to check a different one. When Omega didn’t go away Crosshair sighed and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

Her expression was one of genuine interest and he flicked his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other before deciding after a moment that he would humor her, “You idiots purchased several mods and accessories for the firepuncher when you were plying me with gifts several weeks ago. I’m choosing which I’d like to install.”

“Oh!” the little girl said with a pleased expression. “Can you tell me what they do?”

Crosshair glared at her, but that also failed to drive her away. If she were an akk dog her tail would be wagging. Crosshair sighed again and gave up, she was much too stubborn and he didn’t have the energy to constantly engage in a battle of wills with her. “This is a CI scope,” he told her, holding said scope up for her to see, although he moved it out of her reach when she tried to touch it. “I already had one installed on the firepuncher, but this one has higher magnification and better clarity. I can match a medium powered scope with just my eyesight alone, but only up to a range of three klicks and while I can still see in monochrome with very little light, I can’t see in complete darkness. This scope has a range of five klicks as well as infrared, while the one I have been using becomes blurry at four klicks and doesn’t have infrared. Not to mention it’s been scratched, which is highly distracting.”

“Oh,” Omega said, tilting her head, “I knew your eyesight was really good but I didn’t know it was that good!”

“It’s my best trait,” he told her distractedly, only to look back at her when she made an unhappy noise. She was frowning at him and he sighed. “ What?”

“It’s not your best trait. You’re not a weapon, you have a personality,” she argued.

Crosshair stared at her, taken aback, “I have a bad personality. My skills as a sniper far outclass any other facet of my person. It’s what makes me useful .”

Omega gave him an unnervingly perceptive look, “Is that why you ran? Hunter made you feel useless?”

“I’m not talking to you about this, you're what? Eight years old?” he snapped.

“Yeah, but I’m still older than you ,” she retorted with a prim sniff.

Crosshair glared at her, “Only technically.”

“So? I’m not stupid. You wanted to help because you want to keep us safe , but Hunter wouldn’t let you and that made you feel useless, so you thought you may as well not even be around, right?” Omega told him like it was a scientific fact.

Crosshair couldn’t help but stare, how had the little girl , out of all of his siblings, been the one to figure it out like it was written in basic on his forehead. Omega smiled at him triumphantly, obviously taking his silence as confirmation. He looked back down at his disassembled firepuncher and set aside the scope he had chosen so he could attach it when he put the weapon back together.

“You’re not useless,” Omega told him confidently, undeterred by his lack of response, “Even if you went blind you wouldn’t be useless.”

“What would you know?” Crosshair grumbled, biting down on the end of his toothpick. It was a weak argument even to his own ears, but he had nothing to fend her off with. Her observations were as accurately aimed for the chinks in his armor as any headshot he’d made since he was decanted.

“Tell me what that does,” she said suddenly, pointing to one of the mods he had been considering. Apparently she felt she’d made her point and was willing to release him from the uncomfortable conversation.

“It’s an integral suppressor,” Crosshair said, accepting the subject change with no small amount of relief, “It makes the weapon quieter and scatters the bolt’s tracer flash so it’s harder to determine the origin of the shot, but it also reduces the range and accuracy of the weapon…I’m probably not going to use it, but it’s good to have in case we need to be particularly stealthy.”

“Neat!” Omega chirped. She went on like that, asking about each mod and eventually all the pieces of the firepuncher itself and listening intently to his explanations. It was a comfortable subject for Crosshair, he liked weapons, enjoyed talking about the pros and cons of individual modifications, and Omega seemed genuinely interested rather than simply humoring him.

***

The Batch made it back to Ord Mantell largely without incident and when they met Cid in her parlor she and Crosshair had a stimulating conversation consisting of him saying “Cid,” and her saying, “Twitchy.”

Hunter hadn’t been lying when he said the job paid big. With the money they got from returning the experimental bacta, Tech was able to buy the last part he needed for the scanner and have money left over for a power adapter cord and new battery pack for the medical droid.

Wrecker and Omega cornered Crosshair in the Marauder’s copilot’s chair once they were back in hyperspace and forced him to try the legendary ‘Mantell Mix’ that they were both so obsessed with while Tech assembled the scanner, Hunter paced like a caged animal, and Echo watched him pace with an exasperated expression.

“Why is it so sweet?” Crosshair asked his brother and sister with a hint of disgust in his tone. The Mix had a soft texture with a crunchy center, but it tasted like pure sugar. He could practically feel his insulin shooting through the roof.

“Because it’s delicious ,” Wrecker replied confidently.

“If you keep eating this your teeth are going to fall out,” Crosshair told them.

“ Nuh-uh ,” Omega argued maturely, “We brush our teeth twice a day, so they won’t fall out no matter how much Mix we eat, will they Tech?” she asked, leaning out of the cockpit to address said brother.

“Yes, yes, teeth, sugar, diabetes,” Tech replied distractedly as he connected a set of electrical components. A moment later he hopped to his feet and waved the device in the air declaring, “The scanner is complete!”

Hunter stopped pacing and turned to Tech with a relieved look on his face, “And it works?” he asked.

Tech adjusted his goggles, “We’ll see once I scan you all. I’m confident it will work, but even so it will need to be calibrated.”

“You’re scanning all of us?” Echo asked.

“Naturally,” Tech replied with a short nod, “To calibrate it I must have as many different scans as possible. Now who’s first?”

“I’ll go,” Hunter volunteered immediately. Always ready to take the bullet for the rest of them.

Tech gestured him over to the bunks with a rapid, “Good good. Lay down here and hold still, this will take about five minutes and you mustn’t move.”

Hunter nodded and did as he was told. All of them watched with bated breath as Tech attached the device, which looked like the frame of a helmet covered in sensor pads, to Hunter’s head and then pulled out a datapad to input the scan parameters and start the process.

As predicted it took about five minutes before the device beeped and Hunter was allowed to take it off. Tech hummed and read through the results with interest before gesturing for the next test subject. He repeated the process another three times, adjusting things in between and even moving the parts inward so the helmet fit Omega’s head as well.

Finally it was Crosshair’s turn. He hesitated when Tech gestured him over. If the device wasn’t a hunk of junk it would confirm Croshhair’s story, confirm that his chip was gone and all of his problems were just his own messed up head. Would they really decide he was a liability then and go back on all the heartwarming declarations of loyalty they had made?

He jumped when Omega slid her fingers into his much larger hand and looked up at him with her big honest eyes. “It’s okay, Crosshair,” she said, “It doesn’t hurt and once we know what’s going on we can help you feel better.”

Help him feel better, that was hilarious enough that he couldn’t help but laugh. The sound of it was a little hysterical and he could see the way it worried his siblings. “Sure, kid. Help me feel better.”

She pouted at the mocking tone he used, but still tugged him towards Echo’s bunk and bullied him into laying down.

“As Omega said,” Tech told him, “It will not hurt.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “Just get on with it.”

“Very well, hold still.”

To Crosshair’s relief the scanner was dissimilar enough to the machine the long necks had used to ‘enhance’ his chip that it didn’t turn him into a nervous wreck, but the volume in his head increased the longer he was forced to wait. He ended up counting up and down in his head to try and keep the razors and howls at bay, it was a pathetic defense, but he had no other way to combat the thoughts when he had to hold perfectly still.

They’re going to find out you’re crazy and when they do you’re as good as dead.

They’ll realize they can’t fix you with a little surgery and then drop you on the next planet they pass, if they don’t space you first.

Kill them first, you’ll be able to get Tech with your bootknife and maybe the girl and Echo before Hunter and Wrecker can react.  

Good soldiers…good soldiers…

Crosshair bit his lip, almost biting through it, but he was distracted when he felt Omega wrap her fingers around his hand again.

When the beep that indicated the scan was complete came he sat up immediately and practically ripped the thing off his head. He was breathing hard and now that he was able to he shook his head viciously.

“You’re okay, Cross,” Hunter soothed, coming over and giving his shoulder a squeeze.

“Maybe not,” Tech said with a frown as he looked at the results of the scan.

Hunter gave him a sharp look, “What do you mean? What did it find?”

“Well the good news is that, as Crosshair has repeatedly told us, there is no chip.”

Crosshair’s brothers all slumped in relief as one before sharpening back up when they remembered that Crosshair had still been acting like a lunatic. Crosshair thought he should have felt vindicated by the results, but in reality he just felt overwhelming dread.

“So what’s the bad news?” Hunter prompted.

Tech hemmed and hawed for a moment, driving all of them up the wall, before finally sighing and saying, “There is significant scarring on the brain tissue surrounding the site where the chip was located, it runs deep and the location and extensive nature of the damage is likely to severely alter thought patterns and possibly cause auditory hallucinations.” 

The only sound in the room was the low hum of the Marauder’s engines as it traveled through hyperspace.

“Great!” Crosshair laughed, “They gave me brain damage! I knew they burned it into my head, no wonder none of it has gone away!”

“None of what?” Hunter asked sharply.

Crosshair made a helpless frustrated noise and a jerky gesture towards his head, “The voices, the thoughts: ‘Good soldiers follow orders’, ‘Traitors to the Empire need to be eliminated, ‘You’re on the verge of collapse, Crosshair,’ ‘You’re a liability, Crosshair!” he ranted, the volume of his voice increasing and edging closer to hysteria with every word. Somehow knowing what was wrong with him made him feel worse rather than better. A chip could be taken out, but deep brain scarring? That wasn’t going away. They couldn’t fix that. They couldn’t fix him.

“You are not a liability,” Tech told him immediately. 

“That’s not what you seemed to think earlier! ” Crosshair snapped, “You all benched me! You left your heavy support behind on a mission just to watch me and I still freaked out and ran off. To me that sounds like the very definition of a liability!”

Hunter grabbed Crosshair’s shoulder and spun him around. Crosshair whirled with the movement, perfectly willing to deck his brother right in his stupid tattooed face, but came up short when Hunter wrapped his arms around him in an embrace.

After a second of shock Crosshair struggled, but Hunter didn’t let himself be pushed away.

“You are not a liability, Crosshair,” he said firmly, authoritatively, in a voice that brooked no argument. “I’m sorry I benched you, but we didn’t know for certain that your chip was gone, if there was any chance that it was still there and could override your will I couldn’t risk it. I still should have let you help, there were other things you could have done, and I’m sorry for overlooking that.”

“You didn’t believe me,” Crosshair hissed, “What good is anything I say if you don’t believe me?”

“I’m sorry,” Hunter replied, “But I’ve seen what this thing can do.”

“And I haven’t?!” Crosshair practically howled, finally using enough force to shove his brother off him. He knew what the chip did, he didn’t need to be told. The chip had turned him against the padawan, a child , had made him kill non-combatants in cold blood, had made him try to murder his brothers, had made him listen to Rampart, obey Rampart, no matter what…no matter what the order had been, no matter how vile, no matter how painful…

Crosshair sat down on the floor, all of his energy fleeing him at once. He was broken. What good was a clone too damaged to be repaired?

“Crosshair?” Wrecker asked cautiously.

Crosshair looked up at his brothers miserably. They all glanced at each other and then sat down, so the lot of them were in a loose circle on the floor of the bunkroom. Omega actually crawled into Crosshair’s lap. He was too tired to shove her away. He felt like all his insides had been scooped out and he was left sitting there, empty.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Hunter told him hoarsely after a moment. “You’re right, none of us really understand this thing like you do.”

Crosshair nodded weakly, but his voice had been taken away along with all his insides. 

“So you said you still hear directives from the chip in your head,” Tech piped up, tactless as ever. Crosshair nodded again. “Are you compelled to follow them? I imagine the answer is no, given you haven’t attacked any of us.”

“Hurts…” Crosshair mumbled. His voice sounded terrible, hoarse, like somebody had run razor blades across his vocal cords.

“Is that why you’re in pain all the time?” Omega asked, “Because you’re supposed to hurt us but you won’t?”

Crosshair dropped his head into his hands and tried to control his breathing. Omega reached up and cupped his cheeks with her little hands. 

“You’re really strong,” Wrecker said suddenly. Crosshair frowned but didn’t look at him. “When my chip got activated I went full droid and didn’t come back until it got taken out, but you have all the voices in your head still and you haven’t hurt any of us.”

Crosshair laughed weakly and Omega shifted to wrap her arms around his neck, practically hanging off him like a rat-monkey. “It never worked right…” he mumbled into the silence that stretched after Wrecker had finished speaking, “That’s why they were altering it.”

“Even so,” Echo said, “You’re not weak, or a liability, or whatever other horrible things your brain has been telling you.”

He just shook his head.

Hunter was watching him with sharp discerning eyes and after a moment he said, “Well if this has been going on the whole time and you haven’t hurt any of us, I’d say we can still trust you behind a rifle. I won’t be benching you anymore.”

Well that was something at least. He still had a purpose, even if it was only to protect his brothers. Some sliver deep down in his mind still hated them, but Crosshair couldn’t be sure if it was actually him that hated them or just something that he thought was him. Regardless, he found he liked the idea of that purpose more than anything the Empire had wanted to use him for.

Chapter Text

His brothers tried to console him about the results of the scan, but Crosshair quickly lost his patience, snapping and snarling at them until they gave up and left him alone. He even succeeded in chasing Omega off, much to his relief. The girl trying to cuddle him into submission was torture and he had to fight valiantly to get her off. Surprisingly Crosshair had aid in fending off his concerned siblings, aid in the form of Tech, who shooed his brothers away until it was just him and Crosshair left in the bunkroom. 

Crosshair ended up sitting on the edge of his bunk, rolling his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other irritably, and to his displeasure Tech sat down next to him, close enough that their shoulders were touching, as he pulled up what looked to be the Batch’s medical files on his datapad. Crosshair raised an eyebrow at his older brother, “You realize there’s plenty of room for the both of us on this bunk, Tech, you don’t have to sit in my lap.”

Tech didn’t even bother to look at him, “I can’t say I know what you are referring to,” he replied blandly.

With no way to argue a flat out denial of that caliber, Crosshair immediately gave up. It seemed as though even the normally reserved Tech was intent on cuddling and coddling him to death. It had never been this way before, his brothers used to let him keep his distance, at least most of the time. Crosshair regretted that he had given them a reason for such a change in behavior.

“I’d like to discuss your symptoms,” Tech said in the detached, professional sort of voice he got when he was acting as their medic.

“Discuss away, Doctor Tech,” Crosshair replied snidely, “Your first aid and field medic training is enough to cover dealing with the mentally disturbed, I’m sure .”

Tech ignored the jab completely. “You mentioned having auditory hallucinations and intrusive thoughts?” he said instead.

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “ Yes,” he snapped, “Call it whatever you want.”

“These terms have exact definitions,” Tech told him patiently, “So I must insist on having you elaborate to ensure they are indeed the correct terms for us to use. What exactly have you been experiencing, Crosshair?”

“ Must we do this? You already know what’s wrong,” Crosshair snarled.

Tech nodded serenely, “We must. I am afraid the cause of your symptoms is not something we are able to repair, it’s something you will have to live with, however that does not mean we can’t attempt to ease the symptoms themselves.”

Crosshair let out an expansive sigh. He’d rather forget the whole thing, but as it was there was a chance his symptoms would interfere with his battlefield performance and that was unacceptable. It could get somebody killed.

“ Fine,” he growled after a moment. Tech didn’t gloat over his victory, although Crosshair wished he had just so he’d have an excuse to punch him in his stupid goggle-wearing face.

“So describe your experiences,” Tech prompted again, “Let’s start by having you explain what you mean when you say there are voices in your head.”

“It means exactly what it sounds like,” Crosshair snapped, pulling his toothpick out of his mouth and gesturing with it, “There are voices, like someone talking, and they say things.”

Tech nodded and jotted something down on the datapad. Somehow the fact that his brother was taking notes only served to irritate Crosshair further. He didn’t want to be another of Tech’s little science experiments. “Do you hear them as if they were a person standing next to you or in some other manner?” his older brother asked in a suitably clinical fashion.

“Like somebody is talking to me,” Crosshair replied angrily, “sometimes they sound close and loud and sometimes they sound far away and soft. Sometimes it’s only one talking and sometimes there are so many I can’t figure out what each one is saying.”

His older brother made another note and nodded thoughtfully. “Do you recognize the speakers or are they unfamiliar?”

“I—I recognize them,” he stammered out, cursing himself. That was a question Crosshair didn’t want to answer because one of the speakers, the loudest speaker, was Rampart and he absolutely refused to talk about any of that osik, not to Tech or Wrecker or any of his brothers or anybody else for that matter. He’d take the matter to his grave rather than talk about it.

Hunter could tell reliably if a person was lying by listening to their heartbeat, but that had never worked on Crosshair because lying didn’t make him nervous, so his heartbeat didn’t change, but Tech could tell when people were lying to him based on pure simple logic and he was never fooled by Crosshair’s calm demeanor, he always seemed to know. Which meant Crosshair was left with only the option of lies by omission, although even then he would have to word his answers carefully to keep Tech from chasing down any loose threads he left.

“May I ask who they are?” 

Crosshair glared at him, but Tech was unmoved by the murderous expression, “My own voice,” he replied after a minute-long staring contest that Tech won easily, “Your voices.” Maybe if he just left Rampart out completely…

“Anybody else?” Tech asked, because he seemed to enjoy making Crosshair’s life hard.

He couldn’t outright lie, so he said, “People who issued orders while the chip was active.” There, an answer that was vague but not so vague it sounded avoidant. Crosshair put his toothpick back between his teeth so he didn’t end up chewing his lip and giving away how extremely uncomfortable he was.

Tech gave him a long calculating look before moving on, “And you mentioned having loud thoughts, please elaborate on that.” Crosshair had the distinct feeling that his brother knew he was hiding something and was simply making a note of it for later. It wasn’t a feeling he liked.

Crosshair made a helpless gesture, “That’s just what they are, loud thoughts.”

“Would you consider them unlike you?” Tech asked as he made another note in Crosshair’s chart, “Unusually violent perhaps?”

All the chanting of KillThemKillThemKillThem probably counted as ‘unusually violent’, so Crosshair nodded and Tech hummed as he made yet another note. “There are…” Crosshair started and then wished he’d never spoken, but he had and now he may as well just get the words out before they strangled him. “There are thoughts I know don’t belong to me. Thoughts I never would have had before the chip activated…things that sound like they did when the chip was in.”

“What sort of things?” Tech asked because he was a nosy little bastard.

Crosshair growled at both him and the situation in general, “Things about the Jedi, or the rebellious regs, or you idiots, about how you’re traitors, about how you should be executed.”

Tech cocked his head and gave him an unnervingly intelligent look. It wasn’t easy to forget that Tech was smart, but sometimes it was easy to forget just how smart he was. Crosshair suddenly felt very aware of the fact that his older brother was many times more intelligent than him and was currently using that intellect to pick him apart. “Thoughts encouraging you to execute us?” Tech asked. 

“Obviously,” Crosshair snarled, “But after the ion engine burned half my head off and I was dechipped I stopped acting on that, I pulled my shots when I fired on you, I gave you a head start before reporting your location whenever I saw you, and now that I’m not with the Empire anymore I’m not going to attack any of you at all.”

“Good,” Tech replied, “Hunter already expressed confidence in your ability to control yourself despite the remaining influence of the chip, and I agree with him. You have made no move to harm any of us even during times of extreme stress. The most you have ever done is lash out verbally, which is in line with your normal behavior prior to the chip’s activation.”

“Fantastic,” Crosshair groused.

“Since we are speaking of compliance to the chip’s directives or lack thereof,” Tech continued, “I may as well address another thing. Namely the question of whether Omega was correct when she posited that at least some of the pain you have been experiencing is due to noncompliance. Do you believe she was correct?” He was watching Crosshair carefully, maybe looking for a lie, or simply judging his little brother’s reaction in general.

Crosshair bit down on his toothpick and ran a hand through his hair. It had been growing back out and was closer to the length he had kept it before the Empire had taken custody of him and put him in the situation that led to it all being burned off. “I…yes, it hurts to disobey when I’m given an order…physically hurts. I get a sharp pain in my head, like I’m being stabbed, but the normal pain is just there. It gets worse when it’s loud and lessens when it’s quiet.”

“Normal pain?” Tech inquired, “You are referring to a base level of pain you experience on an average day that then spikes if you are given an order which you disobey, am I correct?”

“Yes,” Crosshair huffed, “Are we done?” 

Tech shook his head, “Not quite. You have exhibited unusual and possibly compulsive behaviors since returning to us such as head shaking and acts of self harm like scratching open your temples and slamming your head into things. Am I correct in assuming that these are things you do in an attempt to control or clear your thoughts?”

“ Yes,” Crosshair ground out. “I'm not doing it because I enjoy it, it’s just the only thing that helps. I’m already in pain most of the time, but causing it to spike is an effective way to reorient myself when things get too loud or overwhelming.”

“It’s also completely unacceptable,” Tech told him, surprising Crosshair with his heated, almost angry, tone of voice. “Surely you realize that, Crosshair?” he went on, “You cannot hurt yourself as a way to cope, that is an extremely counterproductive, unhealthy, and unsustainable defense mechanism.”

“Well I don’t see you volunteering any alternatives,” Crosshair snapped defensively. He knew it was bad for him, of course he did, he wasn’t stupid. It was just that he didn’t care when he felt like he was drowning in the cacophony of his own mind.

“That is the purpose of this conversation,” Tech replied sharply, “To identify your symptoms so I may come up with a workable treatment plan.”

“Well I hope this interrogation is enough for you,” Crosshair hissed, “because I’m not doing it again and I’m not elaborating on anything else.”

There was another long moment where the brothers glared silently at each other before Tech sighed and looked down at his datapad. “It is obviously a very unpleasant subject for you to talk about, but rest assured I am doing this to help you Crosshair, not to hurt you.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

Tech adjusted his goggles and stood up. “I have everything I need for now and will move on to researching treatment options.”

“Am I dismissed?” Crosshair hissed.

Now Tech was the one to roll his eyes, “If you must put it that way, then yes, you are dismissed.” 

Crosshair stood and pushed past his older brother and out of the bunkroom. Of course there was really nowhere to go on the Marauder and both brothers ended up in the back of the ship with Omega and the other three. To Crosshair’s surprise they were gathered around the holo projector, all watching the flickering image of Captain Rex as the reg spoke. “And you’re sure it’s safe?” Rex was saying.

Hunter nodded, “Yes, we’ve confirmed that the chip’s gone.”

“What have we missed?” Tech asked as he came over to the projector.

“Not much,” Hunter replied, straightening up from where he had been leaning on the table-like device, “Rex has something for us to do.”

“ Something I need help doing, ” Rex corrected. He eyed Crosshair openly when the sniper joined his brothers at the projector, but didn’t comment on his presence. It was obvious that they had been talking about him when he walked in, but Crosshair really didn’t care. 

“And what would that be, Captain?” Crosshair asked him a little snidely. He was maybe overcompensating a little with the attitude, but like hell was he going to let on to anybody outside the Batch that he was out of sorts.

Rex completely ignored his tone and answered the question as it was, “As you boys know, there are clones whose chips either didn’t work, or were removed before the Order was issued. Ones who rebelled, like you did. I’ve been trying to track them down and pull them out of the hot water their defiance of the Empire has landed them in and I’ve spread around a comm code for brothers to use if they need help.”

Crosshair flicked his toothpick to the other side of his mouth, “Let me guess,” he said in a bland tone of voice, “Somebody called you and you want us to rescue them?” 

“That’s the long and short of it, yeah.” Rex replied with a nod. “I’ll even pay you.” There was a wry twist to his lips as he said it and Wrecker laughed.

“How many vode have you recovered?” Echo asked. Crosshair supposed this was a little closer to heart for him than for the rest of the Batch, after all, Echo was a reg and these clones were truly his brothers, his family, rather than only being related by technicality the way the regs were to the rest of the Batch. 

“Twenty-three,” Rex replied, “ There’s a couple you might know, some of the 212th and 104th. It’s really a mixed bunch from all over the GAR, we’ve got at least one or two clones from most legions. ” 

“I hadn’t realized that many clones rebelled,” Tech hummed.

Rex shrugged, “I’m constantly hearing about more. We’ve been scrambling to get to them all.”  

“So what do you need us to do?” Hunter asked, pulling them back on course. 

“We need help with an extraction. The transmission I got was very short this time, just a location and that there are three clones in need of rescue. We’ve got no idea what condition they’re in or what the tactical situation might be. Just the sort of osik job you boys were made for.” There was a beep from the holo projector as Rex sent them a packet of files, “That’s all the data I’ve got. I can help you myself and spare a medic and a pilot with one of the shuttles that we may or may not have swiped, but otherwise there’s no backup, We’re stretched thin.”

“Sounds like fun!” Wrecker declared with Omega cheering in agreement, “Who doesn’t love a good rescue mission?”

“Me,” Crosshair replied, “I hate rescue missions.”

“Only because you hate dealing with people in general, Cross,” Echo replied with a smile. The news that some of his brothers had rebelled and were getting picked up by Rex seemed to have really lifted his spirits. 

“We’ll rendezvous on Troithe , I’ll send you the coordinates. Rex out.” And with that the flickering blue figure disappeared and the Bad Batch all took a moment to think before anybody spoke.

It was Tech who broke the silence, transferring the files Rex had sent them to his datapad and looking them over with a thoughtful hum. “This bodes ill for the state of the troopers involved,'' he said after a moment.

Hunter gave him a sharp look, “What makes you say that?”

Tech let out another hum and scrolled through something on the pad, “The location where the SOS originated is a well established strip club and brothel .”

Echo swore, “You don’t think they’re…” he trailed off, biting his lip with worry.

“ Employees?” Crosshair provided helpfully, “I can’t imagine what they’d be doing in a brothel that would lead to them sending an SOS other than being unwilling employees.”

Echo’s already sallow face was tinged with green, “Kark,” he muttered.

Wrecker slung an arm around his ori’vod’s shoulders and gave him an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry Echo, we’re gonna rescue ‘em and then they’ll be okay.”

Crosshair only barely managed to contain the mocking laugh that wanted to escape him. Okay. How utterly naïve. Crosshair knew from experience that if they really were being forced to satisfy others then they were definitely not going to be okay even once they were rescued. 

Hunter sat them all down as a group after that and had an impromptu planning session, all of them listening as Tech found them information on the political leaning of Troithe (very Empire positive, unfortunately) and of what they were likely to run into moving around the city in the area where the brothel was located. They couldn’t form a comprehensive plan before they met with Rex, but they came up with the skeleton of one.

“Wouldn’t it be easiest to just…make an appointment?” Wrecker proposed as they argued about how to actually find the clones to break them out.

“Yeah!” Omega agreed. She obviously didn’t grasp exactly what the purpose of a brothel was or what it meant for the clones involved, but she understood from the dire mood of her brothers that a rescue was needed badly. 

Echo blinked at the two of them, “ Surely it couldn’t be that easy…”

“Even if we could afford something like that, which we might not be able to,” Hunter pointed out, “It would only get one of us into the building. Trying to bring more than that would be suspicious.”

“I’ll go in,” Crosshair volunteered unhappily, “If we’re sending somebody in it should be me.”

“ Why?” Wrecker asked, perplexed. Crosshair, as their sniper, was not in the habit of taking point, and he definitely did not want to go walking around in a brothel and have to deal with all that , but tactically he was the best option.

“Because Hunter and Echo look too much like clones, Wrecker wouldn’t understand subtlety if it walked up and bit him, Omega is a literal child, and nobody would ever believe Tech was there to pay for services,”Crosshair explained testily. 

Tech squinted at him, “What are you trying to imply?” 

“Nothing. I’m stating outright that you look like you’re waiting to help an old lady cross the street. There’s not a sleazy bone in your body.”

Tech let out a huff, but didn’t seem inclined to argue, not that he had a leg to stand on if he were to try it.

“Besides,” Crosshair plowed onwards, “My armor is imperial issued, posing as an imperial soldier might prove useful.”

“…Alright Crosshair,” Hunter replied after a moment of consideration. “You’ve got us there. You’ll take point and we’ll back you up.”

Crosshair sighed, relieved that he was being taken seriously and not sidelined like their previous mission. At least for the strategizing session they were treating him the way they used to before the Order. It was good to have at least something back to normal.

***

Echo had a nightmare that night cycle. Crosshair knew because he was awake long after all his siblings had gone to sleep, trying to sink into a stupor so the incessant noise would wash over him without digging its claws in, although he was less than successful. The implications of his diagnosis were whipping everything inside him into a frenzy and he was left trying to hold all his pieces together in the center of the storm.

And so he heard the little gasp that came out of Echo, the rapid breathing, the soft whine that escaped him a moment later. Crosshair sighed and levered himself off his bunk, grabbed his helmet and shone the little light on it into Echo’s face to wake him without risking getting stabbed.

It worked, pulling his eldest brother back to consciousness with a start. Echo squinted into the light, obviously confused, so Crosshair switched it off and put his helmet back with the rest of his armor in the box at the foot of his bunk.

“Crosshair?” Echo mumbled, his voice was weak and shaky and Crosshair sighed again and came back over. He hesitated for just a moment before flopping onto Echo’s bunk and arranging himself so his head was resting on his brother’s stomach. Echo huffed, but didn’t protest or push him off, which was a major difference between the two of them. Crosshair was obligated to put up a little fight out of spite whenever his siblings tried to coddle him.

“The regs will be fine,” Crosshair told him, even though he knew it wasn’t true. Echo needed to hear it. 

Echo let out another huff and then in a miserable voice he said, “I can’t imagine what they’re going through…”

Crosshair could, but telling Echo that would be counterproductive even if he hadn’t sworn to take what had happened to him to his grave. “We’ll get them out, ori’vod.” He reassured instead, using the nickname because he knew mando’a made Echo feel better.

The older clone shuddered and put his forearm over his eyes, a pitiful sob slipped out of him and Crosshair sighed. He ended up sinking a little more of his weight into Echo and talking quietly in broken mando’a as Echo cried for his brothers’ suffering. Crosshair had never really gotten the hang of mando’a, but he did his level best and Echo always seemed to appreciate it. 

Even when Echo ran out of tears, Crosshair kept telling him all the things Echo always said to him when he was struggling and continued to do so until his older brother was able to nod off and settle back into a more peaceful sleep. Idly, as he listened to Echo’s relaxed breathing, Crosshair wondered if his brother would cry for him if he knew about what Rampart had done. He hoped he’d never have to find out.

Chapter Text

Troithe was an ecumenopolis planet in the Deep Core of the galaxy. The Batch all poured over maps and the other data Tech dug up for them to get a sense of it as they flew through hyperspace towards the planet. He even sliced into the local public records office to get the building plans of the brothel. It was a place called Gold Light and even though it was Crosshair who was going in, they all poured over that as well.

Just as they had been since they picked him up on Kamino, Crosshair’s siblings pestered him to eat and sleep more, pestering which he largely ignored. They were stubborn, but Crosshair was a million times more stubborn than his siblings and if he refused to eat when the memories made him sick to his stomach or didn’t even try to sleep when the noise howled in his ears, in his mind, then they’d just have to deal. He’d eat and sleep when he could and no amount of nagging was going to make a difference. 

Finally they arrived at Troithe, and met up with Rex at the space port. The Captain had stolen the chain codes required for them to dock and move around in the city before he’d even called them to request help with the mission, so at the very least that was something they didn’t need to worry about. He introduced them briefly to Jammer and Tripline, the clone medic and pilot he’d brought with him, and then they all discussed how they wanted to approach the problem of getting in and out of the brothel. 

Rex was dubious at first about it being Crosshair on point, but he acquiesced when Crosshair explained the logic behind it just as he had to his brothers. When their plans were set, Rex gave Crosshair a huge number of credits he’d gathered for the mission and once night fell they all made their way through the city to the Gold Light.

The place looked almost like a nightclub, with a neon sign in the shape of a pair of binary suns, and loud music pounding out of the open doors. Hunter checked in with him one last time, asking, “You’re sure you can do this alone?” which Crosshair only responded to with an offended growl, before he stalked away.

The reception Crosshair got when he walked into the Gold Light was…excessive. The place looked like a cross between a dance club and a smoking lounge, with low plush seats spread about the dimly lit room and stages occupied with scantily-clad dancers of all sorts on display for the hungry eyes of the patrons. The music was loud and thumping and it resonated with the already pounding beat of Crosshair's thoughts to give him a splitting headache. He regretted this already.

A twi’lek woman, slim and teal-skinned with hardly any clothing at all, slid up to him as soon as he walked in the door.

“Welcome, esteemed guest,” she purred as she practically plastered herself across his chest. “Have you come to enjoy the club? Or perhaps you would like a more… private experience?”

Crosshair stifled the disgusted sneer that wanted to control his face, as well as the urge to push her off him because even with his armor on the touch was invasive and reminded him of things, and gave her a cocky smile instead. “I heard a little story and was wondering if there was any truth to it,” he said, leaning down slightly and speaking to her in a hushed conspiratorial voice.

“Oh?” she replied with a sly smile, “And what little story is that?”

Crosshair cocked his head, “That your fine establishment employs a few of the old boys in white, I haven’t been misled have I?”

A nasty look curled across the twi’lek’s features as she smiled at him properly, all sparkling white teeth, “Looking for somebody big and strong are you? Well you haven’t heard wrong, we have three. Shall I book one for you?”

Crosshair put a hungry smile on his face, ignoring the way his stomach twisted with nausea. Maybe it would have been better to stay out of this mission. It was already hitting too close, cutting too deeply. “Why settle for one?” he replied in his smarmiest voice, “I think you’ll find I’m flush with credits.”

The twi’lek’s eyes sparkled, “Of course, the more the merrier I always say. Although if you want to get rough it will cost you extra.”

Crosshair didn’t retch, refused to remember Rampart and his blades and his games, and focused on negotiating with the woman, on playing the role of sleazy imperial soldier.

Eventually she had him wait while she ‘made arrangements’ and then guided him through the club, up a flight of stairs and into a much quieter section of the building, before she stopped rather abruptly and scanned her hand on a pad to open one of the many doors lining the empty hallway. The lock blinked green and she bowed before shooting him a smile, “Enjoy your stay, sir.”

“I will,” he purred back at her as she trotted back down the hall. Crosshair stood still for a moment just catching his breath, before he opened the door and stepped inside.

The room was large and expensively furnished, with a king-sized wooden frame bed, a plethora of overstuffed couches, plush carpet floors, and dark heavy drapes that covered ray shielded windows. Of course Crosshair only noticed those things because his entire life had been spent as a soldier and situational awareness had been literally beaten into him, because what drew his eyes were the three occupants of the room.

They were clones, no doubt about it, although they had been stripped of their armor and were as scantily-clad as everyone else in the establishment. All three of them had slave collars around their necks and there was a hollow look to their faces that Crosshair recognized from looking in the mirror after Rampart’s extracurricular activities. Of course they turned to look at him when he entered and for a second nothing happened before the clone in the middle of the trio, who had a scar on his jaw, snarled at him and said, “ You!”

“Captain Howzer,” Crosshair replied automatically, his tone bland, “What a pleasure to see you again.”

“Is that what you’re here for? Pleasure?” Howzer hissed, taking an aggressive step towards him. 

Crosshair put his hands up and shook his head, this time letting the disgust actually show on his face. “No. I’m your backup, we received your transmission and have come to… liberate you I guess you could say.”

Howzer stared at him like Crosshair had just spoken to him in an obscure language and he was trying to figure out what the words meant. Behind him the other two clones had perked up.

“You got the captain’s message?” asked one of them, his hair was long, shoulder length, and one of his eyes was a slightly lighter shade of brown than the other.

Crosshair nodded, “Yes.”

“Why the hell are you, Rampart’s lap dog, the one who came?” Howzer hissed. He had not so subtly put himself between Crosshair and the other two troopers and Crosshair could only sigh and massage his temples. His headache had lessened when he’d escaped the loud music, but it wasn’t gone. Then again when did he ever not have a headache these days? Naturally he ignored the feeling of something dark and slimy coiling around his insides at the phrase ‘Rampart’s lap dog’. He didn’t have time for it, he could spend a couple hours in the fresher retching once the mission was finished.

“My priorities have been adjusted since we last spoke and I…I apologize for having you arrested, although you realize if I hadn’t somebody else would have.” Crosshair told him, surprised at how genuinely he meant the apology, “Regardless of past quarrels we don’t have all day, you do want to get out of here don’t you?”

Howzer gave him a sharp, suspicious look, but whatever he saw was dissimilar enough to how Crosshair had been in the Empire’s service that he deflated a little and glanced back at the other two clones.

“You said ‘ we got your message’, who’s we ?” he asked after he’d turned his attention back to Crosshair.

Rather than answering Crosshair pulled out a portable holo projector and dialed in Rex’s code. It buzzed for a second and then sprung to life, displaying Rex crouched down. “Crosshair?” he asked, “Did you get in?”

“Got in, found all three clones, they want to know it’s not just me here to spring them.”

“Captain Rex?” Howzer asked as he took a few steps closer, still leery of Crosshair, but more at ease.

“Captain Howzer,” Rex greeted, “Are you three alright?”

Howzer again glanced back at the other two, they were sitting close together on the edge of a couch, the one with mismatched eyes huddled under the arm of the other, but their expressions were hopeful and the one who had yet to speak, who had hard eyes and a swirling tattoo that covered his jaw and nose, nodded. Crosshair didn’t miss the way that clone’s wrists and ankles had been rubbed raw, as if he’d been recently tied up, or all the purple bruises on his body.

Somebody had paid extra to play rough. The thought made Crosshair have to take a couple slow breaths to steady himself.

“I’ve got Sergeant Skroll from the 327th Star Corps and Klacks from the 81st Infantry with me, Klacks is a shiny and…and these chakaare  have put us to work,” Howzer replied, and if there was a slight crack in his voice, nobody acknowledged it, “but we’re hanging in there. We’re alright.”

Rex nodded. “Crosshair and his brothers, Clone Force 99, have volunteered to help me get you all out. You’re leaving this dump tonight , I swear it.”

“Thank you,” Howzer said softly. 

“So you’re a clone under that imperial armor? You don’t look like a clone,” observed the reg who was clearly the shiny, and thus Klacks, the one with the mismatched eyes.

Crosshair sighed, “An enhanced clone, a defective clone, whichever you prefer, but yes, I’m a clone.” There was a time when he’d have said something haughtier, something about being a superior type of clone to the regs, but Crosshair was tired and he found he didn’t care anymore. They could call him whatever stupid thing they liked, he just wanted to get out of there so he could claw his way out of his own skin in the relative privacy of the Marauder.

Howzer gave him a sharp look, obviously noticing the difference in behavior, but didn’t comment. Rex was looking at Crosshair as well, “How long do we have, Crosshair?” he asked.

“Four hours,” he replied. Howzer, Skroll, and Klacks stared at him.

“That must have cost a fortune,” said Skroll.

Crosshair sighed and shrugged a shoulder, “Well you know, no man left behind blah blah, no price too high to pay for family blah blah.”

Rex actually laughed and Crosshair was certain he heard his brothers sniggering in the background of the transmission. “Don’t worry Sergeant, we all chipped in for it,” Rex explained once he’d finished chuckling, “the six of us and the rest of the vode waiting for us to bring you back. We figured it would be costly, but nobody is going bankrupt.”

“So how do we get out?” Howzer asked. 

“They are wearing standard model 13x-r slave collars am I correct?” Tech asked as he leaned into frame next to Rex.

“I’m not a connoisseur of slave collars, Tech,” Crosshair griped, “I wouldn’t know what counts as a standard model.”

“You could have looked it up,” Tech replied dryly, “We had time to prep for this mission.”

Crosshair made an irritated noise, “Well obviously I—”

“Bicker later,” came Hunter’s voice from outside the holo’s view range, “Stay on task.”

Tech sighed, “Take a recording of the collars using your helmet, Crosshair, a detailed recording and send it to me via the holo. If it is any model made in the last ten years I can tell you how to remove it. I did do research for this mission.”

“Good for you,” Crosshair huffed, “the recording will be there in a minute, Crosshair out.” He put the holo projector away and turned to the captured clones, “So who wants to pose for vid first?”

Howzer volunteered of course, even though he was clearly loath to be within ten feet of Crosshair. He held still while Crosshair put his helmet on and examined the collar. He was angrier than he thought he’d be at the way it had burned the flesh of Howzer’s neck raw. It annoyed him even more when he found the shiny, Klacks’s, neck was worse, burned to the point of him wincing any time he moved his head. What had the world come to for Crosshair to feel righteous anger over the treatment of a reg shiny? 

“Why is his neck so much worse?” he growled after he’d released Klacks back into the custody of Sgt. Skroll.

“He’s got a ‘bad attitude,’” Skroll explained with air quotes.

“It’s hard not to fight,” Klacks muttered in a miserable voice. Crosshair had to stand perfectly still so he didn’t throw up then and there. He knew the feeling, he really did. It had been almost worse after his chip had been removed, because he’d had the ability to fight back against Rampart, in theory, but had known the consequences would be more dire than he could handle. The chip had forced him to cooperate at first and then he’d had to do it himself once it was gone. Not to mention the vile pleased way the voices in his head had always curled around every submission to orders he made.

“Crosshair?” the Sergeant asked when he’d been still and quiet for a little too long. Crosshair turned his head to look at him automatically and then shook it violently to clear the memories away so he could concentrate on what he was doing.

Howzer was giving him a strange look, but Crosshair ignored him and set about syncing his helmet to the holo projector so he could send the recordings to Tech.

There was a minute or two of waiting while Tech presumably looked at the collars, then a call came through on the holo and Tech’s image popped up.

“It is possible to remove these collars without the key,” he declared, “however, Crosshair, you will have to follow my instructions to the letter to avoid harming the clones wearing them.”

“Great,” Crosshair grumbled, “I enjoy disarming bombs.” He felt a little guilty at the way the three regs went stiff with alarm, but fortunately Tech, true to form, immediately corrected him.

“This model of collar does not contain an explosive device,” he replied primly, “it will merely electrocute them until they are incapable of moving for a period of time.”

“Sounds fun,” Sgt. Skroll huffed, “being electrocuted is on my schedule.”

“You mean it’s on my schedule,” Klacks corrected in a voice that was a little too shaky to sound amused, “They only ever shock you when you stick up for me.”

“Sorry kid,” Skroll replied mildly, “but sticking up for you is a standing engagement.”

“Nobody will be getting electrocuted,” Crosshair groused, “I’m perfectly capable of following instructions.”

“A little too good at it really,” Howzer growled. 

Crosshair threw his hands up in exasperation so he didn’t haul off and punch Howzer in the face, “Yes yes! My chip worked, I followed orders and was a good little boy alright, we have established this already, can we please move on, Howzer?”

“What do you mean your chip worked? What are you talking about?” Howzer asked, his brows furrowing.

There was a pregnant silence where Crosshair glanced at Tech’s flickering image and Tech pretended to be busy, the unhelpful little bastard. “Go ahead and explain it to them, Crosshair,” Rex’s disembodied voice came over the holo, “They were arrested for rebelling, right? So their chips must not have worked.”

Tech piped up then, “In the meantime I will send you a schematic for the collar’s wiring system, it will assist you in following my instructions to disengage them.”

Crosshair sighed and took his helmet back off so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. “Fine, but this is going to be the shortest possible explanation so try to keep up.”

The regs nodded and Crosshair glanced up at them, “The Kaminoans put mind control chips in our heads when they made us that were designed to make us unquestioningly follow orders, the chips were activated when we were given Order 66, which declared all Jedi traitors to be killed on sight.”

There was another silence and then Sgt. Skroll said, “Kark.”

“That explains a lot actually,” Howzer sighed.

“Great,” Crosshair said, “Now let’s get your collars off so we can get the hell out of here already. Who’s first?”

Naturally Skroll and Howzer had an argument over who it should be, Howzer trying to protect his subordinates and Skroll reasoning that the commanding officer shouldn’t be the one potentially getting incapacitated. Eventually the argument ended when Rex jumped in over the holo and told Skroll to stand down.

Crosshair decided that he was going to need to sit down to do this so he ended up on the edge of one of the couches with Howzer sitting on the ground in front of him like Crosshair was going to braid his hair or something. He immediately dismissed Klacks’s question of why he wasn’t using the magnification in his helmet by saying, “My eyesight is better than the helmet’s magnifier.”

Howzer headed off Klacks’s follow up question with a sarcastic reply of, “He’s an enhanced clone, Klacks, that makes him better than a regular clone.”

“Please,” Crosshair invited as he followed Tech's instructions on how to pull off the panel on the back of the collar so he could reach the wiring, “continue to distract me, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the results, Captain.”

Thankfully Howzer shut his yap and Crosshair was able to pay his full attention to following Tech’s instructions. He was glad his brother was there, although he would never admit it, because the wiring was so complicated that he wouldn’t have been able to disable the collar without Tech’s step by step instructions even with the schematic. As it was, Crosshair still ended up staring between the wires under his fingers and the wires in the schematic with each step, trying to visualize what Tech was telling him to do. 

When Howzer’s collar popped open with a click the other two clones cheered and Crosshair let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Howzer ripped the thing the rest of the way off and flung it across the room with a look of vicious satisfaction on his face.

“I take it from the cheering that you have succeeded?” Tech asked.

“Yeah,” Crosshair sighed.

“Excellent work. Do you believe you’ll be able to repeat it without instructions?”

Crosshair frowned and glanced at Skroll and Klacks as they pulled Howzer to his feet and inspected his bare neck. “Maybe, but it’s probably better not to risk it,” he decided.

“Very well, I will walk you through it again,” Tech replied, unbothered by the prospect.

“Me next,” Skroll said, “So you have as much practice as possible before working on Klacks.”

“If you want,” Crosshair told him as he gestured to the place at his feet that Howzer had vacated. Skroll sat down obediently and Tech dove back into his instructions. The second collar was easier, if only because Crosshair didn’t have to spend so much time looking at the schematic to figure out what Tech was telling him to do.

Klacks whooped when Skroll’s collar popped open and was flung into the corner with Howzer’s.

The shiny’s collar was even easier, although Crosshair insisted Tech still walk him through it. Nobody seemed to mind his caution.

“The collars are off,” Crosshair told Rex and his brothers triumphantly, “Rex they’re going to need medical attention, their necks are covered in electrical burns, and the Sergeant has abrasions on his wrists and ankles as well as severe bruising.”

“I brought Jammer in case there was trouble,” Rex replied, taking the holo projector back from Tech, “I’ll call and have him meet us at the rendezvous point.”

“Now what?” Howzer asked, probably speaking to Rex more than Crosshair.

“We have an outline of a plan, but we couldn’t be sure what the tactical conditions of the brothel would be, so most of this is up to Crosshair,” Rex explained.

“Fantastic,” Howzer griped as he folded his arms.

Crosshair rolled his eyes, but he’d been thinking it over the whole time he’d been there, keeping his observations in the back of his mind. “The windows are ray shielded,” he told Rex, “In fact everything is, they’ve got this part of the building completely blocked off from everything else…except maybe the vents.”

“They big enough for a clone to fit?” Rex asked.

“It’d be tight…for them at least.”

Rex let out a chuckle, “I suppose you could get anywhere you want, considering you’re practically a walking skeleton.”

“We’re working on that!” Omega defended from off-screen, “He’s just stubborn and getting him to eat when he’s distracted is hard, but I think we definitely can—”

“Does this matter, Omega?” Crosshair snapped. He was perfectly aware that he was underweight and needed to eat more, he just had a hard time when his head was so full of noise, but the girl didn’t need to go around broadcasting it.

“Not right now I guess…” Omega mumbled.

Hunter's voice filtered through the holo on her tail, “It’s not important right now , but we haven’t forgotten about it, Crosshair, we promised to have a talk about it and I guarantee you that you won’t be wiggling out of it.” 

“Yes buir ,” Crosshair hissed. Klacks laughed and got a withering look in return that made him cover his mouth, even though his shoulders still shook with mirth.

“Let’s get back on track,” Rex said, although he sounded equally amused. “You think you four can fit through the vents?”

Crosshair looked up at the vent in the ceiling and then at the captive clones, calculating, before he nodded, “Yes, but I’ll go first just in case.”

Rex nodded back “Alright, try not to make a lot of noise.”

Crosshair snorted, “Obviously.”

“Call when you’re out or if something comes up,” Rex ordered and then said “Rex out,” as he hung up.

“Right,” Crosshair sighed and looked around. He was tall enough to reach the vent if he jumped, but the regs would need a boost. “Let’s drag one of those couches over here so you all can reach.”

Clones were designed to be stronger than the average human, so moving one of the couches was easy peasy and Crosshair got a zing of malicious satisfaction when he stepped on the furniture with his dirty boots. He’d burn the whole place to the ground if he could, but for now he’d have to settle for sullying their furniture. Unfortunately the captive clones were barefoot, probably a measure to keep them from escaping, and Crosshair couldn’t help but grimace at the fact that they were going to have to make a run through the streets with no shoes. Hopefully Jammer wouldn’t end up pulling shards of glass out of their feet.

They’d just have to make do.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, the vent was screwed in place, but the Bad Batch carried a multitool as part of their standard kit, so Crosshair was able to remove the screws and pop it off easily. He hoisted himself up into the ventilation shaft and then looked for any source of light further down which would indicate a ray shield that might impede their progress. When he found nothing he ducked back in view of the regs and gestured them up.

Rex hadn’t been kidding when he said Crosshair was scrawny enough to go wherever he wanted, although his height sometimes impeded him, and Crosshair had been right in guessing that the regs would be a tight fit. They had wide shoulders which the three of them had to maneuver into the shaft while Crosshair waited. Klacks was the last one in and he gasped. 

“Your eyes are glowing ,” he whispered.

Crosshair sighed, “I told you I have enhanced eyesight and that includes a tapetum lucidum, so I can see in the dark.”

 “Like a loth cat,” Skroll hummed.

“We’ll the rest of us can’t,” Howzer griped, “So how about you turn on your helmet light so we can see.”

Crosshair made sure Howzer saw the way he rolled his eyes before putting his helmet on and flicking on the light as asked. “I’ll have to turn it off when we pass by more vents so nobody else sees,” he warned as he set off.

They shuffled more than crawled, trying to avoid making noise that would give them away. Crosshair checked the time on his HUD as he went and saw they had about a half hour left before his ‘appointment’  with the clones was up and somebody would come looking. Removing the collars had taken about an hour each and had really set them back.

It was extremely fortunate that Tech had managed to get a blueprint of the building and load it in Crosshair’s holo projector, because the ventilation shafts were a labyrinth. The group of clones had to pause frequently as they came to junctions where there were multiple paths so Crosshair could cross-reference the blueprints with his memory of being led through the building. There were other times when they stopped as well. Waiting for people to pass by under the vents before continuing on, cautious about the possibility of somebody glancing upwards and seeing them.

One stop was bad for all of them however. Crosshair was about eighty percent certain that they had gone from the northwestern portion of the third floor down to the southeastern portion of the second floor, but they all stopped when they heard the noise. It was a hiccuping, gurgling sort of sound, interspersed with pained groans. Crosshair peeked through the vent they were about to pass over and his head swam.

They were over one of the private rooms and there was a massive besalisk currently occupied with a slim twi’lek woman. She had a slave collar on, like the clones had, but it was only barely noticeable between the besalisk’s massive fingers wrapped around her neck. He was strangling her as he had his way. Crosshair’s hand came up to his throat unbidden, feeling Rampart’s ghostly fingers, his own breath coming in short. There was a sudden touch on his calf and he jumped, letting out a wheeze before whipping his head back to see Howzer gripping his calf. The captain’s face was white as a sheet, and while he couldn’t see through the vent from so far back, it was obvious he knew what was causing the noise anyway. 

The clones couldn’t afford to talk while sitting over a vent, but Howzer’s eyes communicated something dire, sad, and understanding. The captain shook his head minutely, and signed to Crosshair in jerky rapid hand movements. 

Extraction not possible

“Can’t save ‘em all, Cross,” Wrecker’s voice whispered in Crosshair’s ears. He shook his head to chase the noise away and refocused on the task at hand. It made him absolutely sick to his stomach, but Howzer was right, they couldn’t save the twi'lek, they had to get themselves out.

Carefully Crosshair shuffled forward, moving as quickly as possible over the vent, but the twi'lek, pinned and facing upwards as she was, saw them. Her eyes were glazed with tears, but she didn’t make any move to blow their cover. Crosshair sent her a silent ‘thank you’ and an equally silent ‘I’m sorry.’

After they’d moved away from the vent Crosshair flicked his light back on and turned to a check on the state of the regs. They all looked pale and drawn, Klacks was breathing faster than necessary, and Skroll looked like he was about to be sick. Howzer didn’t look any better, but he shook his head again and signed.

Status green

Howzer was telling him they were alright to continue and Crosshair only hesitated for a second before nodding and leading them onward. They didn’t have infinite time and he didn’t want to see what kind of storm would get kicked up when the proprietors realized three of their employees were making an escape attempt.

Finally they reached the home stretch, turning right at a three way intersection and coming to a straight run to a vertical vent beyond which shone the neon lights of the nighttime city. Crosshair’s spirits lifted now that the end was in sight, but his holo projector beeped before they were halfway down the shaft. He fumbled it out of his belt pouch and clicked it on to receive the incoming call. Hunter’s image popped up.

“Crosshair, what’s your status?” his brother asked, his voice hushed.

“Almost out of the vents,” Crosshair replied in an equally quiet voice, “about fifteen meters left before we’re home free.”

Hunter nodded and checked something over his shoulder. “A patrol of soldiers came to visit the club, a few were hanging around outside and we had to move. Meet us at the secondary rendezvous point and be careful getting passed them. You guys aren’t exactly equipped for a firefight.”

“Roger,” Crosshair said, nodding, “Anything else?”

“ Yeah, avoid the south end of the district. There’s been a speeder crash and there are soldiers everywhere.”

“Just our luck,” Crosshair sighed, “Alright we’ll meet up with you at the secondary rendezvous…and tell Tech I said thank you for all the maps he found. I get the feeling they’re going to come in handy.”

Hunter grinned and nodded, “Will do. Hunter out .”

Crosshair glanced back at the regs again, plotting things out in his head, and then shuffled onwards towards the way out. When they reached the vent Crosshair removed it as quietly as possible, twisting it at an angle to pull it into the shaft rather than dropping it. He passed it down to Howzer, who ferried it to the other two so they could get it out of the way. 

When he peeked out of the shaft to see what the situation was, he found that they were about ten feet above street level in an alley. Thankfully there were no soldiers, or anybody else for that matter, in the alleyway, but Crosshair could see the shadow of a somebody spilling across the entryway. So they couldn’t go north, they’d have to go south and hope the way was clear.

Carefully he dropped down from the ventilation shaft to the street, silent as a shadow, and then reached up to help the others follow him down. Once all four of them were in the alley, Crosshair gestured towards the south and set off. There were no people-shaped shadows at the southern mouth of the alley and when Crosshair stopped to listen he found no voices either…at least no voices that were real. There was a baseline level of whispering he had grown accustomed to hearing after his chip had been taken out, but fortunately Crosshair knew what it sounded like and rarely mixed it up with actual real life people speaking to him.

He led them out of the alley and onto the street. It wasn’t crowded, but there were people around. The clones got a lot of curious looks immediately, between the attire that consisted only of little skimpy shorts, their bare feet, their burned necks, and their identical faces, they stood out. Crosshair decided after the fourth person stopped to stare that this wasn’t going to work, so he took them back down an alley and pulled up one of the maps Tech had loaded into his holo projector.

Howzer, Skroll, and Klacks came to huddle up with him, blocking the light of the projector from prying eyes.

“Where’s the rendezvous point?” Howzer asked in a voice just above a whisper.

Crosshair pointed it out and the regs all grimaced, 

“Not looking forward to walking three kilometers barefoot,” Skroll huffed.

“Unfortunately I can’t carry you,” Crosshair replied dryly, ignoring the laughter that bubbled out of Klacks as well as Skroll’s accompanying snort.

“You’re so skinny you look like you couldn’t even carry a backpack,” Skroll teased.

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “Ha ha, laugh it up.”

“Oh trust me, we will,” Skroll assured him.

Klacks had his hands over his mouth to try and stifle his giggles.

“You’re going to keep us off the main streets I’m guessing,” Howzer said, ignoring their joking around, all business.

Crosshair nodded, “Too many people were staring at you, somebody is going to report it eventually.”

“Can’t have that,” the Sergeant said lowly.

“I’d like to avoid it, yes,” Crosshair agreed.

“So alleys only,” Howzer hummed and then ran his fingers across the projection, highlighting a route. “How’s that?”

Crosshair examined it and then made an adjustment to the route halfway through, “There’s a government building there,” he explained, “It’ll have soldiers surrounding it.”

The regs nodded.

“We should go through this park instead of keeping to the alleys in the northern market,” Skroll added, pointing out a large forested park, “It’s probably deserted at night and we’ll have a straight shot through the district instead of having to circumnavigate it.”

Crosshair nodded and altered their route accordingly. With a plan in place the four of them set off again, choosing to move slowly but carefully rather than hurrying along.

“When we saw that twi’lek,” Klacks asked out of nowhere some minutes later, “You touched your neck. Have you been strangled before?”

Crosshair froze up for a moment before forcing himself to keep walking, he could feel the regs’ sharp eyes on the back of his head and he had to struggle to keep from squirming under their gaze. “Yes,” he said after a moment.

“ Poor Crosshair ,” Howzer hummed, his voice the mocking tone of somebody who’d heard a person complaining about a degree of suffering far below what they had experienced themselves, “Somebody decide they didn’t like your bad attitude?”

Something disgusting slithered through Crosshair’s insides, “Believe it or not, you aren’t the only one who's ever been put in this position!” he snapped and regretted it the instant the words came out of his mouth. He bit his lip hard to shut himself up.

Howzer stared at him, “What in the pit does that mean?” He hissed back, all mocking humor gone from his voice. 

“You…you’ve been in a situation like that? Like with the twi’lek?” asked Klacks quietly.

Crosshair cursed himself blue under his breath and tried to pass it off, but Howzer stopped in his tracks, bringing the other two up short as a result, and just folded his arms and glared at him.

“ Fine!” Crosshair hissed, grabbing the two higher ranking clones by their shoulders and steering them forward, knowing Klacks would follow, “You know Order 66, how it turned everybody into droids that have to obey orders.”

“Yeah,” Howzer replied suspiciously, walking on his own now that he was getting an explanation.

“Well it didn’t work on my brothers but it did work on me and…and one of the imperial officers took advantage.” His voice cracked on the final word and he hated himself more than he had in a long time.

Howzer stared at him, “You’re joking,” he said, his expression one of disbelief.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Crosshair hissed, pulling off his helmet and gesturing at his own face.

“You look like you’re about to hurl,” observed Klacks helpfully.

“And then pass out,” Skroll added.

Howzer was still staring at him, and then his eyes widened, “Was that what was going on?” he asked, “I walked in on you retching in the sink of the communal fresher and you just about tore my throat out when I asked what was wrong with you…and then again when you were raiding the medipacs in the middle of the night. Kark you were covered in bacta patches! Who-whoever did that was hurting you?”

“I’m having fun talking about my life, I really am,” Crosshair snarled, “but I thought you wanted to escape! How about we get the kark out of here and continue this conversation never!”

“Was it Rampart?” Howzer pressed on, ignoring him, “You two always did have a weird dynamic. He was always touching you.”

Crosshair actually did vomit then. He stood bent at the waist with his hands braced on his knees, panting as his stomach rebelled a second time. He felt like he’d swallowed a pound of maggots.

“I think maybe we should leave it alone, Captain,” he heard Skroll say quietly from the mouth of the alley they’d just turned into as Crosshair coughed and spat.

“Yeah you might be right,” Howzer grimaced.

Crosshair rounded on him, snarling, although the intimidation factor was undercut a little by how the rapid motion made him sway on his feet, “If you tell anybody about this, Howzer, and I mean anybody , my brothers, Rex, anybody , I will gut you and string you up by your intestines in front of all your precious little vode!” 

Howzer held his hands up, “Not my secret to tell,” he said immediately.

“We get it,” Skroll added, “Trust me, we really get it Crosshair.”

Klacks nodded, his eyes sad and understanding. Crosshair wasn’t sure whether to be angry or relieved and ended up somewhere in the middle, although his hackles lowered a little. The noise was worse now, dragged back up along with the memories. He’d never wanted to talk about this, but it was nothing short of typical that he’d let it slip out like a moron.

He shook his head to try and clear it, but the scraping on the inside of his skull was too vicious and all he could do was just deal with it until the regs were safe and he could have a meltdown in the privacy of the Marauder. Defeated, he slipped his helmet back on and sighed.

“Let’s go,” Crosshair told them, his voice sounded awful and the regs grimaced, but nodded and followed him when he set off.

With the exception of having to dodge a patrol of soldiers as they left the cover of the park, the rest of their trip to the rendezvous point was uneventful. By the time an announcement came up on the flashing screens spread across the buildings of the city showing the faces of Howzer, Klacks, and Skroll along with the warning that there were ‘three escaped prisoners at large,’ the group of four were pretty much at the rendezvous point already.

“Right on time,” Rex said as they turned the last corner and met the group of clones waiting for them on the landing platform that held the shuttle Rex had ‘tactically acquired.’ The Captain made a face when he saw his brothers’ skimpy clothes which turned into an outright scowl when he caught sight of their injuries. “You’re up Jammer!” he called back into the shuttle, “Bring our boys some blacks when you come out.”

“Yes sir!” came a voice from inside the shuttle. A moment later Jammer, who had an undercut and a crimson tattoo around his left eye and eyebrow, hurried down the ramp of the shuttle, carrying a medical kit in one hand and three sets of blacks bundled in the other.

Crosshair pulled his helmet off, but he probably shouldn’t have because his brothers immediately zeroed in on how bad he must have looked. “Crosshair, what happened?” Tech asked urgently as his brother came into the light, trailing tiredly after the regs now that they were safely in Rex’s hands.

“You look terrible!” Echo gasped, obviously alarmed, as Hunter jogged over and grabbed Crosshair to get a better look at his pale sweaty face.

Crosshair shoved his brother off more viciously than necessary as he retreated a few steps at the same time, “Don’t touch me!” he snarled like a rabid animal. Hunter looked taken aback, but he held his hands up and backed off. The ghostly crawl of Rampart’s fingers on him had gone from a prickle in the back of his mind to something viscerally impossible to ignore and if one more person touched him or made him talk about it Crosshair was going to lose it.

“Do we need to do anything else or can we get off this dump of a planet?” he hissed.

Rex gave him a calculating look, glancing at Howzer as if looking for an explanation, only for the other captain to shake his head. Rex sighed, “Yeah. All mission objectives have been completed, you boys are free to go. Thanks for the assist.”

“No problem,” Hunter replied as he crept back towards Crosshair, acting like he thought if he just moved slow enough Crosshair wouldn’t snarl and push him away.

Omega and Wrecker caught on and followed suit, with the three of them closing in on him, Crosshair took a couple steps back, away from his siblings, and they sighed in defeat. Now that he didn’t have to wear his helmet Crosshair was able to finally chew on a toothpick again, which was a relief because he’d been chewing on his lower lip pretty much the entire time they’d been running through the city and now it hurt.

Just as the Batch were turning to leave, with Crosshair in the center of the protective cluster, much to his displeasure, there was a shout of, “Crosshair!”

The Batch turned around almost as one as Klacks jogged back over to him, now dressed in a set of blacks and with his neck shiny with bacta and covered in patches. Skroll trailed after him, ever watching out for the shiny.

“Uh…” Klacks said when he reached them, blanching under the sharp gazes of all six members of the Batch, “Uh well, well I wanted to say thank you. Thank you . I don’t know what would have happened to us if you hadn’t come to the rescue…”

“Nothing good,” Skroll said in a low voice, “We owe you big time for this.”

“You don’t owe us anything, vod,” Echo replied instantly, “I’m sure you’d do the same thing if any of us were in that situation.”

Both Klacks and Skroll gave Crosshair a guilty look then, which made him shift uncomfortably, biting down unhappily on his toothpick. The last thing he needed was people who barely knew him feeling guilty over not being there to help him. The less anybody thought about what had happened to him the better.

Hunter caught the look and glanced between the regs and his brother suspiciously. It was obvious that something had happened between them, it was hard to miss given how terrible Crosshair looked and the way Skroll and Klacks were acting. Fortunately the two of them seemed to feel just as disinterested in letting Crosshair’s brothers in on the secret as he himself was.

“Call us if you ever need anything,” Skroll told them seriously, “We’ll drop everything and come running.”

“Yeah,” Klacks agreed, and then held something out to Crosshair. Hesitantly the sniper accepted the offering and looked to see what he’d been given. It was a small disk of wood, carefully carved with symbols that Crosshair didn’t know the meaning of. There was a small hole punched out of it near the top from which hung a loop of carefully knotted red string.

“You were hiding this the whole time?” he asked Klacks.

The shiny nodded sheepishly, “Yeah my hair’s long so I just tied it up in there. Anyway, one of my brothers gave that to me…before the Order happened and I got arrested. It’s a good luck charm. I figured it worked for me so maybe it’ll help you too.”

“I wouldn’t consider your situation particularly lucky,” Crosshair told him dryly.

Klacks shrugged, “I’m still alive and I didn’t get mind controlled and when I was in trouble you came to rescue me, so I’d say I’m doing better than a lot of our brothers.”

Crosshair heard a ‘like you’ in there and he grimaced. He was still alive, but he had fallen prey to the chip, was still feeling the effects of it, and nobody had come to save him when he needed help. “I’ll take custody of it for now,” he replied begrudgingly, “but I’m going to give it back to you once my luck takes a turn for the better.”

Klacks beamed at him and even Skroll smiled. “I’ll be waiting for it back then,” the shiny replied in a relieved voice. “Take care, I'm sure we’ll run into each other again after a while, considering you’re friends with Rex.”

“See you around, skinny,” Skroll agreed.

“Go away already,” Crosshair snapped, eliciting a laugh from both of them. They waved as they trotted back over to where Howzer and Rex were talking to each other, heads bent and voices lowered.

Howzer glanced up when they returned, then broke away and trotted over to Crosshair himself. There was a long silent moment where the two of them just stared at each other, Crosshair waiting for the Captain to say something and Howzer apparently sizing him up. Once the reg had seemingly found what he was looking for he held his hand out and when Crosshair hesitantly reached out as well Howzer clasped his forearm in his hands. Somehow it didn’t remind him of Rampart, didn’t make his skin crawl worse than it already was, although he didn’t know why.

“I might have misjudged you,” Howzer said quietly, “Just a little.” Crosshair snorted and Howzer gave him a crooked smile. “Thanks. Take care of yourself.”

“Try not to make being a damsel in distress into a habit,” Crosshair shot back, which made Howzer laugh, then give his forearm a squeeze followed by a clap on the shoulder. 

“Later Crosshair,” he said as he released the sniper and retreated back towards the rest of the regs. 

Crosshair let out a bemused huff and flicked his toothpick to the opposite side of his mouth.

“Ready to go?” Hunter asked his littlest brother softly, still watching him with sharp, discerning eyes. Crosshair could tell Hunter was going to try and interrogate him about what had happened later, but at the very least he seemed to be willing to wait until Crosshair wasn’t about to keel over.

“The sooner we get off this shithole planet the better,” Crosshair growled, giving his head a vicious shake. Even though Howzer’s touch hadn’t worsened anything, he could still feel Rampart’s fingers digging into his brain and hear him whispering in his ears.

His brothers glanced at each other nervously at how hoarse and weak his voice sounded and promptly started shepherding him away.

Once they were back on the Marauder, Crosshair immediately locked himself in the fresher so he could take a sonic and claw out of his skin in privacy. His brothers were probably going to try and cuddle him as they attempted to figure out what was wrong with him, but he was too tired at that point to care. The regs were safe, the mission was a success, and he’d fulfilled his purpose for the time being. That was good enough for Crosshair

SPECIAL NOTE:

The fantastic blaiddthewolf on tumblr expressed that they wanted to let Crosshair hug their dog for comfort given he wouldn’t appreciate a regular hug and was kind enough to draw it for us all. Please enjoy their beautiful artwork!!!

Chapter Text

As Crosshair predicted, there was an interrogation. Hunter was kind enough to let it wait for the day after the mission, thus giving Crosshair the chance to drag the pieces of his psyche back together into some semblance of order, but once his littlest brother seemed to be more together Hunter sat everyone down and they talked about the mission. 

A debriefing.

At his brother’s behest, Crosshair chewed on his toothpick and obediently told them what had happened from start to finish, although he left out the twi’lek they had seen while in the vents as well as the secrets Howzer had dragged out of him. Of course this posed a problem, because his brothers knew something had happened and with those two events excluded, there was no explanation for why Crosshair had been in such bad shape.

“You are purposefully leaving something out,” Tech stated like it was a scientific fact he had read off his datapad. His brothers nodded.

“Whatever it is, you can tell us Crosshair,” Echo told him softly. 

But no actually Crosshair couldn’t , so he deflected, which only made his brothers grimace and press him harder.

“You threw up at some point,” Hunter said when it became clear they were getting nowhere. 

Of course Hunter would know that, he’d probably smelled the bile that had still coated the inside of Crosshair’s mouth when they met up at the spaceport. He could say it was a result of the conditions in the brothel, that would be the smartest and most effective lie, but Tech would probably deduce that that’s what it was, a lie, smart cookie that he was, and even if he didn’t it was a little too close to talking about the twi’lek for Crosshair’s comfort.

Bereft of any convincing lies, Crosshair went with an unconvincing lie. “We stopped at a carnival,” he said sweetly, “I’m afraid the combination of fried food and the Gravowhirl didn’t agree with me.”

His brothers stared at him. Tech’s eyebrows did something interesting and Hunter dropped his face into his hands in frustration. Wrecker meanwhile was obviously trying not to laugh at the mental image of his little brother hurling on a carnival ride. Echo seemed just as exasperated as Hunter, and Omega was looking at Crosshair with wide curious eyes. She’d probably never been to a carnival before.

“You’re really not going to tell us are you?” Hunter grumbled without looking up. “You’re digging your heels in and we aren’t going to be able to drag it out of you no matter what we do.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Crosshair replied in that same sweet voice as he rolled his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. If they realized he could genuinely out-stubborn any of them then all the better. 

“Of course you don’t,” Echo snapped, “It’s not like we’re worried about you. It's not like we care about your well-being. It’s not like we’re trying to help you. No, we’re just harassing you for no reason and obviously the only logical response is to shut us out completely.”

Ouch. 

Apparently Echo hadn’t gotten rusty in the guilt-trip department while Crosshair was away. The sniper sighed heavily. “Look,” he said, “It doesn’t matter what happened. Nobody was injured, no mission objectives were compromised. I just got sick.”

The rest of the Bad Batch glanced at each other uneasily before looking back at him. Again it was Echo who spoke. Hunter was the leader and mother hen, but he tended to come off as strict and aggressive when he was worried, so bleeding heart Echo was often left in the role of coaxing his brothers to open up. It usually worked, Echo was a naturally comforting person…but it wouldn’t work this time. “It matters to us Cross’ika. If it genuinely wasn’t important you wouldn’t be lying about it.”

Crosshair, as Hunter had predicted, dug his heels in. “Have you ever considered that it’s none of your business?” he hissed.

“We are your siblings, Crosshair,” Tech replied matter-of-factly, “Anything that compromises your health and well-being, especially on a mission, is our business.”

Crosshair plucked his toothpick from between his teeth and ran his hands over his face. Maybe…maybe they were right…what could it hurt really? Something dark and slick slithered through his insides and he shuddered. He opened his mouth to let the secret out, to tell them everything, but that thing inside him coiled around his throat and strangled him. It hurt, the secrets - the lies - slid icy fingers around his vocal cords, freezing them stiff. Crosshair couldn’t get the words out. He worked his jaw for a futile minute as the thing wrapped around his throat strangled all the air of him. He wheezed, panic spiking because he couldn’t breathe, dropping his forgotten toothpick he dragged his nails down his throat desperately, but the thing throttling him was inside him, wasn’t real, and he couldn’t pry it off.

“Crosshair?” Hunter asked, standing and urgently crossing the space to kneel in front of him and pull his hands away from his throat before he drew blood. Crosshair looked down at him with wide, frightened eyes, but he couldn’t get anything out. No words could escape.

“You’re okay, Crosshair,” Hunter told him firmly, “You’re going to be okay. Whatever you’re afraid of, we won’t let it hurt you. You’re safe with us.”

Crosshair shook his head violently in disagreement. The only way he’d ever be safe again was if he could scoop all the wrongness out of his brain, purge all the things that didn’t belong, but Tech had said this was permanent, there was no way to get rid of it.

“Please tell us what’s goin’ on, Cross,” Wrecker pleaded.

“We can help!” Omega added, her eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears…just like the twi’lek in the brothel’s had been.

Suddenly sick to his stomach, Crosshair shook his head again and jerked to his feet, yanking his hands out of Hunter’s grip in the process. Before anybody could protest, he stalked out of the room to go hide in the cockpit. Hopefully his siblings would get the message and leave him alone.

***

Crosshair’s brothers let him spend three hours in the cockpit before they came to disturb him. It was Wrecker they sent. “Hey Cross?” The giant clone asked as he shuffled into the small space with a hesitance that was unlike him. Whatever he wanted, everything from his face to his body language to his unusually tentative voice screamed that he was gearing himself up for rejection.

“ What?” Crosshair growled, not liking the uncharacteristic behavior.

“Uh…well we were gonna play some sabacc and…and we were hopin’ you’d wanna play too?” Wrecker asked him hopefully. Crosshair glared at him and his older brother hunched his shoulders slightly in apprehension.

Sabacc didn’t sound particularly appealing at that point in time; Crosshair had developed a headache after Hunter’s unsuccessful interrogation and between that and the remains of that thing inside him that had strangled him into submission, he didn’t feel very good. But then again Wrecker was making akk puppy eyes at him and it probably would be a good idea to put his brothers’ worries to rest and demonstrate that Crosshair wasn’t dying or freaking out.

“Alright fine, but only if you stop making that face,” he relented as he chewed futilely on his most recent toothpick.

Wrecker perked up and smiled so broadly Crosshair might as well have told him Life Day had come early. “Yes!” he crowed and grabbed Crosshair’s shoulder to steer him out of the cockpit into the bunkroom where the rest of his siblings were sitting in a loose ring on the floor.

“Ah, you actually convinced him to join us,” Tech hummed as he expertly shuffled the deck of cards, “I must say I’m surprised.”

“Watch out, Tech,” Crosshair warned, “If you make too much of a deal out of it I might change my mind.”

“And go back to moping?” Echo asked him. He was angry, Crosshair could see that. It must have hurt his feelings when he had made his most genuine effort to get his littlest brother to open up only to be summarily pushed away.

Crosshair growled at him, but didn’t dignify the question with a response. Instead he allowed Wrecker to tug him down to sit next to him and Hunter and then accepted the cards Tech dealt him.

He couldn’t speak for how his brothers felt, but for Crosshair the game was tense, despite their joking around, Wrecker losing horribly and repeatedly, and Omega’s sheer enthusiasm for the first game she was playing without help. No, Crosshair was there out of obligation and he felt like a six lane speeder crash in downtown Coruscant. His head was pounding and it was hard to hear what his siblings were saying over the voices in his ears and his howling thoughts. His hands shook, which frustrated him, and he could still feel the ghost of the thing strangling him, could feel the ghost of Rampart strangling him too.

There was a short break after the sixth round during which Wrecker left and then bounded back into the room, his arms full of snacks, which he distributed with joy. The snacks were a new thing, they’d never had them before the Order, given there was a war on and they were just clones, but Hunter seemed to be making up for lost time - or making up for something at least - with the variety of things he’d been getting them. 

Crosshair ignored the package of bofa treats that was placed next to him and kept chewing on his toothpick, even when Hunter surreptitiously pushed it a little closer. They were always trying to feed him these days. Ever since Hunter had noticed he never seemed to eat and ordered Tech to do a general health scan of him, which revealed he was almost twenty pounds underweight, since he had lost a great deal while in the custody of Rampart.

Crosshair continued to ignore it when a ration bar was balanced on his left knee by Omega, her eyes bright and hopeful. It was a blue one, the flavor his siblings all knew he preferred. Unfortunately, if he tried to eat anything just then he knew he wasn’t going to be able to keep it down, and Crosshair wasn’t in the habit of wasting food. Not when he knew they always had so little of it, because snacks weren’t a substitute for rations, even if they generally tasted better.

Eventually they gave up and went back to the game. Crosshair was barely paying attention at that point. Everything inside him was swirling around, scraping against his muscles and bones. 

“I knew you were useless,” Rampart’s voice said in his ear, cutting through the storm inside him as easily as he had cut through Crosshair’s flesh. “You can’t even take care of yourself, how could you possibly protect your brothers?”

Crosshair forced himself not to react to the voice as Tech dealt him another hand of cards so they could begin the next round. He had no idea who had won the previous one, he hadn’t been paying attention.

“You’re a liar!” Wrecker’s voice shouted, “All you ever do is lie to us!”

Liar! Liar! Liar! his thoughts chanted at the same time.

He wanted to apologize, because he knew it was true, but instead Crosshair bit down on his toothpick until he felt it splinter and reminded himself it wasn’t real. None of it was real. Wrecker was busy crunching his way through a bag of Kyryll pork rinds with Omega draped over his knees, happy as could be, not shouting at him in betrayal.

Hunter’s voice came to him next, “We don’t need broken soldiers.” His tone was as cold as ice, disdainful and disgusted, “We were right to leave you behind.”

Crosshair’s head was killing him, he squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing, as he pressed his knuckles into his temples. The action did nothing to relieve the pain.

“Are you afraid, CT-9904?” Rampart asked, his voice syrupy sweet. Crosshair could practically see his poisonous smile, that cruel little curl of Rampart’s lips was burned into his memory, “You should be. You can’t really think they’d keep you if they found out what you did. Fraternizing with the enemy? Very unbecoming…but admit it, you enjoyed it.”

“SHUT UP!” Crosshair howled, shaking his head as hard as he could, to the point that he felt something in his neck crick. 

All it served to do was make Rampart laugh.

Somebody touched him and Crosshair jumped, making a strangled noise as he flinched away. Hunter was crouched in front of him and had put his hands over Crosshair’s own, stilling them where they had been scraping the sides of his head. “Nobody was talking, Crosshair,” the sergeant said softly, his expression pinched with worry.

“Obviously I wasn’t speaking to you!” Crosshair snapped. He was mortified by his outburst, but all he had to cover it up with was anger. 

“You’re hearing voices then?” Tech asked, he looked like he was trying not to look as unnerved as he clearly felt.

Crosshair glared at him, but when Tech didn’t look away or relent he gave up and dropped his eyes to the floor, his toothpick had fallen out of his mouth when he’d shouted and he glared at the mangled sliver of wood on the floor as if it were responsible for all of this. “ Obviously,” he ground out.

Tech hummed thoughtfully and then looked at Hunter. “I intended to put this off until Crosshair was feeling better, but obviously it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. If you all wouldn’t mind giving us the room for a few minutes?”

Hunter nodded and ushered everyone out, leaving Crosshair sitting across from Tech but otherwise alone in the bunkroom. Tech got up, picked his datapad up off his bunk, and then dropped back down so he and Crosshair were sitting shoulder to shoulder.

Crosshair would never admit it, but the warmth of his brother leaning into his side was grounding. “Been plotting something, have you?” he asked snidely, although his voice sounded pained even to his own ears. 

“Hardly,” Tech replied calmly, “Are you in pain?”

Crosshair nodded slowly, stiffly. He knew at this point it was blatantly obvious, so there was no point trying to deny it.

“On a scale of one to ten, with one being no pain and ten being the worst pain you have ever experienced, how bad is your pain?”

That required a moment of thought to answer and it was hard to think through the storm in his mind…but at least Rampart had shut up. “Six,” Crosshair decided eventually.

“Hmmm,” Tech hummed and then got to his feet, leaving his datapad on the floor next to Crosshair, “Stay there for a moment, I’ll be right back.” Crosshair waited obediently, grinding his teeth against the chanting of LiarLiarLiarLiar in his head. Just because he wasn’t telling them the whole truth, didn’t mean he was lying.

Tech returned a moment later, holding a hydropak in one hand and something else Crosshair couldn’t see from his position in the other. Tech settled back down next to him, once again leaning into his side, and put both items in Crosshair’s hands. The item he’d had in the hand that hadn’t held the hydropak was a pair of small green pills.

“Painkillers,” Tech explained, “In the future I would like you to try and keep track of your pain and tell me when it gets above a three.”

“These are Hunter’s painkillers,” Crosshair told him irritably.

“They are reserved for anybody on this ship who is experiencing pain, not just Hunter.” Tech corrected him, “It is simply that before we got you back he was the one who required them most frequently. Now please take them.” 

Crosshair glared at him, but was met with a calm and infinitely patient look. He didn’t doubt Tech would sit there and wait him out until they both died of old age. Left with no other options, Crosshair relented. “Fine.” He tossed the pills back and chased them with the drink.

Tech smiled at him. “Good. Thank you for cooperating, Crosshair.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Crosshair replied bitterly, eliciting an eye roll from his brother.

“Now as I mentioned, I wanted to put this off until you were feeling better, but it seems as though it would be better to get it over with.”

Crosshair squinted at him suspiciously, “Get what over with?”

“You recall the conversation we had before Rex contacted us?” Tech asked, adjusting his goggles.

“The one where you interrogated me?” Crosshair growled, scowling.

Tech sighed, “If you must put it that way, then yes, that one. I told you I would look into methods for reducing and coping with your symptoms. I have done research since then and have been meaning to discuss it with you, so you have things you can try.”

Crosshair sneered, “Dare I ask what harebrained thing you’ve come up with?”

“Nothing harebrained,” Tech replied, undeterred by his little brother’s attitude, “Only methods with significant research behind them. Of course the most effective thing would probably be medication, but I am not a doctor and even if I were, psychiatric medications are difficult to acquire without government assistance. Even on the black market they are so expensive we’d never be able to buy them on a regular basis.”

Crosshair snorted and pulled a new toothpick out of his belt pouch, “So no drugs. At least I won’t have anything else fry my brain. So what are you suggesting then Doctor Tech?”

Tech rolled his eyes at the nickname, but answered the question anyway, “Cognitive therapy techniques. There is a great deal of evidence demonstrating their effectiveness. Of course I’m also not a mind-healer, but we’ll have to make do. I’m at least capable of reading medical journals. Now, what you described in our last conversation was consistent with auditory hallucinations and intrusive thoughts. There are some methods for coping with such things that may help you.”

“Do tell,” Crosshair sneered.

“Well firstly,” Tech went on, again ignoring the attitude. He obviously knew it was just how Crosshair dealt with things that made him uncomfortable. “As I said before, I would like you to keep track of the amount of pain you experience daily, it would be best to set up a journal and of course it might help you to write down your other experiences, but I doubt keeping a diary is something you would ever agree to…”

“Absolutely not,” Crosshair snapped. Aside from how simpering and pathetic the idea felt, the fact of the matter was keeping a diary meant committing the most personal possible information to a form that somebody could then read. The idea of actually having somebody else find out what sort of awful things scuttled around in his brain was nothing short of revolting.

Tech huffed, but clearly wasn’t surprised. “I thought not, but as I said, keep track of your pain. It can be as simple as writing a number into the calendar on your datapad, and it will show us any patterns that may exist. I would also like you to record how many hours of sleep you get and how many meals you eat.”

Great, as if they weren’t already on him about those things before, now he was never going to hear the end of it. “Fine,” Crosshair grumbled, “Is that all?”

“Hardly,” Tech snorted and pulled something up on his datapad, which he quickly scrolled through, his eyes flickering across the screen rapidly. “For auditory hallucinations, if you would prefer not to try digging into the patterns behind them, which would require more journaling, then the best strategy is for you to try some different methods that reduce the volume or frequency of the interruptions. Data has shown that listening to music or the radio is a good way to reduce symptoms. Wearing an earplug has some research backing it as an effective method as well, just one so that you aren’t totally disengaged from your environment of course. Also there has been evidence relating to subvocalization that suggests performing such acts as humming to oneself or reading aloud also reduce the volume, intensity, and frequency of hallucinations.”

Crosshair frowned as he worried at his toothpick with his teeth. “Listen to the radio, wear an earplug, and hum to myself? Really? This sounds like nonsense, Tech.” 

“I assure you, Crosshair, there is a significant amount of research backing up each of these methods,” Tech told him confidently, “And even if they don’t work for you, trying something is better than trying nothing isn’t it?”

“I…I guess. Alright,” Crosshair sighed, “Anything else?”

“For the intrusive thoughts, from what I understand, the best method is simply to let them slide off you. Acknowledge that they’re there, but give them no credit, do not try to decipher them or hold onto them, just let them come and let them pass away. If you attempt to fight them off they will only become more persistent. Do you believe you can try that?” Tech asked, finally looking up from his datapad to examine his brother’s dubious expression.

“I imagine you’ll say that this is better than bashing my head against the wall,” Crosshair joked.

Tech nodded seriously at him, “Indeed. As I said before, hurting yourself to cope is unacceptable, Crosshair, please try the methods I have explained to you instead.”

Crosshair sighed and ran his hand through his hair. It was getting too long, he’d have to see if one of his brothers would be willing to trim it for him soon. “Alright fine, for lack of anything else to try, I’ll give your stupid ideas a shot.”

“Excellent,” Tech said, practically beaming at him.

Chapter Text

Three days passed relatively uneventfully. They made a few stops on their way back to Ord Mantell, which seemed to be Hunter’s preferred place to dock in-between missions, and during one such stop Tech acquired some items for Crosshair to help with his new ‘treatment’, namely a small audio device that took the form of an earpiece and could be loaded with music or other audio files. Tech acquired those as well and presented it all to Crosshair with the explanation of, “This might kill two birds with one stone. It serves as both an earplug and a way to listen to music or other audio. I have taken the liberty of downloading a music library onto it as well as a number of audio dramas.”

Crosshair accepted the gift dubiously, but Tech didn’t appear to be looking for enthusiasm, just compliance with his recommendations. Over the next few days Crosshair tried out the device and found that it did help drown out the noise. After six days he had the thing on near-constantly and was relieved that while the voices weren’t gone , they were quieter and he had a way to ignore them for the most part.

They ended up taking a rest on a relatively uninhabited planet on day ten after the rescue mission. Tech had put the Marauder down on a prairie covered in long golden grass and bordered on one side by woods. The six of them quickly spread out, pleased by the opportunity to stretch their legs after spending so much time aboard the attack shuttle. Hunter and Omega set out almost immediately to catch an animal or two for them to eat, while Echo went about building a campfire, Tech settled off the the side to change out the drained battery in Omega’s medical droid with the new one they had bought before the rescue mission, and Wrecker went to fetch Hunter’s cooking tools.

Crosshair ended up laying in the grass, close by his brothers and the Marauder but not so close that he’d be stepped on, dozing lightly as the actors in an audio drama chattered in his ear and drowned out the voices that so often interfered with his sleep. The climate there was temperate and the planet had seasons, of which it was currently spring, so it was warm and comfortable out in the sunshine and while Crosshair wasn’t sleeping deeply enough for dreams, he was, for the first time in a long time, completely relaxed.

Naturally Wrecker knocked over a stack of crates inside the Marauder, resulting in a resounding crash that had Crosshair jerking upright with a gasp. 

“I’m okay!” Wrecker shouted.

Echo glanced at Crosshair and made an irritable noise as he called out to Wrecker, “You woke up Crosshair! He was finally sleeping! What the heck are you even doing?!”

Wrecker appeared on the Marauder’s ramp and grimaced when he saw Crosshair sitting up and tiredly running a hand over his face, “Sorry,” he said, “It was an accident. I was diggin’ through the supplies lookin’ for Hunter’s box of spices an’ I backed into a stack of crates.”

“You said you were uninjured?” Tech asked him.

“Yeah,” Wrecker nodded, “A lotta stuff hit the floor, but nothin’ hit me.”

Tech sighed, “Well that is something at least.”

“Go back to sleep, Crosshair,” Echo told his littlest brother softly, “Wrecker will be more careful not to wake you up.”

Crosshair gave his brothers a truly venomous look that made them all wince, but the noise had startled him and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to doze back off until his hackles had settled. He stood up and ignored the unhappy noise his ori’vod made.

“I’m going for a walk,” he grumbled, ignoring his brothers’ protests as he waded off into the golden grass. 

In the end he didn’t go very far, just enough to be away . He’d found since the chip had come out that being alone with his thoughts was unpleasant and to be avoided, a big turnaround from how things had been before the Order, where Crosshair often longed for solitude. His thoughts were still loud and grating and he continued to struggle with them. He hadn’t gotten the hang of Tech’s suggested method. He didn’t know how he was supposed to not fight them when they were so loud and alien and disturbing that he fought them on sheer instinct.

But the audio player helped, if nothing else, simply because it pulled him out of his head. He had it switched on and playing something nearly all the time now. When he was with his brothers, playing sabacc or otherwise in a situation where he was expected to be socially present, he had the audio device play music, distracting enough to drown out some of the voices but not so distracting that he’d miss what his siblings were saying to him. The rest of the time, when he was maintaining his equipment or otherwise not interacting with others, he played the audio dramas, which took up more of his attention and kept him from spiraling.

The storylines of the dramas were nothing short of ridiculous, but somehow that was helpful and Crosshair suspected that Tech had known it would be and had picked those ones on purpose. In addition, the music selection his brother had chosen was unbelievably varied, but not in the sense that it was only a few songs of any given type. Tech had loaded it with thousands of songs, so each genre was represented with hundreds of individual numbers. Crosshair was still exploring them all to figure out what he liked the best.

Eventually Hunter came to fetch him for lunch and scold him for going off by himself in violation of the long-standing buddy system. Crosshair was unrepentant. He would have been able to make it back just fine on his own, he’d only strayed far enough to be away from his brothers, and hadn’t gone so far that the grass obscured the top fin of the Marauder. Even if he had, the campfire Echo had built left a trail of smoke hanging in the air and Crosshair would have been able to find the way back just from following it. Regardless, Hunter came to get him and Crosshair followed his brother back to camp obediently.

Out of all of them it was Hunter who did the cooking whenever cooking was required. Most of the time when they were on mission and out of supplies he just found an animal to roast over a fire on a spit, simple and easy, if not plain. But when he actually cooked because they wanted fresh food instead of simply being without rations, Hunter was fancier. This time he’d had Wrecker set up the ‘grill’, which was just a piece of metal grating Tech had bought at a market a while back and washed, that they put up over the fire. Omega proudly explained how they’d used a field guide Tech had downloaded for the planet to find edible tubers and fruits along with the animal they had caught. With the ingredients they had gathered Hunter had made kebabs and a tart sauce to eat them with. 

For once Crosshair was actually hungry rather nauseous, although he staunchly refused to acknowledge the way his siblings beamed at him when he actually ate his portion of the meal.

When they had all finished eating Omega scooched over to Crosshair and looked at him with her big round eyes. They were limpid and glittering and Crosshair could only sigh. “What do you want now?” he asked her.

“Well…” she said, drawing the word out as she pulled at a loose thread on her sleeve, “You’re a sniper…”

“An astounding observation,” Crosshair drawled as he pulled out a toothpick to place between his teeth.

Omega rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him before getting back to whatever the hell it was that she wanted. “You’re a sniper so you have good aim right?”

Crosshair raised an eyebrow at her, “Obviously.”

“So since you have good aim then that means that maybe…maybe you could help me get better at aiming?” She turned the akk puppy eyes up to eleven and Crosshair could only run his hand through his hair and sigh.

“Fine. Go put up a target.”

“Really?” she gasped.

He glared at her, “Hurry up and do it before I change my mind,”

That lit a fire under her and she skedaddled off to do as she was told. She ended up painting a set of rings on a tree and dragging Crosshair over to show him her energy bow. He’d seen it before of course, she had used it to save his life during the collapse of Tipoca City, but she was excited to show it to him properly. “Do you know how to shoot one of these?” she asked curiously.

Crosshair held out his hand and she gave him the bow. With only the barest look at the target he fired three rapid shots, which all hit dead center. Omega gasped in delight and reached for the bow back.

“Satisfied?” he asked her and rolled his eyes at the excited nod she gave him. “Great. Now you shoot so I can see whether or not you’re a total disaster.”

Omega pouted at him, “Echo taught me to shoot a little,” she told him, “He’s pretty good.”

“For a given value of ‘good’,” Crosshair replied snidely.

“You know I can hear you talking osik about me, Crosshair,” Echo called from several meters to their left where he was helping Hunter clean up the grill so they could pack it away.

“Good,” Crosshair said, “Maybe you’ll take the hint and practice your shooting so you don’t miss every target you fire at.”

“You wound me!” Echo cried, “I thought we were brothers!”

Crosshair just rolled his eyes and turned back to his giggling little sister. Echo didn’t actually have bad aim, but Crosshair made fun of him for it anyway because compared to himself they all had bad aim.

“Take five shots,” Crosshair told Omega tiredly, “I need to see what you’re doing before I can correct you.”

“Right!” Shakily, the little girl lined up her first shot and then fired. It hit the outer ring of the target and she grinned. Over the next four shots Crosshair got an idea of what she was doing. She wasn’t bad at all, she hit the target more often than she missed, if only on the outer portions. He could work with this.

Crosshair rolled his toothpick between his teeth as he considered how to approach the problem, then he stepped over and knelt down next to Omega so he was closer to eye level. “Draw but don’t fire, I’m going to correct your stance.”

“Okay,” she said and did as she was told. 

He went from the bottom up, first correcting her feet, then the turn of her hips, then her dropped elbow and stiff shoulders. She was shaking with the effort to keep the bow drawn by the time he had corrected everything and privately he thought that the weapon was probably too much for her to be shooting in the first place, the draw weight was too high for her at the very least. 

“You may want to have Echo or Tech make an adjustment to the bow for you,” he told her once she could no longer hold the bow drawn and had collapsed out of her stance.

“What sort of adjustment?” Omega asked him suspiciously.

“The draw weight of the bow is too high for you, that’s why you’re struggling so much…aside from your sloppy shooting stance. That particular type of bow isn’t made to be adjustable, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be adjusted.”

Omega furrowed her brows, “Draw weight?”

Crosshair sighed and, not for the first time that afternoon, wished Wrecker hadn’t woken him up. He was tired. “Draw weight is a measurement of how much strength is required to draw the bow. From the three shots I fired I’d estimate that bow’s draw weight as being around thirty pounds, which is clearly too much.”

“It was way harder when I first started,” she argued, “I’m stronger now and I’ll get even stronger the more I practice.”

“Work smarter not harder,” Crosshair told her, chewing idly on the end of his toothpick. “Now get back into the stance I showed you. If you get back into the sloppy one you were in before then the lesson is over.”

Omega’s eyes widened and hurriedly she tried to return to the corrected stance. She got it about eighty percent right, so Crosshair let it slide and poked and prodded her limbs and back until she was where she needed to be.

“Good,” he said once she’d successfully dropped and returned to the stance a few times. “Now try shooting.”

“Right,” Omega replied and drew back as she took aim. Her shot hit the target, closer to the center than any of her previous attempts, and she grinned.

“Keep practicing like that and you’ll be able to hit the center of the target,” Crosshair told her, “and have the bow adjusted. It’d be stupid to leave the draw weight that high when all it’s doing is making your aim shaky.”

“Okay,” Omega chirped. 

Before she could pester Crosshair about anything else Tech called out, “Omega! I have replaced the battery in your droid and now that Echo’s repairs are complete it should come back online once the new battery has been charged.”

Omega let out a delighted gasp and abandoned target practice to go run over and inspect the droid, “AZI! He’s really all fixed?”

Tech adjusted his goggles. “Yes, and with the power adaptor cable I purchased it will be able to recharge its battery by plugging into the Marauder.”

The two of them worked to carry the droid back onto the ship, chattering all the while, and Crosshair switched his audio from music back to the drama he’d been listening to earlier. After a moment he decided to take another shot at having a nap. He felt like he was about to keel over any minute.

***

It took until they were only a day away from their destination, but as Tech had said, Omega’s droid came back online. Crosshair summarily decided that his initial judgment of it back on Kamino, one of dislike, still held up. The feeling stemmed from a combination of dislike of doctors, dislike of droids, and dislike of people who talked too much, so he avoided it as much as one could possibly avoid somebody they were trapped in a small vehicle with. The only saving grace was that Tech didn’t consult the thing about Crosshair’s health.

Once they were back on Ord Mantell, Hunter had talks with Cid, negotiating over job opportunities, but in the end it wasn’t her they ended up working for. Fifteen days after the completion of the trooper rescue mission, Rex called them again.

The call caught them in the market place as they stocked up on rations and the other supplies that had been running low, and when Hunter answered, Rex summarily requested they move somewhere more private. Hunter seemed relieved by the interruption more than anything else. Crosshair knew he hated shopping, they never had enough money for it to be anything but intensely stressful for their sergeant. Thus the Batch left the market with only half of what they intended to get and returned to the Marauder so they could put Rex up on the big projector.

As it turned out, Howzer was present for the call as well.

“Crosshair,” he greeted, his voice pleasant and free of any of the hostility he had shown before they had come to an understanding.

“Captain Howzer,” Crosshair replied dryly.

“How are you holding up?” Howzer asked him. This question elicited some suspicious looks from Crosshair’s siblings. They knew Howzer and the other two were in on the secret Crosshair was keeping from them. All he could hope was that his brothers respected him enough to not go behind his back to figure out what was going on, and barring that he hoped that the regs would be kind enough to keep the secret.

Crosshair deflected by answering his question with, “I could ask you the same.”

Howzer rolled his eyes expansively, “Forgive me for trying to check on you.”

“They’re settling in fine,” Rex answered, cutting the almost-argument short. “We’re working on contacting a mind healer to help with the nightmares, and trying to get them back up to a more healthy weight, but other than that they’re doing alright.”

“Yep,” Howzer agreed, “We’re doing much better now that we’re not locked up in a brothel. Klacks and Skroll asked me to say hello.” Crosshair just sighed and Howzer grinned at him, “I’ll tell them you said hello back.”

“Do whatever you want,” Crosshair huffed.

“Oh I will,” Howzer replied with a laugh.

Hunter stepped up and leaned his palms on the rim of the projector, “Rex you said there was something you needed to talk to us about.”

Rex nodded and folded his arms across his chest, “Yeah. I’ve got another mission for you, if you boys are up for it.”

“We’re currently in-between jobs,” Hunter told him, “What have you got for us?”

“Well I’ve been talking with Howzer and it seems that at least some of our brothers have been sold at a slave auction, that’s how he, Skroll, and Klacks ended up at the brothel.”

“The auction was on Valebri,” Howzer said as he jumped back in, “There were twenty of us in the lot, but we got split up and sold off to different buyers. Before that, when we were first arrested for rebellion, we all ended up in a labor camp. There were at least five hundred clones being kept there, but I don’t know where the camp was, the guards never said the name of the planet or system where we could hear it and we didn’t exactly get to see any star maps. All I know is that it was on an ice planet.”

“So those clones whose chips didn’t work or were otherwise arrested for rebelling were sent to this labor camp, and then twenty of you were removed from the camp and sent to a slave auction?” Tech rephrased.

Howzer nodded. “We weren’t the first to be sent there I think. While we were at the camp, groups of twenty or so clones were moved now and then and we didn’t see them again.”

“So the Empire has probably been selling rebellious clones into slavery since the Order went out…” Hunter concluded.

“Most likely,” Rex agreed, “There’s not much for us to go on to track down the previous lots that have been sold, too much time has passed and slavers aren’t generally big fans of record keeping, but I had Blackout look into Howzer’s lot and he’s located the rest of them.”

“You want us to go save ‘em?” Wrecker asked, sounding hopeful. He was a caring soul and Crosshair knew that even though the regs had never been kind to them, Wrecker wouldn’t want to leave any of them to such a terrible fate.

Rex nodded, “That’s exactly what I’d like you to do, if you’re willing. I know we ‘regs’ haven’t always treated you the best, and for that I’m sorry, but these are your brothers too…I hope you’ll be willing to give us more of your help. Your skills as commandos could make all the difference.”

Echo gave Hunter a beseeching look and the sergeant sighed and massaged his temples. “We can’t leave them, Hunter,” Echo pleaded, “We have to help.”

Hunter glanced around at the rest of them. “Well I’m in!” Wrecker declared immediately.

“Me too!” Omega cried, “We’ve gotta help them!”

Hunter turned to the last two members of the Batch. Tech simply nodded and then suddenly all eyes were on Crosshair. Some cruel bitter part of him wanted nothing to do with this. Let the stupid regs handle there own problems…but the rest of him remembered the burns on Klacks’s neck, the abrasions on Skroll’s wrists and ankles, the hollow looks on all three of their faces, and way Klacks’s voice had quavered when he said it was hard not to fight. Even if it wasn’t sexual slavery the other regs had been sold into, it would be a situation of untold suffering nonetheless. Echo was right. They couldn’t just leave them.

Crosshair bit down on his toothpick and sighed heavily, “Fine. Not even the regs deserve to be slaves.”

“You’re all heart, Crosshair,” Howzer replied dryly, but he was smiling.

“We’ll help,” Hunter concluded, “Where to first?”

“The lot got split up into a group of seven, two groups of three - including us, a pair of two, and a group of five,” Howzer explained.

“I doubt you’d be able to fit too many extra people on the Marauder,” Rex said, “So you’ll go after the group of two and the group of three and me and my boys will rescue the remaining twelve.”

“The pair are Hawk and Warthog, pilots from the 501st and the 104th respectively,” Howzer said.

“Hawk?” Echo asked, his gaze sharpening.

“You know him I take it,” Howzer sighed, “I suppose that’s hardly a surprise.”

Echo nodded, “I didn’t know him well, but I’ve spoken to him before. His chip didn’t work?”

“Apparently not, frankly I was surprised to learn he’d even survived,” Rex said in a somber voice, “but he was apparently doing a supply run elsewhere when the Tribunal went down.”

Howzer gave Rex’s shoulder a comforting squeeze before turning back to the Bad Batch, “Hawk and Warthog were pretty much inseparable in the labor camp,” he said, “The guy who bought them looked like a real sleemo, so I’ve been worried.”

Rex sighed. If Crosshair were a nice person - and a hypocrite - he might have asked if the captain had been getting enough sleep. He looked exhausted. “According to Blackout’s intel, the man who bought the two of them is part of a group of scrappers. Pilots aren’t engineers, but they have to know how to fix at least a few kinds of ship in a pinch and obviously they know what all the parts do, so we figure that’s what the scrappers would want with them.”

Crosshair snorted, “They wanted an expert opinion on what to steal, fantastic.”

“It’s not stealing if it’s trash,” Howzer pointed out with a lopsided smile, “But yeah basically.”

“So I assume Blackout found out where they are?” Hunter asked.

“Belgaroth,” Rex replied with a nod, “There are lots of scrapyards there, but the planet is pretty much a wretched hive. It’s never been a safe place to be, but recently the Empire has started testing weapons and combat maneuvers there, so it’s doubly dangerous.”

“ Wonderful ,” Crosshair griped.

Hunter shot his littlest brother a commiserating look before turning back to the two captains, “And what about the other three?” 

“A medical officer from Kamino named Needle, a trooper from the 212th named Crys, and an ARC Trooper from the 104th named Snare,” Howzer told them.

“Blackout’s intel tells us they were bought by a chakaar known for hosting an underground fighting ring on Actlyon. If I were you I’d go there first; people forced to participate in bloodsports don’t exactly have a long life expectancy,” Rex added seriously.

“The ARC is probably okay,” Echo hummed. Crosshair figured that if anybody there could make such a statement with confidence it’d be Echo, given he was an ARC Trooper himself. “And the other trooper could be alright, but the medical officer might be in trouble. That job isn’t exactly combat focused and if he’s never been off Kamino he may not have even done any fighting since his cadet training.”

“Our thoughts exactly,” Howzer replied with a grimace.

“We’ll pull them out first then,” Hunter said, nodding, “And we’d appreciate it if you could send us all the information you have on both groups of clones.”

Rex reached off screen and came back with a datapad, which he fiddled with for a second, before the Marauder’s holo projector let out a beep. “Done,” the captain said, “We’ll keep in touch, tell us if you need anything.”

“Will do,” Hunter agreed.

Rex and Howzer gave them a pair of sharp nods before the communication ended.

Chapter Text

The audio player Tech had given him helped, but Crosshair still had good and bad days. The Batch left for Actlyon as soon as they picked up the rest of the supplies they needed, but the planet was still over four days of hyperspace travel away. The first day was fine, Crosshair was largely relaxed and it passed without incident. The second day was worse. It was bad.

He’d had a dream the night before, a familiar dream of a familiar experience, a dream of being called on by the Vice Admiral, of the man gripping his jaw to force his mouth open wider, of him raking his nails down Crosshair’s naked back, of him breathing cruel painful words in his ear while he ruined his life, ruined his body, ruined him.

Crosshair didn’t wake screaming like one might expect to see in the holodramas, but he did topple out of his bunk and land on all fours, where he stayed, shaking, for just a moment before bolting as fast as his body could go to the fresher to avoid vomiting all over the floor.

He was too busy to close the fresher door behind him and after a minute or two Wrecker peeked his head in to see his littlest brother hunched over and throwing up all of what little food he’d eaten over the last few days.

“Uh…Tech?” Wrecker called. It was deep in the night cycle and the rest of their brothers were still asleep, even Tech, who tended to stay up quite late, was out cold. Wrecker was usually the heaviest sleeper of the bunch, so why Crosshair falling out of his bed had woken him up but not the others was a mystery Crosshair didn’t have the available faculties to ponder over. 

“ What?” came Tech’s groggy voice, slurring the word to the point that it sounded more like ‘flwahh?’

“Crosshair’s pukin’ his guts out,” Wrecker called back. The hulking man shouldered his way into the fresher and crouched down next to Crosshair’s still hunched and heaving form so he could pat him on the back in a heavy-handed attempt at comfort. Being touched brought the dream, the memory , back full force and Crosshair started retching all over again.

Wrecker’s statement, apparently, was enough to get not just Tech, but also Hunter and Echo’s attention as well. The only one who could sleep through Wrecker’s booming voice was Omega, who hadn’t so much as stirred.

“What’s going on?” Tech asked as he also jammed himself in the fresher to lean over his little brother. Thankfully Hunter and Echo stayed outside.

“No idea,” Wrecker told them, “I had a dream we were on Jakku and I woke up real thirsty and was about to go get a drink when Cross fell outta his bed and ran in here to puke his guts out.”

By now there was nothing left in Crosshair’s stomach to expel and he was left leaning his forehead on the cool edge of the toilet, panting and shaking with his arms wrapped around his midsection.

“Can you tell us what happened, Crosshair?” Tech asked him, his tone more than a little concerned.

Crosshair squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth against both another wave of nausea and the sound of Rampart’s voice in his ears, in his mind. “Remembered something bad…” he wheezed before his brain caught up to him. He shouldn’t have said that. It was supposed to stay a secret, he should have just said he had a bad dream or something he’d eaten the day before hadn’t agreed with him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Wrecker’s brows furrow and Tech’s lips press into a thin line. “Bad enough to make you vomit like this? We’ve had plenty of injuries and close calls in the past, but never something you had this severe of a reaction to. There were times on Kamino were you couldn’t speak…but nothing ever made you physically ill like this.”

“Were you remembering something that the Empire made you do?” Hunter asked from a few feet back, craning his neck to see over Tech’s shoulder. Damn him for being so astute.

Crosshair let out a helpless wheezing little laugh. “Something the Empire made me do…” he repeated, giggling in a way that his brothers clearly found unnerving. “Yeah I guess you could say that. Something somebody made me do. Something somebody did to me…”

His brothers’ attention seemed to sharpen and Crosshair closed his eyes against the knowledge that he was letting too much slip. He didn’t want them to know, that slick horrible thing was still inside him, wrapped around his insides, just waiting to choke the breath out of him if the secret came too close to the surface.

“Will you tell us what happened?” Echo asked him tentatively.

Crosshair gave him a weak dejected smile, “Not in a million years.”

“Why not?” Wrecker demanded, “We wanna help you!”

“Can’t…” Crosshair mumbled, “it—it… hurts .”

“It hurts too much for you to talk about it?” Echo asked.

The sniper let out a shuddering breath, his eyes still squeezed shut, “To talk about it, think about it, remember it, live with it.”

“If you let it out, it might hurt less,” Wrecker told him gently, “Keepin’ all the feelings locked inside probably hurts a lot worse than just lettin’ ‘em go would.”

“I-I can’t,” Crosshair wheezed, “I can’t.”

“Maybe…maybe you can tell us later, when you feel better,” Echo suggested hesitantly.

Crosshair nodded, just to get them to leave it alone.

He put up the obligatory fight when Wrecker picked him up and hauled him out of the fresher, which only turned real when his ori’vod tried to wipe his face with a wet cloth like he would if literal actual child Omega’s face were dirty, then Crosshair snatched the cloth out of Wrecker’s hands and gave him the surliest most venomous glare in his arsenal before wiping his face himself.

His brothers all supervised as he washed his mouth out and then drank the water Tech thrust into his hand with the stern explanation of, “Vomiting causes a severe loss in fluids, which you should attempt to compensate for.” 

“Yes, Doctor Tech,” he hissed, even as he did as he was told. And wasn’t that just the thing that had caused him so much pain? Doing as he was told?

“Such obedience,” Rampart whispered in his ear, “Like a well-trained akk dog. I just have to say the word and you roll right over”

Crosshair shoved Tech out of his way so he could search for where his audio player had ended up when he’d fallen out of bed and only breathed a sigh of relief once he’d jammed the device in his ear and cranked the volume up as high as it would go.

Warily, they all went back to bed after that. Crosshair got the impression that his brothers would have stayed up with him, but since he’d crammed himself back in his bunk and wrapped himself up tight with his blankets over his head they all seemed to take it as an indication that they should go back to sleep.

Crosshair, despite being wrapped in said blankets and curled up in his bunk, did not sleep. When the day cycle came he drank so much caf he felt like he was about to vibrate out of their dimension into the next and Tech had to forcefully wrestle his seventh cup of it out of his hands to stop him from drinking more.

The waiting was terrible. They made plans of course, plans for how to approach the mission, how to approach the fighting ring, how to approach getting the regs out alive. Crosshair couldn’t focus. The audio player was loud in his ear, but it was nowhere near loud enough to drown out the screaming in his head. Wrecker ended up following him around all day, trying to get him to eat and pulling his hands away whenever they moved to scratch open his own skull.

Omega picked up that something was wrong and she took to sitting with him too, ignoring his growling and snapping as she filled the room with her voice. Wherever she went the damn medical droid went, so Crosshair ended up feeling like he was leading a parade whenever he moved around the ship.

In the end Crosshair couldn’t remember even half of what was said during their planning sessions. He’d just have to pay attention to what his siblings were doing when they got to Actlyon and try to play along, they’d probably end up winging it anyway, they always seemed to.

The day went, the night came, and Crosshair still didn’t sleep. He laid in his bunk and listened to an audio drama about the adventures of a man who’d been trapped in the body of a porg by a vengeful Nightsister. It was blindingly stupid and perfectly distracting. During the night some of the noise in his head subsided and he felt less like his mind was about to crack apart, if only barely.

When the third day came Hunter convinced Crosshair not to drink another seven cups of caf by telling him, “If you’re jittery your aim will be off.” It was true and all Crosshair could do was grumble and drink cider instead in between chewing toothpick after toothpick to pieces. That day passed largely the same as the previous had, with his siblings hovering over him as he kept himself busy with cleaning his weapons and armor and any other equipment he could get his hands on. He didn’t sleep that night either.

His siblings knew he hadn’t slept since the nightmare, hadn’t slept in nearly seventy hours, and eventually they got fed up with him. The bastards set him up. Crosshair was sitting up in the cockpit, watching the blue streaks of hyperspace pass by and zoning out, his brain muzzy and slow but still buzzing unpleasantly, as he listened to more of the porg drama. He was on episode six and the man-turned-porg had just stowed away on a scavenger ship to escape Dathomir when Echo popped his head into the room and said, “Crosshair, come help me with something.”

Crosshair tilted his head and fixed Echo with a surly look, “There are four other people on this ship and two droids, find somebody else.”

Echo rolled his eyes, “Everybody else is busy, just come help me already.”

With the biggest, deepest sigh he could possibly manage, Crosshair got up, stood still until the wave of lightheadedness passed, and then grudgingly followed Echo out through the bunk room to the back of the Marauder. He had just long enough to realize that somebody had made a huge nest with all the blankets and pillows on the ship before Wrecker pounced on him. 

Crosshair kicked and punched, hissing and snarling, but in his exhausted state his older brother easily wrestled him to the floor and wrapped him so tightly in blankets that he had no hope of escaping. The rest of his siblings were waiting on the sidelines and once Crosshair had been subdued they arranged themselves around him in something just shy of a dogpile while Tech put up a drama on the big holoprojector. The fact that they kept the holodrama quiet, along with the blankets and the snuggling, led Crosshair to the conclusion that they were trying to get him to sleep.

He understood them wanting him to be rested before undertaking a mission, but this was overkill to the extreme. “This is completely unnecessary,” he snapped when Wrecker settled down behind him and wrapped his arms around Crosshair’s chest.

“You have made it necessary, Crosshair,” Tech replied blandly without looking away from the holovid. It looked to be something about a twi’lek scavenger on Bracca getting in massive overdone gunfights with the Scrapper’s Guild, but Crosshair was largely ignoring it so he could glare at his pain-in-the-ass siblings. Omega was totally engaged in the drama, but the others only seemed to be paying partial attention to it.

“We understand that you’ve been having a hard time the last couple days,” Echo told him gently, “So we thought we’d make it easier for you. It’s easier to sleep when you know somebody is on guard right? So here we are. The Marauder is safely in hyperspace and will be for another nine hours and even if it weren’t nobody could hurt you or do anything to you while we’re all here. You can relax. It’s safe.”

This was about what he’d let slip to them when he’d been sick, it had to be. Crosshair tried to snarl at him, but the heartfelt reassurance hit something raw in his chest and all the fight drained out of him, leaving him defeated and exhausted.

“Go to sleep, Cross,” Wrecker rumbled against his back, “We’ve gotcha.”

He didn’t have the energy to argue anymore, didn’t have any energy at all, so Crosshair just sighed and gave up. Fortunately for his already paper-thin sanity, none of them gloated over their victory, or if they did, it wasn’t until after he’d finally dozed off.

***

Actlyon was a gray planet covered in mountains. With the information Blackout had dug up, Tech concluded that the fighting ring was located in the capital, Actlyon City, so that was where they went. The place was dirty, the air filled with smog and the water polluted. There was trash all over the streets and all the people looked as dingy as the city they inhabited. The only good thing about the place was that they didn’t need a chain code to land in the space port.

The six of them paced through the streets, heading to the lower levels where all the dirty dealing was done. None of them knew the exact location of the fighting ring, Tech had found that it moved around to avoid being broken up by what little police presence the city offered, so they all followed Hunter while he walked, turning his head this way and that, guided by his EM sense towards where there were large gatherings of people.

After ending up in several clubs and once or twice in market places and city squares they came to a bar which Hunter explained had some kind of something going on underneath, something with a lot of people. It was Crosshair, given that he could pull off sleazy better than any of his siblings, who sidled up to the owner of the place and traded credits for entry to the underground scene.

That was how they found what they were looking for. The space underneath the bar was massive and absolutely packed with people. It was loud too, almost deafening and Hunter clapped his hands over his ears and grimaced as soon as they opened the obviously soundproofed door to descend into the space. With Wrecker in the lead and Omega perched on his shoulder to keep her from getting separated or stomped on by the crowd, the Batch shouldered their way through the mass of people to see the center of everyone’s attention.

The floor was packed dirt and a ten foot deep pit had been dug out in the center of the room. Within the pit were two men, both of them obviously trying to kill the other with their bare hands. Crosshair, who was taller than his brothers - other than Wrecker - and most of the crowd, could see easily into the pit. One of the combatants was a clone. He looked battered and bruised, with bloody knuckles, a split lip, and a large cut on his brow that was bleeding profusely. Every few seconds the clone swiped his hand over his forehead to keep the blood out of his eyes.

His opponent didn’t look much better, in fact he looked significantly worse, his face was covered in purpling bruises, one of his eyes was in the process of swelling shut, his nose was obviously broken beyond repair and was dripping blood down his lips and chin. His movements as he tried to attack were slow and labored, all too easy for the clone to dodge and counter with rapid, deadly strikes. The man was obviously on his last legs.

Both men were wearing slave collars identical to the ones Howzer, Klacks, and Skroll had had, but between the two of them the clone’s neck was far far more burned and scarred. A sure indication that he was prone to resistance. 

“That’s the ARC,” Echo said just loud enough for the six of them clustered together to hear, “I recognize his combat form.”

“What was his name? Snare?” Hunter asked through gritted teeth. Crosshair would be extremely surprised if he didn’t collapse in headachey agony as soon as they got back to the Marauder with the regs in tow. Hunter’s sensory overload was killer.

“There are tunnels leading into the pit,” Crosshair passed on to his shorter siblings who couldn’t see them. 

Tech made a thoughtful noise that was almost lost in the raucous cheering and howling of the crowd, “That can only mean that there is a space further underground, which is most likely where the combatants are kept when they aren’t in the ring.”

“So how do we get down there?” Wrecker asked.

Crosshair swiveled his head around, looking over the tops of the crowd’s heads to examine the walls of the room, “Over there,” he told his siblings with a nod in the direction of his findings, “There’s a staircase leading downwards, but it’s got a bouncer in front of it.”

Wrecker followed the direction Crosshair was looking and then grinned, “Oh he’s puny, I can take care’a him.”

The man guarding the staircase was not puny in Crosshair’s opinion. He was just an inch or two shy of Crosshair's own height, but where Crosshair was lean and slim, that guy was heavy-set with broad shoulders and thick corded muscle visible in his arms and neck. But then again, pretty much everybody was puny compared to Wrecker.

The six of them waded through the crowd towards the staircase. When the bouncer opened his mouth to tell them to piss off Wrecker simply punched him in the head and then dragged his limp body down the staircase out of sight. Everyone in the crowd was busy watching the fight in the pit and nobody saw Wrecker take the man down.

While the space above had been packed with hooting hollering people gambling with the lives of slaves, the space below was deserted. Wrecker set Omega down and the six of them paced through the empty maze of tunnels single file, weapons out. Hunter was in the lead once again, listening for the sounds of occupants. The crowd upstairs was still audible, but it had filtered into mere background noise by the cramped muffled space of the tunnels. 

“In here,” Hunter whispered, obviously not wanting to speak too loudly in the oppressively quiet space.

 They reached a thick metal door buried in the side of a tunnel that branched off from the main artery of the labyrinth and Hunter gestured for them to spread out while Wrecker pulled the door open.

There were people in the space beyond all right. The first thing the Batch saw when the door was open were three weequay raising their blasters almost as one. Crosshair, much quicker on the draw than anyone else present, shot two of them in the head with his hand blaster, drilling nice neat holes through their skulls in less than a second. The third was taken out by Hunter who had dodged the weequay’s shot and buried his knife up under the man’s chin into his brain.

With that done they were free to look through the rest of the room. The first and most obvious feature were the cages. There were three large cages spread out across the space, each big enough to house a rancor, but in this circumstance were empty with the exception of the one on the far left, which only housed three people, one of whom appeared to be dead. The other two were sitting as far away from the corpse as possible, with their backs pressed into the bars of the cage as they watched the Bad Batch filter into the room with confused expressions on their reg faces.

“The cavalry has arrived,” Wrecker crowed at the pair.

“What he means to say,” Tech said as he came to stand in front of the cage, examining the electronic lock, “Is that we are here to rescue you.”

Crosshair stayed near the door, keeping watch, although he did take note of the regs’ appearance. They had both been stripped down to their blacks, although the fabric was ripped in places, like the two of them had been in a knife fight. They probably had. The flesh exposed by the holes in their clothing was covered in purple and green bruises which also mottled their knuckles, necks, and faces. 

Of the two, one had a standard regulation haircut that had long since grown out, and the other’s hair was both even longer and blond. The black-haired clone was keeping one eye closed, which made Crosshair wonder if the eye was damaged, and both had burns on their neck like the ARC and Howzer’s group had. Between the two regs, one was clearly worse off than the other, the one with the closed eye, whose limbs trembled minutely even at rest and whose face and hands were covered in scabbed over cuts along with his full-body bruising. Crosshair suspected he was the medical officer.

“Who-who are you?” asked the worse off clone suspiciously, having to stop and lick his dry and cracked lips mid sentence. His voice was raspy sounding and Crosshair was left wondering when the last time either of them had had anything to drink was.

“Clone Force 99,” Hunter told them in his most reassuring tone, “Captain Rex and Captain Howzer sent us to rescue you.”

“Howzer did?” asked the blond, “He’s free?”

“We rescued him at Captain Rex’s behest as well,” Tech supplied helpfully as he worked on disabling the lock, “Rex has been working on rescuing all the clones who rebelled against the Empire, including those who were sold at the slave auction.”

“Oh,” said the closed eye clone.

“You don’t look like clones,” the blond reg replied.

“We’re defective clones with beneficial mutations,” Crosshair told him blandly.

“Oh,” said the reg with the closed eye again.

The Bad Batch quickly introduced themselves and the regs did the same. Crosshair had been right. The more injured of the two was Needle, the medical officer, while the blond one was Crys.

“What’s wrong with your eye?” Crosshair asked.

Needle gave him a crooked smile, “Got slashed in a knife fight, along with the rest of me. It’ll probably have to come out.” He opened his eye to reveal the mutilated organ underneath. Every clone present, except Crys, winced. “The only reason it hasn’t gotten infected and killed me is because they give us bacta in between rounds to keep their investment alive as long as possible.”

“Well Rex’s people will see to it once we’ve got you out of here,” Hunter told him.

“That’d just make my day,” Needle said with that same dopey grin. The electronic lock buzzed and opened and Tech gestured for the two of them to come on out. “Thanks. You’re a peach,” Needle told Tech lightly as he walked passed. There was still a subtle tremor in his limbs and Crys walked close behind him, as if worried he might collapse and making himself ready to catch him.

Crys nodded along, but said, “Snare was sent out to fight, if he survives they’ll bring him back here pretty soon, what’s your plan?”

“First things first,” Tech told him primly, “We get your collars off so nobody can electrocute you on our way out. Crosshair, they appear to be the same model Howzer wore, do you remember the method for removing them?”

Crosshair nodded and Tech gave him a pleased look, “Good,” he said, “If you would remove Needle’s collar then I shall take care of Crys’s”

Having done it three times already, Crosshair was able to make quick work of it, although not nearly as quick as the lightning speed with which Tech dealt with Crys’s collar.

Both regs let out matching happy sighs when the collars were removed, but were brought back down to cold hard reality by Hunter ushering them behind the cage farthest from the door.

“Wrecker, drag the bodies over here,” Hunter said, “Tech close the cage back up, Echo close the big door. Then everybody get out of sight. We’re going to wait until they’ve brought Snare in and jump them.”

The Bad Batch got to work as one and then waited with bated breath for Snare to be dragged back from the fighting pit, hopefully still capable of walking on his own.

Chapter Text

The eight of them ended up whispering to each other while they waited for Snare to arrive.

“Where are the rest of the fighters?” Hunter asked from his hiding place behind a crate in the corner of the room.

“Dead,” Crys replied just as quietly, crouched next to Needle behind the solid corner of one of the cages, “We’re the last survivors of this batch, Rondan goes to the markets to get more slaves every couple of weeks.”

“You boys have impeccable timing,” Needle told them with a lopsided grin, “He’d have made us fight each other next. Personally I wasn’t looking forward to fighting Snare, since he could kill me dead with his eyes closed and both hands behind his back.”

“He wouldn’t,” Crys said softly, “He’d make them shock him to death before he killed either of us.”

“What a lovely fellow,” Crosshair sneered, more out of habit than anything. Once his chip had been taken out he would have died himself rather than kill his brothers. That was why he’d tried so hard to recruit them, he had been attempting to save their lives. Not that they had ever understood that.

Currently Crosshair was standing on one side of the door with his hand blaster out while Wrecker stood on the other, his weapon also drawn. Tech was behind the corner of the cage the regs had been in and Echo and Omega were crouched behind a crate near Hunter’s hiding place. None of them would be visible to anybody that walked through the door.

“They’re taking forever ,” Omega moaned, “I hope—” Hunter shushed her before she could finish her sentence, probably having heard something, and they all waited in silence. A moment later Crosshair heard it too, voices from outside the door.

He readied his weapon as the door beeped and slid open. The clone he’d seen in the pit was shoved through, he stumbled and Crosshair saw Wrecker twitch with the urge to catch him before he fell, but thankfully the giant was able to control himself. They waited until Snare was fully inside, until he’d turned his head and spotted Crosshair, his eyes wide with surprise, until the guards came in after him, to open fire. The two weequay dropped to the ground like bricks, but Snare let out a wordless shout, waving at Crosshair and Wrecker and pointing out the door frantically.

“There were three!” Hunter snapped as he bolted out of his hiding place with all his brothers and the two regs on his heels. He ran out the door, hoping to catch the third guard before he escaped and gave them away, but he was too late. An alarm went off and Crosshair figured it was time to leave.

The regs had both stopped in front of Snare to check on him, Needle was poking him in the ribs, checking his eyes, and looking at all his new bruises and cuts, but Hunter hurried over and asked, “Can you run?”

Snare turned to look at him but didn’t say anything. 

“They’re clones,” Crys told him, “They rescued Howzer and he sent them to rescue us.”

Snare’s eyes widened and then he nodded, giving his knees a hard pat. Hunter frowned, but then nodded back.

“I don’t think we should take them out the front door,” Echo said dubiously as he peaked into the hall.

“There is another way to get down here I take it,” Tech asked the regs, calm as anything even as the alarm blared, “I’m certain Rondan doesn’t bring his slaves through the bar.”

“These tunnels connect to the city sewers,” Crys explained.

Snare tapped his temple and nodded his chin towards the open tunnel.

“Snare memorized the tunnels we’ve been through, he knows the way out,” Needle translated. 

The Bad Batch glanced at each other, frowning at the ARC Trooper’s silence, but they didn’t have time to worry about it.

“Take the lead then,” Hunter said, gesturing Snare to walk in front.

Crosshair caught the reg by the shoulder as he stepped past. When Snare frowned at him the sniper pressed his DC-17 into the ARC’s hand. “If you’re on point it’d be stupid to leave you unarmed,” he said by way of explanation. Snare accepted the weapon with a nod and headed them up as they all bolted out the door. Tech handed Crys one of his own pistols as something of an afterthought while they ran. Nobody made a move to give Needle a weapon, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Snare led them down the tunnel and then made a hand sign.

Left

They all followed him around the corner even as they heard shouts from behind them. Crosshair reached into one of his belt pouches and grabbed some of his little reflectors, which he tossed onto the walls as they ran past.

Right 

Snare told them and Crosshair, bringing up the rear, waited a split second as his brothers and the regs turned the corner. A group of eight thugs - three weequay, two humans, two trandoshans, and a zabrak - bolted down the hall behind them, all shouting as they ran. Once they were where he wanted them, just starting to raise their weapons as they came into range, Crosshair fired a shot into the reflectors which bounced the bolt to each other and through all the bodies in the way. The familiar trick took down six of the eight of them and Crosshair ducked around the corner as the surviving trandoshan and zabrak opened fire. Crys had hung back and together they shot the remaining thugs when they rounded the corner before taking off after the rest of their brothers.

Their forward progress was stalled three turns and two straight tunnels later when a thick metal door slammed down in front of them. It had no visible control panels and no scomp, so Hunter gestured Wrecker forward and the giant clone started on the problem without further prompting. He kicked the door with all his might, once, twice, until he’d dented the metal enough to create a gap which he could fit his hands through to wrench the door the rest of the way open. When it was done he gave a little bow and motioned them though before following behind them.

After that they got in a brief shoot out before ending up at a ladder. Going up it was nerve wracking as they were forced into single file with no idea what situation Snare was climbing up into. There was a shout and the sounds of a scuffle once he’d made it up and after a second the body of a trandoshan dropped down the hole and landed with a thump in their midst, its neck turned at an unnatural angle. Snare leaned back down and gestured for them to follow him up with a hand sign.

All clear

Hunter went next, followed by the two regs, then Tech, Echo, Omega, Wrecker, and finally Crosshair. As it turned out Crys hadn’t been lying about the tunnels leading into the sewer. The sound of the alarm that had been blaring in the tunnels echoed weirdly through the cramped stone waterways and the place was pitch black, forcing them to turn on their helmet lights so they wouldn’t get lost in the dark.

Nobody followed them into the sewer, apparently the trandoshan had been the only one guarding the entrance. Snare had to stop a couple times, clearly racking his memory, before he signed for them to go one way or the other, but eventually they came to another ladder and he gestured them up, pointing and using the combat sign for Out.

As promised, once Hunter went up the ladder and pushed the manhole cover out of the way they ended up in an alley on the surface. Once all of them were out in the open they started down the alley towards the street only to be stopped when Snare let out a horrible scream. He howled in pain and clawed at his activated collar as electricity arced into him. They hadn’t had time to take the device off and he was paying for it.

The regs hovered around him, distraught, as the electrical charge brought the ARC to his knees and just kept on going and going, but Wrecker elbowed them out of the way and grabbed the collar in both fists, growling as the electricity arced into his body. He snarled and ripped the collar open by force before flinging it down the alley and leaning against the wall, his hands shaking.

Needle dropped down to check on Snare first, who was shivering violently and panting, but after a second the ARC gave his brother a wan smile and forced himself shakily to his feet. Crys immediately pulled one of his arms over his shoulders to help support his weight. Needle looked pale and stressed, but once Snare gave him a nod he turned his attention to Wrecker.

“Second degree burns,” the medical officer said after he'd pulled Wrecker's gloves off and inspected his red and blistering hands, “Bacta will fix it, but he should avoid using his hands for a couple days.”

Tech reached into his pack and pulled out a tube of bacta and a roll of gauze, which he handed over to Needle. The medical officer squeezed a generous amount out and slathered Wrecker’s burned palms with it before wrapping them in the gauze and then doing the same to Snare’s neck. 

“We can’t hang around here,” Hunter told him urgently.

“I’m good to go,” Wrecker said and Snare nodded in agreement. Hunter reached down, picked up his younger brother’s DC-17m, and attached it to the mag lock on the back of Wrecker’s cuirass, then handed Crosshair his hand blaster back from where Snare had dropped it. Wrecker left his gloves off to avoid having to struggle with pulling them on over the gauze.

“Don’t worry Wrecker,” Crosshair teased as he holstered the hand blaster, “the rest of us will protect you invalids .”

Wrecker snorted and elbowed Crosshair in the ribs. Snare just rolled his eyes.

Naturally things immediately got worse when they rounded a corner and ran headlong into two police droids.

“Halt,” replied the droid on the left, holding up its blue metal hand, “You are under arrest for multiple charges of theft and murder.”

“Theft?” Wrecker asked confusedly.

“Those three slaves are registered property of Rondan Zeech,” the other police droid explained, “You will come quietly and they will be returned to their rightful owne—” the droid didn’t get the chance to finish as Wrecker whipped his arm out and crushed its head like aluminum can in his fist.

The remaining droid pulled up its weapon, but Crys shot it in the head with Tech’s hand blaster before it even had the chance to level it at Wrecker or anyone else.

The medical officer rounded on Wrecker once the droid had dropped to the ground in a sparking heap. “Did I not just tell you not to use your hands? Are you deaf? ” Needle snapped.

Wrecker gave him an apologetic smile and let him look over the damage again. As it turned out there was nothing to be done, so they moved on, hurrying through the streets and ignoring the stares they got from passersby.

All in all they destroyed six more police droids before they made it back to the spaceport and into the safety of the Marauder. Tech took them off the planet in a roar of engines before anybody could try to shoot them down and everyone let out a collective breath once they jumped into hyperspace.

“So,” Echo addressed the regs with a grin while Tech handed over one of their medpacs to Needle so he could work on patching up all of Snare’s various injuries, “Nice to meet you all.”

Echo had the Batch all introduce themselves to Snare since he’d missed the original round of introductions. When he just nodded at each of them Crosshair sighed. 

Snare, interpreting the sound correctly, gestured to himself and then flashed a hand sign.

Silent

Crosshair frowned, but Needle dove into an explanation before any of them had the chance to ask.

“Snare’s got a mouth on him,” Needle said with a grin, “He told Rondan—” the clone interrupted himself with a giggle as he wiped all the blood off his brother’s face so he could properly see the cut on his head, “he told him uh…what were the exact words, Crys?”

Crys raised his eyebrows and said, “He told him, and I quote, ‘Your mother fucked Jabba the Hutt but you came out so ugly the slug disowned you.’”

Needle giggled again and then his face sobered slightly, “Rondan didn’t appreciate that, no sense of humor, so he uh…” he made a gesture towards Snare and the ARC opened his mouth.

Crosshair couldn’t help but grimace when he saw the ARC’s tongue had been cut out.

Snare made another hand sign.

Acceptable losses

“Worth it huh?” Wrecker asked wryly.

Snare gave him a feral grin in reply.

“When we leave you three with Captain Rex I will also leave you with a vid dictionary of Galactic Sign Language,” Tech told him plainly, “I think you’ll find it to be much more articulate than combat signs. It also has plenty of curse words you might like.”

Snare put a hand over his heart and mimed wiping a tear from his eye.

“He’s touched,” Needle translated with a grin, “That’s real nice of you, Tech, bless your little heart.”

Tech sputtered and looked away, adjusting his goggles to hide his embarrassed expression, “I—it’s no trouble really and being able to communicate is vital for any sentient’s emotional well-being.” 

Snare grinned evilly, sensing weakness, and then pointed to Tech before cupping his hands into a heart shape.

“You’re absolutely right, Snare. He is a big ol’ sweetheart,” Needle replied wickedly, “I just wanna pinch his lil’ cheeks.”

Wrecker laughed at the way Tech’s ears turned bright red and he elbowed his little brother, almost knocking him over as a result. 

Snare and Needle both cackled and punched each other in the shoulders in a way that was just short of trying to shove each other over. Crosshair was starting to come to the conclusion that the two of them should not be allowed in the same room. They were too similar to not fuel each other’s malicious personalities. Meanwhile Crys watched the whole scene with the absolute serenity of a Jedi master.

“If you ask Rex he’ll probably set up classes for everybody on their base so all of them will understand you,” Echo added, smiling at his vod’ika’s embarrassment and the regs’ horseplay.

Snare grinned at the other ARC and gave a thumbs up. Crosshair sighed, tired out by all the commotion, and went to go stow his weapons in the bunkroom and find the regs some food and water.

Chapter Text

Crosshair, in an effort to keep away from the rowdy regs, got them ration bars and water and then avoided the back of the ship like the plague. However, like he had predicted, as soon as everyone was settled Hunter came and dragged himself up onto his bunk like his whole body was made of lead before putting his blankets and pillow over his head. 

Sensory overload was a bitch.

Crosshair had been sitting in his own bunk with his eyes closed, listening to episode ten of the stupid porg drama and chewing on his most recent toothpick. As it turns out the drama was pretty old, pre Order, so the porg had met up with a Jedi and was communicating with them via Jedi osik in a long scene that seemed to drag on immensely. With his main form of distraction flagging, Crosshair’s hands itched to doodle something, he hadn’t had the opportunity nor the inclination to draw anything since the Order, he was certain that his brothers hadn’t kept his supplies other than the armor paints, but now his idle hands twitched with the need to do something. Anything. Truly Crosshair didn’t mind the interruption his ailing brother provided.

Moving as quietly as possible so as not to disturb his miserable ori’vod, Crosshair got up and went to raid the medipac in the cockpit for painkillers, then went to fetch something for Hunter to take them with. All of them could take pills dry if they had to, but it was never a pleasant experience and was best avoided when not absolutely necessary. He also turned the lights in the bunkroom down as he walked past the room’s control panel.

Once he’d collected the items, he padded over to where Hunter was facedown and limp on his bunk and grabbed the hand his brother had hanging over the side so he could put the pair of little green pills he had acquired into his palm. The mass of fabric covering Hunter’s head and shoulders shifted and then his brother peeked out from underneath, his expression tight with pain.

“Drugs,” Crosshair explained in a low whisper, then held up the hydropak he had fetched and shook it slightly, “And liquids.”

“My two favorite things,” Hunter mumbled and shifted into a position that was vaguely similar to upright so he could toss the pills in his mouth and then chase them with the proffered drink. Crosshair had had to dig around a little, but he’d found one of the melon flavored ones that he knew were Hunter’s favorite.

Crosshair hesitated for just a second and then asked, “Should I turn off my audio player? You can hear it even with the volume low I assume.”

Hunter’s eyebrows knitted together in an expression Crosshair wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret. “You need that for your own problems don’t you?” 

“I…it helps, but I survived all the time since the Order up to two weeks ago without it…” Crosshair whispered, shifting unhappily from foot to foot. He couldn’t do anything about the noise the ship made, the noise from the other clones in the back of the ship, or anything about all the electromagnetic fields that could only be making Hunter feel worse, but he could turn his audio player off for a couple hours. It wasn’t that big a deal.

“Keep it on,” Hunter told him softly, shaking his head and then pulling a face like he regretted the movement.

“I can go stay in the cockpit…” Crosshair offered.

Hunter smiled at him wanly, “Stay, you can keep me company, the audio player isn’t loud enough to be terrible as long as the volume is low.”

Crosshair huffed and then placed his hands flat on the edge of Hunter’s bunk - the one above Wrecker’s - so he could hoist himself up to sit with his back against the wall and his long legs hanging over the side next to his eldest brother.

Hunter shuffled around a little so he was on his back with his knees across Crosshair’s lap and then rearranged his pile of blankets and pillow to cover his head again. Crosshair turned the volume of the audio player down as low as it would go while still being audible to him and closed his eyes. 

He woke up a few hours later from a slumber he hadn’t intended to fall into, but when he saw Hunter was also asleep he closed his eyes again and dozed back off.

***

The trip from Actlyon to Rex’s base on Dantooine only took a couple days, which was good because by the time they arrived Crosshair was certain that if he had to deal with Snare and Needle’s raucous laughter and constant horseplay for even one more hour he was going to shoot them both in the head.

Crys was no help either, doing absolutely nothing to reign in his brothers, often just sitting happily in the midst of the storm with a slight smile on his face. Omega was delighted by the cheerful energy of the bunch, Echo was happy to horse around with his brothers, and Wrecker was clearly having a blast, even though he couldn’t wrestle with the injured clones for real, but Tech and Hunter, both tired out from the mission and then the constant whirlwind of frenetic energy that had consumed the Marauder, seemed to be leaning more towards Crosshair’s attitude, which was that the rowdy regs should be spaced. 

When they finally arrived and were told where to land, it was Howzer who greeted them rather than Rex. Tech brought the Marauder through the jungle and into the large enclosure that housed the disguised base’s starships in a much more sedate and safe manner than his usual flying habits, probably because he was tired, and when they opened the ramp they found Howzer and a mix of regs and nat-born refugees waiting to meet them.

“Welcome to our little home on Dantooine, boys,” Howzer said with a wave towards their facilities.

“And girl!” Omega protested.

Howzer smiled and knelt to ruffle her hair, which earned him a pout, “And girl, my apologies Omega.”

Jammer and a second clone with the medic symbol on his pauldron, along with a wookiee sporting the same symbol on their armband, came forward and pulled the injured clones away, hustling them off towards what Crosshair assumed was their medical facility to get treatment for their wounds. Wrecker got dragged along with them, the wookiee shoving him along despite his protests that he was fine and didn’t need more treatment. Echo, knowing the rest of the Batch would be uncomfortable with Wrecker being left alone with regs and nat-borns, trailed after the group.

The Bad Batch watched their brother get marched away with a mix of concern and amusement, but were distracted when Howzer clapped Crosshair on the back, making him drop his toothpick and earning Howzer a glare, “You look like hell,” he said with a grin as some of the people milling about started to disperse.

“Thank you,” Crosshair bit out, “I do my best.”

Howzer laughed and gave his shoulder a shake. “When’s the last time you slept?” he asked, not unkindly.

Crosshair glared at him, but his glare had no effect on the captain. Crosshair had given him much more vicious responses back when they’d been working together on Rhyloth, enough that by now Howzer was largely immune to anything short of outright violence.

When the captain didn’t relent Crosshair sighed, “Yesterday,” he said bitterly.

Howzer smiled at him, but it was a sharp, knowing smile. Rex had mentioned the brothel regs having nightmares, so Howzer probably knew exactly why Crosshair had such a rocky relationship with sleep. “Right, and for how long exactly?”

“How is this your business?” Crosshair snapped.

Howzer fixed him with a stern captainly look, “After the osik on Troithe I have made it my business, given you clearly don’t listen to your batchmates.”

“He slept for approximately three hours,” Tech supplied, his expression a mix between displeased and curious. “What exactly happened on Troithe if you wouldn’t mind telling us? Crosshair has refused to do so.”

Howzer gave the Batch, who were all waiting with bated breath to see if he’d finally spill the secret, an apologetic look. “Not my place to say,” he told them, “If you want to know you’ll have to get it out of Crosshair.”

“Think of it as a mystery for the ages,” Crosshair said dryly to cover his sigh of relief. Howzer was an annoying busybody but at least he was trustworthy.

His siblings scowled at him and Howzer sighed before turning back to the clone who - while significantly taller than him - he had trapped with an arm around his shoulders, “So three hours of sleep in the last twenty four hours. We’ve all worked with less but…well I might make you take a nap.”

“I don’t answer to you,” Crosshair said immediately.

“Of course not,” Howzer replied with a roll of his eyes, “You answer to no one and nothing. However, unless Rex countermands it, Jammer does answer to me, along with the rest of our brothers here, and I can order them to hold you down while he shoots you up with sedatives, so I recommend you cooperate.”

Crosshair shifted unhappily while Omega sniggered at him under her breath. “Not…not right now…later…” the sniper mumbled a little helplessly. He had the audio player on and thankfully the voices and the thoughts weren’t bad at the moment, but his skin had been crawling all day, ever since he’d slept and dreamed of things he’d rather not think about.

Howzer gave him an understanding look, “Sure alright, but you’re just putting it off, not weaseling out of it entirely. You will sleep before I let you off this base, which leads me to my next question. When did you last eat?”

Crosshair ran his hand through his hair and growled to himself. He had to wonder whether Howzer had learned to be such a pain in the ass or if he had just been decanted that way. Crosshair glanced at his siblings, wondering if they’d rat him out if he refused to answer and, judging by the displeased looks on their faces, he came to the conclusion that yes they definitely would.

He sighed and gave up, “Also yesterday.”

Howzer let out a huff, although he hardly seemed surprised by the answer. “Great, well it’s lunch time so if you’re not sleeping then you’re going to eat. Skroll and Klacks will be happy to see you anyway.”

“Rex doesn’t want to debrief us?” Hunter asked the captain curiously.

Howzer smiled at him, “‘Course he does, but he doesn’t need all of you for that and I’m sure you agree that Crosshair needs to eat more than he needs to be interrogated.”

Hunter hesitated for a second, glancing between Crosshair and Howzer like he wasn’t sure leaving his brother in the captain’s hands was entirely safe, before concern over Crosshair’s eating habits evidently won out and he nodded his head. “Alright. Where’s Rex?”

“Probably in the command center, it’s that little domed building in the center of the base, can’t miss it,” Howzer told them happily.

“Alright,” Hunter said again. He had one last look at Crosshair before leading the remaining Bad Batchers away, leaving his littlest brother in the fell company of Captain Howzer.

“Right,” Howzer said, “Off we go then, come on, the mess hall is this way.”

Crosshair let Howzer steer him through the base, in between prefab modular buildings and amongst trooper and nat-born alike, until they stepped into a building with a large flow of people going in.

The line to get lunch was long, but moved quickly and Skroll and Klacks caught up with them, both already holding their own trays of food, as soon as they were up at the front. Skroll had cut his hair back to a length similar to the regulation cut, although the style was slightly different, but Klacks had left his hair shoulder length and had simply tied it up at the back of his head.

“You serve actual hot food here?” Crosshair asked, a little surprised as he accepted a tray from the droid working the cafeteria line. The tray carried a bowl of what appeared to be dark but chunky stew, a pile of fried zuchii sticks, and a noxiously bright orange drink.

“When we can,” Howzer told him with a nod, accepting his own tray and leading them all to an empty table, “the nat-borns get testy when all they have to eat are ration bars.”

“Spoiled,” Skroll scoffed as he sat down next to Klacks.

Howzer laughed, sitting down on Crosshair’s left, across from the other two, “Oh definitely. Although maybe less so now that they’re adrift with no homes or possessions to their names.”

“Still spoiled,” Skroll repeated, “We never had that stuff to begin with.”

“Which is why we have nothing to miss,” Howzer replied evenly, “It’s easy to live with nothing when it’s all you’ve ever done, but it’s hard to go from having a home and a settled life to nothing. Cut the nat-borns some slack.”

Skroll huffed but then sighed, “You’re probably right…”

“Of course I’m right,” Howzer told him haughtily, “I’m always right, aren’t I Klacks?” 

“If I say yes can I have your zuchii?” Klacks asked him.

Howzer gave a regal nod and Klacks transferred the handful of fried vegetables off the captain’s tray onto his own before saying, “You should listen to the captain, Sarge, he’s always right.”

“Damn straight,” Howzer agreed triumphantly.

Skroll glowered at them both, “Accepting bribes, Klacks? I thought I raised you better.”

Klacks shrugged, “You raised me to eat my vegetables. You going to eat yours, Crosshair?”

Crosshair opened his mouth to tell him to go ahead and take them but Howzer clapped his hand down on the sniper’s tray before he could push it across the table while at the same time Skroll cuffed Klacks in the back of the head. 

“Stealing food from the starving now?” Skroll asked him, “I definitely raised you better than that .”

“He’s not eating it,” Klacks pouted.

Howzer let out a prim sniff, “Oh he’ll eat. He’ll eat it if I have to hold him down and cram it down his throat.” 

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “That won't be necessary. If it’ll shut you up then I’ll eat.”

“Is that all?” Skroll asked him suspiciously, “Are your batchmates not threatening you if you don’t eat? Hassling a brother until he gives up and takes care of himself is like psychological support 101.”

“They used to do that sort of thing, but now they’re afraid of upsetting me,” Crosshair replied with a scoff.

Howzer’s brows pinched together, “Why?”

Crosshair scowled down at his lunch, but didn’t touch any of it, “I haven’t exactly been emotionally stable since…you know.” 

“Osik,” Skroll grumbled.

“You’ve been having a lot of trouble since then huh?” Klacks asked him quietly, his expression understanding rather than pitying. Which was good because if Crosshair had seen pity on his face he would have punched the shiny and abandoned his lunch entirely.

Instead he just bit his lip and looked away.

“How long was it going on?” Howzer asked him gently.

“Since a few days after the Order up until a few weeks ago,” Crosshair mumbled. He didn't know why he was telling them this, or why he could say anything about it at all when the words got strangled out of him when his brothers asked him for even tangentially related information. He didn’t understand any of it.

“Double osik,” Skroll growled at the same time as Howzer hissed, “ Kark .”

“I’m sorry,” Klacks told him softly.

“You had nothing to do with it,” Crosshair replied in a flat voice.

Klacks shook his head, “I’m still sorry.”

“Judging by the question Tech asked me when you kids landed and by what you said on Troithe, I’m guessing that your brothers don’t know about any of this…” Howzer said. As he spoke he took the spoon off of Crosshair’s tray and loaded it up with a helping of the sniper’s untouched stew before holding it up to Crosshair’s face like he was about to feed an uncooperative toddler. Crosshair snarled at him and snatched the utensil out of his hand, shoving the food into his mouth just to make the captain knock it off.

Once he swallowed he ended up glaring down at his bowl, it pissed him off to no end, but the stew was actually really good and he did want to eat the rest of it despite how this topic of conversation made his stomach feel wobbly. “I haven’t told them…” he admitted, not looking at any of his dining companions.

“How come?” Klacks asked him quietly, “They seem like they really care about you, I’m sure they’d want to help you in any way they can.”

“That’s—” Crosshair cut himself off with a frustrated noise before taking another bite of his stew as an excuse to avoid finishing a defense he hadn’t properly planned out. The action put a smug look on Howzer’s big stupid face and Crosshair glowered at him.

“I can’t imagine keeping what happened to us a secret from our brothers,” Klacks went on in a sad yet compassionate voice, “It must hurt so much, keeping that inside where nobody can see it and help you.”

“I understand why you might not want to talk about it,” Sergeant Skroll added, “But this could cause a rift between you and your batchmates if you let it go on like this. They’ve got to know you’re hiding something big from them and it’s probably hurting them. They probably think you don’t trust them.”

“ Of course I trust them,” Crosshair snapped before he could help himself. Skroll chuckled but didn’t interrupt him, just folding his arms across his chest and leaning back slightly. “I—they—” Crosshair fumbled. He clenched his fists on the table, gritting his teeth before forcing the words out, “It’s not that. I…I tried to tell them, but it got stuck in my throat like it was strangling me, I couldn’t get it out.”

Howzer and the other two frowned and shared a glance. “Maybe try for something simpler, like use as few words as possible so you don’t have to force out a whole detailed explanation. Just give them the gist,” the captain suggested.

Crosshair scowled at the prospect and ate some more of his stew. 

“The longer you wait the harder it’s going to be,” Skroll told him seriously, “And the longer you let that secret sit in your gut the more it’s going to fester and poison you.”

“I…” Crosshair struggled to find something to argue with. He didn’t want to tell his brothers, he didn’t want to see them look at him with pity or revulsion, he didn’t want them to leave him behind again, but he also knew the regs were right. The secret was festering inside him like a disease and at this rate it was going to kill him, he had to tell them and accept the consequences. Crosshair was a responsible adult not a sniveling child, he could do it. He took a deep shaky breath, “I’ll—I’ll tell them. I’ll figure out some way to do it.”

The regs all smiled at him, Howzer especially looked proud and Crosshair turned his face away uncomfortably. He took another bite of his food so he didn’t have to say anything.

“Good, great,” the captain said with a grin, making a triumphant gesture with his spoon, “You do that and I’m sure it’ll make things better. You’ll feel better and your batchmates won’t be worrying over what you're keeping from them and why anymore.”

“The more people you have at your back, supporting you, the better,” Skroll agreed.

“He’s right, if there’s one thing we ‘regs’ know,” Howzer added, “it’s that there’s safety in numbers.”

Klacks nodded, “And if you can’t trust your brother you can’t trust anybody. We’re all we have. We’re all we’ve ever had.”

“All three of you are teary-eyed nitwits,” Crosshair huffed, although there was no real bite to his tone, “You sound like the motivational speakers they brought in on Kamino. Brotherhood this and loyalty that.” He jabbed his spoon at them accusingly, “I thought you wanted me to eat, not throw up.”

Howzer laughed, “Alright alright, eat your stew kiddo.”

Crosshair squinted at him, “I’m not that much younger than you idiots.”

“Oh yes you are,” Howzer grinned, “You think I didn’t read your file when we were working together on Rhyloth? You’re even younger than Klacks and he’s practically a baby!”

“ Seriously?!” Klacks gasped, like the concept of a clone being younger than him was astounding. 

An evil look glinted in Skroll’s eye, “ Do tell , Captain,” he said with a smirk, “Just how old is Crosshair?”

Howzer’s grin widened and Crosshair put his head down on the table. “He’s five and a half,” the captain said with wicked delight.

“ What?!” Skroll and Klacks both gasped.

“Bull!” Sergeant Skroll barked a second later, “That’s not even old enough to be off Kamino, let alone to have a years long service record during the war.”

“We were fast-tracked,” Crosshair groaned, his head still down. “They skipped all the drill, standard doctrine, large formation tactics, and regulations training that takes up most of the first five years, trained us for small unit maneuvers, intensive combat, and special operations, and then released us into the wild. We were an exploratory project and they figured we were going to fail regardless, being just experiments and all. That’s why they were always sending us on suicide missions, they wanted to see the full extent of our capabilities so the next batch of enhanced clones could be better.”

Skroll took a bite of one of his zuchii sticks and then gestured at Crosshair with the remainder of it, “That’s totally messed up.”

“Par for the course with the long-necks really,” Howzer said with a sigh.

“Well they’re all dead and you guys are all alive, so I guess that shows them huh?” Klacks hummed, eating one of his own plundered zuchii sticks. Crosshair decided to try one of his own and found to his displeasure that they also tasted fantastic.

“Why is your food so good?” he bit out angrily, “This is a shit show thrown-together operation in the middle of nowhere full of random displaced people and soldiers who’ve never cooked a day in their lives.”

The trio of regs all laughed. “Our head cook, one of the random displaced people, used to run a famous diner on Coruscant, but the Empire closed it down because he was a ‘subversive Jedi associate’ and put him on the run,” Howzer explained, making air quotes as he did. “Most of our ingredients come from Dantooine itself, so he has to make a lot of substitutions in his recipes, but stuff like the zuchii we sometimes manage to trade for with smugglers or independent farmers.”

“And other times it’s ration bars and whiny nat-borns,” Skroll added around another mouthful of fried vegetables.

Dubiously Crosshair took a sip of the noxiously orange drink and choked. The regs all laughed at him uproariously, “Too strong for you, baby boy?” Skroll asked sweetly.

Crosshair coughed and shot him a glare. They were going to tease him for his age constantly, he could already tell, “It tastes like somebody concentrated every single orange in the galaxy into a one centimeter diameter tablet and then made a drink out of it.

“The lemon flavor is worse,” Klacks told him, trying to suppress his grin and failing, “It’s so sour you can’t taste anything for a week after you’ve drank it.”

“Does your chef make this too?” Crosshair asked snidely.

“ Kark no,” Howzer told him with a laugh, “It’s a nutrient drink we get from one of his associates. Really strong flavor, but great for the body. Comes in a little dried block that he dissolves and mixes up by the gallon for the lot of us every meal. There’s six flavors, all of them powerful enough to curl your hair.”

“Well well,” Skroll said, looking up at the other side of the mess hall, “Looks like your vode are here, wanna invite them over?”

Crosshair followed his gaze and found that yes, the whole rest of the Batch, including Wrecker sans bandages, had just stepped out of the food line and were scanning the crowd with trays in hand. Eating in the mess hall full of regs on Kamino had always been a trying experience for them, given how often they got harassed, and this was a similar enough scenario that Crosshair understood why they were hesitating. “Do whatever you want,” he huffed and Howzer clapped him on the back before waving to get the Bad Batch’s attention. 

Hunter spotted the movement first and led the group through the crowded mess hall over to their table. “You actually got Cross’ika to eat!” Echo gasped as he took notice of his little brother’s half empty bowl. Crosshair’s siblings all grinned at the discovery as they sat down next to and across from him almost as one.

“The trick is you have to threaten, harass, and embarrass him until he surrenders,” Skroll told them, “He’s a big boy, he can take it. Isn’t that right, Cross’ika?” Crosshair shot the sergeant his most venomous look, but in the face of Skroll’s malicious glee it did nothing. 

“Duly noted,” Tech replied dryly as he took a bite of his stew.

Hunter smiled and sipped his drink only to choke just like Crosshair had. The regs laughed again and then doubled in volume when Crosshair pointed to Hunter’s gagging form and raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘ see!’

“What is in this drink?” Hunter gasped once he’d finished gagging. The regs laughed even harder when the rest of the Batch immediately tasted their own drinks and had the same reaction.

“Misery,” Crosshair told his older brother, “It’s made of oranges and suffering.”

“Don’t be a bunch of babies,” Howzer chided them through his laughter, “It’s good for you, lots of vitamins and minerals.”

“I feel like I just visited the orange dimension for a split second there,” Echo said, chuckling.

“I like it,” Omega chirped as she took another bigger gulp.

“Of course you like it,” Crosshair growled in exasperation.

“It appears that Captain Howzer is correct,” Tech said, swirling the violently orange liquid inside his cup with one hand and checking over information on his datapad with the other, “This is a nutritional drink commonly referred to as maxivitam often used in refugee camps and hospitals to supplement meals. It is high in a large number of necessary vitamins, minerals, protein, and various antioxidants, especially vitamin C, iron, and calcium. The strong flavor is designed to mask the unpleasant taste of the additives.”

“Wow,” Howzer said, “I wasn’t expecting a lecture on Orange Drink today. That was…enlightening.”

“You should write a paper on it, Tech” Crosshair told his brother sardonically. “Publish it in a science journal where all the galaxy’s most useful information is collected.” He got a massive eyeroll from Tech in reply.

“So you kids are going after another couple of vode right? Once you finish here?” Skroll asked.

“Kids?” Wrecker frowned, his brow furrowing. Tech and Hunter looked just as perplexed, whereas Echo obviously knew exactly what they were talking about and was grinning widely.

“Yeah, kids . How old are you?” Skroll asked them with that same malicious grin.

“Six and a half,” Hunter and Wrecker said at the same time.

“Six,” Tech answered mildly.

“I’m almost eight!” Omega told them, clearly proud.

All three regs lit up like Life Day had come early. “The girl is the eldest!” Skroll practically howled with laughter.

“Wow you guys really are younger than me!” Klacks told them happily, “I’m nine.”

“They need to be protected at all costs,” Howzer added, nodding his head solemnly, “These precious babies.”

Omega seemed absolutely delighted by the attention, but the rest of Crosshair’s brothers were clearly bewildered by the turn the conversation had taken.

“You…were asking us if we were going to pick up more of your brothers,” Hunter said, trying to steer the conversation away from more teasing.

“You mean our brothers,” Howzer told him sternly, suddenly dead serious, “Just because you lot are from an experimental batch doesn’t mean you aren’t our brothers too.”

Crosshair was taken aback by the declaration, as were his batchmates. All four of them stared at Howzer like he’d grown a second head. Echo and Omega beamed.

Skroll made an unhappy noise and Howzer gave them a sad look, “Nobody ever told you that did they, that’s why you call us all ‘regs’ right? They convinced you we aren’t family?” the captain asked.

“They got harassed a lot back on Kamino,” Echo told his brothers sadly, “We never treated them right. They didn’t even know any Mando’a before I joined the squad and started teaching them.”

The trio of regs looked like Echo had just kicked them in the gut before Skroll and Howzer’s expressions both turned irate. “Those no good chakaare!” Skroll growled.

“It doesn’t matter,” Crosshair huffed, cutting him off, “Don’t get sappy on us.”

“Only if you finish eating,” Howzer told him, clearly suppressing his indignation, “Eat everything and I promise not to get weepy on you.”

Crosshair let out a put-upon sigh and picked his spoon back up. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the grateful nod Hunter gave the captain, which Howzer returned with an easy smile. They were all saps, honestly.

After that the regs interrogated them about how the mission to Actlyon had gone, looking dutifully over the fresh healthy skin on Wrecker’s palms and expressing another bout of anger at the condition of their captured brothers, then they moved on to interrogating them about how they were thinking of handling the upcoming mission to Belgaroth. Hunter and Tech were the ones that fielded most of the questions while the rest of the Batch gleefully pretended not to watch Crosshair eat. Crosshair shot them a venomous glare whenever he caught one of them looking, but it didn’t stop the irritating behavior.

Once the meal was over Klacks and Skroll had to go off and complete the duties they’d been assigned while Howzer herded the Batch to one of the barracks for “Baby Batch Naptime” and locked them in with orders to sleep.

They did, some more begrudgingly than others. Crosshair woke a few hours in to find Omega curled against his chest rather than in the bunk next to Hunter’s that she’d started out in. He entertained the idea of pushing her off the bunk and onto the floor, but decided against it on the grounds that Hunter would probably skin him alive. He was still trying to figure out how best to disentangle himself when he lost the fight with drowsiness and drifted back off.

They six of them ended up sleeping not just the rest of that afternoon, but all night as well, with Crosshair waking periodically only to doze off again before he could get up and occupy himself with anything. His dreams were uneasy, anxious and unpleasant, like they always were these days, but he didn’t have any outright nightmares, which was a relief.

When Howzer finally released them from the barracks the next morning, they once again had a meal with the Captain, Klacks, and Skroll, but Hunter had to remind Howzer that the longer they put off the mission to Belgaroth the longer Warthog and Hawk would be slaves. Howzer was clearly displeased by the idea of them shipping out for a mission almost immediately after completing one, but he didn’t argue and when he came to see them off on said mission a few hours later, he wasn’t alone. Not only was Rex there to give them all a clap on the back and a “Good luck,” but so were both Skroll and Klacks, as well as all three Actlyon regs - although the latter group was bandaged and had the wookiee medic waiting to drag them back to medical as soon as the Marauder took off.

Crosshair was a little startled by the heartfelt sendoff, but he refrained from snapping at anybody, his mood affected by the fact that he was feeling better, both his thoughts and the voices quieter than normal now that he was unusually well-rested.

Fortunately nobody cried, he wouldn’t have been able to handle that. Although, as if reading his thoughts, Howzer weaponized the concept, wagging his finger in Crosshair’s face and saying, “If you come back and I find out you haven’t eaten in days then I will cry. I’ll cry loudly with huge tears. You hear me? Every trooper on this base will know you made me cry and will confront you to defend my honor. Does that sound like something you want to deal with?”

“It does not,” Crosshair told him truthfully as a kicked his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Good,” Howzer said, withdrawing from Crosshair’s personal space before he could be forcibly removed, “Eat at least twice every day or I’ll make good on my promise. Your batchmates will rat you out won’t you? ” he glowered threateningly at the rest of the Batch, who all nodded obediently.

All the regs in the background, Rex included, were sniggering, but Howzer ignored them.

After the final round of goodbyes Hunter herded his siblings onto the Marauder and Tech brought them out of the atmosphere and into hyperspace, on route to Belgaroth.

Chapter Text

Crosshair waffled over it for pretty much the entire first day they were in hyperspace, but eventually came to the conclusion that while he had to finally tell his siblings what Rampart had done, it would be better not to tell them right before a mission. They didn’t need to be distracted and off their game. He’d tell them once the mission was complete.

It was just unfortunate that things spiraled completely out of his control on the second day of the week-long hyperspace trip to Belgaroth. 

It was a few hours into the night cycle and the Batch were all playing sabacc in the bunkroom. Omega had fallen asleep and Wrecker gently scooped her up and took her to her room. Meanwhile the rest of them decided to take a short break, with Tech going to make himself some tea and Echo going to check that the Marauder’s flight path was still on track. 

After a couple minutes Crosshair stood, stretched, and then went to go find a drink of his own to partake in - cider he decided, since drinking caf during the night cycle only served to make his brothers tell him off - only to run headlong into Tech as he came back through the door to the bunkroom. The collision sent Tech’s freshly brewed tea spilling down Crosshair’s front and with a yelp Crosshair ripped off the top half of his blacks to get the boiling hot liquid away from his skin as fast as possible. 

He was about to round on his brother and give him a piece of his mind when Tech grabbed him by the elbow out of nowhere, making Crosshair jump and snarl at him. Tech ignored the reaction and pulled his arm out straight so he could examine it. It was only when he ran his fingers over the skin that Crosshair realized what was going on.

The scars. There were thirty of them on his right arm, reaching from his shoulder to his wrist, raised horizontal slashes about three inches long and spaced a half-inch apart above and below. Neat, pristine, precise.

“Crosshair,” Tech said, his voice tight, when Crosshair yanked his arm out of his brother’s grip. He wanted to turn away, but there were matching scars on his left arm too and he didn’t want to broadcast it, not when he’d already been so careless. This was why he always kept his shirt on. “Did you…? Did you do that to yourself?”

Crosshair stared at him for a moment, bewildered and swimming on the precipice of the memories, the place Tech had touched felt like it was prickling with the ghost of Rampart’s fingers. Rampart’s blades.

After a second it clicked and Crosshair snarled at him, “ No! Of course I didn’t cut myself up! What kind of stupid question is that?!”

“Then somebody else did.” Slowly he turned his head to face Hunter, holding the rest of his body deathly still, like a small prey animal trying to avoid the eyes of a much bigger predator. He recognized Hunter’s tone, it was one he hadn’t heard in a long time. Brutally calm, deadly furious.

He backed away, still trying to avoid falling into the memories, his heart jackhammering in his chest. He shouldn’t have argued, it would have been better if Hunter thought he’d done it to himself. Tech had gotten behind him when he was busy paying attention to Hunter and he piped up suddenly, making Crosshair jump once again. “There are more on his other arm, Hunter, and on his shoulder blades.”

Ninety total, Crosshair knew, given in six batches of fifteen.

He was starting to feel cornered. Wrecker was in the doorway, his eyes wide with shock, and Echo had returned from the cockpit. Crosshair’s chest heaved as he backed away from Tech and his other brothers, only managing to put himself in a corner between the bunks and the wall.

“Crosshair,” Hunter said, taking a step forward, his eyes sharp, “ What happened?”

Crosshair wheezed, the memories bubbling up, he clutched his head and sank down to the floor. It hurt, he remembered the knife, sharp enough to cut but not so sharp that Crosshair wouldn’t feel the damage. Rampart’s voice, soft and dripping, furious.

“You did this to yourself CT-9904. This is the cost of failure. This is what you deserve .”

“Crosshair?”

He shook his head, but the voice wouldn’t go away. He scrabbled at his temples to try and dig it out, but somebody pulled his hands away and held them.

“Cross, you’re okay,” somebody said, somebody close by, not Rampart. 

“No!” CT-9904 wheezed. “I won’t fail again. You have my word, sir…” he shook his head, but Rampart only sighed and ran the blade over a new place while the clone struggled to hold perfectly still, then he wiped the blood away with a cloth so he could see what he was doing. He always smirked at the way CT-9904 sucked in a sharp breath each time he made a new cut.

“Your brothers can’t be that impossible to capture, it’s almost like you’re doing this on purpose.”

“No sir,” CT-9904 denied. “They just—“

“Quiet,” Rampart interrupted and CT-9904 snapped his jaw shut.

“Crosshair, can you hear me?” somebody asked, “What’s going on?”

“He appears to be having a flashback, Hunter,” somebody else replied, somebody familiar.

“H-Hunter?” CT-9904 asked, confused. Hunter wasn’t supposed to be there. Him being there defeated the whole purpose. “Why?”

Somebody touched his face and he flinched hard, but the hand was huge and callused, not at all like Rampart’s.

“Come back, Cross,” said a third person. He recognized the voices.

“Wrecker…” Crosshair mumbled, “Tech…Hunter,” he assured himself. “M-my brothers. Not…not Rampart.” He blinked and looked up into Wrecker’s concerned eyes. His big brother was kneeling in front of him, holding both Crosshair's hands in one of his and cupping his face with the other. 

“Rampart isn’t here, Cross’ika,” Echo reassured him quietly. He was still on the other side of the room, hanging back cautiously. Probably trying not to crowd him. Crosshair felt like his head was screwed on wrong, everything slightly tilted, not how it was supposed to be. “You’re on the Marauder. You’re safe, it’s just us and nobody is hurting you.”

It took a second for everything to line up in his head and then the mortification hit. “ Kark,” Crosshair groaned. He’d had another freakout and of course it had to have happened in front of everybody . Crosshair pushed Wrecker off him and ran his hands over his face. “Kark.”

“Are you back with us, Crosshair?” Tech asked him nervously. He’d been at Wrecker’s side, but had taken a step away when Crosshair had pushed Wrecker off.

“ Yes ,” Crosshair spat, humiliated and angry with himself.

“Did talking about it cause that? Or did we do something else to trigger it?” Echo asked gently. He had the most experience with this sort of thing, between his own problems and the problems he had encountered in his reg brothers.

“Just don’t…” Crosshair made a cut off, half formed gesture, “Just don’t touch them… and don’t—” he made an angry choked off sound in his throat. He didn’t want to add anything else but after this they were going to try and interrogate him, he knew they would, what choice had he given them? “And don’t talk to me about karking Rampart . I don’t want to hear his name.”

Something seemed to click together for Hunter, Crosshair saw the sudden sharp understanding settle across his face. His expression was still dark, still angry, maybe even angrier than before.

“I mentioned Ramp— him on the landing pad on Kamino, right before you had your panic attack. Was that what caused it?” the sergeant asked, his voice all business, leaving no way to wiggle away from the question.

Crosshair made a strangled furious sound in his throat, “ Yes. Happy? You have your answers now.”

Hunter’s brows furrowed, “Not quite, I have one more question.”

“ What ?” Crosshair snarled, raking his nails down his arms to try and dig out the lingering feeling of the blade, of Rampart’s touch.

“Please stop doing that, Crosshair,” Tech cut in, grabbing one of his wrists to stop him before releasing it almost immediately, minding that they’d been asked to stop touching the scars. “You’re going to draw blood.”

Crosshair gave him a venomous look but dropped his shaking hands to his sides where he clenched them into fists.

“He cut you up,” Hunter said and grimaced guiltily at the way Crosshair flinched, “Did he do anything else?”

Crosshair looked away and immediately regretted it. It was as good as an admission and he knew he’d essentially answered Hunter’s question without saying a word.

“What else did he do, Crosshair?” Echo coaxed, “You can tell us, we won’t ever hold it against you, we just want to help.”

He still didn’t want to tell them, even after the conversation with Howzer and the regs. Crosshair’s head hurt, his thoughts loud and thrumming. The voices screamed in his ears. But he had to tell his brothers…he’d said he would, he’d agreed to do it because he'd known Skroll was right. If he left the secret inside of him it would fester until it had poisoned every part of him, until it started poisoning everyone else. He had to get it out. 

They wouldn’t understand the way the reg trio - who had had similar experiences - could, but his brothers at least knew what it was like to feel helpless, to be used, to have things taken from you. So maybe in that they at least would get it…and the secret was drowning him on the inside, it was that putrid slimy thing that slithered around in his guts. This was his best chance to get rid of it, if he put it off now he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get the words out.

Even as the same icy grip wrapped around his throat, even as the air was strangled out of him, Crosshair was determined to say something . After a long minute where he struggled with himself furiously, he was finally able to force out three short words, hoping against all hope that his brothers would understand, “Carrot and stick…” he choked out shakily. 

It was Tech who spoke up then. Wrecker had remained deathly silent the entire time, but his eyes were big and sad. Crosshair wanted to punch the look off his face. “He implemented a reward and punishment system?” Clever Tech always putting the pieces together quick as a little kushiban. That was good, it meant he wouldn’t have to explain quite as much. 

Crosshair growled and gestured at his arms, “Stick,” he said and then hesitated before he ran a shaking hand over his neck and then his bare chest, the touch light, nothing like the jerky motions he had used up until that point. His voice cracked when he said, “C-Carrot.”

Hunter figured it out first, his already angry expression darkening to something murderous . “And did you want that?” he asked, his voice low and quiet. Deadly.

“ No!” Crosshair shouted, “No I didn’t want that, but good soldiers follow orders!”

The explanation hit them all like a kick in the teeth, knocking all the air out of the room. Crosshair panted and shook, but still managed to yelp when Wrecker lunged and pulled him into a hug that started out crushing and turned gentle. Crosshair put his hands on his brother’s forearms, about to shove them away, but Wrecker was so warm and he realized with a start that he was freezing .

Echo took charge. He pulled a fresh set of upper blacks out of Crosshair’s things and handed it off to him so he could cover the evidence back up and feel less like he’d been flayed open, then dragged the blankets off their bunks and bundled Crosshair up despite his (admittedly weak) protests, before letting Wrecker back in to wrap Crosshair up in his embrace again and sit them both down on the floor. The arrangement was designed to sink heat into him so he’d stop shivering like he was buried up to his neck in snow on Hoth. Tech took the chance to bring Crosshair several hydropaks which he placed in his little brother’s lap before settling down to stare meaningfully at Crosshair until he gave up and drank. The flavored drink tasted like ash in his mouth.

“You must be overjoyed,” Crosshair said after an agonizingly silent moment in a voice he intended to sound wry and mocking but in actuality sounded hoarse, crackling, and painful, “To have a brother do what I did.”

“What you did?” The sheer confusion in Echo's voice made Crosshair stop staring blankly down at the open half-empty mango flavored hydropak in his hands and risk looking up at his brother’s face. His expression was one of total bewilderment. 

Somehow, even though his brothers knew the secret now, the words still stuck in his throat and he couldn’t get them out. “I…w-with Rampart,” Crosshair stammered.

Surprisingly it was Tech rather than Wrecker who caught the implied meaning of his statement. “Crosshair,” Tech said sharply, drawing his little brother’s eye from Echo’s face to his. He looked pinched, his lips pressed into a thin pale line, “Are you asking us if we’re angry at you for being raped?”

Crosshair winced and then let out a weak, stressed out laugh, “It-it sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

“It should,” Tech told him flatly, “It was an extremely stupid question.”

“So…so you aren’t going to…” Crosshair struggled to get the next question out as well, but it had been eating him alive ever since he’d heard Rampart’s voice say those poisonous words the day Tech had proposed his treatment ideas, “You aren’t going to leave me behind again even—even though he ruined me?”

Hunter made a sound like he’d been stabbed and then dropped down to sit on Echo’s bunk, his head in his hands and his shoulders shaking. Crosshair frowned, was he actually crying? He didn’t have time to think about it because Wrecker’s embrace was suddenly crushingly tight and Echo had full-body tackled him so he could bury his face in Crosshair’s shoulder and card his fingers through his short silver hair. “You are not ruined!” Echo told him fiercely, fervently, “No matter what he did he could never ruin you!” If he’d thought Hunter might be crying he knew Echo was, Crosshair could hear the way his ori’vod’s voice hitched and feel the tears soaking into his blacks. If nothing else that answered the question of whether Echo would cry for him if he knew. Apparently he would.

“I toldya before, Cross,” Wrecker said solemnly, “We’re keepin’ you. We’re never leavin’ you behind again, not for nothin’.”

“What has occurred does not change our opinion of you in the slightest, Crosshair,” Tech added as he pushed his goggles up and rubbed at his eyes. His complexion had gone pale and even seated on the floor as he was, his posture was unbelievably stiff, “What the Vice Admiral did has absolutely no effect on your worth as a human being. None.”

“S-sure…alright then.” Crosshair’s voice came out embarrassingly weak, but really this entire experience was absolutely mortifying, “Let’s go back to sabacc…I…I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

There was a moment of hesitation where he thought his brothers might not agree to let it go, but after a second they all took pity on him. Echo swiped his hand through Crosshair’s hair one last time, scritching his scalp with his nails in a way that felt good, before he wiped his eyes and shakily returned to his place in the circle. He was still hiccuping slightly, his breath hitching every few seconds as he was forced to keep wiping his eyes, but he was obviously making an effort to get himself back under control. Tech picked up his abandoned cards obediently, although he was still deathly pale, and Wrecker loosened his grip on his little brother enough to pick up his own cards from where he’d left them on the floor, still encircling Crosshair’s blanket-cocooned body but without any pressure other than the passive weight of his limbs, apparently completely unbothered by the fact that Crosshair - who was practically sitting in his lap - could see the entirety of his sabacc hand.

Hunter was the odd one out. His shoulders had stopped shaking and he wiped his eyes, like Echo, but even though his face had turned red and blotchy, there was a hint of blackest fury in his expression that put Crosshair on edge. Instead of returning to his place in the game the sergeant stood up, stepped over to give Crosshair’s shoulder a tight squeeze, and then stalked out of the bunkroom. 

Crosshair suspected that if somebody were to put Hunter in a room with Rampart just then, the Vice Admiral would end up with ninety new vibroblade-shaped holes. As it was, he figured Hunter felt the need to remove himself from the gathering so he didn’t accidentally take his temper out on any of his brothers.

Uneasily the remaining four of them returned to their game of sabacc. It was anxious, as even when they fell back into a more jovial mood there was still tension in the air, but Crosshair was just thankful they beat him into the ground instead of letting him win. He didn’t think he’d have been able to stand it if they had really started treating him with tubie gloves. He needed to pretend this had never happened, if only for the sake of his dwindling sanity. 

They played until Crosshair got fed up with all the coddling and sad looks and told them to go away so he could sleep, not that he thought he’d actually be able to. He suspected his brothers were well aware of that, but they did as he requested all the same and Crosshair laid down on his bunk and stared up at the bottom of Tech’s bunk above him. His head hurt and the audio player did little to quell the storm in his mind. His thoughts were loud, but they blurred together too much for him to really understand any given one, which was a relief in a way, although the noise itself was unpleasant.

Tech had talked to him about this and Crosshair tried to remember what he’d said, something like ‘don’t fight them or try to pick them apart.’ So he didn’t, he just let the noise wash over him and imagined himself as a rock jutting out of the ocean, remaining still and unmoved as the waves crashed and broke against him. 

It helped. 

Chapter Text

The only thing keeping Hunter from screaming his lungs out and breaking his knuckles punching the wall was the fact that the noise would wake up Omega. As it was, he still ended up pacing around like a caged animal, breathing heavily as he tried to control his temper.

Rampart that sleemo, that chakaar, that shabuir! He had sliced Hunter’s little brother to ribbons, the sheer number of scars on Crosshair’s arms…and that there were more on his back…and that wasn’t even touching on the other things the son of a Hutt had done to him. That sad tremulous question Crosshair had asked, like he really thought they’d leave him behind because he was no good anymore, had torn Hunter’s heart into little bloody pieces. Crosshair was snide, confident, and argumentative, Hunter never wanted to hear him sound so timid again for as long as he lived.

He had also never wanted to kill somebody so badly in his life, had never wanted to torture someone to death the way he did then. If he ever got his hands on Rampart he’d make him scream until his lungs shredded apart. 

“Hunter?” came Wrecker’s voice, pitched low and quiet to avoid waking their baby sister. Hunter turned on his heel and saw all of his brothers sans Crosshair had come into the back of the ship.

“Why are you all back here and not with Crosshair?” he hissed furiously.

“He requested we leave him alone so he could sleep,” Tech answered just as quietly as Wrecker.

Echo interrupted before Hunter could argue, “We were crowding him and he wanted to be by himself,” he explained, “He agreed to call if he needed us.”

Hunter deflated slightly and turned away, running a hand down his face, “Right. If—if he says to leave him alone then we should…so long as that’s what he actually wants and he’s not just saying it because he’s embarrassed,” he glanced at Wrecker as he said the last part.

Wrecker nodded, “He wasn’t just bein’ cagey, he meant it when he said leave.”

Hunter nodded and sighed shakily. Everything about him was shaky, both shaken and shaking with rage. He strained his ears for a moment, but didn’t hear any noise from the bunkroom, not that he was certain what he was actually listening for. Crying maybe, although Crosshair never cried, no matter how much he was suffering. Whatever it was he was listening for, he didn’t hear it.

“Let’s spar,” Wrecker suggested out of the blue, “You need to punch something and so do I.”

“ No , it’ll wake up Omega,” Hunter snapped and then grimaced at his own overly harsh tone. Fortunately Wrecker didn’t seem hurt by it.

Rather he seemed completely undeterred, “So we’ll be quiet. Come on Hunter, you know you wanna punch me.”

“I want to punch that imperial slimeball , not you Wrecker,” Hunter growled.

“I suspect you would be more likely to stab him, if you two were to meet,” Tech pointed out helpfully, “Of course you would have to get in line, since I would also like to stab him.”

“Me too,” Echo grumbled.

“You guys can stab ‘im,” Wrecker said in a deceptively mild tone, “I just wanna pop ‘is head off like a busted clanker.”

Hunter laughed despite himself, at least they were all on the same page.

“Sparring won’t wake up Omega,” Echo told him softly. His voice sounded strained in a similar way to Hunter’s own. Crying will do that to a person, he supposed.

“One could shout into a loudhailer pressed up against the side of her head and she wouldn’t wake up,” Tech agreed.

Hunter sighed. He knew they were right and he knew the exercise and the chance to punch somebody , anybody at all, would make him feel better. “Alright, but we keep it quiet. No armor.”

“Yes!” Wrecker cheered softly, pumping his fist, “I call first dibs!”

“Sure,” Hunter agreed easily. Wrecker could take a hit thanks to his mass alone, nevermind his high pain tolerance, which made him a better outlet for Hunter’s fury than the rest of his brothers. Together the four of them cleared a space, stepping carefully around AZI where the droid was tucked into a corner as he charged, and then Hunter and Wrecker squared up while their other brothers settled down on the sidelines to watch and wait their turn.

The thing about sparring with Wrecker, Hunter knew, was that you couldn’t afford to take even a single hit. The giant always held back, because he was so strong he could kill somebody if he punched them in the head at just half of his full strength, but even holding back he hit like a meteor. Hit and run tactics were the name of the game when fighting Wrecker.

Hunter landed some great hits, it was true, ones that made his knuckles creak, made Wrecker grunt and recoil, and bled away some of Hunter’s uncontrolled fury, but in the end Wrecker still laid him out flat. Wrecker had a tendency to win spars, not necessarily because he was a better fighter than all his opponents, but just because he was so big that he could resist or even brush off almost any non-lethal attack he was hit with. In a real fight he’d be a case where escalating the level of violence involved would be necessary.

Fortunately Wrecker was a graceful winner. His victory made him pump his fist, but that was the extent of his gloating and immediately afterward he reached down and helped his still reeling brother back to his feet and over to a crate to sit down. Hunter had to admit, getting knocked flat had done wonders for his mood. He was still angry, furious , but he no longer felt on the verge of exploding.

Tech was up next and he handed his datapad off to Echo for safekeeping as he stepped into the invisible ring with his much much larger brother. They always sparred under the rules that the winner had to keep fighting until they eventually lost, so until Wrecker slipped up, he’d be their opponent. 

Of the five brothers, Tech was the weakest physically, but he more than made up for it with his sheer intelligence, not just in terms of mechanical and book smarts, but in tactics as well. He was also fast, which helped him stay in the fight longer. Naturally he beat Wrecker into the ground, using every dirty trick in the book and his smarts as his weapons. Tech was the only one who could reliably beat Wrecker just because he understood how to turn the giant’s own incredible strength against him.

Wrecker laughed at his ever-unexpected loss, as graceful a loser as he was a winner, and limped over to drop down next to Hunter while Echo got up to face his vod’ika. Echo won that fight quickly. Even with his smarts and dirty fighting, Tech only had so much stamina and he’d used all of it to defeat Wrecker. Tech congratulated Echo on his win and then sat back down, retrieving his datapad from Hunter, whom Echo had handed it off to when it was his turn to fight. Wrecker asked his older brother if they could trade places so he could go next and Hunter, still a little woozy from the hit he’d taken earlier, waved him forward congenially.

It was during the bout between Wrecker and Echo that Tech sucked in a breath and jerked his eyes up from his datapad to look at them all. “I just realized,” he said sharply. “On the first reg rescue mission, the reason why Crosshair came back looking so awful. I will eat my goggles if it wasn’t because something he saw in that environment triggered him. That was why he wouldn’t tell us what had happened.”

His brothers’ sparring came to a screeching halt with Wrecker dropping back to a neutral stance and Echo pushing himself up so he wasn’t lying flat on the floor. He looked like he was still reeling a little from the hit he’d taken, a similar one to what had laid out Hunter. Of course getting knocked down didn’t end the fight, so long as you got back up.

“Why were the regs acting so weird then?” Hunter asked with a scowl. He already didn’t like this revelation and he had a feeling it was only going to get worse.

“They figured it out,” Tech explained, “Or Crosshair told them. That would escalate the situation enough to explain his evident distress when he returned to us. Them being aware of what happened to him would also explain why they behave so familiarly with him and why he allows it.”

“I don’t like the idea of him tellin’ them when he wouldn’t tell us…”  Wrecker growled, “What’s so good about them?”

“No it makes sense,” Echo disagreed, “They shared a similar experience. It’s easier to talk to somebody when you know they’ll understand and none of us can really relate to what he went through.”

“It has also been shown that it is often easier to discuss traumatic events with an unbiased stranger rather than a relative whom you want to love you and whose opinion matters to you,” Tech added, “That is the driving principle behind talk therapy.”

Something occurred to Hunter and he snarled, “He volunteered for that mission! He put himself in that situation on purpose!”

Echo sucked in a breath, “He…maybe it’s not like that, maybe he just wanted to be the one to pull them out because nobody rescued him.”

All of them let out a wounded noise at the reminder, but Hunter recovered quickly, his guilt buried under his anger. “That’s no excuse!”

Tech was apparently on the same page, his face drawn with righteous fury, “Even if that was his motivation, it was a purely self-destructive thing to do. We’re going to have to confront him about this. I will not allow him to think this behavior is in any way acceptable.”

“Not now,” Echo told them sharply, his voice a whipcrack of brotherly authority, “He needs to recover from this conversation first, you saw how hard it was for him to talk about it.”

“…Echo’s right,” Hunter agreed, begrudging, “We’ll wait a couple days so he has time to get used to the idea of us knowing what happened.”

“We gotta tell Omega first anyway,” Wrecker pointed out, “She’s smart, she’ll figure out somethin’s up and get upset that we’re keepin’ secrets.”

Considering how upsetting it had been for all of them to know Crosshair had something important, something vital, he wasn’t telling them, Hunter was inclined to agree.

“We can’t tell her everything,” Echo said, finally picking himself the rest of the way up off the floor, “Even if she understood, which I don’t think she will, it’d be a violation of Crosshair’s privacy to tell somebody else without asking him.”

“I’ll tell her something vague,” Hunter decided with a nod, “Something she could probably figure out on her own that wouldn’t contain any details, just enough that we won’t have to avoid talking in the same room as her. That way it’ll be up to him whether or not he tells her what happened.”

Uneasily they went back to sparring after that. Continuing until all four of them were so worn out it was all they could do to drag themselves into the bunkroom and collapse into their beds. Hunter checked on Crosshair surreptitiously and when he found his brother was indeed sleeping, if restlessly, he let out a relieved sigh, then climbed into his own bunk and was out like a light.

***

Hunter took Omega aside the next day, leaving his brothers to occupy Crosshair. He sat down on one of the crates in the back of the ship and patted the one next to him, waiting for her to climb up and settle in before he said anything. AZI hovered in the background and Hunter considered telling the droid to go somewhere else, after a second he said, “AZI give us a minute please.”

“Of course,” the droid replied politely as it floated sedately out of the room. Hunter sighed. Omega was fond of the droid and really it did no harm, it had even been helpful when they’d brought the injured regs on the ship, providing treatment for Needle so he didn’t have to try and patch up his own injuries, but Hunter still hadn’t quite gotten used to the droid just yet. He knew Crosshair hated the thing, although that might just be because Crosshair hated doctors, not that all of them didn’t hate doctors.

“Omega,” he finally started, getting back on task now that they were alone, “You know that something’s been wrong with Crosshair and he was keeping what it was a secret from us?”

Omega frowned, her little blonde brows furrowing, “Yeah?”

Hunter sighed, thinking over how he wanted to say this. “He…told us what happened…last night after you went to sleep.”

Her eyes widened and her naturally rapid heartbeat pitter-pattered a tiny bit faster. Tech had reassured him early on that children had a higher resting pulse than adults, providing a characteristically long-winded and deeply technical explanation as to why, so Hunter didn’t worry about it. “What happened? Is he okay?” Omega asked him urgently.

“No,” Hunter said, his voice shaking just a little as he remembered all of the ways his littlest brother had been suffering, “He’s not okay. Do you remember Vice Admiral Rampart?”

Omega nodded, scowling, “Yeah, I didn’t like him, he was a sleemo.”

Hunter huffed and ran a hand down his face, “You don’t know the half of it kid.”

“Did he do something to Crosshair?” she asked, her expression dark and wrathful. Sometimes it surprised Hunter how protective of them she could be. It was easy to forget that she’d seen them all decanted, that she’d known them as tubies even if she’d been very young herself.

“Yeah. Yeah he hurt him. It sounded like he kept hurting him the entire time Crosshair was away from us…” The words came out clipped, angry, a tone that was matched by Omega’s own when she replied.

“ Why? Why would he do that? Crosshair doesn’t deserve that.” It was also easy to forget how innocent her worldview could be, she understood people so instinctually, but she was still a child, one who was prone to seeing the best in people.

“You’re right, he didn’t deserve that, any of that. What Rampart did was monstrous and you said it already kid,” Hunter growled, “He’s a sleemo.” He had a lot of other, much more vicious names to call Rampart, but he wasn’t about to use them in front of Omega.

“How do we make Crosshair feel better?” she asked suddenly after a long moment of silence where the two of them were both lost in their own thoughts.

Hunter smiled. Omega was kind, had always been kind, and he knew all she wanted was for them to be safe and happy and together. She was a great sister. That question though? He sighed and ran a hand down his face, “I don’t know. Crosshair is difficult even when he’s being mostly cooperative. He doesn’t know how to ask for help because he feels like he shouldn’t need it, you know?”

Omega nodded seriously, like this was an observation she had already made herself. “Then we should help him even if he can’t ask for it,” she said like she was proposing the simplest and most straightforward thing ever rather than suggesting they navigate the absolute minefield that was their littlest brother’s stubbornly uncooperative nature, severe trauma, and overall snarling bad temper. She was one hundred percent right of course, but she clearly had no idea what a difficult task it would be. Sometimes Hunter forgot that she really didn’t know Crosshair all that well.

“You’re right,” he told her tiredly, “I just…I don’t know where to start…I don’t know how to handle this, it's just…so much worse than what I had been expecting.”

“Maybe you can ask Echo,” his sister suggested, “He knows about stuff like this right? Those Techno people did a lot of bad stuff to him so he knows how Crosshair feels right?”

Hunter frowned and glanced over at her. She had her knees up with her arms folded on top and her chin resting on top of that. “Maybe,” he said, “but…it’s not exactly the same situation. There are different kinds of trauma. I’ll ask him anyway though.”

Omega nodded and tilted her head to give him a wobbly smile, “Do you think I can help?” she asked. She sounded like she was trying to be confident but was deeply afraid that the answer would be no.

“I think you’re already helping,” Hunter told her soothingly, reaching over to card his fingers through her soft blonde locks. “I can tell spending time with you does him good. He actually humors you, so when you ask him questions about his weapons or convince him to help you shoot, things like that, he really lights up instead of getting all snarly like he does with the rest of us.”

“Oh!” Omega said, perking up a little, “Well I can keep doing that easy! He doesn’t even try to chase me away anymore, I just use akk puppy eyes on him and he gives up right away!”

Hunter couldn’t help but laugh, it was true and he knew it was true because he’d seen that exact thing happen more than once, “That’s not a Crosshair thing,” he told her, still chuckling, “None of us are immune to the akk puppy eyes.”

Omega smiled evilly and then laughed when Hunter ruffled her hair. “So that’s our plan I guess,” he said, “You keep up what you’ve been doing while the rest of us put our heads together and see if we can’t figure out our own ways to help.”

“Got it!” she cheered, “I’ll go talk to him right now! Maybe I can get him to tell me about what he listens to on his audio player!”

Hunter gave her a pat on the crown of her head and stood up, stretching his limbs out once he was on his feet. “Good idea, kiddo, go for it.”

Omega grinned and then bounded off the crate with the infinite energy of the youthful before barreling away. Hunter almost felt guilty for unleashing her energy on his little brother, but Crosshair always seemed more relaxed when he was interacting with her, she seemed to be good at getting him out of his head, so Hunter felt like he could easily justify his actions.

*** 

They had planned to confront Crosshair about his actions on Troithe once a few days had passed, and after four days they felt it was as good a time as any to get it over with.

Hunter had let Omega distract Crosshair while he gathered the rest of his brothers in the back of the ship and went over the game plan, then once they were all in agreement they filtered back into the bunkroom, carefully finding places to settle down so they weren’t crowding or looming over their brother. Echo sat on his bunk, Wrecker leaned his back against the far wall, and Tech simply sat down on the floor like he would if they were playing sabacc or if he needed the space to build something. For his part, Hunter remained standing, but wasn’t so close that Crosshair would have to look up to talk to him.

At some point Omega had actually convinced Crosshair to tell her about what he listened to and when they had come back in he was laying upside-down on his bunk, eyes closed, scowling, with his feet up on the wall and ranting heatedly about the bad writing in one of the audio dramas Tech had found for him while she sat next to him on the bunk and listened with rapt attention. He was surprisingly passionate about the subject, although to Hunter it seemed like most of that passion came directly out of sheer frustration.

He was a little sorry to have to turn the situation serious, but when he glanced at his brothers they all nodded to him shortly, their expressions resolute. It would be stupid not to expect a fight on this matter, given it was Crosshair they were confronting. 

Crosshair figured out something was up immediately once he opened his eyes. His frustrated scowl turned suspicious as he squinted at them and picked his toothpick from between his teeth, “What are you idiots up to?” He growled when he saw them all dotted around the bunkroom.

“Omega, could you leave us alone for a little while?” Hunter asked.

To his genuine surprise, she crossed her arms and said, “No.”

Hunter blinked at her, taken aback. “Why not?” he couldn’t help but ask, bewildered.

“Because you all are here and you’re going to talk about something serious and I’m part of the Batch too so I deserve to also talk about it,” she told him stubbornly.

Crosshair snorted and Omega shot him a petulant look.

“Omega,” Echo said softly, “I don’t think you’re going to want to be here for this. It’s probably going to be upsetting.”

She shook her head stubbornly, “I’m staying.”

Echo gave Hunter a helpless look, but Hunter could only shake his head. Crosshair and Omega were the most stubborn of all his siblings and he could only argue with one or the other at a time, not both. He didn’t have the energy for both.

“Alright, you can stay,” he sighed, “but if it gets too upsetting I want you to leave. Promise me.”

Omega smiled triumphantly, “I promise!”

“What exactly , are you up to Hunter?” Crosshair hissed. He’d rolled over so he was sitting upright on his bunk instead of upside-down and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“We wish to discuss the events of our mission to Troithe with you, Crosshair,” Tech replied darkly. 

Crosshair went as taught as piano wire in an instant.

“I want to be sure we’re on the same page,” Hunter said, although his voice came out just as clipped and angry as Tech’s had. Maybe it was unwise to start the confrontation from a place of anger, but he couldn’t help it. Crosshair was hurt enough already without him doing it to himself. “So let me get this straight,” he hissed, “We had a mission you knew was going to be full of triggers for you, one that you were fully aware would cause you psychological strain and you volunteered to go in, knowing you would be by yourself, and somehow this all seemed like a good idea to you?”

Crosshair winced and Hunter felt a little vindicated seeing that his brother at least understood why he was in trouble. “It sounds bad when you put it that way,” the sniper grumbled.

“It is bad!” Hunter snapped at him, “And it was bad! You came back looking like you’d been infected by the Blue Shadow Virus. You looked half-dead! You even vomited at some point, I could smell the bile!”

Crosshair held up his hands, “The mission was successful,” he said, as if that excused anything at all.

Hunter snarled at him “That’s no excuse! If we had known, if you’d just said something to us about any of it, we would have come up with a different plan. We would have found another way in. Purposefully putting yourself in a situation you know will cause you psychological distress when you don’t have to is self-destructive Cross!”

“It’s in the past!” Crosshair snapped, “There’s no need for you to lecture me, Hunter, believe it or not I can survive without your constant supervision, or did you forget that you left me to fend for myself for months?”

All of them flinched at those words, guilt flaring up. Hunter already knew all of this was his fault, if he’d just found a way to come back for Crosshair, if he hadn’t kept putting it off, waiting for a better opportunity to crop up, Crosshair wouldn’t have been left at Rampart’s non-existent mercy. 

“I haven’t forgotten,” Hunter told his little brother bitterly, “It’s my fault that all this happened to you, and if I could go back in time I’d slap some sense into myself and make him pull you out, but like you said, it’s in the past. I can’t fix it.”

“Poor consolation,” Crosshair hissed.

“ Cross ,” Wrecker said, his voice sharper than Hunter had heard in a long time, “We were wrong, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t wrong too and you turnin’ the conversation around on us doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt yourself on purpose.”

“Precisely,” Tech added with an annoyed huff, “Your whataboutism will not distract us from your actions. I expressly told you that hurting yourself is unacceptable, that you mustn’t do it, but you dove right in and did it again almost immediately.”

“Just—just because other people hurt you doesn’t mean you should hurt yourself too,” Omega added, sniffling miserably. Hunter had known this would upset her even if she didn’t fully understand what they were talking about, given how much it upset all of them. He stepped over to his brother’s bunk where she sat and reached down so he could stroke her hair to try and comfort her. 

“What do you want from me?” Crosshair asked, he’d hunched in on himself a little, his shoulders up and his arms crossed over his chest as if trying to protect himself from his siblings’ concern. 

“Assurance that you won’t ever do something like that again,” Echo said, “And for you to keep that promise. I understand why it feels like you have to put the mission above your own well-being, Cross’ika, and I understand that you’re desperate and hurting yourself is the only way you feel you can exert some control over the situation, but you’ll destroy yourself if you keep it up and seeing you do this to yourself is destroying us. Please let us help you through this.”

Crosshair hunched in on himself even further, averting his eyes and scowling. 

“Let us help, Cross,” Wrecker pleaded.

“There is a solution to the problems you are facing,” Tech added confidently, “And if we work together we can find it, but if we have to constantly fight you on it then we may never reach it.”

Hunter nodded and sat down to gather his littlest brother in his arms. Crosshair snarled at him, but made no move to escape the embrace. “We weren’t there for you when you needed it, and I will never forgive myself for that, Cross,” Hunter sighed, “but if you let us be here for you now we won’t let you down again.”

Omega wrapped her arms around Crosshair’s skinny frame from the other side and the sniper let out an expansive put upon sigh.

“ Fine,” he hissed, sounding frustrated, “If a similar situation arises I’ll let you look for alternative strategies. Happy?”

“It’s a start,” Tech said with a huff.

Wrecker grinned and ruffled his littlest brother’s hair fondly, which resulted in Crosshair snarling like an angry mastiff and smacking his hands away. Apparently two people hugging him was where he drew the line at affection.

***

A day later found Hunter pouring over maps on the big holo projector while his brothers entertained themselves elsewhere. Omega was with him in the back of the ship, looking for something in the crates of supplies they kept stored back there.

“Hey Hunter?” came her little voice from between the boxes.

“Yeah?” Hunter replied, Omega sounded perplexed more than upset, so he wasn’t terribly worried.

The little girl jogged over to him with something rectangular clutched in her hands, “What’s this?” She held the object up to him and Hunter’s breath caught in his chest.

It was Crosshair’s sketchbook. They’d hidden it away along with the rest of his stuff after the Order, because seeing it sitting on his bunk, looking at the contents, had hurt too much to bear. Shakily Hunter took the little book from Omega’s grasp and opened it up.

It was impossible to give Crosshair compliments without him flinging them back in your face, but the fact of the matter was that he was a talented artist. The drawings in his sketchbook had a sort of life to them that always took Hunter’s breath away. From the finely lined portraits of people to the breathtakingly detailed drawings of ships and the dynamic sketches of animals caught mid-motion. After the Order all of it had made Hunter want to cry, because he remembered the everyday sight of Crosshair making those drawings. He remembered his little brother sitting in his bunk when they traveled through hyperspace to a new mission, he remembered him leaning against the outside of the Marauder while they refueled, or parked in the shade under some vegetation planetside, totally focused and yet completely relaxed. 

How had it all fallen apart?

Hunter rubbed at his eyes and gave Omega what he hoped was a convincing smile. “It’s Crosshair’s sketchbook,” he told her, “did you find his pens too? We should give them back to him.”

Omega grinned, “I’ll go find them!” He watched her run off with a fond huff, before looking back down at the sketchbook. In truth he didn’t know how Crosshair would react to them returning the items to him. Ironically, Hunter’s little brother had never seen the inherent value in art. Crosshair had repeatedly expressed that art served no practical purpose and was thus useless and therefore worthless, and when Hunter had asked him why he drew if he felt that way about it, he had simply told him, ‘It’s something to challenge myself with when I’m dying of boredom.’

It took a couple minutes of her rattling around in the crates, but eventually Omega did return clutching a bundle of pens, which she showed to Hunter to confirm that they were indeed what he’d asked her to find. Hunter took them from her hesitantly and then led her into the bunkroom.

There they found Tech and Echo absent - sequestered in the cockpit most likely - and Crosshair and Wrecker sitting on the floor, embroiled in a competition to see who could disassemble and reassemble their weapon the fastest. Weapon cleaning supplies were littered on the ground around them, so it looked like they’d started out amiably maintaining their equipment and then got distracted. If Hunter had to guess he’d say Wrecker had probably come up with the idea and Crosshair, never one to back down from a challenge, had accepted. 

With an interested noise Omega crawled into Wrecker’s lap, which the giant didn’t let distract him from his task. Even so, Crosshair ended up winning by three seconds, a declaration that made Wrecker groan and collapse theatrically backwards. Omega squealed with delight at his histrionics and shook him while he pretended to be dead.

Hunter smiled at the sight of the two of them goofing off and saw the subtle amused slant to Crosshair’s lips that the sniper was trying to hide. That only made him smile wider and he hoped maybe Crosshair wouldn’t react badly to having his sketchbook and pens returned to him. Maybe he’d even be pleased. Somehow Hunter doubted it, but a man could hope.

“Cross,” Hunter said, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt. Obviously he failed because Crosshair was immediately suspicious of him, squinting up at where he was standing with a frown.

“ Dare I ask what you’re up to, Hunter?” he asked dryly.

Hunter couldn’t help but snort at the tone and decided to just get it over with, holding the sketchbook and bundle of pens out to his little brother with an explanation of, “Omega found these, thought I’d return them.”

Crosshair stared at the proffered items like he was worried they’d bite him before his eyes went back up to Hunter’s face. “You kept those?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion, “Why?”

The question felt like a punch to the solar plexus. Hunter wanted to snarl in outrage, because how could they not keep them? 

“We kept all your stuff,” he said instead, his voice a little sharp even to his own ears.

Crosshair’s expression changed from confused to stricken in an instant as his pulse picked up and his breath started coming in a little bit quicker. Hunter’s heart clenched, his little brother really did think they had just left him behind and forgotten about him didn’t he.

“You should have gotten rid of them,” Crosshair snapped, wounded and defensive.

Hunter swallowed thickly. There were so many things he wanted to say. ‘We never gave up on you,’ ‘We were determined to bring you home,’ ‘We love you so we’d have kept them no matter what,’ but Hunter couldn’t say any of those things, because in the face of what had happened to Crosshair, of what Hunter had allowed to happen to Crosshair, all of it was hollow.

“We didn’t want to,” he finally decided on saying. Wordlessly he offered the sketchbook and bundle of pens to his little brother again and watched the emotions warring on his face. For a long moment Hunter thought he might refuse to take them, but eventually he reached out and accepted the items. Crosshair tossed them down on his bunk in a single sharp movement, like he couldn’t wait to be rid of them, and Hunter was just relieved he hadn’t flung them across the room or dumped them in the trash. 

“You’re good at drawing and you’re good at painting armor,” Omega told him innocently, now sitting on Wrecker’s chest where he continued to lay on the floor, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and his eyes crossed, “Have you ever painted a picture?” Her tone was hopeful and Hunter had to wonder if she was going to ask Crosshair to paint something for her.

“Of course you would think so” Crosshair snapped, pitching it like an insult. Complimenting him really was impossible, “And no . Just drawing is already a waste of time, I don’t need to make a mess as well.”

“It is not a waste,” Omega told him, her tone uncharacteristically severe and her little face twisted up in a sudden scowl. Crosshair seemed a little taken aback by the sharpness of the statement and Hunter had to agree. He hadn’t expected it. “Art is important, ” she went on passionately, “it makes people happy and lots of people are sad when they don’t deserve to be, so anything that would make them happy is a really good thing. And besides, if you didn’t like doing it you never would, and doing things you like isn’t a waste of time. It’s one of the things that makes you a person instead of just a human battle droid.”

Crosshair blinked at her, apparently startled by the fervor with which she had told him off. Being admonished by a little kid was probably weird enough just on its own. Hunter had to resist the laugh that bubbled in his chest at the utterly bewildered expression on his little brother’s face. They’d been trying to convince him that his art was worthwhile for years , so Hunter really hoped he’d take Omega’s words to heart. With any luck he’d go back to using the sketchbook and wouldn’t revert to old bad habits either. Tech had given him an impassioned lecture about the value in his creations a few years back and while Crosshair seemed to only change his behavior to humor him, it had still been a relief when he’d stopped tearing the finished drawings out of the sketchbook and crumpling them up when he was done working on them. 

“You should paint a picture of Lula!” Wrecker suggested with a huge grin, catching a giggling Omega easily in his arms as the act of sitting back up dislodged her from on top of him. 

Crosshair bared his teeth at him, “I’d rather drop dead,” he hissed. Wrecker just laughed and chucked his cleaning rag at his little brother’s snarling face. Hunter couldn’t help but smile at the exchange.

“You don’t have to paint anything,” Omega reassured Crosshair, “But could you draw me? I’ll sit still I promise!”

Hunter’s littlest brother looked taken aback. None of them had ever asked him to draw something for them simply because they hadn’t wanted to put pressure on him for fear that he would stop drawing altogether, but Omega clearly didn’t consider that as a possibility, instead she just looked at Crosshair with her soft doe eyes and smiled hopefully.

After a second Crosshair threw his hands up and growled in defeat, “Fine.” Then Hunter really did laugh. Just as he’d thought, nobody could resist Omega’s charms when she wanted something, not even the willfully stubborn and constantly prickly Crosshair.

The four of them shuffled around until Crosshair was sitting back on top of his bunk, feet on the floor, but otherwise hunched a little defensively, with Omega perched on Echo’s bunk across from him, and Hunter leaning against the wall and sharpening his vibroblade while Wrecker returned to cleaning his DC-17m.

He and Wrecker pretended to ignore their brother while he told Omega to sit however she wanted and then hesitated for a moment, his hands shaking subtly as he stalled by putting a fresh toothpick between his teeth, before he forced himself to pick up his sketchbook and one of his pens. Hunter was a little disappointed that he didn’t so much as glance at his older drawings before flipping to a clean page, but Crosshair was going to draw again and he’d take what he could get.

The calm that seemed to settle over Crosshair as he sketched out his sister’s profile was both noticeable and a little startling. Hunter hadn’t realized just how jittery his brother had constantly been until serenity had replaced it. If he hadn’t been glad he’d returned the sketchbook before he definitely was now.

When Tech and Echo left the cockpit and returned to the bunkroom a few minutes later they both froze up at the sight of Crosshair drawing. A big delighted grin spread across Echo’s features, while Tech flicked his eyes over to Hunter, as if he suspected his eldest brother was responsible for the turn of events. Hunter tilted his head towards the open space on the floor next to him and Wrecker, trying to get them to move before they distracted Crosshair with their unintentional looming, and Tech nodded then plopped down on the ground next to the two of them, pulling Echo down as he went. 

Engrossed with the task at hand already, Tech pulled up something on his datapad and then handed it off to Echo while said clone rolled up his left pant leg. With a thoughtful hum, Tech inspected the exposed prosthetic’s ankle joint, gently taking hold of Echo’s mechanical foot and rolling it to the side one way and then the other, which made Hunter suspect it had been giving Echo trouble, and then, apparently satisfied with his inspection, Tech dragged his box of tools down off his bunk so he could fix whatever was wrong with the joint.

It didn’t take Hunter all that long to finish sharpening his vibroblade and rather than finding something else to do he hoisted himself up to settle on his bunk, leaning his back against the wall, eyes closed, just breathing and listening. Having all his siblings together like this, their heartbeats calm and steady, with Wrecker trying to make Tech and Echo laugh as they worked, Omega poorly suppressing her giggles, and both the newer sound of the music playing in Crosshair’s audio player and the old familiar sound of his pen scritching across a clean sheet in his sketchbook…all of it made something in Hunter’s chest loosen minutely. The dark knot of distress and rage and guilt that had taken up residence in his heart slackening just a little bit. 

He let out a long deep breath and allowed himself to be at ease, at least for a little while.

Chapter Text

His siblings had become overprotective again, the way they had been when they’d first got him back from the Empire. Crosshair supposed it was hardly surprising, given what they had recently found out. They had failed to protect him from it at the time and he could see the guilt from that failure eating them alive, so now they were trying to protect him from the aftermath, as futile as their efforts were. 

Still, Crosshair found that he was once again being herded around the ship so that he was never actually alone. Somebody was always there with him, unobtrusively most of the time, but there nonetheless. He found he minded a lot less than the last time, when they had been doing so because they didn’t trust him not to kill somebody. This was just…worry.

Even so, the lecture his brothers had given him settled uneasily over Crosshair’s shoulders, unbalancing him. They were looking at it all wrong. They thought he wanted to hurt himself, Tech especially seemed convinced that he’d take any chance he got to indulge in self-destruction, and while he had done some things along those lines - he had yet to kick the habit of clawing at his head when he got too overwhelmed - he wasn’t doing it willfully. He hadn’t volunteered for the mission because he wanted to hurt himself, he had done it because tactically it had been their best option, but for whatever reason his siblings seemed to have forgotten that getting hurt and having the mission succeed was a far better outcome than letting the mission fail. They’d never been able to afford to let missions fail before and Crosshair didn’t understand why that had changed. When had anyone ever cared if a clone got hurt?

He would have said the lecture, and Crosshair’s agreement to not do something similar in the future, seemed to make them all feel better, except that he could tell the only thing that would actually make his brothers feel any better about any part of this situation was if they got the chance to cut Rampart’s throat. Crosshair couldn’t help but agree on that front, killing Rampart would make him feel better too, but unfortunately the Vice Admiral was hidden away, surrounded by his army of soldiers, and out of their reach. Maybe someday that would change, but for now the bastard was safe.

Then there was the sketchbook.

Crosshair had watched Omega gush over his sketch of her with bewilderment. He didn’t understand what there was to be so excited about. Even if it did look like her, even if it looked ‘alive’ or whatever other drivel his brothers had said when they’d seen it. 

The drawings were important to them, that much had been made abundantly clear over the years, but Crosshair truly didn’t understand why. He had never understood why. 

The whole thing had just started with him doodling on the wall behind his bunk with chalk when they were cadets. He’d done it because he was bored senseless and trying to make a picture of something look like the thing itself had been challenging. It had just progressed from there. The better at it he got the more difficult he tried to make the task, focusing on capturing things in motion, completing them under a time limit, or filling a drawing with so much detail that it could rival a holograph, but that was all it had ever been. A challenge.

The act of making a drawing had some worth to Crosshair, since it kept him busy when he had nothing to do, since he enjoyed the challenge as he enjoyed all challenges, but the product? He didn’t see the point in treasuring it the way his brothers were so insistent he do. And it wasn’t that he didn’t understand the concept of aesthetic beauty, he could enjoy looking at a sunset or a beautiful person just as well as anybody, he could even see the aesthetic beauty in his own work, but ultimately art was just something to look at, it didn’t do anything. It served no practical purpose and as far as Crosshair was concerned, things that served no practical purpose, things that were useless, had no value.

That was why Crosshair had always endeavored to be useful.

Despite all that, picking up his old sketchbook and flipping to a fresh page, studying his subject with the full advantage of his enhanced eyesight to pick up details otherwise missed, running the pen over the pristine white surface to leave a picture behind, all of those familiar actions had dulled some of the ever-present pain in his head, calmed some of the rampaging thoughts he still struggled to control, dampened the shivering nerves that kept him constantly on high alert. He hadn’t so much as doodled since the Order, so he’d had no way of knowing it would calm the storm inside him so effectively. Maybe it wasn’t as useless as he’d thought, even if the finished product was still a waste of space.

Regardless, Crosshair knew the drawing of Omega wasn’t his best work, despite how taken with it his siblings were. There had been a fine tremor in his hands the whole time that made his lines shaky, one that didn’t go away even though he was calm. 

It was there because of his brothers. Because of the sketchbook. They had kept it, had kept his things, and hadn’t even given away his bunk when they got a new member…they…they had really meant to come back for him hadn’t they? They hadn’t truly abandoned him. 

But if that was true why had they never come? Why had they never mounted a rescue operation until it was Hunter who’d been captured?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Crosshair suspected the answer would hurt him worse than not knowing.

So his hands shook, picking up the sketchbook, drawing, they shook the entire time and continued to shake even once he was done. Crosshair felt twisted up inside, unsure what to think or how he should be feeling.

When Omega asked if she could keep the drawing Crosshair agreed without hesitation. He had no reason to keep it, so if she wanted it she was welcome to it. He still watched his brothers’ reaction to him tearing the page out of his sketchbook, looking for the wince, for the disapproval. He didn’t see it this time, so apparently ripping the pages out to give them to somebody else was acceptable, that was good to know.

Eventually his siblings dispersed, Omega taking the drawing to hang up in her room where she could look at it every time she went in there - very weird of her - with Hunter and Tech following her to review some information on the holoprojector and Echo testing his repaired leg out before heading back to the cockpit. Wrecker remained in the bunkroom with Crosshair, humming tunelessly as he put away all his weapon cleaning supplies and stowed his equipment.

Crosshair sat on his bunk numbly, chewing his toothpick with his hands still shaking as he flipped idly through his sketchbook. Wrecker thumped down next to him after a moment, startling him, and then leaned over to see the old drawings.

“Omega’s right, Cross,” Wrecker told him solemnly, “Art’s important, your art’s important, even if you don’t think so.”

“I…I’ll admit that the action of making it has benefits, that that might be worthwhile, but there’s absolutely no point in keeping the finished product,” Crosshair argued. He didn’t know why he even bothered, this was an argument they’d all been having for years, he doubted any of his brothers would see reason now.

Wrecker furrowed his brows, “Sure there is, you can put it up an’ look at it an’ it makes you feel a certain way, like lookin’ at the picture you made of Omega makes her happy, it makes her feel validated an’ loved an’ beautiful. Doesn’t lookin’ at your drawings make you feel anythin’,or maybe at other people’s drawings?”

Crosshair ran a hand through his hair and frowned, “Obviously, but I don’t see why that matters, what good is it doing? What does it matter how I feel about anything?”

He jerked his eyes up when Wrecker made a strange, pained noise, and found his brother’s face twisted up in misery. “You really think that, don’tchu?” Wrecker said quietly, “You really think your feelings don’t matter.”

“So?” Crosshair asked him testily, he didn’t like how close his brother’s expression was getting to pity, “We’re clones , Wrecker . We were created for a purpose. Nat-borns can exist for the sake of existing, but we were made to serve a function, how we feel doesn’t factor. If I can function, if I can remain useful and complete my missions then what does it matter how I feel?”

“I…” Wrecker struggled for a moment, his eyes both sad and angry, “I think you need to talk to Howzer about this. He’d know what to say.”

“Why does anything need to be said about it?” Crosshair snapped.

“Because thinkin’ about yourself like that is bad for you, Cross!” Wrecker protested. Before Crosshair could argue that it really wasn’t as big of a deal as he was making it out to be, Wrecker grabbed him and dragged him bodily out of the bunkroom into the back of the ship. “Everybody clear out,” Wrecker boomed, “Crosshair needs to make a call on the projector.”

Hunter, Omega, and Tech glanced at each other and set aside what they were doing.

“This isn’t necessary,” Crosshair said firmly, “You’re overreacting.”

“What happened?” Hunter asked Wrecker seriously, glancing between him and Crosshair, his expression concerned.

“Crosshair said the reason his drawings don’t matter to ‘im is because it doesn’t matter how they make ‘im feel since how he feels doesn’t matter,” Wrecker ratted his little brother out, his tone dark.

“ Crosshair ,” Tech scolded and Crosshair could only roll his eyes, “That is a completely self-defeating attitude.”

“What I actually said was that as clones our feelings have no bearing on the rest of the world and what matters is that we can perform our function,” Crosshair growled futilely, “Wrecker is twisting my words to suit him.”

“That’s not better though…” Omega said quietly as she looked up at him with big sad eyes.

“Omega is correct,” Tech snapped, “That is worse. ”

“Who were you going to call?” Hunter asked Wrecker.

“I was gonna call Captain Howzer, cuz he seems to know about stuff like this an’ Cross actually listens to ‘im,” Wrecker explained, still holding Crosshair in place with his big hands gripping him by the shoulders.

“If I apologize will you drop it?” Crosshair hissed, “This is ridiculous.”

Hunter was already keying a code into the big projector while Tech scowled at his little brother, “No. We are not looking for an apology, Crosshair, what we want is for you to have a healthy level of self-esteem. If Captain Howzer can explain to you why your thinking is flawed then you will be speaking to him.”

Crosshair made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat as Rex popped up on the projector.

“ Something happen? You boys alright? ” Rex asked them, his voice full of concern.

“Nothing dangerous, we’re still on route to Belgaroth, we should arrive later today, but we need to talk to Captain Howzer,” Hunter told him.

Rex nodded slowly, “Alright, I’ll transfer you to his personal holo. Let me know if you need anything or if anything else comes up.”

“Of course, Captain, thank you,” Tech replied. Rex nodded and his image fizzled for a moment while the projector made a buzzing sound, then after a few seconds Howzer’s image popped up. He was wearing his armor, but his helmet was clipped to his belt.

“ What’s going on? You kids all alright? ” he asked, “ Rex said you needed to talk to me. ”

“Crosshair has expressed that he holds a concerning opinion about the nature of clones and his own self-worth specifically and we were hoping you could correct it…since he seems more inclined to listen to you than to us,” Tech explained.

“They’re overreacting, Howzer,” Crosshair told the Captain dryly.

Howzer fixed him with an unimpressed look, “ Knowing you, somehow I doubt that Crosshair. So out with it, what stupid thing did he say? ”

“Crosshair expressed that as clones our emotions are secondary to our functionality and are therefore irrelevant,” Tech supplied succinctly.

“He said it doesn’t matter how he feels,” Wrecker added on the tail end of his little brother’s explanation.

Howzer let out an impressively large sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “ Of course. Who gave you that idea, Crosshair? ” he asked in a tone that was a lot more patient than any of Crosshair’s siblings were being.

Crosshair frowned at him, “Nobody gave it to me, it’s obvious. We were created to fight a war, not weep over art or write sonnets or other nat-born drivel.”

“ Right. Well tell me this, Crosshair, are you a battle droid? ” Howzer asked him calmly.

Crosshair frowned, taken aback, “What kind of question is that?” he snapped.

“ Answer my question, Crosshair. Are you a battle droid? ” This time Howzer’s voice was more forceful, but still relatively calm.

“No,” Crosshair hissed, “Obviously not.”

Howzer nodded as if even that simple admission was something he was pleased to hear. “ Alright, now tell me this. What’s the difference between a clone and a battle droid ?”

Crosshair stared at him, bewildered. “We—” he cut himself off, somehow struggling to find the right answer. They were different than droids. Clones were alive for starters, but he wasn’t sure how to explain any further than that.

His lack of a reply made his siblings shift unhappily behind him and Howzer sighed again. “ The difference is that we’re people , Crosshair, and people have feelings. It matters that we have feelings, they inform everything about our lives. It’s not wrong to love your vode is it? ”

“N-No of course not…” Crosshair muttered. He felt like he was being talked in a circle and it wasn’t a feeling he liked. Howzer really was a major pain in the ass.

The clone captain nodded, “ Well there you go. Our feelings make us effective in combat, Crosshair, they inform our ability to care for each other, they motivate us to protect what matters to us, they push us to complete our goals. Without feelings there is no sentience. It’s not just okay for you to have feelings, it’s vital . ”

“I—” Crosshair stammered, “I don’t—”

“ You’re okay, Crosshair, ” Howzer told him gently, “ No matter what anybody has ever said to you, the Kaminoans or Empire shitheads like Rampart or anybody else, clones are people. We’re allowed to have things we like and dislike, things we care about, things that matter to us, and none of it has to be practical…and we’re allowed to take those things into consideration, to give them room to breathe. You don’t have to ignore them or feel guilty for having them. ”

Crosshair opened his mouth to say something, to argue, but nothing came out and he ended up rolling his mangled toothpick between his thumb and forefinger anxiously. He couldn’t think of anything to say in the face of Howzer’s calm steadfast convictions and it made him nervous.

Howzer smiled at him and the expression was a little sad around the edges, “ You don’t have to stress over it. Just think it over. ”

All of a sudden Wrecker went from holding Crosshair by the shoulders to snaking his big arms around his little brother’s thin chest. Crosshair was too off-kilter to fight it and Howzer’s smile turned a little brighter and a little less solemn. “ He been eating like I told him? ” the captain asked Hunter, who nodded.

“We have had to badger him, as Sergeant Skroll suggested,” Tech told him, “but he has been largely cooperating and eating at least two ration bars a day. We don’t have the facilities on the Marauder for real meals unfortunately.”

“ That’s fine, ” Howzer assured them, “ ration bars aren’t exactly a culinary delight, but they pack a good two thousand calories. Two a day is good enough, although maybe get a third one in him for the first day or two before and after a mission. Running around shooting people and freeing slaves burns a lot of calories.”

“Yes,” Tech agreed with a nod, “Two to three bars a day regularly should be enough to get him back up to a healthy weight. Thank you for your assistance in getting him to cooperate, Captain.”

Howzer snorted, “ No problem. Call me if he says or does anything else stupid that you need me to scold him for. Keeping baby clones in line is a hobby of mine. ”

“You’re genuinely not going to let go of the age thing are you?” Crosshair growled from within Wrecker’s embrace.

“ Not in a million years, ” Howzer told him with a laugh, “ You kids are just going to have to deal with us oldies cooing over and babying you. It’s inescapable. Give up. ”

Hunter let out a huff and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Sorry to bother you Captain, and thanks again for the help, we’ll let you go now.”

“ Like I said, no problem. Good luck with your mission, you better come back in one piece,” Howzer told them sternly, but before he could sign off a collection of words tumbled out of Crosshair in a rush.

“I told them,” he blurted. He didn’t know why he was saying it, it wasn’t like he needed Howzer’s approval. 

Howzer paused and then a hopeful look spread across his face, “ You told them? ” 

Crosshair nodded, “A-About what happened with…with Rampart…I told them.” Wrecker’s embrace became a little bit tighter and Crosshair started to fight it so he could escape. Woefully, Wrecker released him and took a step back, leaving his little brother panting slightly. “I said I would,” he grumbled between breaths, “so I did.”

He hadn’t realized Howzer was even capable of looking so proud. The Captain grinned hugely, “ Fantastic! I knew you could do it! Do you feel better? ”

That was a good question. Crosshair stood there for a moment considering it while Howzer and his siblings watched him intently. Eventually he came to a conclusion and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “a little.” If nothing else, he no longer had to lie about it.

Even that seemed to be good enough for Howzer. “ Great! ” the Captain said cheerfully, “ Do you mind if I talk to your vode privately for a moment? ”

Crosshair was a little taken aback by the question, but he shook his head. “I don’t care.” Obviously they were going to talk about him, but Crosshair couldn’t bring himself to be bothered. There wasn’t anything Howzer could tell them that they either didn’t already know or couldn’t figure out on their own.

“Omega how about you and Crosshair go to the cockpit and send Echo back here?” Hunter said softly. Omega pouted mightily, unhappy to be excluded from the conversation, until he said to her in a quiet voice, “Crosshair might like you to keep him company.”

Omega blinked in surprise before her expression resolved first into understanding and then into determination. “I’ll keep him company,” she said firmly and then ran over and grabbed Crosshair by the hand before he could argue that he didn’t need to be babysat by a child. “Come on!” she crowed, tugging on his arm, “Once we get Echo can you show me how to draw a tooka? I saw a cute one on Troithe but the picture I drew of it on my wall wasn’t very good.”

Crosshair sighed, but let her drag him out of the room.

Echo frowned at them when they informed him that Howzer wanted to talk to him and the rest of their brothers, obviously suspicious of the fact that Crosshair was not going to be involved in the discussion. However he went without argument, probably more curious than he was suspicious.

With their brothers otherwise occupied, Omega dragged Crosshair back to the bunkroom excitedly, telling him all about the tooka she saw as they went. “Alright alright, I’ll show you how to do it,” Crosshair surrendered, “and then you try to copy what I did.”

Omega nodded excitedly and Crosshair could only sigh. He put the toothpick back between his teeth and settled down cross-legged on his bunk with his sketchbook in his lap, not bothering to push Omega off even though she was practically draped over his side. He told himself that it was because she could see better that way and because pushing her away had always been futile in the past, not because she was warm and he was jittery.

The girl had convinced him to draw for her twice in one day, which was nothing short of novel. Crosshair’s brothers never tried to get him to draw at any particular time or with any particular subject, they just tacitly encouraged the practice in general. 

He forced himself to focus on the task at hand as he flipped the sketchbook open to a fresh page and selected the size of pen he wanted from his collection. 

When Crosshair was drawing from a subject he did it by eye and didn’t bother with any extra steps, but without a subject to look at, when he had to draw something from memory, he couldn’t be quite as certain he’d get the proportions right without assistance, so when he had to draw from memory like he was then, when he had to imagine what the subject would look like in a certain pose, he blocked it out with geometric shapes first.

Crosshair wasn’t great with children by any stretch of the imagination and, ironically for a sniper, he didn’t have the patience to teach, but he did his best to explain to Omega what he was doing as he did it anyway and tried not to get annoyed when she peppered him with questions.

Once he’d blocked out the tooka, given all he had were pens whose marks couldn’t be erased, he started over right next to the first drawing, keeping the blocked out shapes in mind, but not drawing them out a second time. The second drawing was the tooka proper, with its smooth living bumps and curves and furry texture. When he finished that drawing and had looked it over with an appraising eye to see if it met his standards, he shoved Omega off him and dropped the open sketchbook into her lap before holding out the pen for her to take.

She stared at him, evidently stunned, although Crosshair couldn’t for the life of him guess why. “You’re letting me draw in your sketchbook?” she asked in an awestruck voice.

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “Where else would you draw your kriffing tooka? On my face?”

The question startled a laugh out of her and when Crosshair wiggled the pen for emphasis she finally took it from him and focused on the page with the two tooka sketches on it.

He had no real expectations of her as he watched her try to recreate both tooka drawings. She was a child and one who didn’t draw frequently, so Crosshair watched her wobbly lines take over what remained of the paper and refrained from commenting.

When Omega finished, her grin was nothing short of luminescent. “How’s that?” she asked, showing him her finished work.

Crosshair took the sketchbook back from her and looked it over. The drawing was passable, he could see what she had been attempting to do and was sure if she were to practice it she’d improve greatly. “It’s a tooka,” he told her blandly and her grin brightened by another ten kilowatts.

“It is! I did it!” she crowed and he could only nod his head placidly.

“You did it,” Crosshair agreed. Omega looked like she was about to vibrate out this dimension and into the next, so Crosshair carefully patted her on the top of the head, hoping she’d calm down. It seemed to work a little, so he gingerly ruffled her hair, like he’d seen Wrecker and Hunter do, and her smile became a little softer as she settled down.

Once Omega had relaxed she asked him to tell her more about the dramas he listened to on his audio player, so he’d shifted his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and stretched out on his bunk, with her sitting by his hip and kicking her legs idly, as he told her about the moronic porg drama. He was on episode fifteen at that point - having had to take a break and then come back to it later when it got too blindlingly stupid - and the porg had teamed up with the Jedi and a bounty hunter to track down an ancient Jedi holocron that might contain the secret to turning them back into a human. 

Technically now that the Empire had declared the Jedi to be traitors and banned anything related to their existence, the porg drama had become subversive media, which somehow only made it that much more idiotic rather than adding a sense of importance or culture to it. Regardless, Omega listened with rapt attention, completely absorbed, as he explained what had happened so far, so she jumped when the door to the bunkroom slid open and Hunter poked his head in.

“We’re done talking with Howzer, he had something important to do so he couldn’t stick around to speak with you more,” Hunter told him. He sounded apologetic if anything and Crosshair rolled his eyes.

“Believe it or not, Howzer and I are not best friends and I’m not dying to spend my time talking to him,” Crosshair retorted.

Omega laughed and Hunter gave him a crooked, annoying smile that said he thought Crosshair was full of it. “Well regardless,” Hunter went on, “Echo says we should be coming out of hyperspace in about twenty minutes, so it’s time to get ready.”

“ Finally! Belgaroth, here we come!” Omega crowed.

“Try not to get too excited,” Crosshair griped at her, “You’ll only have blast rescuing slaves until the Empire drops an experimental bomb on us, then it won’t be fun anymore.”

Hunter let out a snort and ducked back out of the room while Omega pouted at him as she hopped down off his bunk. “It won’t go like that,” she huffed, “You’ll see, we’ll rescue Hawk and Warthog and everything will go great.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes again and pulled his armor out of the trunk at the foot of his bunk so he could put it on. If Wrecker had heard her say that he would have covered her mouth and told her she was going to jinx it and silently Crosshair had to agree. “You’re optimistic to the point of delusion,” he told her dryly, “and I have a bad feeling about this one.”

Chapter Text

Rex hadn’t been lying about the Imperial presence on Belgaroth and it was only Echo’s caution in taking them out of hyperspace farther from the planet than strictly necessary and Tech’s unorthodox - i.e. absolutely insane - flying that kept them from being detected and subsequently blown to smithereens. The Empire had stationed a pair of star destroyers and numerous smaller craft on the far side of the planet, but Tech maneuvered them around the opposite side of Belgaroth from that whole death trap and brought them unobtrusively down into the atmosphere. 

Belgaroth was an ugly planet. A sickly gray marble if viewed from space and hardly better in atmo. The place was mountainous, with muddy brown bodies of water and thick smoggy clouds. Before exiting hyperspace the Batch had gone over the game plan once again and Tech had concluded that the best place to look was obviously the planet’s scrapyards, but that to narrow it down further they should find the largest collection of broken starships. If Howzer had been right that the scrappers had wanted the two regs so they’d know the best ship parts to steal, then it was only logical to start their search near the largest collection of broken down ships.

“What an appealing location,” Tech said sarcastically as he brought them over the largest of the planet’s scrapyards, “Imperial presence, inhospitable terrain, hostile wildlife…”

“At least the Imps haven’t put up a station here yet,” Echo said while he ran a scan of the terrain.

“Yet,” Tech replied flatly.

Echo hummed, “A few little star destroyers here and there never hurt anybody.” 

“Oh yes,” Tech said in a tone that suggested a huge eye roll, although Crosshair couldn’t see it from where he was standing behind the two of them, wedged in the back of the cockpit next to Wrecker. “A few little star destroyers, mercy me I hadn’t thought of them that way.”

“Adjusting your thinking every now and then is good for you,” Echo fired back.

“Less bickering more searching,” Hunter told them, although there was no bite in his tone. Bickering in the cockpit was what Echo and Tech did and Crosshair knew Hunter was well aware of that.

Tech and Echo ignored him and kept bickering all the way up until they landed on the only flat area they saw within the massive scrapyard. “Scans show that there’s a collection of junker starships about two klicks west of here,” Echo told them as they all disembarked.

“Good a place to start as any,” Hunter said.

So they walked, or hiked really, having to clamber around and over piles of scrap as they went. It reminded Crosshair of Bracca, an unpleasant memory of hunting down his brothers further tainted by the controlling influence of the chip. Hunter stopped them suddenly as they were just coming around the cockpit of a scrapped AT-TE. He held up his fist and the Batch all halted and huddled up in cover, peeking out just a little to try and see what had made Hunter stop them.

It ended up being fairly obvious. A huge beast was lumbering past only a good two hundred and fifty meters away. It looked formidable with armor plating on its head, small beady eyes, and a thick trunk and limbs. “A droidbreaker,” Tech informed them quietly as they watched the beast mosey along, unaware of their presence, “They are what I was referring to when I said ‘hostile wildlife’. They are aggressive and eat plasteel and refined metals, so we would probably look quite delicious if it were to see us, given our armor.”

“Then let’s avoid letting it see us,” Echo said dryly.

“Quite,” Tech agreed.

Wrecker snorted,  “We could take it.” His voice gave away the grin on his face, even when it was hidden by his helmet.

“Be my guest,” Crosshair told him as he watched the meandering creature. From this close he could easily see the flexing of huge muscles beneath its skin as it moved, “I think watching it smear you across this scrapheap would be entertaining.”

“It’d smear you ,” Wrecker retorted, “I don’t smear, I’m made of 100% durasteel.”

“So you’d count as lunch then,” Crosshair fired back.

“How do we get past it?” Omega whispered.

All of them looked at Tech, who huffed, “We need to stay around this distance away from it to avoid it detecting us, they can sense energy. Any closer and it may sense us and attack.”

Hunter nodded, “So we’ll keep the space between us and circle around. Try not to knock anything over or make any noise.”

They all nodded and followed his lead when Hunter paced forward on silent cat’s feet. They moved slowly and stopped every time the droidbreaker stopped, worried it would hear them if they moved while it wasn’t distracted by nosing through the scrap for tasty metal morsels.

When they reached the other side of it and the path to their destination was no longer blocked, the Batch collectively let out a sigh of relief. Hunter waved them all on and they went back to clambering around amongst the detritus with little grace despite their physical fitness. Personally Crosshair was glad for his armor and blacks, this whole trek through Garbage Land was just asking to get tetanus. 

They stopped again when they reached a ridge that looked out over a sea of ruined starships. Hunter gestured Crosshair to peek over the ridge while he searched around their various equipment for a pair of macrobinoculars for himself. Crosshair did as he was gestured to do, looking across the landscape first with just his eyes and then with his helmet’s rangefinder. 

Another droidbreaker was picking its way across the landscape, but not near anything they had any reason to approach. He mentioned it anyway.

“Another droidbreaker,” he said, “northwest, about eight hundred meters.”

Hunter nodded while Wrecker let out a disappointed huff. Evidently he still wanted to fight one of the creatures, hardly a surprise since he always wanted to fight the biggest thing he came across. 

“Any people?” Hunter asked him, “Blackout’s intel said the scrappers were a mix of weequay and humans, should be five of them, not including our pilots.”

“You mean our slaves, I doubt the scrappers are having them pilot anything,” Crosshair grumbled as he scanned the landscape again. Upon his second search movement caught his eye, just a tiny reflection shifting almost three klicks away. He squinted and watched which rewarded him with the sight of a humanoid figure dropping out of an open hatch in a starship. The reflection had come from the scraped up metal on the edges of his goggles. 

The figure gestured sharply, head tilted back to address somebody still in the remains of the ship. A second later another figure dropped down, this one holding a weapon. That one waved to something beyond a hill that obscured Crosshair’s view and a minute later two more figures appeared with a cargo hauler. “Found four out of five…” Crosshair told his siblings, “Clones not included.”

“Where?” Hunter asked him, he’d located the macrobinoculars so it wouldn’t be a waste of time to point the gaggle of scrappers out to him. Crosshair did so and Hunter spent a moment watching the group before coming to a decision.

“Crosshair stay here,” Hunter ordered, “make a nest and be ready to pop them if they give us any trouble, the rest of us will flank around and come up behind them. I think if they have our regs then they’re still in the ship under the guard of the fifth one.”

“They looked like they were about to start stripping things out to put on the cargo hauler,” Crosshair added in a bland voice.

“So they’ll be distracted,” Echo said, sounding pleased. All of them except maybe Wrecker preferred being shot at as little as possible during missions.

“Most likely,” Tech replied, taking the macrobinoculars from Hunter for a moment so he could see what they were talking about.

“Well you all have fun,” Crosshair told them dryly, “I’ll just be here.”

“Try to avoid trouble,” Tech said, his voice equally dry, “For obvious reasons if something happens we won’t be able to help you.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes expansively, “Thank you for the warning, this is my very first sniping mission after all.”

Tech rolled his eyes as well, but didn’t fire back. With that, Hunter packed the macrobinoculars back up in Tech’s pack and then waved Crosshair’s siblings forward as he set off to flank the scrappers. As they went, Crosshair looked around a little until he found a wrecked walker that would serve his purposes well. It was only a few meters away, so he clambered over to it and then scaled the side so he was up on the turret, there he lay down on his belly and set up his rifle.

It took a nice long while for Crosshair’s siblings to get to their destination and he spent the time watching the group of scrappers through his scope. As he had predicted, there were more people inside the starship who were stripping things out of it and handing them down through the hatch to be loaded onto the cargo hauler. Crosshair didn’t see the faces of whoever was in the starship, so he couldn’t confirm whether they really were the two enslaved clones.

Hunter and the rest of the Batch crept up behind the starship and then stepped out into the open with their weapons up. The four scrappers froze stiff. Crosshair watched them as Hunter spoke, but Hunter was wearing his helmet which meant Crosshair couldn’t read his lips, so he made due with guessing what was going on. Hunter gestured with his rifle and one of the scrappers called out to whoever was still inside the starship. Three people clambered down the hatch after a moment, one was another weequay, but the other two were their captured regs.

Hawk and Warthog looked less worse for wear than either Snare’s group or Howzer’s group, although Crosshair could see burns from their slave collars on their necks. They were bruised however, in a way that suggested a beating, so obviously they hadn’t had a fun time while toiling away in slavery. One of the two clones also had a slight limp that didn’t escape Crosshair’s notice. 

Hunter said something else and the regs brightened up. If Crosshair were to hazard a guess he’d say Hunter had told the scrappers that they were taking the regs off their hands. That seemed likely given how one of them whipped out a blaster. Crosshair fired a shot that blew the weapon out of the scrapper’s hand (and took a little of his hand with it) before the man could get a shot off at his siblings. 

After that all hell broke loose.

One of the weequays grabbed the clone who was favoring his left leg and held a blaster up to his head while his comrades scrambled into cover and pulled their own weapons out. The other clone hesitated for a split second like he was considering tackling the hostage-taker, but then he also dove for cover, probably having decided he would make the situation worse by intervening and not wanting to get caught in the crossfire. 

There was a standoff while Hunter and the hostage-taker talked to each other and Crosshair waited for the weequay to move in such a way that his shot was no longer blocked by the clone pilot’s body. The scrapper twisted after a few seconds, attempting to move back towards cover while also dragging the clone along as a human shield, but the movement put his head out where Crosshair could see it cleanly and the sniper wasted no time firing off a shot.

The bolt flew true and the weequay scrapper’s head burst like a ripe melon, splattering the clone with his blood. The reg made a revolted face, but didn’t hesitate when he sprinted over to his companion and ducked behind his cover. After that it turned into a shoot out, one which Crosshair did most of the work for. Whenever one of the scrappers ducked a limb out of cover, Crosshair shot it clean off, that included hands carrying weapons, heads peeking up to spot, and even one human’s leg as he leaned past a slim gap in his cover. 

Crosshair’s covering fire managed to distract the scrappers to the point that his brothers had little trouble surrounding and finishing them off. Once all five of them were dead there was a moment where everything was still as the adrenaline in everyone still alive faded away, then the regs came out of cover and the Batch stepped out to meet them.

The members of the Batch who had been wearing helmets took them off when they greeted the regs, which meant Crosshair could tell what everyone was saying just by reading their lips through his scope. A useful skill he had developed on purpose rather than by accident through exposure.

“Thanks for the save,” said the reg with the limp, “but who are you exactly?”

“Clone force 99,” Hunter told them, his expression mellow.

They did the whole ‘you don’t look like clones,’ spiel which Hunter responded to with the rote ‘we’re an experimental batch’ response that was a lot nicer sounding than the ‘we’re defective’ that Crosshair had defaulted to using now that he was no longer hanging onto the thread of pride (arrogance) that had kept him going through his tenure with the Empire.

“I’m Hawk,” said the clone with the limp, “with the 501st.”

“Warthog,” said his companion, “104th.”

Hunter introduced all his siblings including saying “The sniper is our brother Crosshair, we’re going to go meet up with him once we get your collars off.”

The reg pilots both nodded and Warthog was up first for Tech’s clever fingers to dig into the machinery around his neck and disable it. Once that was done the reg went and inspected the dead scrappers, turning their bodies over none too gently with the toe of his boot before stripping them of any useful items. Meanwhile Tech rid Hawk of his collar and then insisted on taking a look at his leg.

Crosshair ended up wishing it wouldn’t be so dangerous to distract himself by listening to one of his audio dramas as he waited for his siblings to escort their rescuees back through the two klicks of scrap to reunite with him. Waiting around with no obvious trouble on the horizon was dreadfully boring.

Hunter introduced the regs to him once they finally made it back and Crosshair decided it wasn’t worth explaining that he’d eavesdropped on the first introduction. Hawk and Warthog had divested their captors of much of their gear, taking not just their coats and goggles, but also their belts, all the tools and explosive charges attached, and their weapons.

All set, the eight of them set off back across the scrapheap towards the Marauder. It was an uneventful if not arduous expedition, right up until it suddenly became very eventful. 

Hunter was leading the group, followed by Tech, Wrecker, and Omega, who were in turn followed by the regs. Echo and Crosshair were taking up the rear, Crosshair because he had a bad feeling and wanted to watch the group’s six and Echo to keep him from wandering off or some such nonsense.

It was when they were scaling a hill of scrap that things went wrong.

Halfway up the hill something snapped closed around Crosshair’s lower leg without any warning, digging sharp elements into him with enough force to go straight through his greave into his flesh. He let out a yell of shock and pain and looked down, it felt like he’d stepped in a bear trap, but he found that attached to his leg wasn’t a trap, or even some piece of twisted scrap metal, it was a set of huge toothy jaws.

The creature they belonged to hauled itself up out of the hill of scrap until it was fully standing, dragging Crosshair off his feet in the process and leaving him hanging upside down from his lower leg, a position that hurt . It was another droidbreaker, one that had apparently taken a liking to Crosshair’s armor if the way it’s long tongue had wrapped around Crosshair’s trapped leg was any indication. He kicked the massive beast in the snout as hard as he could with his free leg, but it didn’t even seem to notice, so instead he jammed his firepuncher right into the thing’s face and fired. 

It sure noticed that. It was just unfortunate that the creature was more pissed off by it than hurt.

“Droidbreaker!” He heard Tech yell unnecessarily, “Our weapons won’t—” he didn’t hear the rest, because the droidbreaker took exception to being shot in the face and retaliated by shaking its head, Crosshair still in its grip, like an akk dog trying to break the neck of a small animal it had caught. The firepuncher was yanked straight out of his hands by hostile physics and all Crosshair could do was curl up in a ball and hope it’d be enough to stave off whiplash.

As it thrashed him around Crosshair felt the muscles in his trapped leg tear, sending a torrent of pain through him and jerking a cry from his throat.

When the droidbreaker finally stopped shaking him  it became apparent that it hadn’t given up so much as decided on a different tactic. Even as Crosshair’s brothers and the regs opened fire on it, the beast ducked its head down, then trapped Crosshair under one of its feet while it held onto his leg with its teeth and pulled . If he’d thought the muscles in his leg tearing hurt, they had nothing on this. Something in Crosshair’s hip went pop followed by something in his lower leg going crunch before it gave. He screamed and just then Hunter jammed his knife into one of the droidbreaker’s beady eyes. 

It bellowed and threw Crosshair away with a toss of its head, before turning on Hunter, but Crosshair couldn’t see what happened after that because the pain of the way hitting the ground jarred his leg sent his vision white and then black.

When he came to it was to a thick woozy feeling in his head. “Bluh?” He asked groggily.

“You will be alright, Crosshair,” Tech told him, leaning into his field of view. His voice sounded tight and stressed, “I have given you strong painkillers, so don’t worry if you feel disoriented.”

Somewhere off to the left there was a furious roar from the massive creature that was immediately echoed by Wrecker. Crosshair couldn’t get his eyes to focus enough to tell what was going on, so he looked back at Tech. “My-my leg?” he asked weakly. He didn’t know what exactly had happened to it, but Tech was in the way and he couldn’t see the state of it.

Crosshair’s helmet had been taken off, but Tech still had his on, so Crosshair couldn’t see his face, but he didn’t miss the tension in his shoulders. “Not good,” he guessed. 

He could hear the grimace in Tech’s voice, “No, but we’ll get you fixed up, so don’t worry.”

That was suspicious, Tech was usually nothing if not forthcoming about every facet of an injury or combat situation, the fact that he was trying to reassure Crosshair instead of telling him how bad it was? That was…something…something bad. Crosshair shook his head, but the wobbly floating feeling didn’t abate. It felt like everything in his brain was moving at a crawl, slow and laborious.

“Let…let me see my leg, Tech…” he mumbled, his head swaying to the side as he struggled to keep himself up. Tech saw it and pushed him down gently.

“You are going to be alright,” he repeated, “right now you needn’t worry about it,” Tech assured him.

Crosshair growled at him although it sounded weak, “You’re hiding it from me, which means it’s really bad!”

Tech’s hands clenched into fists as he did something Crosshair couldn’t see. 

“ Tech!” he hissed, he was starting to feel panicked on top of confused and disoriented.

His brother must have heard it in his voice because he stopped what he was doing and pulled a hypo out of his pack, “You need to relax,” he said, “panicking will only make your condition worse, I’m going to give you a sedative for now.”

Crosshair’s heart jumped into his throat, but he tried to keep the fear out of his voice. “We’re in a combat situation!” he growled as he tried to push himself back upright, but Tech easily stopped him.

“ You are not and you won’t be again until you’ve been thoroughly treated and healed. Wrecker will carry you out if he must,” Tech told him sharply. He hated it when they argued with him about receiving treatments, but Crosshair suspected all medics hated that.

Crosshair made an unhappy sound, but couldn’t think of any good arguments with his head full of cotton, “My leg,” he whimpered, “It’s ruined isn’t it?” His voice was weak and thready, but Tech sighed although there was a shaky quality to the released breath, and gave his shoulder a squeeze. 

“Let me worry about that for now, you rest,” Tech told him softly as he injected the hypo full of sedatives into Crosshair’s neck.

Everything got about fifty times more difficult to focus on and Crosshair was no longer able to lift his head, he let it drop back with a thunk and stared blearily up at the smoggy sky above them, “Tech…” he mumbled. He felt his brother squeeze his hand and then saw him lean into his field of view.

“You are going to be alright,” Tech told him gently, “Sleep.”

Crosshair slept.

Chapter Text

The droidbreaker turned out to be just as formidable as it looked. It completely ignored the blaster bolts they hit it with and only Hunter jumping up onto the creature’s neck and burying his knife in its eye was enough to distract it from Crosshair. He didn’t have time to check on his brother after it had tossed him away, because the droidbreaker started trying to buck him off. Hunter caught sight of Tech running to Crosshair’s side and that was enough for him to focus on the fight at hand. If Tech was taking care of him then Crosshair would be okay, Hunter believed that wholeheartedly. 

With him on the droidbreaker’s neck, just above its shoulders, none of his siblings dared fire at the creature, not that it had done much before. Hunter used his grip on the knife he’d lodged in the droidbreaker’s eye to try and hold on as the creature bucked and tossed its head, but when it reared up on its back legs and shook its whole head and neck wildly back and forth he could no longer keep his grip and was flung off.

Landing heavily in a pile of scrap was not comfortable and it was only Hunter’s armor that stopped him from being sliced to ribbons by the twisted metal. The droidbreaker let out a bellow and Wrecker roared back at it, enraged by what it had done to Crosshair. Now that Hunter was out of the way the giant attacked the beast full force, not bothering with his rifle now that it had been proven ineffective. Instead he charged the droidbreaker and caught it around the head with his massive arms, wrestling with the beast in an effort to break its neck or crush its windpipe.

That was not a method Hunter would have recommended, even considering how strong Wrecker was, but his brother was furious and Hunter could see that he wasn’t thinking straight. The clone sergeant picked himself up out of the pile of scrap as Omega scampered across the treacherous terrain to reclaim Crosshair’s lost firepuncher and the two regs moved to surround the droidbreaker and shoot it in the ribs. 

Echo appeared at Hunter’s side a second later and helped haul him fully to his feet. “You hurt?” he asked urgently.

Hunter shook his head, “I’m fine, just a few bruises.”

The eldest member of the Batch let out a relieved breath and then turned his attention back to the fight, running to try and assist Wrecker, although how he was going to do that Hunter wasn’t sure. 

The droidbreaker did the same move it had used on Hunter, rearing up and shaking its head, which managed to toss Wrecker aside just like it had tossed Hunter. The furious giant picked himself up hardly a second after he had landed and made to charge the droidbreaker again.

“Wrecker!” Hunter yelled, moving to intercept, “stick a charge on it! Wrestling it isn’t going to help!”

For a second he thought Wrecker wasn’t listening, but then the giant pulled out two sticky bombs and activated them before slapping them on the droidbreaker’s face as it charged him. It tossed him through the air with the hit, but then the bombs exploded and it bellowed in fury and pain.

Wrecker landed with another crash of armor on twisted metal but again he picked himself up immediately. Both he and Hunter cursed violently when the smoke cleared and the droidbreaker was no worse for wear other than the scorch marks on its head armor. 

“Try it’s neck!” Echo called as he fired at the droidbreaker’s remaining eye along with the regs to distract the beast from charging Wrecker again.

Wrecker pulled out another sticky bomb and Hunter turned to try and help him only to stop dead as he saw Omega frozen stiff out in the open, dangerously close to the rampaging beast, clutching Crosshair’s rifle like precious cargo and staring with wide horrified eyes at something in the opposite direction of the giant infuriated animal. Hunter followed her gaze as he sprinted over to her and then froze up for a second as he saw what had put that pale terrified look on her face. She was looking at where Crosshair lay motionless like a broken toy, pouring blood out of his mangled leg while Tech, soaked to his wrists in red, struggled to stop the bleeding before his brother died.

Hunter couldn’t help the frightened noise he made, but the sound of another explosion pulled his head out of that frozen state of panic and he broke back into motion, finally reaching Omega and pulling her out of the way of the fight. She stared up at him with terrified eyes, “He’s dying,” she whispered.

“No,” Hunter told her firmly, “Tech will save him. Right now I need you to get your head in the game Omega, otherwise that thing is going to crush you while you aren’t paying attention. Can you do that for me?” 

She swallowed thickly and nodded, tears in her eyes as her grip on Crosshair’s rifle turned white-knuckled.

“Good,” he told her in as steady a voice as he could manage. 

Yet another explosion followed by a bellow from the droidbreaker grabbed their attention and Hunter saw the beast trying to stomp on the fleeing regs.

“Nothing’s working!” Echo cried as he pulled Hawk out of the way of the huge creature’s stampeding body.

“Stay here,” Hunter told Omega urgently. He was trying to keep calm, but his voice was tight and stressed sounding nevertheless. Fortunately Omega nodded and huddled against the scrap he had hidden her behind. “Good,” he said as he stroked her hair gently and then turned away and ran back onto the battlefield. He caught Wrecker by the arm just as he was pulling another sticky bomb out, ready to prime it. Wrecker jerked in surprise when his brother grabbed him, focused on the droidbreaker to the point of tunnel-vision.

“Putting them on the outside isn’t working,” Hunter told him, “We need to put them on the inside.”

Wrecker seemed to brighten up and he nodded, “Got it, if I get ‘is mouth open can you toss the bomb inside?”

“Yes,” Hunter told him with a sharp nod, “but give me something stronger than a sticky bomb, just so we don’t have to do it more than once.”

“Gotcha,” Wrecker agreed as he pulled out a multi-detonator and handed it over.

“That’ll probably do it,” Hunter said with a chuckle. If anything, using a multi-detonator was overkill, but then again this karking animal had hurt Crosshair, had maimed him, so Hunter was only too happy to blow the thing sky-high. “Help Wrecker get its attention! We’re going to blow it up from the inside out!” Hunter shouted to Echo and the regs.

“Copy that!” Echo shouted back. Without further ado Wrecker grabbed the droidbreaker by the head again as Echo and the regs piled on with him. The droidbreaker roared and Hunter used the opportunity to chuck the multi-detonator straight down its throat.

Wrecker and the others quickly disengaged and once everyone was clear Wrecker hit the detonation switch and the multi-detonator exploded like a supernova. It didn’t just kill the droidbreaker, it splattered it, coating everything within ten meters in the animal’s thick foul-smelling blood, including Hunter and Echo.

“Ugh!” Echo cried in disgust as he held up his dripping arms.

Wrecker laughed at him, but Hunter didn’t have the brain-space to pay attention to the blood. He needed to check on his wounded brother.

When he made it over to Tech and Crosshair at a dead sprint the first thing he saw was how grey his littlest brother’s face was. It made his heart seize in his chest, but he could hear Crosshair breathing quietly, and his heartbeat was fast but regular, definitely still there. By that point his mangled leg had been wrapped up in so much gauze and bandages that it almost looked like a clean amputation, but Hunter wasn’t fooled. 

Just remembering the sight of the droidbreaker mutilating Crosshair made Hunter’s stomach threaten to rebel and seeing the destroyed remains of the limb, with only torn muscles and tendons hanging loosely below the twisted bloody knee, everything else ripped completely off, had brought him close to vomiting. Maker, the sound the joint had made when the droidbreaker had torn it apart, Crosshair’s bloodcurdling scream…Hunter shuddered and only barely resisted the urge to sit down then and there.

But Tech had wrapped it and now there was an illusion that things could almost be okay, although it was slightly undercut by the blood staining the ground and Crosshair and Tech’s armor. The smell of it was heavy in the air, although it had to compete with the droidbeaker’s blood for prominence, and of course none of that compared to the overwhelmingly sharp scent of Crosshair’s pain and fear.

When Hunter got close with the rest of his siblings right behind him, as even Omega was spurred to come out of hiding, Tech sat back on his heels, but didn’t look up. Hunter could hear the pounding of his heart and his shaky breathing. He could also see the tremor in his little brother’s shoulders. “I gave him enough painkillers and sedatives to knock him unconscious and have relocated his hip,” Tech reported, “I was worried the droidbreaker might have broken off the femoral head, but it was only a dislocation. I have also put a tourniquet on above the knee to close the damaged femoral artery and used all the bacta injectors and patches, the bandages, and the gauze I carry in my kit, so the bleeding has stopped for the time being, but he needs surgery…”

Hunter rapped his knuckles lightly on the top of Tech’s helmet in a show of support. “What…” he tried, but his voice crackled and died in his throat. He swallowed and tried again. “What are his chances, Tech?” 

“If he gets to a medical facility in the next few hours? Good, although obviously there is no saving his lower leg. However…” Tech trailed off just like Hunter had.

“The hospitals were the first thing the Imps took over,” Echo finished for him, “I don’t think we can take him there. Not in any of the core systems, that’s for sure.”

“The wound needs to be closed. The longer the tourniquet is left on the more likely the tissue in his leg is to turn necrotic and that isn’t accounting for the possibility of sepsis or other infection. Not to mention his blood pressure is dangerously low, he needs a transfusion,” Tech told them mechanically, “Once we get back to the Marauder I can give him some blood and then perform field surgery to clean and disinfect the injury, remove the hanging tissue, and close the open wound. That will keep him from bleeding to death, possibly mitigate the risk of infection, and will allow me to remove the tourniquet, but I am a combat medic not a physician, Hunter, and it will need to hold up for a week at the very least if we are to make it back to Captain Rex’s medical facilities on Dantooine. I can’t guarantee he’ll— he might not—” Tech’s voice cracked and he stopped talking rather than letting tears overtake him.

“He’ll pull through!” Wrecker snapped, although his voice shook, “Crosshair’s tough! No way some overgrown womp rat is gonna take ‘im out!”

“Wrecker’s right!” Omega agreed tearfully, her voice wobbly as she bit back a sob, “He’s gonna be okay!”

“Do the best you can, Tech,” Hunter told him, knocking his knuckles against the top of Tech’s helmet again. 

Tech nodded and pushed himself to his feet, ruthlessly getting himself back under control so he could do what was needed. “I need you to carry him, Wrecker, jostle what’s left of his leg as little as possible.”

Wrecker nodded gravely and picked his unconscious little brother up in a bridal carry rather than throwing him over his shoulder like he might have normally.

Warthog appeared at Hunter’s side and silently offered him his knife back. It seemed he had been looking for it while they all checked on Crosshair. Hawk was right behind him, the two of them practically inseparable.

“I’m sorry,” was all Warthog offered, not adding anything extraneous to the statement that might raise Hunter’s hackles. Hawk nodded solemnly and glanced at the wounded sniper, his lips pressed into a thin remorseful line. Hunter appreciated the sentiment, he really did, so he gave the pilots a nod and accepted his knife. He couldn’t wipe it off when every inch of him was also covered in blood, so he simply sheathed it and put it out of his mind. He’d deal with it and the rest of his filthy equipment later.

With the group all gathered they took off. Hunter was in the lead as he had been before, although he had to resist the urge to stop and check on Crosshair every few minutes. Tech was keeping pace with Wrecker, monitoring his patient’s condition as they made the trek back to the Marauder, so he reasoned that if something happened then Tech would stop them.

Again they had to circle around a droidbreaker, but fortunately this one didn’t notice them and they were able to avoid another disastrous fight. When they finally made it back to the Marauder, Tech had Hunter clear a space in the back of the ship and then fetch all the medical equipment they kept for emergencies like this. AZI was enlisted to help with the surgery and the rest of them were all shooed into the bunkroom so they wouldn’t get in Tech’s way.

Hunter ended up pacing around the bunkroom like a caged nexu while they waited, heedless of how nervous it was making Echo. Eventually his ori’vod intercepted him.

“Stop pacing,” he said firmly, “Take your armor off, change into fresh blacks, and help me clean this kriffing blood off of everything. Like this the two of us are a walking biohazard.”

Hunter stared him down for a moment, tense, his hackles up, but Echo met his glare calmly and eventually Hunter backed down and did as he was told. If nothing else it would occupy him while they waited.

The regs had huddled up in the corner of the bunkroom, talking quietly amongst themselves, while Wrecker sat in his bunk with Omega cradled in his lap. She’d cried once they’d gotten back to the ship, unable to hold it in any longer, and Wrecker had scooped her up before Hunter could think of a way to comfort her when he badly wanted to cry himself. She’d sobbed herself out by that point and was sleeping fitfully with Lula clutched to her chest. It had been difficult to get her to relinquish Crosshair’s firepuncher, but Wrecker had managed it by swapping it out for the beloved tooka doll. Now the firepuncher was leaning against the wall next to Crosshair’s bunk. Seeing it there was so normal Hunter could almost pretend nothing was wrong.

The wait was agonizing. Hunter watched the time, checking every few minutes as he washed the droidbreaker’s now tacky blood off his equipment. It was over four hours before Tech emerged from the black of the ship. His hands and forearms were covered in blood, but his heartbeat and breathing were less panicked, much closer to normal. His expression was slightly less tight as well, although it was still far from relaxed.

“The surgery was successful,” he told them and they all let out a sigh of relief. “Aside from cleaning and closing the wound I was able to get his blood pressure back up to a safe level. The tourniquet is off as well. For now he’s stable, so if we can avoid him getting an infection I think with any luck he might hold out until Dantooine. AZI is monitoring his condition.”

Tech didn’t give any of them time to respond, simply shucking off his soiled vambraces and gauntlets into the pile of befouled armor before marching into the cockpit and setting about getting them into hyperspace. Echo made a face at the prospect of cleaning Crosshair’s blood out of anything, but Tech was clearly not in the mood to be bothered.

They hadn’t wanted to risk the ship shaking while he had been performing surgery, so they’d been forced to wait until he was done to take off, but now that they could go Tech took them out of atmo and into hyperspace like Darth Sidious himself was on their heels. 

Chapter Text

All of them wanted to go check on Crosshair, to see his condition personally, but they were also all too afraid to do so. Fortunately or unfortunately Hunter had to go back there anyway because he needed to tell Rex and Howzer what had happened and that they’d be needing serious medical assistance. 

In fresh blacks, but out of his armor given it was still rather blood-soaked despite his and Echo’s best efforts, Hunter padded to the back of the ship, unsure why he felt the need to be quiet other than the sense that Crosshair needed to rest, even if Tech had pumped him with enough drugs to keep him out for the whole trip back.

He couldn’t help but stop and check on his littlest brother when he got back there. AZI helpfully gave him the rundown of Crosshair’s condition although he used technical language that Hunter didn't understand. He could see that his brother looked slightly better. His face was still pale, but no longer grey, the smell of pain and fear was less pervasive, having dulled to just a slim edge in the air, and the dressing on his leg looked neat and clean, especially compared to the blood-soaked bandages he’d had on before they got him back to the ship. AZI and Tech had also put an IV in him, which was hung up from a magnetic hook that they kept in the emergency supplies for that exact purpose. 

Hunter was just about to tear himself away when Crosshair let out a nearly silent whine, so he turned back and gripped the back of his little brother’s neck gently. The intent was to comfort him, but rather than calming down Crosshair’s heartbeat sped up until it was racing and jackhammering loudly in his chest as his breathing turned shallow. He’d gone stiff, like he had locked all his muscles in an effort to hold still.

What Howzer had told them before Belgaroth popped back into Hunter’s head. “I didn’t know Crosshair before the Order,” he had said, “but what he went through, the chip, being alone, all the things Rampart did…that sort of thing changes a person. Even if it’s only a subtle difference, he’s not going to be the same as he was before the Order and you boys need to be aware of that so you don’t accidentally hurt him. I’m not saying stop doing whatever you’ve been doing because he does seem to be getting better, but just…watch to make sure how he reacts so you don’t push too far.”

Hunter took his hand away from Crosshair’s neck, and the rest of him in general, no longer touching any part of him and listened as his heart rate slowed down a little and his breathing evened out. Being touched had scared him, but why? Normally he complained loudly but wasn’t actually bothered by it. Hunter puzzled over it for a moment before he remembered that Crosshair was drugged to the gills, he probably didn’t know where he was or that it was Hunter who was with him. He hoped against all hope that Crosshair hadn’t thought it was Rampart who was touching him.

It was hard to pull himself away from his wounded little brother’s side, but he did need to speak to the two clone captains. Hesitantly, Hunter pried his eyes off of Crosshair and moved over to the big projector so he could key in Rex’s code. The device buzzed for a moment and then Rex’s image popped up. He had his helmet on, but took it off a second later.

“I’m hoping you have good news for me,” the captain said.

Hunter sighed. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to include Captain Howzer in this call, to make it easier to get you both up to speed.”

“Alright,” Rex replied easily and the call fizzled for a couple minutes until it restarted with both clones standing side by side in the frame.

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” Howzer told him unhappily, “You’re giving me a bad feeling. Stop it.”

“We succeeded in rescuing Hawk and Warthog. They’re safely aboard the Marauder with us and aside from bruises and Hawk’s twisted knee they’re both uninjured.”

Both captains let out a sigh before they tensed back up almost as one, “I’m sensing there’s a ‘but’ in there. Did something go wrong?” Rex asked suspiciously.

Hunter let out a breath and nodded. “Yeah, something went really wrong. Crosshair is severely injured, he…his lower leg is completely gone, everything from the knee down on the right side.”

The reg captains were silent for a shocked moment and then Howzer rubbed his face, “Kark,” he said quietly, “As if the kid doesn’t have enough problems already…”

“What’s his condition aside from that?” Rex asked.

Hunter sighed and looked back at his brother over his shoulder, “Tech drugged him to the high heavens and then did field surgery to clean and close his leg wound so he could take the tourniquet off. Right now Crosshair’s stable, or so I’m told, but it might not stay that way. We’re a full week out and he could still get an infection if we’re unlucky enough.”

“Plan on being unlucky,” Howzer told him, “that way if it happens you won’t be caught with your pants down.”

Rex nodded in agreement. “I’ll make sure the medics know you’re on your way with him. You have a medical droid don’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s from Kamino,” Hunter said with his own nod, “It’s keeping an eye on his condition right now.”

“Good,” Rex huffed, “Have it or Tech send me all the data on Crosshair’s condition so I can give it to my medics and then keep updating us every day until you get here. The medics will be able to prepare better if they can follow his condition until he arrives.”

“Copy that,” Hunter replied a little flatly. He felt like he needed to sleep for a thousand years and at the same time suspected he’d hardly get any sleep at all until they were back on Dantooine and Crosshair was out of the woods.

“And Hunter…” Rex said quietly, “I’m sorry. He’s a tough kid, I’m sure he’ll pull through.”

“Try to think of ways to keep him from going absolutely ballistic when he wakes up without his leg,” Howzer told him in a voice that could have either been serious or joking and Hunter had no clue which.

To be honest it hadn’t occurred to Hunter just how badly his little brother might react, he’d been focused solely on the there and then, because he was too afraid of the outcome to think of what might happen…but maybe trying to come up with a plan would be a good idea. He needed to believe that Crosshair would be okay otherwise he wasn’t going to be able to function.

“Will do,” he said and then hesitated, “I…I would appreciate it if you could talk to him when he wakes up, he…he obviously trusts you and you always seem to know what to say to him…”

“It’s a gift,” Howzer hummed lightly, “and if you think for one goddamn second that I’m not going to talk to that kid when he wakes up then you’ve lost your kriffing mind.”

Hunter let out a relieved sigh and nodded, “Thank you, Captain.”

“Howzer’s buir mode was activated the second Crosshair walked in looking like he hadn’t eaten or slept in years and it’s not going to deactivate anytime soon, trust me, when he gets like this there’s no stopping him,” Rex told Hunter with a laugh. Not for the first time Hunter wondered if the two of them were batchmates, they seemed to know each other well.

“You’re goddamn right there’s no stopping me!” Captain Howzer snapped good-naturedly, “That snarly little ad’ika is going to be heathy if it karking kills me.”

Hunter laughed despite himself, “I think he’d protest to being called an ad’ika.”

“He can protest all day long and it won’t change a damn thing,” Howzer told him, “He’s an ad’ika and for that matter so are you , Hunter. How are you holding up? From what I understand the last ten months have been a shabla shit show for your squad.”

The question took Hunter back a little, he hadn’t expected it at all. He floundered for a second, searching for an answer, before deciding to tell Howzer and Rex the plain old truth. “It has been,” he said tiredly, “It’s like every time we survive one disaster, another worse one happens immediately afterwards. It’s exhausting. And we’ve all been so worried about Crosshair, he turned rabid once the chip activated and we thought…” Hunter swallowed thickly and forced himself to keep talking, “We thought he really wanted to kill us…we thought we were never getting him back… then when we finally did get him back we realized just how much damage they did to him and it’s—it’s horrible to see him like this. And now with him severely injured? Omega is a mess, Wrecker is almost as bad, Echo is trying to keep it all together even though he’s a nervous wreck, and Tech is trying even harder to keep it together but he thinks he’s responsible for fixing everything any time something goes wrong, so he always blames himself when one of us ends up hurt.”

“I’m so sorry, kid,” Howzer told him in a genuinely sorrowful voice, “None of you deserve any of this, none of you deserve any of the osik that’s ever been done to you, I don’t know you kids all that well but I’m here if any of you ever need something, and I’ll help with keeping Crosshair steady and marginally sane to the full extent of my abilities. He’s going to freak out over losing his leg, anybody would freak out, even if they weren’t wound tight as a spring like that kid is, but I’ll do my best to help you guys handle it.”

“We know it’s been tough,” Rex added solemnly, “but we’ll take care of you all when you get here and we’ll make sure Crosshair comes out okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”  

“Thank you,” Hunter told them, a little touched by their sincerity, “I’ll let you know if we need anything.”

“Good, that’s all I ask,” Rex replied as Howzer nodded his head.

“I’ll see about having Tech or AZI send you Crosshair’s medical information now and I’ll tell you if anything else goes horribly wrong.”

“Maker forbid,” Rex said with a roll of his eyes, “But you boys have some genuinely terrible luck, so I’ll hope for the best, but keep an eye out for your call anyway.”

Hunter sighed and nodded. “Thanks, Hunter out,” he said and then the call ended and Hunter was left in the back of the ship with the only noise being the sound of the Marauder’s engines and Crosshair’s quiet breathing and heartbeat. The sergeant took a moment to breathe and steady himself before checking on Crosshair again, finding him the same as before, and then heading back into the bunkroom to tell Tech that Rex wanted them to update his medics every day.

***

The atmosphere in the Marauder during the hyperspace travel back to Dantooine was tense and that tension only rose when Crosshair developed a fever. Tech was all over it, increasing his fluid intake and doing what few tests he had available to him in the hopes of figuring out what his little brother needed, all while keeping Crosshair drugged to oblivion. The fever appeared on the second day, starting low, but Crosshair’s temperature quickly rose and while Tech didn’t allow any of them in the back of the ship when he was changing the bandages, he did call Hunter back to speak with him when he was done. 

“As I feared, Crosshair’s leg has gotten infected,” Tech told him plainly.

Hunter didn’t need Tech to tell him Crosshair’s leg had gotten infected, he could smell the infection from across the room, even if it wouldn’t be noticeable to anybody else. “We have antibiotics right?” he asked, that seemed like something important enough that they should have it for emergencies. 

Tech nodded and adjusted his goggles instead of truly answering which clued Hunter in that there was some sort of caveat.

“There’s a problem, Tech, what is it?” he coaxed.

Tech let out a slightly shaky sigh, “We do have antibiotics,” he said, “However standard practice during the war meant such things were heavily rationed, especially near the end, and we haven’t had reason to use any so I hadn't thought to stock up more than what we already have…which is three days worth.”

Hunter gave his brother’s shoulder a squeeze to try and reassure him so he’d calm down. It wouldn’t be obvious to somebody who couldn’t hear his heartbeat, but Tech was struggling to keep himself from panicking. He was blaming himself, Hunter could practically hear the way he was berating himself internally for not stocking up, even though really it was Hunter’s fault for not ever thinking about it before they’d had a crisis.

“And three days isn’t enough,” the sergeant deduced.

“No,” Tech agreed with a sharp shake of his head, “It is not. He needs a full course of seven days at the least and more likely twelve days to be really through with the infection.”

“Well, we’re five days out, so three will cover most of that…” Hunter replied, trying to reassure him while still being realistic, “Do you think you can keep him going for the last two days after the antibiotics run out before we get to Rex’s medics?”

“Using only a partial course of antibiotics may fail to stop the progression of his illness as much as we need before we get there, or it may help him, but the missed days might cause the bacteria to develop drug resistance which will be hard for Captain Rex’s medics to treat. Either scenario could lead to permanent consequences, it—” Tech shook his head and twisted his hands together before looking at his older brother with wide eyes, “It-it is n-not enough, Hunter.”

The already dismal mood in the Marauder plummeted when Hunter broke the news. Hawk and Warthog kept to themselves respectfully, but Echo was a nervous wreck and Omega cried anytime somebody brought Crosshair up, Tech was irritable and snapped at whoever tried to interact with him, while Wrecker stuck to Omega like glue and cuddled her almost constantly as if she were a human version of Lula. Hunter himself was trying hard to keep it all together, braving Tech’s foul temper to remind him to eat, sitting with Wrecker and Omega while she cried and Wrecker tried to cheer her up without crying himself, helping Echo as he obsessively repaired every rusted bolt or dented piece of armor he came across, and all the while Hunter tried not to think about the possibility that their three days of antibiotics really wouldn’t be enough. 

He didn’t dare contemplate the possibility that Crosshair might die, his littlest brother falling into the Empire’s hands had torn Hunter up inside, had torn them all up inside. Crosshair dying would destroy them.

On day four Crosshair hadn’t improved despite the antibiotics. They only had one dose left, but they were also running low on sedatives, so Tech had to ration what remained and that meant that Crosshair actually woke up…or at least he came close to it. 

Hunter had been sitting out of the way but still nearby while Tech conferred with AZI about Crosshair’s vitals, when the sniper groaned. Tech and Hunter both went stiff and then rushed over. “Crosshair?” Tech said from his place next to Hunter at the ‘bedside’, “Are you awake?” 

Another groan, but Crosshair scrunched up his face instead of opening his eyes. To Hunter and his brother’s dismay, the next noise Crosshair made was a wheezy painful sort of whine. “No…sir…I won’t, it won’t happen…again,” he moaned. 

Hunter's heart pounded and he could hear Tech’s matching him, although neither was comparable to the panicked beating of Crosshair's heart. That sentence sounded an awful lot like what he’d said while having a flashback, when he was remembering Rampart cutting him. Tech met Hunter’s eye and he could see his little brother had come to the same conclusion.

“Crosshair,” Tech called gently, “You’re on the Marauder, you’re with your brothers and you’re— no-nobody is hurting you.”

It was the best he could say without lying, Hunter knew. Tech couldn’t tell their wounded little brother that he was fine because he most certainly was not fine. He couldn’t even tell him he was safe, not when infection was ravaging him more every day. 

Crosshair made a face and turned his head in the direction of Tech’s voice, but when he opened his eyes Hunter could see he was delirious. They were unfocused and glassy with fever, while his hair was plastered to his skull with sweat, there were deep dark circles under his eyes, his skin was pallid, and his pulse pounded through the roof. He still looked terrible despite the antibiotics.

“Where…?” Crosshair mumbled, his eyes rolling aimlessly around as if looking for something but not finding it. 

“You’re on the Marauder,” Hunter repeated to him, “Rampart isn’t here, nobody is hurting you.”

Crosshair’s brows pinched together, “Can’t be on the Marauder,” he argued weakly, “They left me…”

The only way Crosshair could have hurt Hunter more would be to physically stab him, he wheezed and only just managed to stop himself from grabbing Crosshair’s shoulder and trying to remind him where he was through a combination of shaking and sheer volume. Instead he glanced at Tech, who looked equally stricken, but when he saw Hunter looking at him he took a steadying breath and said, “Rampart probably didn’t ever hold his hand, so…so it may not cause him further distress.”

Hunter gave his brother a thankful nod, he wasn’t sure who Tech was trying to comfort at that point, him or Crosshair, but he took his advice anyway and carefully clasped Crosshair’s fingers with his own, hoping against hope that it would be soothing for him rather than upsetting.

When Crosshair frowned, but didn’t seem distressed by it, Hunter let out a sigh and told him as firmly as he could while still being quiet, “We came back for you. We came and got you.”

“ Liar ,” Crosshair snapped, startling both his brothers with the viciousness of his tone, “You’re not even real , why should I listen to you?”

Hunter looked to Tech for help, who then let out an unhappy sigh, “He did say that sometimes the voices he hears are ours,” he told Hunter tiredly. 

“I’m real,” Hunter insisted firmly, but patiently as he turned back to Crosshair, letting none of his hurt through to taint his voice, “You’re on the Marauder with your brothers and your sister, we’re heading to Dantooine to see Captain Rex and your friend Captain Howzer. It’s been over two months since we brought you back from the Empire.”

Crosshair glared at the wall listlessly, “I…” he said, “I don’t believe you…everything hurts too much…everything always hurts when Rampart is done with me.”

Hunter had to take a deep careful breath to keep from punching the wall in fury. He really hoped he got his hands on that imperial shabuir someday, Hunter was going to tear him to pieces.

He could smell the change in Tech’s body chemistry when the anger had hit him at Crosshair’s words, anger that matched Hunter’s own. Tech would probably figure out the most efficient way to make Rampart suffer if they ever got a chance at revenge, but at that moment all he did was reach down and gave Crosshair’s shoulder a squeeze, “Rampart is not here,” he said in a carefully controlled voice, “And he will never hurt you again Crosshair. We will not let him.”.

“I’m…I’m tired…” Crosshair told them weakly.

“Then sleep,” Tech replied in what he obviously meant to be a soothing voice that nonetheless came out sounding a little clipped. “Sleeping will only make you feel better at this point. You need as much of it as you can get.”

“Nag…” Crosshair mumbled as he closed his eyes and seemed to drift back off. Hunter carefully brushed his littlest brother’s sweaty hair back and then let out a sigh. 

“Is he on enough painkillers?” Hunter asked once Crosshair had nodded off. He felt a complaint like ‘everything hurts’ was normal when one had an infection, let alone the severed leg, but he still worried that maybe they weren’t giving him enough.

Tech hissed at Hunter with sharp frustration coloring his words, “I cannot give him more or we will run out before we get to Dantooine and then he won’t have any.”  

Hunter raised his hands in surrender in the face of Tech’s ill-temper.

Things only got worse from there.

The next time Crosshair woke up he was completely incoherent and didn’t seem to recognize them at all. It was day five and not only had his fever not abated, he had started vomiting as well. Hunter wasn’t a doctor but he knew vomiting was a bad sign and even if he hadn’t known that he’d have been able to guess from how stressed out it made Tech. 

By day six he suspected it was only the IV drip of fluids that was keeping Crosshair from dying of dehydration. His fever was still dangerously high and the vomiting had become so frequent that it seemed like he could barely keep any liquids in his body. They had a small amount of anti-nausea medicine in their supplies, but not enough. They didn’t have enough of anything . Hunter was certain that if Crosshair survived, when Crosshair survived, Tech was going to overstock them with anything and everything he could think of. They needed to get Crosshair through it alive and then they could make sure something like this never happened again. He'd fit it in the budget somehow.

On day seven Crosshair’s fever had gotten so high that Tech had to use the store of liquid nitrogen they kept for hyperdrive repairs to freeze enough water into ice that they could pack Crosshair in it to cool him down. Tech had told them that his fever was so high it was on the verge of cooking his brain, which had sent them all into a panic. Hunter did his best to keep calm and give his siblings orders, even if he was only giving them things to do to keep them too busy to completely freak out.

It was in that semi-panicked state that they finally arrived on Dantooine. Rex had four medics waiting for them with a gurney as they landed and they rushed Crosshair away the second the ramp was down. Tech ran after them, intent on making sure nothing happened to their baby brother while he was under the regs’ care. That left the rest of the Batch standing around, unsure what to do with themselves.

Rex and Howzer were both waiting for them as well and Rex swiftly whisked away the pilots to get them out of the Bad Batch’s hair, although he did give them each a word of support and a tight squeeze on the shoulder or bicep (and a clinging hug in Omega’s case) before he was off. After his fellow captain had left with Hawk and Warthog, Howzer stepped up.

“You kids look awful,” he said gently, “understandably so. I recommend you all take a long-ass water shower and then, even though you may not want to right now, you give eating a shot. I imagine you’ve been too busy to do much self-maintenance and the docs aren’t going to let you anywhere near the clinic until Crosshair is stable.”

Hunter gave Howzer a tired, but immensely grateful nod. Taking care of people seemed to be Howzer’s thing and right then Hunter needed help taking care of his vode. He was stretched so thin mentally that he was barely keeping himself together.

Howzer gave him a slap on the back and escorted them to the shower stalls where he showed them how to turn the settings from sonics to water and how to adjust the temperature. The Batch all took an age under the water, trying to soak the tiredness out of their bones. Hoping to rid themselves of the stress was futile, not while Crosshair was in critical condition and they could do nothing to help him, but the hot water helped Hunter’s nerves at the very least.

When they came out Howzer was waiting for them in the empty barracks (which had not been empty when they went in, suggesting the captain had cleared everyone out for their benefit) with packed meals ready and waiting. “Figured you wouldn’t want to deal with being in the mess hall right now,” the captain told them patiently as he coaxed them all into sitting and then handed out the lunches. 

There was plenty of room to spread out, but Hunter and his siblings all ended up sitting in a circle on the floor, as close as they could get without being on top of each other. Howzer refrained from commenting and simply launched into a highly animated account of what had been going on while they were away, with almost a hundred percent of it being gossip about people they had never heard of.

The Bad Batch couldn’t relax, not really, but Howzer distracted them and kept them relatively calm while they waited for the medics to stabilize their brother and for that Hunter was eternally grateful.

Chapter Text

Crosshair had no sense of time. Largely he had no sense of anything but agonizing pain, burning heat, freezing cold, violent nausea, and bad dreams. He revisited things he desperately wished he could forget, memories that only caused him suffering, the chip screaming in his ears, the hatred it had poisoned him with, Rampart hurting him, and when he wasn’t remembering anything his brain invented new fever-born terrors. He dreamt of fulfilling his orders, of his brothers dead by his hand, each of their heads blown open by a bolt from his firepuncher. He dreamt of giving Omega back to the Kaminoans, of her strapped down and screaming while they dissected her. He dreamt of being unable to find Howzer on Troithe, of having to leave him, Skroll, and Klacks to their fate - to the same fate as the twi’lek they’d seen in the vents, the fate Crosshair had endured for so long.

He dreamt of the voices of Hunter and Tech trying to reassure him, lying to reassure him, but their real life counterparts had left him behind and he was alone in the clutches of Rampart. There was no escape, not for him, not this time.

The nightmares, the pain, the sickness all consumed him and in the short fleeting bouts of awareness that broke through Crosshair wondered if he was being punished. 

The only saving grace he had ever had was that all things came to an end, both good things and - miraculously - bad things. The total domination of Crosshair’s will by the chip had come to an end, his time at the mercy of Rampart had come to an end, his time alone in the dog eat dog world of the Empire had come to an end, and finally being lost within the swirling dreams and memories and pain came to an end.

Crosshair rose through the murk back to true consciousness in confused fits and starts, but when he did make it back he groggily noted that he was not in the Marauder and yet was indoors, for there was a ceiling above him, but not the ceiling he was used to in the attack shuttle he called home. He felt woozy in a way that suggested he was on painkillers which wasn’t great. Crosshair looked down at himself. His right leg was under a blanket, but his left was out. There was a soft robin’s egg blue sock on his left foot, Crosshair didn’t own any blue socks. Somehow that felt important. Why was he wearing a blue sock? Where had the mysterious sock come from?

“Cross, you awake?” asked somebody nearby. Crosshair started, he’d been so distracted by the mystery of the blue sock that he hadn’t looked around at the rest of the room. He scolded himself, bad situational awareness got people killed.

“That’s okay, Cross,” the same somebody said, “I’m watchin’ out for you.”

Crosshair must have done his scolding out loud, whoops. He’d meant to do it silently, in his experience people got all funny when you started talking to yourself out loud. He finally managed to tear his eyes away from the damn blue sock and found that Wrecker was sitting at his bedside. He looked awful, with dark sleepless circles under his eyes and a relieved but threadbare sort of expression on his face. 

“Wrecker,” Crosshair said then coughed. His voice was hoarse and crackling like he hadn’t spoken for ages. “Where are we? Not on Belgaroth…”

Wrecker let out a huff, “Nah, we left Belgaroth a week and a half ago.”

“And the regs?” Crosshair asked next.

Wrecker gave him a tired grin, “Fine, we got ‘em both an’ they’re back with their brothers now.”

Crosshair squinted at him. Weird unfamiliar room, bed with railings, chair next to bed containing Wrecker…loud beeping…he looked around again and saw that he was hooked up to several machines displaying various numbers and lines as they made their own individual noises, thus explaining the beeping. Hospital, he was in a hospital.

“Wait, Cross, don’t—“ Wrecker said, grabbing Crosshair’s wrists when he tried to sit up and yank all the sensor pads and their attached cords off of himself. He was drugged, he knew he was drugged, his brain felt weird and foggy and he knew he should be totally freaking out right now but while the panic was there, it felt like it was being suppressed. When Crosshair saw the needle in his arm, the IV, he tried to yank his hands out of Wrecker’s grip so he could rip it out, so it’d stop poisoning him with the drugs, but Wrecker held on and he was a whole lot stronger than Crosshair.

“Let go!” Crosshair demanded, his voice strangled with that twisted panic that was both there and not there.

“You’re hurt,” Wrecker told him firmly, frowning, “You gotta leave the stuff in or you won’t get better.”

“No!” Crosshair snarled, “I don’t want drugs, I don’t want to be in here, it’s dangerous!”

“Tech checked it,” Wrecker assured him, “he checked everything’ they did before they did it when you were in surgery an’ when you got out an’ they putcha in here. It’s safe, Tech promised it was safe.”

That stalled some of Crosshair’s belligerent panic, but the part he caught on was the word ‘surgery’. It took a second for him to rack his brain until he remembered the droidbreaker karking up his leg. Then he processed what Wrecker had told him before he’d realized where he was. Crosshair had been unconscious for a whole week and a half?

“How bad was my leg?” he asked urgently. If it was bad, and it must be for them to keep him out for that long, then he might be benched again while his siblings went off on whatever mission Rex saw fit to give them next. Crosshair didn’t want that and he heard the beeping he took to be his heart monitor pick up speed. 

A look at Wrecker’s face told him everything. His brother had gone pale and strained as he worked his jaw trying to come up with a way to break the news that Crosshair was too injured to fight and would have to be left behind. Eventually Wrecker seemed to give up and he cautiously transfered his grip on one of Crosshair’s hands so he was holding them both with one of his own and then reached across his brother’s bed to pull the blankets off his covered leg silently. Crosshair frowned at him and then looked down at his newly visible leg. 

If not for the beeping monitor, Crosshair would have thought his heart had stopped.

He stared, blinked, shook his head, and then stared some more. His leg was…gone. Not stitched together, not splinted, not even in a cast. It was gone fully and completely from the knee down.

“W-what?” Crosshair wheezed.

His leg was gone. It was gone.

“I don’t—I…my leg…” he stammered weakly.

Wrecker bit his lip, “The…that droidbreaker thing, it gotcha good and we couldn’t get it to let go of you until it had already…”

“Until it had torn my karking leg off?” Crosshair hissed at him, his shock morphing into fury in an instant. “You couldn’t have, you know, shot it in the eyes?!”

“We didn’t wanna hit you…” Wrecker said softly, it was a weak, shaky defense, so weak and shaky that it snapped Crosshair right out of his building fury and left him feeling listless. Wrecker wasn’t supposed to sound like that. Crosshair didn’t like that he was making Wrecker sound like that. 

“Why was I out for so long?” he asked instead of snarling something cruel, “Even if I—if I had my leg torn off I shouldn’t have been out that long should I? That seems excessive.”

“You almost died,” Wrecker told him unhappily, “Tech saved you from bleeding to death, he did surgery and gave you blood…but you got an infection and it made you delirious even after he stopped givin’ you sedatives and you woke up.”

“I…I don’t—” Crosshair bit his lip and dragged himself into a sitting position, which made the pain in his leg - what was left of it - spike threateningly. Wrecker helped him get fully upright and then released his hands, apparently confident that Crosshair wasn’t going to try and rip out his IV, and searched around for the controls to sit the back of the bed up for him to lean on. 

Crosshair knotted his fists in the fabric of the blanket still covering most of him. “Where is everyone else?” was the question he chose to ask first out of the million clamoring in his head. He couldn’t tell what was him and what was the remnants of the chip. Whatever drugs they had him on seemed to be suppressing the voices at least. Now if they just unhooked all the beeping machines he might experience quiet for the first time since the Order.

“The docs only let in one visitor at a time, so we’ve been takin’ turns waitin’ for you to wake up,” Wrecker explained, “Want me to get Hunter? He asked me to get ‘im when you woke up...I think I’m s’posed to get a medic too…”

“I…whatever, I don’t care,” Crosshair told him, too knotted up inside to have an opinion on who was with him at the moment. His leg was gone . How was he supposed to fight? How was he supposed to keep his siblings safe? How was he supposed to do anything? They were going to leave him, what choice did they have? He was dead weight.

Crosshair barely noticed his brother standing to his full massive height and then ducking out of the room and was still too distracted to pay much attention to the medic that came in a moment later with Hunter on his heels. The sergeant must have been waiting close by for him to be there so soon.

The medic spoke to Crosshair but he wasn’t really listening, too caught up in his spiraling thoughts as they darkened rapidly. All he could think about was that they were going to leave him behind and there was nothing he could do to stop it, no way to argue that they needed him, no way to convince them that he was useful. What good was he to them now, what good was he to anyone?

“Crosshair!” Hunter barked and Crosshair snapped out of his thoughts back to the real world, feeling a little bewildered at being dragged so suddenly out of his head.

“What?” he snapped, resorting to anger so he didn’t beg. Hunter was the one who would decide what to do with him, but did that really matter when there were no scenario in which Crosshair could stay with his siblings without being a massive liability?

“Needle was talking to you,” Hunter told him. He looked just as rundown as Wrecker, with that same threadbare relief in his expression, but it was mixed with all-consuming worry. Maybe Crosshair should try to remain more cognizant of his surroundings if his lack of attention was so concerning.

“Thank you, Hunter,” said the medical officer. Now that Hunter had pointed out who he was, Crosshair recognized him. Apparently the reg was healed enough to return to his duties, although there was shiny pink scarring around his neck where the collar had sat and on his face and hands where’d he’d been slashed while knife-fighting. Most obvious though was the white patch stuck over his missing eye. They must not have had a replacement available. “As I was saying,” Needle started again, “How are you feeling?”

“My karking leg was torn off, how do you think I feel?” Crosshair snapped. Both Hunter and Needle flinched a little at his tone and neither of them tried to scold him for his temper. That was good because Crosshair felt he had a right to a little ill-temperedness given the situation. Besides, it wasn’t like he could ruin his chance for Hunter to let him stay with them, since there was no chance of that to begin with.

“I’ll rephrase,” Needle said in a more subdued tone, “On a scale of one to ten, with one being no pain and ten being the worst pain in your life, how much pain are you in?” 

The question was phrased almost exactly the same as when Tech had asked him about his headaches and Crosshair was a little thrown by that. It must be a standardized medical question.

“I can tell I’m drugged off my ass,” Crosshair grumbled, “so right now it’s around three.”

Hunter let out a breath that he was clearly trying to keep from sounding like a relieved sigh. Needle simply nodded and wrote something into his datapad before coming over to check the readouts on Crosshair’s various machines.

Crosshair’s older brother stayed out of Needle’s way, but remained closeby regardless. Crosshair felt a little bitter about that, if they were going to leave they should just go already and save him from agonizing over it. Hovering around him like this when he knew they were just going to abandon him in the end was sadistic.

Needle summarily distracted him from his dark thoughts by moving around to the other side of the bed and turning Crosshair’s arm so he could check where they’d taped the IV in place on his inner forearm. The action made Crosshair go stiff, not because somebody he barely knew was touching him, but because it was at that moment that he realized he was in a hospital gown rather than his blacks, a hospital gown which did nothing to cover the scars on his arms.

It took every ounce of self control Crosshair possessed to keep himself from yanking his bare arm out of Needle’s gentle grip. The reg paid no attention to the scars, which made sense given Crosshair had been unconscious for days, plenty of time for all the medical staff to get their fill of ogling him. The knowledge that anybody could walk in and see them made his skin crawl though. 

When Needle was finally finished with his IV, Crosshair tugged the thin hospital blanket up around his shoulders. It trapped his hands, but at least he was covered up. He could tell Hunter had picked up on it, given the slightly stricken look on his face, but when he noticed Crosshair was looking at him he schooled his expression into something calmer.

“Cold?” Needle asked him as he circled around the bed once again to reach the main course of his examination: the remains of Crosshair’s leg. “I can get you another blanket if you need it.”

Crosshair shook his head, “I’m fine,” he said in a clipped tone, just this side of a snap.

“Alright, let somebody know if that changes,” Needle told him as he set his datapad down on the bed by Crosshair’s foot and took to poking and prodding what was left of his knee. When the medical officer went to change the dressing that the limb had been wrapped in Crosshair found he couldn’t look, he couldn’t bear to see his flesh ending in a stump. He wasn’t ready for it, so he looked away, focusing on staring at the smooth white wall to his left.

Somebody had hung up a poster depicting a series of ten cartoon faces in increasing levels of distress. Above the faces was the caption ‘Pain Scale’ which Crosshair could only assume meant the image was related to that same question both Needle and Tech had asked him.

When the dressing was changed Crosshair was able to look back in time to see Needle messing with a small tube that was running along Crosshair’s hip and thigh before it dipped under the dressing on his leg. He hadn’t the foggiest idea what it could be for, but at that point Crosshair really couldn’t make himself care what they were doing to him.

Needle asked him some more questions that he answered to the best of his ability but Crosshair had largely zoned out by then. Still no voices in his ears, but his head was far from silent. Ever since he’d figured out what Tech had meant about letting his clamoring thoughts wash over him he had marginally been able to find some peace in his head, but not now. Now all the coping mechanisms he had developed felt like they were out of reach and he was left with the hurricane trapped inside the confines of his skull.

It showed, because Needle tried to get him to tell him what was wrong, but as far as Crosshair was concerned that was none of his business, so he snarled at him instead of giving him a real answer.

“Will you talk to Tech?” Hunter asked him.

Needle seemed unhappy about the idea that his patient was holding out on him, but he let Hunter handle his ill-tempered little brother rather than trying to fight Crosshair’s stubborn irritation.

Crosshair considered the question seriously. On one hand they were just going to leave him there on Dantooine anyway, but then again that would mean he should see if Tech could help him while he was still around to do so. Eventually he nodded and both Hunter and Needle left the room, although Needle was clearly hesitant.

Tech appeared before Crosshair even really had time to start suffocating in his own brain again. His siblings must be waiting crowded around outside the room for them to be capable of appearing so quickly. The Bad Batch medic’s eyes flicked over his brother, noting the blanket covering his torso and arms as well as the state of everything else, Crosshair could practically see him cataloguing it, before Tech finally sat down in the chair next to the bed.

“I am told you are holding out on Needle,” Tech said in a mild voice. He seemed much more relaxed than either Hunter or Wrecker, but then again he was naturally of a calmer disposition than either, so it might be that he was just as concerned but was simply not being nearly as demonstrative about it. “Please tell me what is bothering you.”

Crosshair couldn’t help but laugh. It was not a pleasant noise and Tech grimaced at the sound of it. Even Crosshair recognized that his voice had that raw desperate tone to it that it had carried almost constantly for the first few weeks he’d been with them after Kamino. That wasn’t surprising because he felt very similar at that moment to how he had back then. Out of control, battered on all sides by the chaos in his head, and doomed no matter how you looked at it.

He let the laugh carry him for a moment and then leaned his head back and closed his eyes, “I hate the drugs,” he told his brother after a long moment of silence where Tech patiently waited him out, “but they at least made the voices shut the hell up…”

“However?” Tech prompted.

Crosshair let out a sigh and finally surrendered the information. “It’s still loud,” he told his brother, “I can’t…nothing's working. It’s too loud.”

“You are having uncontrolled intrusive thoughts,” Tech deduced as the clever little gears in his brain spun at light speed. Even though he was spot on, he still waited for Crosshair to confirm it before he sat back and adjusted his goggles while he considered the situation. “That suggests to me that you are struggling with your emotions,” he said after a moment.

Crosshair couldn’t help but roll his eyes, “No,” he replied snidely, “my leg is gone, but I assure you, I’m still emotionally stable.”

Tech let out a sigh and rested his hand on Crosshair’s shoulder, on top of the blanket. “It is completely understandable for you to feel the way you are feeling.” Tech told him with that same everlasting patience that helped him deal with his little brother through all those weeks of panic and chaos right after Kamino. “Fear, rage, despair, grief, all these are normal reactions to the loss of a limb. I am not surprised that you are having trouble brushing away the influence of the chip under these circumstances. You are allowed to feel this way Crosshair.”

“Glad I have your permission,” Crosshair snapped.

Tech ignored that remark and simply plowed onwards, “I am not a mind-healer, but if you like I can consult with Rex’s medical staff and see if they have any suggestions.”

“No they—” Crosshair started in a panic before he caught himself and took a deep breath so he could wrangle his nerves back under control. 

“They have already run enough scans on you to know about the scarring on your brain,” Tech told him placidly. “I did not volunteer any of your personal information that wasn’t directly linked to your immediate well-being, but they came to the correct conclusions regardless. You would only benefit from informing them of your troubles, Crosshair. They have a great deal more experience dealing with these things than I do.”

“They’re regs ,” Crosshair hissed, hoping that would tell Tech what he needed to know. They weren’t like him and his brothers, he couldn’t trust them to have good intentions, he couldn’t rely on them when there were other options, even if the other options weren’t favorable. 

“Echo is a reg,” Tech reminded him blandly, “And so is Captain Howzer. You trust both of them implicitly.”

Crosshair made a frustrated noise, “They’re the exception to the rule.”

Tech sighed, “I fully understand you not wishing to discuss your symptoms with people you don’t know, but at the very least allow me to confer with them on my own so I can give you medically sound advice.”

That was as good an offer as he was going to get from Tech, Crosshair knew, so he folded and gave his brother a tired nod. “Good,” Tech said, “I’ll send someone else in while I speak with the medical staff. Before I go, do you have any other concerns you haven’t told Needle?”

Crosshair shook his head and Tech let out a sigh as he got to his feet. He gave his little brother’s shoulder another squeeze before walking back out of the room.

Again Crosshair was left alone with his thoughts, and what a punishment that was when they all screamed the same old things.

They don’t need you!

They’re going to leave you!

What can you possibly do like this?!

You’re useless and useless things get discarded!

He reached up a hand to dig his nails into his temple, only for the movement to be arrested by somebody grabbing his wrist and pulling it away. Crosshair started and looked up to see Echo leaning over him, his exhausted expression caught between that same relief and the familiar concern.

“Not feeling great, I take it?” Echo asked as he sat down in the chair and then changed his hold on Crosshair’s wrist until their fingers were clasped together. 

It was a moment of supreme weakness that prevented Crosshair from yanking his hand out of Echo’s grip.

“My leg got torn off,” he snapped instead, “What do you think?”

Echo tilted his head, “I get it Cross’ika, believe me I do.”

And then Crosshair remembered that Echo had lost both his legs and his arm. He felt foolish in light of that. What right did he have to feel like this when Echo had gone through so much worse?

Echo shook his head, “No, stop that. I can see you putting yourself down. You’re allowed to feel like this Cross’ika. You’ve lost something important, you’re allowed to grieve for it. You’re allowed to be angry , so long as you don’t take it out on anybody.”

Crosshair twisted the fingers of his free hand into the front of his hospital gown beneath the blanket. He was torn. It was hard to think like this. He hoped Tech would find a solution for him quickly.

“Tech and I are already putting schematics together for a prosthetic, you know,” Echo told him in a light voice as he gave Crosshair’s fingers a squeeze, “Mine are pretty good so we were going to use them as a template. We’ll consult with you while designing it of course.”

Crosshair couldn’t help but gape at him, “You’re going to make me a new leg?” he asked.

Echo actually laughed and patted him on the back of his hand with his scomp, “Of course we’re going to make you a new leg! What? Did you think we were going to make you go on missions in a wheelchair?”

“You… you’re…” Crosshair stared at him. That sounded like they…like they wanted to help him instead of leaving him like they reasonably should.

Echo gave him a disturbingly perceptive look, “You’re still afraid we’re going to leave you,” he said. It wasn’t a question, not really. 

Crosshair could only look away and Echo let out a sigh. “I get that you’re not going to believe it no matter how many times we say it, we lost your trust when we did leave you…but I’ll say it another time, we’re not going to leave you behind again. We’ve all agreed that if Rex has a mission for us we’ll turn it down.”

“What if he demands you do it in exchange for staying here? For using his medical facilities and resources?” Crosshair asked him cautiously.

“Then we’ll take you and skedaddle,” Echo replied, “but Rex won’t do that. You don’t know him like I do so I can see how you might think that could happen, but Rex isn’t like that. He wants to see you better just as much as everybody else.” 

“How long until I can walk again?“ Crosshair asked him urgently. He didn’t want to stay down if there was any other choice.

Echo let out a huff, “I don’t know, you’d have to ask Needle. All my limbs were taken when I was half-dead and then Tambor hooked me up to their kriffing brain dump machines, so I don’t remember any of that except all the scenarios they kept running me through. When you guys came and got me everything was already attached and worked similar enough to how it should that I got used to it quickly. Of course it helped that we were in sort of a situation and I had to work it out quickly.”

“So this is uncharted territory,” Crosshair grumbled. He couldn’t accuse Echo of not knowing what it was like to lose a limb, but it was annoying that he couldn’t give any actual information on what Crosshair was in for.

“Yeah, I’m sorry Cross’ika, I’ll be able to give you more help once we have a prosthetic for you. Until then it’s going to be Tech and the medics you’ll have to get information from.”

There was a rustling outside the door and then not just one, but all of his siblings - sans Tech - snuck into the room.

Crosshair huffed, “I thought there was a one visitor rule,” he grumbled.

“We’re breaking it,” Hunter told him evenly.

“Everybody’s busy right now so nobody is gonna bust us,” Wrecker added.

Omega bounced over to Crosshair’s bedside and then after a moment of thoughtful contemplation, climbed up onto the bed to curl against his left side. She looked up at him with big eyes and asked, “Are you ok?”

“Nobody has asked me that one yet,” Crosshair griped, “It’s all been ‘How are you feeling, Crosshair?’ But then again maybe it’s because the answer is obvious. No, I’m not okay.”

“Sorry,” Omega mumbled, burying her face in his ribs. 

Crosshair sighed and snaked his free hand out from under the blanket to pet her hair the way Hunter often did. “Sounds like I almost died,” he said as something of an olive branch, “But I’m not dying now, so by default I’m better than before.”

That seemed to cheer the little girl up as she snuggled closer and lay her arm across his midsection in a half-hug. Moving his hand out from under the blanket had caused said blanket to slide off his shoulders, but with Echo still holding one hand and the other occupied with Omega’s golden locks, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Fortunately Hunter was on the same page as he stepped around Echo and tugged the blanket back up over Crosshair’s shoulders so it fell over everything but his wrists.

“You cold?” Wrecker asked with a dismayed look. 

Crosshair rolled his eyes at being asked the same question twice, but Hunter answered for him. “He’s not in his blacks,” the sergeant said.

Quick as ever when it came to the implications of a statement, Wrecker understood immediately. “Oh, your arms…well I can get a set from your stuff on the Marauder,” the giant offered.

“I doubt they’d let me change clothes,” Crosshair grumbled. He couldn’t wait to get back into his familiar blacks, but unfortunately he was going to have to ask Needle about it, given they’d have to take the IV out and all the sensors off to put the blacks on and it had been made clear to him that his brothers would stop him if he tried to take that shit off.

Crosshair’s siblings all settled down like they intended to stay until somebody came and kicked them out, which was probably exactly what they planned on doing. Omega snuggled into his side, Echo continued to hold Crosshair’s hand, and for once Crosshair was too tired to fight them. His energy was waning fast. His brothers noticed it, he could tell, but none of them commented on it. Instead they talked amongst themselves quietly without trying to make Crosshair engage in the conversation.  

His siblings didn’t intend to leave him, at least not over his lost leg, they were going to stay and help him recover. Crosshair’s head was still full of the chip’s howling, but his panic had been quelled somewhat now that he knew the worst case scenario wasn’t happening, and that was enough for him to doze off.

Chapter Text

Crosshair slept until the wookiee medic came into his hospital room and promptly chased all his siblings out, waking him up in the process. She, for it was a she, checked on his vitals again, jotted the numbers down on her datapad, and then asked him if he needed anything. 

There had been a module on Shyriiwook that all clones were required to complete in case they were deployed in an area in which it would be necessary, since Wookiees didn’t have the vocal cords for Basic, so in a twist of fate that Crosshair knew annoyed Echo, he actually understood Shyriiwook much better than he understood Mando’a.

The medic’s name was Tilorrli, which Crosshair was too groggy to be certain he’d remember. According to her she was the medic directly responsible for his care, while Needle, as a medical officer rather than just a regular medic, had been put in charge of the team of medics as a whole. Apparently they’d been sorely lacking a CMO before he’d been rescued. He did a daily check with all their patients, which explained why it had been him Crosshair had seen earlier and not Tilorrli.

Since she was there and Needle was not, Crosshair asked her the question he’d been worrying over. “How long until I can walk again?”

The wookiee tilted her head, although he wasn’t sure if she was scrutinizing him or just considering his question. Eventually she did answer him.

“Your leg needs to heal before we can even consider getting you a prosthetic and it’s fortunate that your brothers are building one for you, as we don’t have any prosthetics at our disposal,” she told him.

“I’m guessing that’s why Needle doesn’t have a replacement for his eye,” Crosshair said with a huff.

Tilorrli nodded her shaggy head.

“How long until it’s healed then?” Crosshair asked instead.

The medic trilled thoughtfully as she inspected the swelling in his bandaged stump. “If we dump you in our bacta tank once or twice I’d say it’d only need a few days. Bacta’s useful like that.”

Crosshair perked up at that, but didn’t interrupt her when she went on speaking, “Even once it’s healed we’ll need to let the residual limb shrink before a prosthetic can be installed, you won’t be waiting around idle though, there are exercises you’ll be doing to build up muscles to compensate for the loss of the limb.”

“How long will that take?” he asked.

“A couple weeks for it to shrink most likely,” Tilorrli told him patiently, “it’s different for each person. I’ve seen it take up to a month for the swelling to fully disappear, but if nothing else it’ll give your brothers time to build your prosthetic. The physical therapy will last longer, but that will be because you’ll continue to do it even once you have your prosthetic. Once the new leg is complete I’ll do a quick little surgery to hook up the neural interface and then you can start learning to use it. I’ll need one of your brothers to advise me during the surgery since the interface probably won’t be standard.”

Crosshair let out a relieved breath, it sounded like it wouldn’t take as long as he had feared. “Tech will probably want to do that, he’s our medic and our engineer.”

Tilorrli nodded mildly as she put on the fresh dressing while Crosshair looked away, still not ready to see it. “Do you feel hungry?” she asked him once she was done.

He shook his head, he felt too off balance to have an appetite. His wretched brain was still bombarding him with all those dark thoughts that it seemed to create just to make him submit. That was the chip’s ultimate goal, the end to which it tormented him. Submission to the directives. Even now that it was just a shadow burned into his brain it still screamed in his head for him to hurt his siblings, for him to return to the Empire, to Rampart. He’d gotten better at ignoring it, but his defenses were worn down now and it was harder to concentrate on anything but the constant scratching inside his skull.

Fortunately Crosshair wasn’t panicking anymore, but that didn’t mean he felt good. In reality he felt like shit, melancholy and the ambient anxiety of being in a medical setting dragging even on the thoughts he suspected were his own. He didn’t want to eat. He didn’t really want to do anything but sleep.

Tilorrli made that same thoughtful trill in the depths of her throat and then said, “You need calories even if you don’t feel hungry, I’ll send somebody with something easy to digest, try to eat at least some of it.”

Crosshair nodded numbly. He didn’t really notice when she left. Now that he knew what he was in for he had a new thing to stress over. 

What if it takes too long and they change their minds once it gets tedious? whispered his brain, one of the insidious voices in his head that he suspected was the lasting influence of the chip. 

He shook his head to try and clear it. Echo had said they were going to help him recover, had said they weren’t going to leave him. If he didn’t believe that he was just going to worry himself sick. Even if he had to reassure himself of it every second of every day it would be better than letting the panic consume him.

What if it heals wrong and the new leg isn’t viable? the cruel little thoughts pressed.

The medic would have told him if it was healing wrong, Crosshair reasoned to himself. If something did go wrong he’d…well he’d have no idea what to do.

***

Surprisingly it was Howzer who came with his food, which consisted of a bowl of thin soup and crackers on a tray.

“How’re you holding up, kid?” the captain asked him as he set the tray down on Crosshair’s lap. Crosshair eyed the food dubiously, he still didn’t feel like eating, but he suspected Howzer wouldn’t take no for an answer and that was probably why he was the one they had sent.

“Not hungry,” he tried anyway, hoping the captain would be merciful.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Howzer told him as he sat down in the chair next to the bed, “Now eat.”

Typical.

Crosshair freed his hands from the blanket and mechanically went about sipping the salty soup broth and eating the bland crackers. Howzer laughed, “Maker, Crosshair you don’t have to act like I’ve consigned you to the gallows, it’s just soup.”

That earned him an acerbic look from Crosshair, which, as ever with Howzer, did absolutely nothing. Unfortunately a moment later Crosshair moved a little too much and the blanket slid down to pool in his lap, baring his naked arms to the world.

Howzer spotted the scars immediately, Crosshair could tell from the way his lips thinned into a severe line, but the captain only looked at them for a second before he turned his eyes back to meet Crosshair’s own. “Those why you were raiding the medpacs back on Rhyloth?” he asked in a neutral tone of voice.

Crosshair swallowed thickly and then gave the captain a slow stiff nod, waiting for him to make a fuss, for him to get angry or upset the way his brothers had, but Howzer didn’t do either. He let out a sigh, ran a hand through his hair and down his face in a tired fashion, and said, “Of course.” And that was it, Howzer simply moved on as if Crosshair hadn’t just admitted to being tortured for months right under his nose.

Somehow Crosshair had expected himself to want the outrage on his behalf, but instead all he felt was overwhelming relief. Hunter and the rest of his siblings had enough outrage for them all, having Howzer react so calmly was a pleasant break from the constant upset that was dealing with his siblings since the Order.

“So talk to old man Howzer,” the captain said as he leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out so he could cross his ankles, “How are you feeling?”

“My leg hurts,” Crosshair grumbled, because it did and because he didn’t feel particularly cooperative at the moment.

“Hardly a surprise,” Howzer said, “Did you tell Tilorrli about it?”

Crosshair nodded and ate another soup cracker.

Howzer nodded back at him, “Good, I’m guessing it’s within expected limits then, what else?”

“What do you mean, ‘ what else?’” Crosshair snapped.

“In the brainpan,” Howzer clarified cheerfully, rapping on his own temple with his knuckles for emphasis, “How are you feeling emotionally?”

Crosshair glared at him, hoping maybe he could vaporize the captain if he thought about it hard enough, but alas Howzer came out of it unscathed. The captain stared him down with a patience that rivaled Tech’s and eventually Crosshair threw his hands up in defeat. “Fine! Be a busybody!”

“I am and I will,” Howzer told him unrepentantly, “Now spill it.”

“I—I feel bad I guess,” Crosshair stammered. Even just that was hard for him to admit.

“Bummed out?” Howzer asked, his voice understanding and his eyes kind.

“If you want to phrase it so trivially then yes you could say I’m bummed,” Crosshair grumbled, “I’d go with ‘depressed’ personally.”

Howzer made a thoughtful noise, “Well let’s see if we can’t clear some of that out. What is the thing that’s worrying you the most? I know you’re always afraid your vode are going to leave without you, so I can’t imagine this is helping with that.”

Crosshair shook his head, “I… I was, am still a little, but Echo said he and Tech are building me a new leg…they wouldn’t be doing that if they were just going to leave…”

“Logic prevails over fear!” Howzer crowed happily, “You’re absolutely right, your vode are in it for the long haul and if you start to stress about that just think of how much work building a whole-ass functioning leg is. They’re doing that for you, to help you live how you want to, because they love you.”

“You’re a sap,” Crosshair told him snidely, masking the fact that it actually did reassure him to hear that. “But what if it doesn’t work?” he asked before his brain caught up with his mouth, “What if—what if my leg heals wrong and I can’t use a prosthetic and I’m just stuck as useless dead weight?”

Howzer’s jovial expression turned serious and Crosshair realized he must have just said something stupid. “There’s no such thing as a useless person, Crosshair,” Howzer told him calmly but firmly. His tone said loud and clear that he would accept no arguments on the matter. “Some people need help and some people don’t, but not needing help doesn’t make somebody better and needing help doesn’t make somebody worse. People have intrinsic value that you can’t measure based on their abilities.”

Crosshair made a frustrated noise, “That's not the point , Howzer!” he snapped, “How am I supposed to—to do anything to help them, to keep them safe , if I’m stuck in a wheelchair and can’t fight?”

The captain let out a sigh and crossed his arms over his chest, then tilted his head slightly to fix Crosshair with a patient look. “Even if you couldn’t fight, which I’m sure won’t be the case, but for the sake of argument we’ll say for whatever reason you can never walk again, that doesn’t mean you can’t help your vode. You could learn to be a pilot for instance.” Howzer smiled, “Even you have to agree that pilots are vital to the success of a mission.”

Crosshair frowned. Howzer…definitely wasn’t wrong about that. He didn’t like the idea of being taken off the battlefield and delegated to a full support position, but if he were a pilot or something of that nature he would be able to help. He wouldn’t be dead weight.

Then again Howzer seemed to be trying to convince him that there was no such thing as a person being dead weight…it was hard for Crosshair to get his mind around that when all he’d ever been told was clones who couldn’t pull their weight got decommissioned. He couldn't help but wonder where Howzer had gotten such gentle ideas from.

“See?” Howzer said, smiling. “Even if you can’t do the same things as before, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do new things that are just as good.”

“Where’d you get such friendly little ideas from?” Crosshair asked him, feeling wrong-footed, “Not from the Kaminoans.”

Howzer laughed, “No definitely not the Kaminoans, they’d have us fight even with every bone in our bodies broken if they could get results. No, Cham and the twi’leks put these little ideas in my head. For them when somebody can’t function on their own, their friends and family help them and their society tries to find ways for them to live good lives and contribute how they can.” The captain smiled wanly, “I heard the Republic was like that too but well…”

“That never applied to us,” Crosshair finished for him. “Not even the Jedi cared about us enough to stop the long-necks from decommissioning us.”

“That’s why we rely on each other,” Howzer told him plainly, “Even if nobody else in the galaxy is on our side, we have each other. I’m still immensely pissed off that those damn di’kutla brothers treated you kids so bad when they should have given you extra support instead. I promise nobody here will do that, Crosshair, they know Rex and I will skin them alive if they act like shabuire.”

“It doesn’t matter how the regs act,” Crosshair said stiffly, “We don’t need them.”

Howzer gave him a sad look, “Maybe not, but you have us anyway, I’ll make sure of that.” He let out a sigh and then made himself perk back up. Somehow it managed to not look forced, Crosshair didn’t know how he did it. “Skroll and Klacks want to see you obviously, care to reassure them you’re not dead or dying?”

“So many people want to see me I feel like I should be setting up appointments,” Crosshair grumbled.

The captain laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, “The price of being well-loved. If it’ll help, then I’ll break Needle’s one visitor rule. Technically I can’t countermand him on the clinic rules without getting sedated and dumped out in the dirt, but I can pretend I don’t know them until he gives up in frustration.”

Crosshair raised an eyebrow. “So you’re a pain in the ass for everyone , not just me.” 

The observation earned him what was probably the most purely malicious grin he had ever seen. “I know what I’m about,” was all Howzer said in his defense. Instead he used his comms to summon the other two regs that Crosshair didn’t know why he put up with, then Howzer kept him distracted for the ten minutes it took for Skroll and Klacks to show up.

“You look like shit,” Skroll told him jovially as he trotted into the hospital room and held the door for Klacks to follow him in. Skroll was as neatly shaven and hard-eyed as always, but that day Klacks had his long hair down around his shoulders instead of up.

“Well despite Howzer’s best efforts I’ve lost weight again,” Crosshair told him dryly, “Wild animals will do that to a person if given half a chance apparently.”

“Looks like it,” Skroll replied, “Too bad Howzer can’t just make you eat more to make up for it. If only everything were so easy.”

Howzer scoffed, “Easy my shebs, he’s worse than eight-year-old Hera. I’m inches from holding him down and force feeding him at any given moment.”

“Careful Captain,” Skroll told him maliciously, “I hear some people are into that.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Skroll, so I don’t have to kill you where you stand,” Howzer shot back bitterly.

Klacks ignored the two of them and came over to lean his hip against the side railing of Crosshair’s bed, “Guess my good luck charm isn’t working too well,” he said in a remorseful tone.

Crosshair for the life of him didn’t know why he felt the need to cheer the shiny up, but he did. He must be getting soft. “I’m still alive aren’t I?” He told Klacks blandly.

The shiny perked up slightly, “Yeah there’s that I suppose,” he said with a crooked smile.

“Tilorrli and his immensely nerdy vode will have him up and walking in no time,” Howzer told the three of them blithely. 

“Who do you think you are, calling other people immensely nerdy, Mr. I-Solve-Math-Problems-For-Fun?” Skroll scoffed.

Howzer gave him an unimpressed look, “That’s Captain I-Solve-Math-Problems-For-Fun to you, Sergeant.”

Klacks leaned over to speak to Crosshair in a low tone while the captain and sergeant bickered. “Everyone thinks Captain Howzer is a meathead because he kicks everybody’s shebs in sparring, but he’s secretly a math geek. Him and Captain Rex’s chief engineer are always getting into fights about whether theoretical math is useless. I think they got in a fistfight over it once.”

“We got in a fistfight because Nix has his head up his ass,” Howzer corrected irritably, turning his attention from Skroll to Klacks. Skroll made a rude gesture at the captain behind his back and Crosshair had to cover his face lest he laugh and ruin his reputation. “You can’t understand anything at all about the universe without mathematics and you can’t use applied mathematics without making use of formulas dictated by theoretical mathematics. It's common karking sense!”

“I’m sure it is, Captain” Klacks soothed.

Skroll rolled his eyes and said, “Don’t mollify him Klacks, he needs to realize nobody cares about his stupid feud with Lt. Nix except the two of them. Otherwise he’s going to drag you into it.”

“You’re just bitter because you can’t do long division,” Howzer retorted primly. 

“I completed my modules just like everybody else, doesn’t mean I have to make a hobby out of it,” Skroll replied. 

“Did you bring them here so you could fight about nonsense?” Crosshair asked Howzer acerbically.

“No,” Howzer said, shaking his shoulders out slightly before he settled fully back in the chair, like a tooka shaking itself to resettle its puffed up hackles. “I let them in here because they wouldn’t leave me alone if I didn’t.”

“You sad we weren’t paying attention to you, kid?” Skroll asked Crosshair evilly.

“Get spaced,” Crosshair retorted.

Skroll smiled, “That’s ‘get spaced, sir’. I outrank you. Anyway I’m glad you’re still a prickly little bastard. It’d be nothing short of tragic if losing your leg made you friendly and well-adjusted.”

“Who would Howzer baby then?” Klacks added with a laugh.

“You,” Howzer told the shiny in a threatening tone, “And if you slip up I still might, so watch it.”

Crosshair summarily gave up on keeping the trio from bickering. He would rather die than tell any of them and invite ceaseless mockery, but he preferred having them there to being alone. Their sheer nonsense was so distracting that he was able to keep out of his head so long as he had continued exposure.

***

As before Tilorrli came and chased everybody out, although not for quite a while. As he’d said, Howzer pretended he had no idea that there was a one person rule when he was scolded, but he and his friends wisely skedaddled when Tilorrli, unamused, slowly opened her mouth to bare her large fangs.

With a scoff she turned back to Crosshair and went about the same check she had done that morning. After she bustled off to see her other patients Crosshair was left alone, which he found he hated. There was nothing to distract himself with in the hospital room and while he didn’t have to worry about the voices, his head overflowed with noise from the chip’s shadow.

By the time Tech showed up Crosshair was practically climbing the walls. “Still struggling?” his brother asked him completely unnecessarily as he sat down. Crosshair felt the way he had been pounding on his head with his fists should have been quite illustrative.

“What do you think?” he snarled, in too foul of a mood to be anything approaching friendly.

“We’ll it’s fortunate then that that is what I am here to discuss with you,” Tech replied, totally unperturbed. “I have conferred with your medic and Needle and they have recommended some coping strategies.”

“For the love of god just tell me how to turn it off!” Crosshair practically shouted.

Tech reached over and then hesitated for a split second before he took his little brother’s right hand in both of his own. Vindictively, Crosshair was tempted to pull away, but any input to distract him, no matter how small, was a relief. “I wish I could simply turn it off for you, however we can only work through it. Needle and Tilorrli are in agreement that mindfulness exercises such as meditation will most likely be our best bet for getting you the relief you need,” Tech explained patiently, “The reason it took me so long to get this information for you was because I was forced to then track down and interrogate Captain Rex, as he is the only one I am aware of who has been taught to meditate by a Jedi, Ahsoka Tano specifically.”

“So meditating will help?” Crosshair asked. At this point he’d take anything, even if it sounded like Jedi osik. 

“It should. The more you practice it the more it should help you,” Tech replied. “You are clearly in distress right now, would you like to try it?” 

Crosshair grimaced and nodded.

“Very well,” Tech said, adjusting his goggles with one hand but keeping the other entangled with Crosshair’s own, “I will help you in following Captain Rex’s instructions. The first step is to get into a comfortable position. I can adjust the bed if you wish to sit up or lay down more than you currently are.”

Crosshair considered that and then had his brother put the back of the bed up so he could sit almost completely upright. When Tech asked if he was comfortable Crosshair nodded.

“Good, step two,” Tech told him, “is to close your eyes and control your breathing. Try to count your breaths; breathe in for five seconds, hold your breath for two seconds, breathe out for five seconds, hold for two seconds, and then repeat.”

Crosshair did as he was told. Tech counted for him for the first few rounds, but then broke off to say, “Once you get into the rhythm and it no longer becomes necessary to count, Captain Rex suggested you choose a mantra or phrase to repeat to yourself as a way to focus on the meditation and let other thoughts slide off of you like water. Apparently the Jedi are taught to use ‘I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,’ however the captain said he prefers to repeat a simple ‘Peace and Quiet.’”

The Jedi mantra didn’t really feel like it applied to Crosshair, but ‘Peace and Quiet’? Those were things he had used to love, one of the facets of being a sniper that he had enjoyed the most, that had been taken from him by the chip. Getting them back was something he would be willing to strive for.

Crosshair continued to breathe in the same rhythm he had counted out and tried repeating the phrase ‘Peace and Quiet’ to himself over and over. His own thoughts and the thoughts that didn’t belong to him clattered around inside his head, bouncing loudly around his skull, but he focused on the phrase, Peace and Quiet, Peace and Quiet, Peace and Quiet , and to a small degree they became less overwhelming, less unbearable. He let out a sigh of relief and felt Tech squeeze his hand in encouragement.

His brother stayed with him, but didn’t say anything else while Crosshair did his best to meditate, instead fiddling one-handed with his datapad balanced on his knee.

The meditation lasted until Tilorrli returned along with a light blue twi’lek. “Good, there’s still only one of you in here,” the wookiee grumbled. She pointed a shaggy finger at Tech and told him, “If you sneak your brothers in here I’m drowning you all in the septic tank.”

“Duly noted,” Tech responded with a nod and a mild expression. Crosshair retrieved his hand from his older brother’s gentle grip now that there were other people in the room. Displays of affection amongst his brothers were one thing, but he wasn’t comfortable with it around nat-borns. 

“Good,” Tilorrli said and then turned to Crosshair. “This is Dura Fenn,” she told him, gesturing to the twi’lek, “He is our resident physical therapist.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Fenn said with a bow of his head.

Crosshair nodded at him, but while he felt better than he had before Tech dropped in, he did not by any means feel good which also meant he didn’t feel gracious. 

Fenn didn’t appear to be bothered by his reticence. The twi’lek came to the side of Crosshair’s bed, gesturing Tech out of his way as he did so and then spent a moment looking his new patient over before nodding to himself.

Tech meanwhile went to speak with Tilorrli about Crosshair’s current condition and what she felt would be needed in the design of the prosthetic. Crosshair was more interested in that than in Fenn, but he reminded himself that without the physical therapy he wouldn’t be able to use the prosthetic so he forced himself to focus.

“We will be starting you off with very mild exercises as it’s only been a few days since you had surgery. Once you have recovered more we will move on to more strenuous exercise, yes?” Fenn told him.

Crosshair nodded and Fenn gave him a crooked pointy-toothed grin.

“Good.”

Once Crosshair was ready Fenn laid the back of the bed down so he was mostly horizontal and then informed him that they would be exercising the small joints before moving on to the larger ones and that when doing the exercises he should always start as far away from his heart as possible. As such, they started with Crosshair’s remaining foot, where Fenn instructed him to bend then flex his toes for a number of repetitions before moving on to his ankle, and then on to the knee and hip. From there he had Crosshair lift his arms up to flex his fingers, then touch his shoulders and finally to lift and then lower his arms repeatedly to stretch his shoulders. When they got to what remained of his leg Crosshair looked away anxiously and Fenn gave him a patient understanding look. 

“You don’t have to watch, for now you can just do as I say, but you should watch eventually so you don’t develop an aversion to looking at yourself. Such things aren’t healthy,” Fenn told him gently.

Crosshair just nodded and waited for instructions on moving what was left of his leg.

“Bend your residual limb upwards,” the twi’lek instructed and Crosshair assumed he’d meant to bend at the hip since there wasn’t much of his knee left to bend. Fenn nodded once he’d lifted his leg up and then said, “Now extend it. Do this five times.” Crosshair did and Fenn praised him with another, “Very good, now move your leg away from the center of your body then bring it back, away and back five times.”

That seemed to be the end of the exercises except one. “You are doing very well,” Fenn assured him, to which Crosshair couldn’t help but roll his eyes. He wasn’t a cadet, not that anyone had ever said such things to the Batch when they were cadets. “Now your next task is simply to sit up straight without a backrest.”

Doing so felt…weird. He felt decidedly unbalanced with a good portion of the mass on his right side missing. Fenn corrected his posture and then timed him and by the time the twi’lek was satisfied Crosshair felt tired. “Very good,” Fenn said once again, “I want you to do these exercises three times a day, every day, until I tell you otherwise, understand?”

“Yes,” Crosshair replied. His mood was worsening with the heavy weight of his fatigue. “I’m tired,” he admitted bitterly.

Fenn chuckled, “Well you did nearly die a few days ago,” he said, “You can’t expect to be ready to run a marathon, leg aside, but you’ll get better the more you heal.”

Crosshair let out a frustrated huff that made Fenn chuckle again, “Fret not, focus on your exercises. I want you to look at your leg when you do them at least once this week. No need to develop a complex.”

“If you say so,” Crosshair agreed sullenly. Fenn patted him on the shoulder and then took his leave.

At that point Crosshair expected Tech and Tilorrli to leave as well, but the wookiee medic let out an animal snort and put her hands on her hips, “Ready for the bacta tank?” she asked him.

The bacta tank was much loathed among the clone ranks, but if it meant he’d heal faster Crosshair would put up with nearly anything. He nodded and the medic quickly and efficiently unhooked him from all the machines and his IV before she scooped him up in her arms as easily as if she were Wrecker.

Crosshair couldn’t help but snarl at her, he hated being manhandled and being carried around was especially humiliating, “I apologize,” she said as she walked out of the room and down the hall with him carefully clutched in her arms and Tech trailing unobtrusively behind, “But we don’t have any wheelchairs that aren’t already in use. Needle said that Captain Rex is working on it, so this is only temporary, but even if we can’t acquire any you will be able to move about with crutches soon enough.”

“Whatever,” Crosshair growled, trying to ignore his burning face.

Bacta was horrible, because bacta was always horrible, but at least he was able to sleep through most of it. When the treatment was done Tilorrli carried him back to his room and Crosshair found Tech had left him a datapad with a note stuck to it.

‘ This datapad is loaded with literature that you are free to read if you feel bored,’ the note said , ‘Tilorrli says we may visit you again tomorrow, rest well.’

Crosshair sighed as the medic hooked him back up to all the machines and looked over the selection of books Tech had loaded onto the datapad.

At least he had something to do now.

Chapter Text

Crosshair’s medic dipped him in bacta another two times before she and Needle were satisfied that his leg had healed. During that time they also weaned him off the drugs, which meant with every incremental decrease of the IV the voices made an equally incremental return. 

Crosshair did not ask to stay on the drugs to keep the voices away. 

He didn’t know if it was just pain medicine that was doing it or if it was something else in the concoction, but regardless it wouldn’t be practical. Even if the drug responsible didn’t dope him up, the supply logistics would be a nightmare, just as Tech had originally said when discussing psychiatric medicine all those weeks ago. It was better for Crosshair to just listen to his audio player and put up with the voices as he had been. He didn’t need drugs. 

Thankfully when he mentioned that the voices had come back, Tech brought him the audio player without comment, which suggested to Crosshair that they were of concordant opinions on the matter. Between the books, the audio player, and his siblings and the reg trio always wanting to visit him, Crosshair didn’t end up with much unoccupied time, which was fine with him. Being alone in the hospital was nerve-wracking. The meditation was still an ongoing endeavor, one Crosshair was far from mastering, and while it helped a little with the shadow of the chip plaguing him, keeping himself too occupied to ruminate was much more effective.

He did his exercises as instructed, doing as he was told and watching his stump as he moved it with something of a newborn morbid fascination that tentatively replaced the revulsion he had felt earlier only after repeated sessions. His leg looked different . It should obviously, given half of it was missing, but the differences were more complex than just the missing section. Once the dressings were off and he could see his flesh - another thing he had to get used to in small increments - he noticed that the muscles moved a little differently when he used them now than they had before when there were more parts attached.

At Tilorrli’s advice Crosshair had carefully examined his leg once it was healed, looking over the swollen stump where the scarring was the most severe, to familiarize himself with it and fight off the - as Fenn had put it - unhealthy aversion to looking at himself. Of course he wore a compression sleeve most of the time now that the dressings were off, as they were still waiting for the swelling to disappear, but even then Crosshair still caught himself staring at it. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than his fear of seeing it before.

Tilorrli and Needle kept him in the hospital for another week even after his leg had healed, insisting they wanted to be cautious given how close he’d come to death, but once Fenn had moved him to more intensive exercises Tilorrli had provided him with an item he’d coveted ever since his pain had subsided: crutches. 

His medic and her CMO encouraged Crosshair to walk about with the crutches, saying that he should go until he got tired and then rest. Claiming that people recovering from illness and injury needed exercise just as much as they needed rest. 

Crosshair got into the habit of having lunch with his siblings and the reg trio in the mess hall, as Dex’s regular food was much better than what was given out at the hospital and Crosshair had decided that even the orange drink (and it’s other equally powerful flavors) was preferable to tasteless soup and crackers. Howzer always seemed happy to have him and Crosshair could tell his siblings were relieved that he was up and around.

After three weeks of puttering around and waiting in equal measure, the swelling had finally gone down. Crosshair was nothing short of relieved that now Tech and Echo could work on the prosthetic in earnest. 

He was back to sleeping on the Marauder with his siblings as well, which the whole Batch was pleased about including Crosshair, since it meant no more hospital, although getting up and down the steps of the ramp with the crutches took practice. Crosshair shot down the idea that they sleep in the reg barracks until he had his new leg installed with avengeance. He would sleep in his own damn bunk or not at all. The fact that when it had been suggested the phrasing had included all of them staying in the barracks and not just Crosshair did soothe his ire slightly though. His siblings seemed intent on sticking to him like glue and Crosshair personally didn’t feel inclined to stop them.

Because he was out of the hospital both of his brothers were able to corner him to discuss their designs with him at the same time.

Tech dove right in with no preamble as Crosshair sat on his bunk and listened with more patience than he normally had for his brother’s rambling.

“The droidbreaker pulled your knee joint apart quite thoroughly,” Tech told him, gesturing to his missing leg, “So you have essentially been given a through-knee amputation, if not a violent one. This means that your prosthetic will need to have a working knee joint along with the ankle and foot. Our designs are quite complicated, but with the both of us working on it I assure you it won’t take long to complete.”

“Good,” Crosshair replied, “The crutches are fun, they don’t make my shoulders hurt at all , but being able to walk up a staircase without looking like an absolute fool would be nice.” If there was a little sarcasm in there, well Crosshair felt he had a right to it.

Echo smiled at him, “You don’t look like a fool, you look like a person on crutches trying to do something crutches weren’t made for.”

“My mistake,” Crosshair rolled his eyes, “I just look like an idiot then.”

“Regardless,” Tech said, cutting off Echo’s rebuttal, “You will be able to walk up stairs. You should be able to do everything with the prosthetic that you could with your old leg. We’ve worked out a system of synthetic nerves to give you a sense of touch and all joints will be fully articulate. I will work with Tilorrli to install the required mechanisms so it can connect to your nervous system.”

“Your leg’s going to be way better than either of mine,” Echo said with a laugh. 

Crosshair frowned at him, “Why not make yourself better ones then?”

Echo smiled back, “Maybe I will, but yours comes first. I can walk up stairs just fine already.”

After Crosshair listened carefully to Tech and Echo’s plans, he gave the ‘Okay’ and the two of them took his measurements and then whirled away into their patented ‘Engineering Frenzy’. Crosshair was perfectly happy to let them work the whole thing out without his interference, he knew Tech was enough of a mechanical wiz and Echo was sensible enough to keep his brother grounded, so he had no doubts the final product would be brilliant.

Meanwhile Dura Fenn made Crosshair do strength and balance exercises to prepare him for it. Tech and Echo also took notes during Crosshair’s physical therapy, paying attention especially to Fenn’s advice on his ambulatory requirements. Fenn even gracefully allowed Crosshair’s other siblings to come cheer him on on occasion as well, although they made such a ruckus Crosshair almost wished he hadn’t.

Six weeks after the mission to Belgaroth, Echo and Tech presented Crosshair with the finished prosthetic. 

The pair of them had woken him up early like excited kids on Life Day and once he was up they busted the thing out, setting it down on Crosshair’s bunk to examine. Before Belgaroth they probably would have put it on the floor where there was more room, but while Crosshair absolutely refused to complain about it, getting up and down off the floor was difficult with just the crutches and his siblings had started taking pity on him. 

“Ta-da!” Echo had chirped when they set the leg down, although he kept his voice low to keep from waking Wrecker and Omega. Hunter always woke up long before everyone else and was already puttering about in the back of the Marauder, probably taking stock of their supplies or something. Tech had rolled his eyes, but he was still obviously pleased. “Your brand new leg is ready Cross’ika!” Echo went on happily.

“Quite, would you like us to go over its features with you?” Tech asked him, doing a better job of containing his excitement than Echo, but not by much.

Crosshair spent a moment examining the leg. Fortunately for their sleeping brother and sister, he could see it just fine even in the low light in the Marauder. It was made of a matte dark but lightweight metal and while it appeared to have casings on the outside to protect the inner workings Crosshair could see in places the complex web of components meant to replace muscle and tendon and bone. There was a gold color to the sockets and joint casings which he wasn’t sure was aesthetic or if it served a purpose and the whole thing had a much more complex and organic shape than Echo’s almost droid-like legs. 

“Oh it has features does it?” Crosshair asked them dryly.

Tech snorted, “Several.”

Crosshair made a gesture for them to go ahead and Tech launched into a technical spiel about the limb that made almost no sense to Crosshair, although he didn’t interrupt. The gist that he got from the lecture was that the joints, for there was not only a knee and an ankle joint but also toe joints, were all fully articulated as they had intended. He’d have full ankle rotation and the toes could splay and curl as effectively as the real thing. The foot was sectioned so it could bend during a step, allowing him to run, and the joints were coated with a substance that would prevent friction from causing wear and tear. That must be the gold, Crosshair decided as he listened. Tech also explained that they’d made it not only heat-proof to protect it from blaster shots, but also fully waterproof and designed to resist an electrical surge such as an EMP.

All in all Crosshair was impressed and for once was willing to actually tell his brothers so. The both of them beamed, although Tech tried to hide how delighted he was by the praise.

“I’d try it on but…” Crosshair gestured to his leg and Tech huffed. 

“I have spoken to Tilorrli and she has scheduled you for surgery later today to install the connector and interface,” he said.

The surgery turned out to be scheduled for that afternoon and Crosshair waited impatiently until it was time, anxious and excited in equal measure.

He was actually awake for them to drug him this time, but he found that rather than an anxiety-inducing helpless drag away from consciousness he was used to from Nala Se’s procedures, Tilorrli simply had him count backwards from ten. He remembered getting to five and then he woke up several hours later.

They had him back on pain medications, pills this time instead of an IV drip, but Tilorrli told him that was only for the next two days. More importantly the surgery had been successful.

Crosshair examined the new addition to his stump with interest while he recuperated in the same hospital bed he’d been in weeks before. The connector was made out of the same material as the prosthetic leg, but had a set of clamps around the edges and delicate silver pins spread throughout its surface. Tech demonstrated the functionality of it by running a small electric current through one of those pins, which resulted in an almost indescribable sensation in a place where Crosshair no longer had a limb. The fact that there was such a phantom sensation apparently meant it was working as intended.

They had to wait another three days for him to fully recover from the second surgery and Crosshair was practically ripping his hair out in anticipation. When Tilorrli finally finally cleared him to try the prosthetic Crosshair felt like he was going to collapse from the sheer relief.

They did the first test in Dura Fenn’s physical therapy room. The place was clean, spacious and well lit, with devices like parallel bars and balance boards in evidence here and there. Weighted medicine balls and small dumbbells were stacked neatly in one corner along with a conservator nearby that hummed quietly away which Crosshair knew kept a supply of ice packs and electrolyte drinks cool. Dura Fenn himself leaned against one wall, while Crosshair's siblings, the reg trio, and Tilorrli had all crowded around where he sat, waiting breathlessly as Tech showed Crosshair how to attach the new limb.

It inserted into the connector easily enough and when the clamps engaged to keep it in place there was an electric jolt that ran up Crosshair’s leg that was just this side of painful. Tech stepped back and tilted his head to look over the connection.

“You spasmed,” he observed, “which I assume means you felt the synthetic nerves engage.”

“Yeah I’d say that’s probably what happened,” Crosshair told him distractedly. He wasn’t paying much attention to his brothers anymore because he could feel it. He could feel the prosthetic. Over the last six weeks he had been getting used to the feeling of having nothing below the knee but empty space, no input, no weight, nothing to touch the ground with, but now there was something there again and Crosshair wasn’t sure what to make of it.

It didn’t feel the same , that was for certain. It felt strange and a little dull, like touching a surface while wearing many layers of clothing. He felt pressure more than texture, but that was lightyears ahead of feeling nothing at all.

He couldn’t help but grin at Tech, who raised his eyebrows back.

“How’s it feel?” Echo asked from beside him.

“Like I have a leg,” Crosshair said a little breathlessly. To say he was elated would be an extreme understatement.

Echo grinned widely and high-fived Tech, who was normally above such gestures, but apparently he was willing to make an exception for this.

“Try moving it if you would, Crosshair,” Tech suggested.

Crosshair and the crowd of people watching all gasped when he successfully wiggled his new toes. Crosshair laughed and then rolled his ankle back and forth. Tech’s expression turned deeply pleased while the reg trio and the rest of Crosshair’s siblings cheered uproariously.

“It works!” Echo cried in delight as he slapped Crosshair on the back.

“How about we try balancing on it now, yeah?” Dura Fenn suggested from his place off to the side. His dark eyes were sparkling with pleasure as he helped Crosshair up and over to the parallel bars then sat down on a wheeled stool next to him.

Fenn had him do some exercises to correct his center of balance, forcing him to unlearn the habit of keeping his balance over his remaining limb that he had learned in the time since losing his leg. Essentially making sure that Crosshair could stand mostly on his own without overbalancing and falling in one direction or the other. Once it seemed that he was stable Fenn wheeled his stool over in front of Crosshair between the bars and sat down again.

“Now shall we walk?” the twi’lek asked him brightly.

A whole new kind of anxiety curled in Crosshair’s guts as he gripped the parallel bars, but it was tempered by sheer excitement. This was it, with this he should be able to walk again. He wouldn’t have to muddle about with crutches, only barely mobile. If all went as planned he’d be able to run, he’d be able to fight.

Crosshair hesitated for just a moment and then with Fenn guiding him through the motion with his hands on Crosshair’s hips he took a step. The prosthetic held as he swung his remaining leg forward and he laughed again, breathless. He took a second step, swinging the prosthetic this time, and then a third, repeating the same motion as before. 

He was more unsteady on his feet than he’d like, not because the foot didn’t work, but because the sensation was different than what he’d had before. It was almost like having a limb that had fallen asleep. It felt a little more like dead weight and a little more uncoordinated in comparison to his original leg, but he could feel it. He knew he’d just have to get used to the slightly duller sense of touch. The fact that he could feel it at all was a marvel of technology.

He was wobbly and glad for the assistance the parallel bars and Fenn - who had remained seated with his hands on Crosshair’s hips, but had then steadily rolled his stool back to keep pace as his patient moved forward - provided, but Crosshair managed to walk from one side to the other while his siblings and the reg trio hooted and hollered. He turned back around with a grin on his face once he reached the end and his audience clapped.

“Very good,” Fenn said, “Shall we go again?”

Crosshair nodded and they repeated the exercise, this time with Fenn giving him more verbal direction than before, correcting his posture and gait as he moved.

He was walking.

Slowly and unsteadily, but Crosshair was walking, he could hardly believe it.

***

Things seemed to speed up from there. Crosshair practiced with his leg as much as Fenn, Tilorrli, and Tech would allow. Tech had warned him the day he’d first worn it that the nervous system in the leg wasn’t perfect and that if he kept the limb on for longer than twelve hours it would most likely start to ache. It did and Crosshair ended up taking the thing off when he slept or if he didn’t expect to be up and around, although he always kept it handy. Putting it back on was as simple as locking it into place, so he could do it quite quickly if need be.

All the practice paid off and he got steadier every day until he could walk completely unassisted. Howzer took to taking him on strolls around the base during the day to give him even more practice.

When Fenn told Crosshair he was finally ready to try running he was elated. It ended up being more difficult than walking, which Fenn and Tech assured him was to be expected, but Crosshair worked at it every chance he got, stopping only when he was in pain or truly exhausted, and he improved quickly until he could keep up with his brothers once more. He felt like he was free from the shackles the loss of his limb had placed on him, even if things weren’t totally the same.

Howzer’s daily walks turned into runs and then Fenn started working Crosshair through the Dantooine base’s obstacle course.

There were days where Crosshair was frustrated, days where he snapped at anybody who came within shouting distance, days where it was all too loud, too painful, too much and he had to hide in his bunk until his brain or his body or the outside world quieted down. He stumbled metaphorically and literally, but overall he made forward progress as time went on.

Finally, after almost three months since Belgaroth, Needle cleared Crosshair for active duty. That night his siblings threw him a party, and Crosshair didn’t mind even though they were annoyingly rowdy.

The next day Howzer and Rex called the Batch to Rex’s command center with the message. “ We’ve got a mission for you .”

The six of them went, energetic at the prospect of a mission after months of idleness. 

***

Rex’s command center reminded Crosshair of the few times he’d been on the bridge of a Republic Venator. It had computers around the walls, some manned but others silent and dark. There were free-standing screens displaying holographic star maps and ship plans, and in the center of it all was a holoprojector of a similar model to the one on the Marauder. This was where the two captains stood.

Howzer and Rex both smiled at them, although more wanly than the day before, and Rex gestured them over. 

“What have you got for us, Rex?” Hunter asked.

Rex sighed and said, “I’ve had Blackout monitoring the slave market where our brothers were sold and he reported another group of twenty arrived on the market this morning. I’m already arranging for our boys to rescue them, but that still leaves the larger problem unsolved.”

“The labor camp,” Tech deduced.

Howzer nodded and Rex sighed.

Echo folded his arms over his chest and frowned, “Have you managed to figure out where it’s located?” 

Rex shook his head, “I had Blackout sneak onto the ship that transported the slaves, but whoever is in charge of the operation is intent on keeping their secrets. The hyperdrive logs were dumped as soon as they reached atmo and the rest of the ship’s records have been scrambled. No identification for Blackout to trace.”

“So we’re back at square one,” Howzer finished for him.

“You said you had something for us,” Crosshair pointed out, “but it sounds like you have a whole lot of nothing at all.”

“You’re commandos,” Rex said, “and I’ve seen you come up with some truly insane plans in the past. We need an insane plan right now.”

“You called us for a brainstorming session then,” Tech said. He didn’t sound bothered by it, but then again a good half of their insane plans were his ideas.

“We did,” Rex agreed, nodding.

The Batch stood around for a moment, all thinking, and then Hunter asked Rex and Howzer to go over what they knew about the labor camp again.

Ice planet. Facility dedicated solely to imprisoned clones. At least five hundred clones being held. Hard labor. And the location was a nasty carefully hidden little imperial secret.

Hunter sighed once it had all been summed up. Echo was frowning deeply, an expression almost identical to Captain Rex’s, Wrecker looked like he was about to blow a gasket if he thought much harder, Omega was chewing her lower lip, and Tech was tapping his fingers against his bicep as he contemplated their options.

For his own part Crosshair considered the situation, chewing on his toothpick contemplatively. He knew from his time in the Empire that most clones, the obedient ones, were already being phased out to be replaced by the inferior but cheaper TK troopers, ‘phased out’ obviously being a euphemism for ‘decommissioned’. There was little they could do for those regs, it had already happened before any of them knew to intervene.

The disobedient ones were the ones they were keeping, why? To punish them. The Empire was nothing if not systematically vengeful. Disobedience was punished rather than simply stifled. Imperial officers liked to make an example out of people.

Crosshair had wondered at one point if Rampart would have him phased out like the regs, but he hadn’t been truly worried about it. On one hand he knew Rampart was covetous of his toys and likely wouldn’t simply discard one that continued to entertain him and on the other hand at that point Crosshair hadn’t really cared if he died. Anything would have been better than what he was already subjected too.

So Crosshair had had a certain value, if only as an amusement rather than a soldier of any worth. Thinking about it made him bitter, but it also summoned up a thought out of the depths of his disquiet mind.

It struck him almost out of the blue and Crosshair straightened. As soon as he gave it his attention other things started to attach, pieces clicking together in his brain until he was looking at a full picture. A plan. “I’ve got an idea,” he said suddenly, interrupting whatever it was Hunter had been saying to Rex. 

“What is it, Crosshair?” Howzer asked, looking at him curiously. 

His siblings all looked at him as well and Crosshair gave them a crooked smile, “I don’t think you’re going to like it, any of you…but it’ll work.”

“Go ahead,” Rex prompted.

Crosshair’s smile turned vicious, “I kill Rampart.”

Chapter Text

Crosshair’s siblings and Howzer all went stiff. “You’re suggesting we help you kill Rampart?” Tech asked, “I fully understand your desire for revenge Crosshair however that doesn’t seem—“

“No,” Crosshair interrupted, “Nobody will be helping me. Rebellious clones get sent to the labor camp and we need to figure out where it is. The only way to do that is to get somebody sent there with a tracker.”

“Ah,” Tech said, understanding immediately, “You’re suggesting you return to the Empire and use your old position as his right hand to kill Rampart so they arrest you and send you to the camp.” 

Crosshair’s grin widened and he flicked his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, “Exactly. It’s a practical solution and I get to kill Rampart as a bonus. I think it’s a great idea.”

“It’s reckless,” Howzer said with a slight growl in his voice. “What if you can’t get to Rampart? What if you do manage to kill him, but they put you in front of a firing squad instead of sending you to the camp?”

“Then I’ll improvise,” Crosshair replied confidently. It was a good idea, he knew it was, he just needed to make the rest of them see it. “Do any of you have any better ideas?” he asked them sharply.

“Wouldn’t it be better to have one of us kill somebody less important, or not kill anyone at all but break some other rule to get ourselves arrested?” Echo asked.

“Do any of you have current credentials listing you as a soldier of the Empire?” Crosshair snapped, like hell was he letting anybody else do this in his place. He would freely admit to more than a little of his motivation being the opportunity to murder the man who had tormented him for so long, but even with the bias he knew it was the only idea any of them had had so far.

“No…” Echo replied miserably. Crosshair knew it wasn’t the plan he had a problem with, but Crosshair being the one to carry it out.

“You don’t think I’ll be able to do it?” Crosshair hissed. His brothers all looked away guiltily.

Hunter shook his head and put a hand on his littlest brother’s shoulder, “It’s not that, Cross,” he said, “We just…” the sergeant seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, like he wasn’t sure how to explain his thoughts in a way that wouldn’t make Crosshair angry. 

“We do not want to put you in a room with Rampart,” Tech told him matter-of-factly, “Not even to kill him.”

“ Why?” Crosshair hissed.

“You know why, Cross’ika,” Echo told him softly.

“What if he hurts you again?” Wrecker asked in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

Crosshair bristled, “The only reason he was able to hurt me before was because I—” his voice cracked and he snarled at himself, “Was because I let him. I obeyed instead of fighting.”

The look his siblings gave him was one of pure horror. “What he did is not on you,” Hunter told him viciously, giving his shoulder a shake, like he could physically knock the idea out of his little brother’s head if he just shook him hard enough.

“That’s not the point here,” Crosshair hissed, “the point is that I won’t be letting him do anything like that again.”

“Even if that were the problem, and it is not, there’s a significant chance that even if he doesn’t physically harm you he will still do or say something to trigger you, Crosshair,” Tech told him sternly. 

“Hurt him? Trigger him?” Rex asked, sounding utterly lost. Out of the corner of his eye Crosshair saw Howzer put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and shake his hea

Crosshair snarled at his brothers in general, but Tech in particular, “You think I’m going to freak out! You think I’ll take one look at him and have a meltdown!”

“A panic attack,” Tech corrected automatically, “And perhaps you won’t,” he went on, always trying to be the voice of reason, “but if there is any chance of that happening then it is too risky to put you in a room with him, especially in the middle of enemy territory with no backup.”

“I was around him almost constantly for months and never had a panic attack in front of him,” Crosshair hissed, “I didn’t have them in front of anybody . It was only when you idiots showed up that I had one in front of another person.”

Hunter used his hand on Crosshair’s shoulder to turn him so he was facing him square on and then gripped him by the upper arms. “You had that one because you realized returning to the Empire would take you back to Rampart. How is this any different?” 

“Because I’ll be murdering him, not working for him!” Crosshair snapped.

Omega startled him by grabbing onto Crosshair’s arm and when he looked down he saw she was holding onto him like she thought he’d evaporate any second, her eyes huge and frightened.

“But he hurt you!” she almost wailed, “He’ll try again!”

“He can try all he likes,” Crosshair hissed at her.

There was a deep rumbling growl that startled the lot of them and the whole Batch turned to Wrecker.

“You tryin’ to make a liar outta me, Cross?” Wrecker asked him darkly.

Crosshair blinked, not sure what his ori’vod was talking about or why he sounded so angry all of a sudden. He squinted up at Wrecker, who seemed to realize that he didn’t get it. The giant scowled and folded his massive arms over his equally massive chest. “I toldya we weren’t gonna leave you behind, not for nothin’, and even if you’re askin’ us to do it for a mission, I’m not doin’ it…‘specially if it means leavin’ you with the Empire . No way never again.”

“ Exactly! ” Echo cried, “Don’t make us go back on our word Cross’ika, please .”

All his siblings seemed to be in agreement and Crosshair huffed, he was touched, really he was, but they couldn’t have picked a worse time to do this. Over five-hundred clones depended on them finding the labor camp. 

“It’s our best option,” he hissed, standing his ground even in the face of such vehement resistance.

“Crosshair,” Rex said, making the Bad Batch all jump. They’d forgotten entirely about the two reg captains in the midst of their argument. “Could you think of an excuse to bring somebody in with you, somebody to back you up so you won’t be alone?”

“Captain, with respect,” Hunter snapped, “There’s no way in hell we’re doing thi–”

“I could bring them in as a captive,” Crosshair interrupted, latching onto the foothold Rex had given him like it was a lifeline, “Especially if it’s one of my brothers. I had already figured I’d tell Rampart that I got captured after Kamino, but escaped. If I were to bring one of them back with me as a captive it would still be believable, especially if I roughed them up first.”

Rex hummed while Hunter silently seethed, “No offense meant Hunter, but Crosshair’s idea really is the only one we have, anything else I can think of has a very high risk of getting somebody killed. Five hundred brothers are depending on us to rescue them. We can’t afford for this mission to fail.”

“What if all of us went?” Wrecker asked, frowning. He was still tense, still angry that they were losing this argument, but it was clear he wasn’t quite so close to losing his temper now that the idea of Crosshair going alone had been shot down.

Crosshair shook his head, “Realistically I could pull off capturing one of you, especially if I had a gun, but nobody would ever believe I could bring you all in without help.”

Wrecker grumbled something under his breath that Crosshair didn’t quite catch before saying, “I’ll go. If we get in trouble I can protect Cross the best.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Crosshair hissed, deeply offended by the implication that he was weak and helpless, “I survived there for months without anybody’s help.”

“You’ll protect me back, I’d be your teammate not your bodyguard,” Wrecker soothed.

Crosshair was miffed by his brother’s gentle, reassuring tone - more coddling, why were they always coddling him? - but his hackles lowered nonetheless now that Wrecker had clarified that he hadn’t meant it as an insult to Crosshair’s competence. 

“You are all forgetting something,” Tech pointed out sharply, “If they are being arrested then they are likely going to be interrogated as well and we all know the Empire employs, even favors , torture.”

Crosshair couldn’t help but laugh, “Like that’d be anything new to me!” 

He saw the way Rex’s brows furrowed in confusion, but the captain didn’t ask what he was talking about. The meaning was obvious.

“That’s the whole problem Crosshair!” Hunter shouted, slamming his fist down on the edge of the projector as he finally lost his temper, “You’ve been subjected to way way too much already! There is absolutely no way I’m letting you sign up for more!”

“It’s a small price to pay to save five hundred clones from hard labor and slavery, Hunter,” Crosshair replied testily, remaining mostly calm in the face of his brother’s fury, “I have a very high pain tolerance and if they’re sending all the clones to a work camp and eventually a slave auction then they won’t do anything to cripple us and reduce our value. In all likelihood they’d have a TK trooper hit us with electricity rather than using an IT-O interrogator droid prone to leaving permanent damage.”

“Being electrocuted is still bad for your health Crosshair, even if it might not leave outward signs,” Tech snapped in total exasperation, “It can cause seizures, heart arrhythmia, and permanent nerve damage.”

“I can take it,” Crosshair hissed, “I’d have been able to even before the Order. We all survived resistance training.” The sheer mention of that part of their cadet training made the other three original Batch members shudder. Before Order 66 Crosshair would have genuinely called it one of the worst experiences of his entire life, now it wasn’t even in the top five. 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Howzer and Rex’s brows furrow as one as Howzer mouthed to his brother, ‘survived?’ Rex shrugged and shook his head.

Yes. They had survived. All of their training had been like that, failure meant death, death meant failure. They were expendable, an experiment; the Kaminoans had wanted to know what it would take to break them. They had never managed to do it, but there had been times they had come close. Resistance training had been one of those times.

“I can take it too,” Wrecker said dismally, he seemed to have realized that Crosshair was truly not about to give up, “I don’t like this at all…but who’s gonna rescue those clones if we don’t? Cross’s the only one with a way in…”

“Wrecker!” Hunter growled, he was still furious, but it was becoming a helpless sort of fury as each argument against Crosshair’s plan was systematically dismissed. “He said he wouldn’t do this again! Crosshair you promised us you wouldn’t intentionally put yourself in a position to get hurt!”

Crosshair met his brother’s irate gaze with a calm glare of his own, “I did no such thing. What I actually promised was that I would allow you to look for alternatives if another situation like Troithe arose. Now please,” he made a sweeping gesture to encompass the situation in general, “I invite you to look for alternatives. So far I don’t see any , do you?”

“This is ridiculous!” Hunter cried, “I can’t believe you’re actually considering this!” He looked at Captain Rex, who grimaced guiltily and at Wrecker who looked away.

“I agree with Hunter,” Howzer said in a firm tone of voice, “There has got to be a different way to do this.”

“The longer we spend arguing over it the longer your brothers are trapped,” Crosshair snapped at him.

Howzer gave Crosshair a scowl so dark it made his jaw snap shut automatically as every instinct in him told him to stop talking or face consequences.

“This is more about revenge for you then it is our brothers,” the captain said coldly, “I understand why it would be, we’ve never been good to you, and you have a very good reason for wanting to kill Rampart. I’m not faulting you for that, Crosshair, but don’t act like you’re insisting on this for anyone's sake but your own.”

“ I do…want to save them…” Crosshair admitted quietly, once he’d unstuck his jaw, “Killing Rampart is my main priority but…if they’re like you, Echo, Klacks, or Skroll then…then I do want to save them.”

Howzer’s expression softened slightly, “You’re a good kid, Crosshair,” he said, “I know this is important to you, but if you promised to let your vode look for another way then you should keep your word. Maybe there’s a way for you to get back at Rampart without putting yourself in so much danger.”

Crosshair bit down on his toothpick in lieu of biting his lip, “This is the only way…but I’ll keep my word. I’ll give you a chance to come up blank first.”

“That’s all we ask,” Howzer told him in a mellow tone.

“Cross,” Wrecker said quietly, “Wanna go spar? Listening to them argue is just gonna piss you off.”

“Wrecker is correct,” Tech agreed, “and sparring whenever you can would probably be helpful for you. It’d be advantageous for you to be as aware of your new limits as possible.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes, but turned and stalked out of the room, annoyed that both of his brothers had a point. Listening to them argue would only piss him off more, he’d already said his piece, and he did need to get more used to how he should be adapting in combat with his new leg.

He wasn’t surprised that Wrecker followed him out. Aside from not being great at coming up with plans and having been the one to offer a spar, the four original members of the Batch were all still vaguely uncomfortable with being surrounded by regs and nat-borns even after three months of staying on Rex’s base. They preferred to have eyes on each other whenever possible. It was a survival thing, something left over from their upbringing on Kamino.

Back then if one of them went off alone they tended to come back injured, regardless of whether it was due to the regs or the Kaminoans’ training sessions, it had made them all wary of letting each other out of sight around others. Echo had noticed the habit only a few weeks after he joined the Batch and had started humoring them by shadowing Hunter on the occasions when he went off by himself before the rest of them woke up in the morning, which made them all feel better.

So Wrecker followed his brother out as Crosshair stalked across the base to one of fifty identical prefab buildings, already having memorized which one housed the gym. Crosshair spat out his toothpick as he seethed. He understood his siblings’ overprotectiveness, they had always been protective of each other, but since they’d gotten Crosshair back the habit had worsened and then worsened again after they’d found out what happened to him while he’d been in the clutches of the Empire. He understood it, but it was infuriating nonetheless. He was not a helpless child, he had survived without them through the worst experiences of his entire life.

When they made it to the gym there were other clones already present using the weights, the indoor track, and other fitness equipment as well as the sparring mats. There were nat-borns too, although for the most part their exercise routines appeared to be lighter than the clones’, given most of them were refugees rather than soldiers. Fortunately one of the mats was open and the two of them made their way over unmolested.

“Armor or no armor?” Wrecker asked amiably. What he was really asking was how bad of a mood Crosshair was in. No armor meant this was a friendly spar, armor meant they were going to do everything short of actually killing each other.

“Armor,” Crosshair told him and put his helmet on as he walked onto the sparring mat. Wrecker let out a huff, neither a concerned sigh or an excited chuckle but some other meaningful exhalation that Crosshair didn’t care enough about to try and decode, as he followed Crosshair onto the mat and put his own helmet on.

Wrecker was not the ideal opponent, mostly because none of them were evenly matched against him in unarmed combat. He was good for somebody in a bad mood though, since he was essentially a punching bag that hit back three times as hard.

Crosshair ignored the interested looks from the regs that were in-between matches with their brothers and focused on Wrecker as the two of them squared up. He couldn’t afford to divert his attention to anything else or Wrecker would knock his block off. At some point Crosshair had added sparring to his list of things that instantly got him out of his head alongside sharpshooting and drawing; it required too much focus for him to be able to pay attention to anything else.

Wrecker pounded his fists twice on his chest-plate in a show of excitement and then settled into a defensive stance. Crosshair did not pound on his chest, but he did settle into a mirror of Wrecker’s stance. The two of them circled the mat for a moment, searching for flaws in each other’s guard.

To Crosshair’s mixed annoyance and relief Wrecker shot a kick out at his prosthetic leg, actually taking Crosshair seriously and willing to exploit any weakness in an armor-on fight. He wouldn’t break Crosshair’s bones, or by extension his prosthetic, that wasn’t the point of the fight, but he would take advantage of any small lack of coordination present.

Crosshair twisted smoothly out of the way and shot out a viper-fast jab that caught Wrecker in the throat before immediately pulling back out of range. Wrecker backed off with a hacking noise that crackled with static over his vocoder, having been effectively punished for underestimating his little brother, but he recovered almost immediately and made another lunge. Crosshair ducked out of the way of his swinging fist only to get caught in the hip by Wrecker’s knee.

He hissed in pain and stumbled but didn’t fall. Wrecker didn’t give him a chance to recover and immediately went to punch him in the head. Crosshair knew the hit would lay him out flat if it connected, but rather than scurrying out of the way he grabbed Wrecker’s wrist and twisted, taking momentary advantage of the joint to pull Wrecker off-balance so he could knee him in the gut with top edge of his metal leg.

He refused to let his prosthetic disadvantage him, Crosshair was determined to use it as a weapon instead.

Wrecker dropped to his knees at the strike, which probably hurt a whole lot worse than it would have if Crosshair had used his other leg. Crosshair used the downwards movement to twist around and roundhouse kick his brother in the head. 

His ori’vod didn’t go down, but the hit did give him a second’s pause, only just enough for Crosshair to escape before Wrecker could grab him around the waist and bring him to the ground. Grappling with Wrecker was a death sentence, he was simply too big and strong. Crosshair knew the only sure-fire way to beat him in a fight was to avoid getting hit long enough to wear him out.

So he danced away, struck when Wrecker came after him, before dancing away again. He hit as hard as he possibly could, attacking Wrecker’s joints, his pressure points, and any part of his body not protected by his armor. Eventually Wrecker did get a hit on him, one that made Crosshair black out for a split second.

Layed out, he woke up almost immediately and Wrecker pulled him to his feet. Crosshair shook his head, ignoring the ringing in his ears and said, “Again.”

Wrecker obliged him. 

Crosshair won the second round, kicking his older brother so hard in the throat that he collapsed, choking, while Crosshair waited for him to recover and get back up.

By then they’d attracted an audience, both regs and nat-borns, but Crosshair continued to ignore them. He was still in a bad mood and while fighting with Wrecker was distracting him that was all it was doing. Eventually one of them would get too tired to continue and - if it wasn’t Crosshair - he’d have to find some other way to bleed off his temper.

They were both going to be hurting by the end of this, Tech would undoubtedly need to use bacta on them, but that was the reality of armor-on fighting. Nobody came out of it unscathed, that was the point. The regs could play-fight with each other if they wanted, but Crosshair needed to prove to himself that he could still genuinely match his brother, one of the strongest fighters he’d ever met, if not beat him completely.

Wrecker won the third round when he managed to grab Crosshair by the back of the neck and drag him to the ground where he pinned and completely immobilized him easily with his weight alone.

Crosshair won the fourth round when he kicked him in the chin hard enough to snap his head back and knock him out for a second.

As Crosshair was waiting for Wrecker to get back up a holler caught his attention, he glanced to the side for a split second, risking it while Wrecker was still down, and found Skroll and Klacks had appeared in the crowd.

“I call next!” Sgt. Scroll hollered at him. Crosshair snorted. He had his armor on, so it would be fair, at least in theory. Crosshair glanced at Wrecker, who was getting to his feet.

“Fine with me,” the giant said, “Slaughterin’ the regs’ll give me a break from gettin’ kicked in the head.”

“ If you win this round,” Crosshair told him.

Wrecker chuckled, “Oh I’ll win. You’re slippery but I only gotta hitcha once, Cross.”

“Hit me then,” Crosshair said.

Wrecker tried, but he was getting tired, overextending to try and catch his much faster little brother and Crosshair took full advantage. He took a glancing hit that nearly knocked him flat and made his ears start ringing once more, but managed to catch Wrecker by the wrist again, this time twisting it into a sideways joint lock that forced his brother to the ground on his side and then pressed his heel into Wrecker’s throat until he stopped struggling and went slack, unconscious. There was no tapping out unless something was about to break, they both knew that, but they also knew how far was too far. 

“Kark, you two aren’t screwing around,” Klacks hissed in sympathy when Crosshair dropped Wrecker’s arm and stepped back.

“Armor-on is no holds barred,” Crosshair said in a flat annoyed voice, “and you fight until you physically can’t.”

“Great,” Skroll said as he paced onto the mat and watched Crosshair help Wrecker stand back up once he woke up, “Howzer is always telling me I need to get my shebs kicked.”

Wrecker laughed and took his helmet off, there were dark bruises already forming on his throat and jaw. “I wanna take turns if any more regs wanna fight,” the giant said, “Can’t let you have all the fun, Cross.”

“Whatever,” Crosshair said as Skroll put his helmet on and Wrecker plopped down to sit cross legged on the floor at the edge of the mat.

“You said this is no holds barred?” Skroll clarified.

“Yes,” Crosshair replied, “Anything short of permanent injury is allowed and you fight until you can’t, no tapping out unless something is about to break. No ring to step out of, no disqualifications.”

“Do you always spar like this?” Klacks asked.

Wrecker laughed, “Usually only when somebody is in a really bad mood and we can afford to make noise.”

Crosshair ignored whatever Klacks’s response was as Skroll squared up.

He was no Wrecker and Crosshair took him down with considerably less effort. That wasn’t to say Skroll was a bad fighter, he was just a reg. Echo, as an ARC, could hold his own - could win even, but a rank and file reg didn’t stand a chance.

Once Crosshair finished choking the sergeant out somebody else called next and Wrecker bounced back out onto the mat happily. He liked unfair fights just as much as he liked fair fights and was perfectly happy to ‘slaughter some regs’ as he had said.

Less than a minute later he grinned and nudged the reg he’d punched in the gut with the toe of his boot as the man curled in on himself on the floor and wheezed.

“Can’t afford to get hit by him at all can you?” Skroll asked from next to Crosshair, his throat was starting to bruise just like Wrecker’s had and his voice was gravelly, Crosshair hadn’t been nice to him when he took him down.

“No,” Crosshair said shortly, “If Wrecker hits you square on you go down.”

“Simple as that?” Klacks asked lightly.

Crosshair nodded. He was still in a foul mood, angry. He had a worse headache than usual as well - and numerous other aches - but he stood back up when it was his turn again, only it wasn’t a reg who stepped up to face him, but Hunter.

“Sorry little brother” Crosshair’s ori’vod said softly, he sounded as furious as Crosshair felt, must still be upset about their argument, “but I’m in a bad mood too.”

“Good,” Crosshair growled and squared up, “Maybe if I hit you hard enough it’ll knock something loose and you’ll see reason.”

Hunter slid with deadly grace into a guard stance, “The one who needs to see reason is you and I’m going to pound it into your thick skull.”

Break time was over.

Chapter Text

If Hunter was there, Crosshair knew his other siblings had probably shown up as well, but he couldn’t afford to check the crowd for their faces. It would require him to take his eyes off Hunter and in some ways that was even more dangerous than looking away from Wrecker. Hunter was a great deal faster than Wrecker for one, and for another he was more skilled at hand to hand than any of his brothers. The only reason he ever lost to Wrecker was because sometimes he was unlucky enough to get hit.

Against Crosshair though? It still wasn’t an even match, and it wasn't uneven in Crosshair’s favor either, the only advantage he had over his brother was reach. 

Unlike Wrecker, Hunter was patient in a fight and Crosshair ended up making the first move. He took advantage of his long legs and struck out at the side of Hunter’s knee. Hunter twisted deftly out of the way and then ducked inside Crosshair’s guard to hit him square in the solar plexus. If not for his chest-plate he’d be on the ground from that strike alone, as it was it hurt like a motherfucker but didn’t take him down. Crosshair elbowed his brother in the face, which forced him back a step and gave Crosshair a chance to put some distance between them. Up close he would lose, far away he might win. 

They traded blows again, both coming out with new pains, and then Hunter took the gloves off and tossed Crosshair across the mat before pouncing on him like a massiff on a womp rat. The two of them ended up grappling on the floor. Hunter slammed Crosshair’s head into the ground repeatedly, which again would have been enough to take him out if not for the armor, even so the force of it dazed him for a second. Hunter went for his throat with a hiss of, “ Why do you keep doing this to yourself? ” his tone caught between sheer fury and helplessness, but Crosshair didn't answer him. He wasn’t about to be strangled by his own brother just because Hunter was angry with him, so he twisted up and hooked his leg over Hunter’s head so he could pull himself out of the hold, a move only possible thanks to Crosshair’s superior height.

He reversed their roles and put Hunter in an elbow lock, if they were fighting for keeps he’d have easily been able to break his brother’s arm and dislocate his shoulder, but that wasn’t the name of the game and Hunter whipped around lightning fast and kicked Crosshair in the head until he lost his grip. “We’re trying to keep you safe, you idiot!” Hunter snarled as they both rolled away from each other.

“I don’t need you to keep me safe!” Crosshair snarled back as they circled each other, “I need you to stop treating me like I can’t take care of myself!”

“I’d believe you could if you’d just stop doing things to hurt yourself!” Hunter growled as he lunged forward, blocked his brother’s punch, and kneed Crosshair in the ribs.

Crosshair had to roll to the side and back up, wheezing for a moment before he snapped, “The mission comes first! It’s always come first!” He struck out with the same sort of kick to the chin that had taken down Wrecker, but Hunter caught him by the ankle and twisted until Crosshair’s hip was locked and he had to go to the floor to get out of it.

He dragged Hunter down with him and again they were grappling, “Not anymore! The Kaminoan’s are dead! It doesn’t have to be like that anymore Cross!” Crosshair head-butted his brother hard enough to stun him and threw him off before putting him in a submission hold.

“So this doesn't matter to you? Rampart and the regs don’t matter?” he hissed as he dug his heel into Hunter’s sciatic nerve in a way that made his brother grind his teeth audibly in pain.

“Of course! It! Matters!” Hunter ground out and then head-butted him in the chin. Crosshair was pretty sure he felt his teeth rattle in his jaw and he sucked in a pained breath as he tasted blood. He’d bitten his cheek open by accident. The pain weakened his grip enough for Hunter to escape and kick him furiously in the head. “You think I don’t want to tear Rampart apart?! You think I don’t care about Echo’s brothers being sold as slaves?! You're not the only one who cares, but you don't have to destroy yourself trying to take Rampart down!”

“You couldn’t think of another way!” Crosshair crowed triumphantly even as he only barely stumbled to his feet. “That’s why you’re so pissed off!” 

Everything hurt, his mouth was full of blood and his body was telling him to quit, but like hell was he going to let Hunter win so easily just because he’d gone a couple rounds with Wrecker beforehand and was running on empty. Just because Hunter was undeniably a better fighter than him to the point that he was more focused on arguing with him than subduing him yet was still winning.

Hunter let out a furious inarticulate snarl and lunged, grabbing his little brother by the back of his bucket and slamming Crosshair’s head into his knee, not once or twice, but four times in rapid succession. Crosshair blacked out, but once he woke up on the floor he tried to push himself back to his feet.

“ Enough ,” came Tech’s voice from next to him on the left side, “Hunter has won the fight, but you have won the argument. Your plan was the only workable thing we could come up with, now stay down.”

“Sure,” Crosshair said weakly, his head still spinning. Blearily he saw Hunter storm off into the crowd. Omega tried to follow, but Echo grabbed her by the hand and shook his head. 

“I’ll talk to ‘im,” Wrecker told his siblings quietly.

“Bring him back when he’s calmer,” Tech ordered, “I need to check you both for concussion.”

Wrecker gave Tech a thumbs up and then pushed the regs and nat-borns out of his way as he followed their older brother out. Their entertainment gone, the audience dispersed and left the remaining siblings alone on the mat. Even Skroll and Klacks, sensing they were intruding on a family matter, took their leave.

“Honestly,” Tech sighed as he helped Crosshair sit up and pulled his helmet off so he could check his pupils. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you doing something foolish.”

“Like you’ve never participated in a voluntary armor-on fight,” Crosshair grumbled around his bloody mouth. He was tempted to spit the blood out, but wasn’t rude enough to do that indoors, so he swallowed it instead. 

“Maybe,” Tech allowed, “But you are developing a habit of self-destructive behavior. Wrecker should have known better than to indulge you.”

“Wrecker will indulge anybody if it means he gets to punch someone in the head,” Crosshair told him in an amused voice.

“You are not taking this seriously,” Tech snapped, “Your behavior is becoming extremely concerning Crosshair, if we had any other option I would take you off this mission.”

Crosshair snorted, “You wouldn’t need to, Hunter wants to lock me in a crate on the Marauder for my own ‘safety’ enough already.” 

“He should ,” Echo said testily as he came over and sat down on the mat next to the two of them, still holding Omega’s hand. She looked disturbed in a way that made Crosshair think she’d never seen her brothers have a real fight before. “You seem to have lost what little sense of self-preservation you used to have. Do you genuinely have a death wish?”

Crosshair had to think about that for a minute while Tech used a bacta injector on him. “No,” he decided, “Not anymore.”

His siblings stilled, all three of them looking at him with wide eyes, “What?” Echo wheezed.

“You did before then?” Tech asked him carefully.

Crosshair gave them a wry smile, “For a while, from after the incident on Bracca when they took my chip out up until you chased me down in the jungle on that unnamed planet, although I’d say it was less that I wanted to die and more that I just didn’t care if I did.”

“You’re okay now though?” Omega asked in a shaky voice, “You don’t want to…you don’t…”

“I’d rather kill Rampart than die,” Crosshair told them matter-of-factly, “And after I kill him then things will go back to normal. I have reasons to stay alive now.” And he did. Before he’d had nothing, his siblings had left him, he’d had nothing to expect but more unrelenting pain, more time with Rampart, more missions where he either tried to kill the only people who had ever cared about him or where he massacred civilians at the behest of people he hated for a cause he didn’t give a kark about. Not caring if he died under those circumstances felt like a perfectly reasonable reaction to him. 

Now though? He wasn’t alone, even if his siblings didn’t seem to understand him anymore, even if he’d changed, even if there were still those malevolent foreign things festering in his brain, he wasn’t alone. He had his family, he had a place on the Marauder, he even had…friends? Whatever the reg trio was to him, he had that now. He didn’t want to die…but he still couldn’t allow Rampart to live when there was a chance for him to do something about it, even if Crosshair got hurt in the process.

Tech let out a breath and adjusted his goggles, Crosshair didn’t miss the slight tremor in his fingers. On a whim he reached out to grab Tech’s hand and still it, “I’m alright,” he reassured him, “I’m not about to quit on you. You’re stuck with me for the long run.”

His clever older brother glared at him, but didn’t pull away, “Prove it by changing your behavior. No more of this. Promise that once this mission is over you won’t put yourself in this position anymore.” 

Crosshair nodded and his siblings all let out a collective sigh, “Good,” Echo said, “This is still a mess, I hate this, but as long as we come out the other side okay and it doesn’t happen again…”

“Please…tell me” Tech requested quietly, “if you start to feel like that again, like you don’t care if you die.”

“Sure,” Crosshair agreed easily.

Tech sighed and nodded to himself, “Good,” he said in a barely audible voice, less to his siblings and more to himself, “good.” Crosshair could still feel the way he was trembling ever so slightly. He did not give hugs, hugs were not his thing, but Crosshair did give his elder brother’s fingers a squeeze and reached over to clasp his shoulder.

“Everything will turn out alright,” he reassured Tech and the other two by extension. “I can handle this.”

***

Crosshair could tell Hunter was still pissed off at him hours later, his voice had a clipped harsh tone when he spoke and there was tension in his body that wasn’t normally there. He was wound up tight enough to snap at any moment, so for once Crosshair purposefully avoided aggravating him.

The six of them and the two captains met back up to discuss the logistics of the mission some hours later. Naturally Tech was put in charge of the trackers. They needed something that projected a signal strong enough to be detected from extremely far away since they didn’t know how far across the galaxy the planet housing the labor camp was, but the signal also needed to be innocuous enough that it wouldn’t stick out on sensors and alert anybody that something was going on.

Howzer told them that the prison that housed the clones was built into the side of a cliff and that a majority of the compound was underground, connected by ice caves and tunnels where the clones were made to do mining in the freezing cold, so they had decided that the signal breaking up or receiving significant interference would be the sign that they had reached their destination. Tech assured them he’d be able to tell the difference between interference from geologic features and interference from outside sources such as a jammer, so they shouldn’t end up launching the rescue early or walking into a trap.

Apparently ever since Howzer had told Rex about the slave market and labor camp the two of them and the base’s third captain - a weird giggly clone by the name of Gregor that Crosshair’s brothers were familiar with, but whom Crosshair himself had only met once or twice during their stay on Rex’s base - had been working on building up a fleet of starships and pilots big enough to take on moderate resistance along with ‘tactically acquiring’ enough personnel carriers to extract 500+ people. They would have to rely on nat-born pilots, but that was better than nothing. 

Rex and Howzer would be in charge of any battle that resulted from the operation while the Batch extracted their brothers and set the imprisoned regs free. Aside from being the key to locating the camp, Crosshair and Wrecker would be responsible for organizing a prison riot to draw away the attention of any ground troops present.

“Who’s the highest ranking clone in the camp?” Crosshair asked. Regs were all about the chain of command and if they got the highest ranking clone on board the others would follow.

“Commander Wolffe,” Howzer replied.

Rex jerked like he’d been electrocuted, “Wolffe is there?” he asked in a surprisingly urgent tone, “His chip didn’t work?”

Howzer frowned at him, “It seems like most of the 104th’s chips were dysfunctional, they make up a majority of the clones in the camp. I hadn’t realized you two knew each other or I would have mentioned him earlier…”

Captain Rex sighed and scratched his hand through his buzzed blond hair, “He’s my ori’vod. The Kaminoans didn’t want to make me an official commander because I deviate from the template too much,” he gestured to his hair, so apparently he was a natural blond, who would have guessed? “But the command batch pretty much adopted me anyway, so Wolffe, Cody, Fox, Bly, and Ponds are all my ori’vode... were my ori’vode at least…it’s good to know Wolffe still has his own mind.”

“All the more reason to rescue these troopers then,” Howzer said, “This might make things easier for Crosshair and Wrecker. If they tell Wolffe it’s you who’s launching the rescue operation he’ll probably be more willing to go along with it.”

“Why wouldn’t he want to go along with it normally?” Omega asked, looking from one captain to the other.

Rex sighed, “Because starting a prison riot is dangerous , security there is tight if they’re managing to keep that many clones in line, so troopers could get killed if they riot. If Wolffe thought the operation had a high risk of falling apart at the seams there’s a good chance he wouldn’t want to risk his men on it.”

“Well we’ll be sure’ta drop your name then,” Wrecker said with a grin.

“Be sure you do,” Rex said, nodding sharply.

Crosshair glanced at Hunter, who had been quiet throughout the whole planning session. He was still obviously seething, but he hadn’t argued with anything and was clearly paying close attention. Crosshair would like to say he’d get over it, but Hunter had always been the most overprotective of his brothers and if he truly hated an operation they were being forced to do he would remain a mass of boiling anger and taught nerves until it was over and done with. There was nothing any of them would be able to do to placate him, so aside from Omega - who was clearly fretting over his behavior - the Batch members were giving him his space.

“We should leave any equipment we can’t afford to lose here or on the Marauder,” Crosshair pointed out, “They’ll only take it away when we get arrested anyway. There’s no point in losing our armor or preferred weapons.”

“You think Rampart won’t find that suspicious?” Rex asked.

Howzer and Crosshair snorted as one and Crosshair tipped his head to the side, “Rampart sees what he wants to see. If he expects there to be traitors in his midst he’ll see them everywhere, but if he thinks he has a loyal operative returning home he’ll ignore minor details that don’t match the image, besides, my cover is that I’ve been captured and escaped, I’d have no reason to be wearing armor or using my firepuncher. Wrecker is another story, but I can always say I caught my brothers off guard during the night cycle.”

“And you’re certain he’ll be thinking of you as a loyal operative?” Rex pressed.

Crosshair shifted uncomfortably and looked away as he folded his arms and tapped his fingers nervously against his bicep. “He-he doesn’t think of me as much of an operative at all, more like a…a pet , something to let off the leash and always be expected to come back and do what it’s told.” His voice was tight when he admitted it and he couldn’t meet Rex’s eye.

Howzer sighed and reached over to give his shoulder a tight squeeze. “He thinks that way because of the chip,” Howzer reassured him, “Not because of any failing on your part.”

“You're wrong but it’s nice of you to say that,” Crosshair growled, “I was a good little boy even after they took my chip out. I always did what I was told even if it meant trying to kill my own batchmates.”

“Well now we’re going to be using that image to rescue our brothers,” Rex told him, “So something good is coming out of it.” He spoke in a decisive tone that really did demonstrate why he was in a command position, Crosshair couldn’t help but be reminded of Hunter when he was truly determined. Hesitantly he glanced at his older brother and found that somehow, impossibly, he looked even angrier than before. Talking about Rampart was apparently doing his already foul mood no favors, but this was happening and Hunter would just have to suck it up.

***

Howzer took Crosshair aside after the mission planning session was over. He had a stressed out, concerned air about him that Crosshair didn’t like; the sniper was sick of people being concerned about him, truly he was. The fact that it was apparently his own doing only aggravated him more.

They had continued their daily runs around the perimeter of the base even after Crosshair had gotten more capable with his prosthetic leg and Howzer led him around the route they usually went, although this time they moved at a sedate walking pace instead of a run.

“Crosshair I need you to tell me something and be truthful about it,” Howzer eventually said after a long period of contemplative silence.

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “I haven’t been lying to you in the first place, the added stipulation isn’t necessary.”

Howzer let out a huff, “You’re probably right, but I doubt you’re going to want to talk about this so I needed to add it. My boys told me about you kids and your practice of ‘armor-on sparring’.”

“So?” Crosshair asked, frowning. He had no idea what the point of this conversation was.

Howzer returned the frown with a deep one of his own, “You realize that’s not normal right? Sparring is one thing but legitimately beating your brothers into unconsciousness is not standard practice.”

“We don’t do it frequently,” Crosshair told him, waving the concern off, “it’s just a thing we did in our training that we sometimes break out when we need to genuinely hit somebody.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask,” Howzer said. They were just rounding the first guard post and the captain nodded to the clones standing at attention when they saluted him. “You mentioned something during the brainstorming session, you said you ‘survived’ resistance training. You also said in the past that you kids were fast tracked. I need you to tell me about your training.”

“What about it?” Crosshair asked him. He wasn’t seeing what was making Howzer look so concerned.

Howzer sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, “Well first tell me about armor-on sparring. You said you did that on Kamino.”

Crosshair nodded, “That was just how combat training was for us. A round lasted until you were knocked unconscious or completely immobilized. They had us wear armor so the trainers didn’t kill us outright. Tech got a lot of practice with his medic modules as soon as he started them, but before that after training sessions we just had to suck it up if we were injured.”

Howzer grimaced, “And all your combat training was like that, from the beginning?”

“Yes? I don’t see where you’re going with this,” Crosshair said.

“Yeah I can see that,” Howzer told him with a sigh, “Let me be the first to tell you, that shit is not normal Crosshair, that’s not how they trained the rest of us.”

“So?” Crosshair asked, bristling slightly, Howzer was acting like he didn’t already know the regs had inferior training, “Like I said, we were fast tracked, they trained us to be twice as effective in a third of the time. Obviously it wasn’t going to be a cake-walk.” 

“Right,” Howzer said dryly, “I can see that you don’t get why this is problematic. Tell me about your resistance training then. What did you mean when you said you kids all survived it?”

Crosshair shuddered a little at the reminder, but answered the question anyway, he may as well. “You know what resistance training is, I’m sure, they do it to make sure you won’t break if captured and tortured.”

“I know what our resistance training was like, and yeah it was hell, but when you said survived I got the feeling you meant literally survived and not just that you passed,” Howzer explained.

“Obviously the most effective way to train one to resist something is to inflict it,” Crosshair told him testily, “That’s what they did, they put us through interrogation simulations using all commonly practiced techniques and if we broke under the pressure then we failed.”

“Okay two things about that,” Howzer said, “Firstly it’s not a simulation if they actually torture you, that’s not what that word means, I need you to know that.”

Crosshair just rolled his eyes and didn’t argue. They were passing the second guard station now, but Howzer was too distracted to nod at the saluting clones this time.

“Second, what happened if one of you failed?” the captain went on.

“If one of us failed any part of our training then the whole project would be scrapped and we’d be decommissioned,” Crosshair informed him matter-of-factly.

Howzer’s expression turned tight and angry, “So if one of you failed even one module they’d kill all four of you…that explains a hell of a lot actually.”

“I still don’t see where you’re going with this,” Crosshair told him irritably. “Our training was brutal, I’m aware of that, you don’t need to tell me that.”

“It was straight abuse , Crosshair,” Howzer sighed, “I’m surprised you kids turned out so well honestly. I’d think you’d be way way more screwed up than you are under those circumstances.”

“It fostered camaraderie and cooperation between us and impressed upon us the importance of success,” Crosshair replied a little stiffly, “It was effective . I wouldn’t recommend using it on regs but it made us tough. We have a 100% success rating on missions because of that training.”

“Of course you do!” Howzer snapped, the tension in his body finally breaking into anger, “If the options are ‘succeed or you and your brothers die’ any sane person would do literally anything to succeed.”

“That’s a good thing isn’t it?” Crosshair hissed back, “If you can’t succeed why would they even send you on a mission in the first place? What good are you as a soldier, what use do you have if you can’t successfully complete mission objectives?”

“There you are using that word again,” Howzer said, obviously trying to control his temper, “‘Use’, ‘useful’, you’re obsessed with being useful, Crosshair, and honestly I can see why. If all they ever tell you is ‘be useful or we’ll kill you’ then anybody would be obsessed with it. To some extent they told that to all of us, but this goes above and beyond…” the captain kneaded his brow and Crosshair had to wonder if he was getting a headache, “I need to talk to all of you kids about this, not just you. I’m not going to corner you all for something like this before a mission, especially an absolute shit-show in the making like this one, but we will be having a discussion about this, mark my words.”

“I’d say ‘if you insist’ but I can already see that’s what you’re doing,” Crosshair grumbled.

“That’s right,” Howzer replied sharply, “This is me insisting. Tell your vode that this is going to happen so I’m not springing it on them out of the blue. Do Echo and Omega know about any of this?”

“We haven’t had a reason to talk to Echo about our training, although he has always expressed dislike for armor-on sparring,” Crosshair told the captain as they rounded the third guard post, “and I have no idea what Omega does or doesn’t know. I can’t imagine Hunter sat her down and talked to her about it, there’s no reason for him to do so, but she was apparently aware of a lot of what went on involving our project, so she might know about it.”

“Right, well I can’t imagine Echo is going to be happy about this,” Howzer said, “I…this is a lot, Crosshair, I might have to bring Rex in on this.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “Are you saying you need emotional support while you explain to us that our lives are karked up? You realize we already know that don’t you?”

“Clearly you don’t understand this , ” Howzer snapped, “Otherwise you wouldn’t be defending the Kaminoans’ practices. All of this is totally unacceptable and we need you kids to realize that so you don’t kriffing combust trying to live up to these impossible standards.”

“ Hunter will probably agree with you,” Crosshair snarled, “He seems to have completely lost all sense of priorities.”

“If his sense of priorities puts the health and safety of his vode over having a perfect record then I can only applaud him for overcoming his conditioning on his own,” Howzer grumbled, “but obviously he doesn’t have his head on completely straight or he wouldn’t have beat you into the ground in this shabla armor-on fighting thing of yours.”

“He was pissed off,” Crosshair said dismissively, “he’s still pissed off and he’s going to stay that way until the mission’s over, he’s always been like that.”

“Beating your vod’ika unconscious is not a rational response to being pissed off about him willfully endangering himself,” Howzer snapped, “Hunter is going to be part of this attitude adjustment even if he does have a slightly better sense of how karked up it all is.”

“Whatever,” Crosshair grumbled, “If you insist , I’ll tell them you’re gearing up to lecture us when the mission is over, if only so we can blow you off.”

Howzer rolled his eyes, “If you think for one goddamn second that I’m not prepared to chase you kids around this whole kriffing galaxy then you’ve got another thing coming Crosshair.”

“We’ll see,” Crosshair snapped, “Are we done?”

To his surprise Howzer stopped walking and turned to look him over. Crosshair stood still, unsure why he was suddenly under inspection but feeling the need to hold still for it anyway. After a second Howzer stepped forward and dragged Crosshair into a hug. The sniper was too shocked to resist, but he’d adamantly deny that he made any sort of startled small animal noise when it happened. He’d deny that to his grave.

Howzer gave him an all-encompassing squeeze and then dragged his head down by the back of the neck so he could tap their foreheads together in that reg maneuver Echo sometimes did if he was feeling really sentimental. After a second Howzer released the completely shell-shocked Crosshair and stepped back.

“You better come back safe, ad’ika,” Howzer told him, “Now get the hell out of here, I need to think.”

Stiffly Crosshair turned and walked away, still totally bewildered by what had just happened.

Chapter Text

Tech figured out the trackers in only five days and on the sixth day AZI implanted the little devices - each no bigger than a grain of rice - into Crosshair and Wrecker’s upper arm. 

From there things got more stressful. 

They didn’t want to lead the Empire, especially Rampart, to Rex’s base, which meant Crosshair couldn’t call for imperial pickup on Dantooine, so they went to JanFathal instead. JanFathal was under Empire control after the CIS had fallen along with the Republic, but it wasn’t a hornet’s nest like Mygeeto or a place where they had allies they wouldn’t want to invite the Empire to interfere with like Ord Mantell.

They landed in the capital city of Athar using more of Rex’s stolen chain codes, and then Crosshair and Wrecker sparred, no armor, but real strikes. Howzer wouldn’t have liked it, hell the whole rest of the Batch hated it, with Hunter especially scowling and twitching every time one of them landed a hit. Apparently he felt okay beating Crosshair to a pulp himself, but didn’t like it when anybody else did it, even one of his brothers. Maybe he had just been so angry at the time that it hadn’t mattered to him when it normally would have. Crosshair didn’t know, they only did armor-on sparring very infrequently and it had been years since Hunter and Crosshair had fought like that. Regardless, Wrecker and Crosshair fought and Hunter scowled, Tech watched with hands that twitched to intervene, and Echo kept Omega busy in the cockpit so she didn’t have to watch her brothers hurt each other for a second time. None of them liked it, but Crosshair felt it would be best if it actually looked like there’d been a fight. He needed to be convincing for this to work, they both did, and Wrecker was a terrible liar.

Once they were both sufficiently wounded, with Crosshair bruised, sporting a sluggishly bleeding split lip, favoring his right side, and hosting an even more splitting headache than usual - not that he was about to complain - and Wrecker being even worse off with a badly bruised and bloodied face and limbs and what was probably a cracked rib or two, Echo and Omega reappeared and, before the brothers started the trek to the place Crosshair estimated would be the best location for him to call for imperial pickup, their eldest brother and little sister smothered them with hugs. Even Tech gave Crosshair a hug, as awkward and short-lived as it was. Hunter was too angry to hug anybody, but he did grab Crosshair and Wrecker both by the forearm and give them a hard stare before saying in a dark voice laced with unquestionable authority, “Don’t do anything stupid.” 

Crosshair was tempted to promise nothing out of sheer spite, but he understood that Hunter was angry because he was afraid. His brother was always the most furious when one of them did something to scare him and this plan, the gamble they were taking, was scaring him to death, they could all see that.

“We won’t,” Crosshair assured him with Wrecker nodding along. Unlike his little brother, Wrecker was not satisfied with only the warning as a parting gift and he swept Hunter up into one of his patented bone-crushing hugs. Hunter put up with it because it was Crosshair he was mad at, not Wrecker, but by the time he was released he looked like a tooka somebody had put through a laundering unit, fluffed up and indignant. 

Tech gave Crosshair an unmodified DC-17m that Rex had been kind enough to bestow upon them for this mission and both Wrecker and Crosshair left the safety of the Marauder to tromp their way through the abandoned district they had chosen.

A terrible feeling settled in Crosshair’s gut as he watched the Marauder take off and leave them behind, but Wrecker seemed to sense that it was there and he wrapped an arm around his little brother’s shoulders. “They’ll be back for us,” Wrecker reassured him, “And you’ve got me, nobody’s leavin’ you this time. We’re both comin’ back.”

Crosshair released a shaky sigh and nodded, maker he wished he had his toothpicks, but he didn’t and all he could chew on was his lower lip. He let Wrecker comfort him for a minute, feeling shaken enough that he didn’t fight his brother’s affection off, then he pulled out the communicator Rex had also given them and called the old comm code he had memorized back when he was still a cog in the machine. He had his own real 100% authentic chain code that was attached to his identity, one that he hadn’t used for anything since his brothers had reclaimed him, but he used it now along with his CT number. Repeating those numbers to the officer on the other end of the signal felt like cutting himself apart, like admitting that he had never really been a person to begin with, that that’s all he was…a number.

Wrecker clearly sensed his upset and gave him another tight squeeze while they waited for the shuttle to come pick them up. The operator had given them an ETA of fifteen minutes, so after ten minutes Crosshair shoved Wrecker off him and nudged him to kneel and put his hands on his head so he could hold him at gunpoint as the imperial shuttle landed. When the shuttle’s door opened and the ramp dropped down, two TK troopers marched down said ramp and grabbed Wrecker by the arms so they could drag him up and onto the ship. They said nothing to Crosshair and he followed behind them just as silently as they all loaded up and got ready to take off.

It was all familiar, the type of shuttle, the silent troopers, the red lighting, and the crackling comms spouting a never-ending series of codes and orders. The orders made his headache infinitely worse, even though they weren’t directed at him, but the codes and protocols were what really kicked up a storm inside him. He’d been programmed by the chip to respond to them and that impulse had stuck around just like everything else.

It took two silent days on the shuttle before they made it back to the imperial fleet, to Rampart’s flagship specifically. Crosshair didn’t eat or sleep the entire time, unable to make himself do either, his head too full of buzzing clattering noise for him to do anything but wait. He had had to leave the audio player behind. For once Wrecker didn’t pester him about taking care of himself either, because while the giant was an awful liar, he wasn’t stupid and he knew not to blatantly go against their cover. Crosshair knew he worried about it anyway, he could see it in the way Wrecker watched him and worked his jaw, holding the words in.

The anxiety that shivered through the sniper’s bones as the shuttle slid into the star destroyer’s docking bay was powerful, but compared to what he felt when the ramp lowered and he found the Vice Admiral waiting on the platform it was paltry.

Crosshair wasn’t ready for the absolute panic that slammed into him at the sight of Rampart, standing there real and watching him. He couldn’t panic now though, panicking would kill them, so Crosshair cut that part of himself away, like amputating a gangrenous limb, and quarantined it so it couldn’t touch any other part of his mind and poison him. Cutting himself, his mind, apart was probably a deeply unhealthy thing to do, but being executed was a lot more unhealthy and that was what would happen if Rampart caught on to their plan.

“CT-9904,” Rampart greeted as Crosshair made himself walk smoothly down the ramp to meet him, barely even noticing as Wrecker was shoved down after him, “And here I thought you’d gone down in flames with your birthplace.”

“No, Vice Admiral,” Crosshair responded, his voice empty of all fear; perfect, loyal, and subservient. “My…batchmates pulled me out of the city while I was unconscious.”

Rampart tilted his head in a way that reminded Crosshair unpleasantly of a predatory bird, “Did they now? And yet here you are, after so much time has passed, did you grow bored of spending time with them? I see you’ve brought me one of them as a prize.”

Crosshair was tempted to nod, but that wasn’t the correct lie, so he remained still, eyes focused on the place above Rampart’s left shoulder, respectfully averted. “I was grievously injured, sir,” he said instead, still perfect, still empty, as he pulled up the leg of his blacks enough to expose the prosthetic. The buzzing in his head had grown steadily into a roar as the seconds ticked by, it was becoming hard to think for himself underneath it. “I had to wait until I was recovered enough to be capable of fighting.”

“Your brothers saved your life, helped you recuperate, and gave you a new leg and you still betrayed them to return here?” Rampart asked, there was a strange tone in his voice, not disbelief, because Crosshair knew Rampart believed down to his bones that Crosshair was and always would be his slave, but almost…delight. 

It hurt. His mind was starting to tear itself apart. He couldn’t take this anymore, it was too much…but he had to continue.

For once Crosshair didn’t fight, he let himself sink down into the world of whispers, let the shadow of the chip rise up to meet him and then overtake him. He let it have what it wanted, so that his revulsion, his fury, his terror could no longer rip great bleeding swathes out of his soul. “They betrayed me first,” he spat viciously, finally listening to what the screaming in his head told him, “And my place is here. My loyalty is to the Empire.”

He felt a little woozy, a little distant, far away in the depths of his head instead of there in his body. This couldn’t be healthy, Tech would have scolded him, he felt, although it was hard to care. It was hard to care about anything like this. He must have been convincing though, much too convincing, because he saw the fearful look that spread across Wrecker’s face. Perhaps his brother saw that Crosshair had finally submitted to the voices in his head.

Rampart looked pleased as punch, smug, and why shouldn’t he? He’d thought his favorite pet had bit the dust, only for it to return to him of its own accord with a gift in its jaws. Knowing that, seeing that look on Rampart’s face, resurrected that putrid slimy thing inside Crosshair, the thing he’d thought he’d killed when he told his brothers the secret. It slithered through his guts and Crosshair sunk even deeper into his head, further away from the rest of himself, trying to get away from it. 

“Very good,” Rampart said in that syrupy voice he reserved for when Crosshair had exceeded his expectations. Those words made the voices in Crosshair’s head preen delightedly, but the tone made something else in him scream. He blocked that out, buried it. He didn’t have the luxury of revulsion. He had to sell this or they’d never succeed. He needed to be a slave to get what he wanted.

“Orders?” Crosshair asked. He should have hated the hopeful tone in his voice, would have, if he were still capable of feeling anything at all, but he couldn’t. He was too deep, too far away.

“Crosshair,” Wrecker said, his voice urgent. His face said that he’d forgotten they were playacting, he’d become genuinely afraid at some point during the short exchange. Crosshair gave him a totally disinterested look before turning his attention back to the Vice Admiral. 

If anything this seemed only to please Rampart further. “Funny how fragile your camaraderie has turned out to be,” the Vice Admiral said to Wrecker with a smirk, “You and the rest of your ‘brothers’ are obviously truly defective, but CT-9904 is all one could ever hope for in a clone. Obedient .”

Wrecker seethed and started towards Rampart, violence etched into every muscle and tendon of his body, but Crosshair saw it coming and promptly slammed the butt of his rifle into his brother's face and then kneed him in the gut with his metal leg. Wrecker doubled over in pain and Rampart smiled that cruel little smile of his. “CT-9904 your orders are to go to requisitions to get outfitted with new armor and weapons, then standby until eighteen hundred hours when you will report to me for debrief .”

Crosshair saluted and said, “Yes, Vice Admiral.” Somewhere some part of him was screaming. Debrief was the euphemism Rampart used for either ‘reward’ or ‘punishment’ and with the way things were going it seemed more likely to be ‘reward’ this time. Crosshair cringed away from the terror that knowledge dredged up and summarily buried it in a shallow grave next to the revulsion. He couldn’t feel anything. He needed to last at least that long, long enough to get Rampart alone so he could finish the mission. 

“You’re dismissed, trooper,” Rampart told him with a smirk before he turned to Wrecker. “It’s unfortunate that you’ve turned out to be so troublesome, CT-9902, but you may be of some use yet,” the Vice Admiral flicked his eyes over to two TK troopers that were standing only a few paces behind, weapons ready in case things got out of hand, “Take him to interrogations,” he ordered. The troopers saluted and then grabbed Wrecker by the arms so they could manhandle him out of the room.

Wrecker shot one last look at his little brother as he was dragged away. Crosshair expected to see anger or betrayal on his newly re-bloodied face, but all that was there was fear. He was afraid for Crosshair, maybe afraid of what he’d done to himself to sell the lie, Crosshair didn’t know, but he smothered the feelings seeing that expression elicited in their crib. He had a mission, there was no place for feelings, there was no place for anything but success. Crosshair was empty of everything but purpose as he turned his back on his ori’vod and walked away.

He remembered distantly that this had been what it was like after they’d enhanced the chip. He, Crosshair, remained only as a shadow buried under all the directives, his existence limited to an occasional stray thought that was easily dismissed by CT-9904. Even after they’d taken it out he remained that way to some extent, with Crosshair only rising to the surface once he was out on a mission before slipping back under when he returned. It had been so easy to slip back into that place again, he should be frightened by that, but fear was a Crosshair emotion and CT-9904 was not Crosshair. Crosshair didn’t matter, the orders mattered, so he went to carry them out.

Rampart’s flagship was much the same as he remembered it, although the quartermaster that he met in requisitions was a TK trooper now when before it had been a clone. CT-9904 didn’t talk to the man other than to give him the specifications of the equipment he needed and the quartermaster didn’t attempt to engage him in conversation either, simply drifting away among the shelves and crates of equipment to find what had been requested.

CT-9904 took the new items back to his place in the barracks, unoccupied now that his elite squad was dead. He inspected everything carefully, checking that it was all in working order, however he stripped back out of the armor once he’d finished making sure it all fit properly. He wasn’t supposed to wear armor for debrief. It got in the way. 

With nothing to do but wait, CT-9904 set an alarm, then stretched out on his assigned bunk and made himself sleep.

He had no dreams. Dreams were also a Crosshair thing, nightmares especially, and the orders drowned them out in a static buzz of noise that filled the clone’s unconscious mind until the alarm went off and he woke up.

Time for debrief.

CT-9904 drifted through the halls of the star destroyer on autopilot. He knew the route to Rampart’s quarters by heart and it was his feet that led him there more than his head. When he reached the door to his destination he knocked twice, paused, and then knocked another three times. Rampart opened the door and stepped out of his way only a few seconds after he’d finished.

The Vice Admiral’s quarters looked exactly the same as every other time CT-9904 had ever been in them and the familiarity raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He wasn’t upset by it, not the way Crosshair probably would have been. 

Rampart smiled at him, that familiar oily smirk, and his voice dripped when he spoke. “The prodigal son returns,” the Vice Admiral said, sounding highly amused. “Come stand over by my desk, CT-9904.”

CT-9904’s feet carried him over without any input from his brain. Probably another red flag. It was so easy to obey orders, it was disobeying that was challenging…but why would he want to disobey them anyway?

“Good,” Rampart said once CT-9904 had turned back to face him. “Kneel.”

The sniper hesitated. He had a reason for being there other than the usual, but he was struggling to grasp what it was. Before he could figure it out, however, pain tore through his skull and down his limbs like he’d just been struck by lightning.

KNEEL!

KneelKneelKneelKneelKneelKneel

The force of the orders slamming around inside his head, tearing him apart, caused CT-9904’s knees to buckle, but it subsided slightly once he was kneeling as ordered. Rampart’s smile widened. “Always so obedient, even without your inhibitor chip. If only your brothers could be like you, then I’d have the full set instead of just the one piece.”

Something about that idea was disturbing, although CT-9904 couldn’t figure out what. Rampart standing before his brothers as they all knelt. Would he use the knife on them? Would he kiss them and use their bodies like he owned them, the way he had done with CT-9904? There was definitely something off about that, something that made his guts twist unpleasantly, like he was about to be sick. 

Rampart prowled across the room and pulled a smooth wooden case out of his desk, which he opened to withdraw his prized knife. He had a collection of them, but that one - wickedly curved with an ivory hilt, a golden pommel in the shape of a ram’s head, and a Damascus steel blade, an antique - was his absolute favorite. CT-9904 was intimately familiar with it. Crosshair often felt the ghost of it sliding hot over his flesh, but Crosshair was out to lunch, present only in spirit. CT-9904 would feel the real thing when Rampart put it to use of course, but the memories were too far away to hurt him. 

CT-9904 was empty, he felt nothing.

“You’ve survived the fall of Tipoca City and you’ve returned to your place with the Empire…” Rampart observed as he ran his thumb over the blade thoughtfully, “Which is impressive I must say…however you were captured, and even when you were so close to them, you still failed to complete your mission. You failed CT-9904. You know the cost of failure.”

CT-9904 nodded. He knew. Numbly he watched as Rampart approached him. The Vice Admiral stopped right in front of him and then crouched down to be at eye level, “We’re going to do something a little different this time.” He flipped the knife so he was holding it by the blade and then held it out hilt-first to CT-9904, “Take it.”

The clone took it. It was heavier than he had expected, much heavier than a vibroblade of the same size, and he spun it in his hand automatically, getting a feel for it. Rampart smiled at him toothily. Distantly, CT-9904 felt that if he had opinions he wouldn’t have liked that smile, it meant something bad was about to happen.

“Normally I’d add these new cuts to your back, below the ones on your shoulder blades that you earned on Rhyloth, but since we’re playing a new game they’ll be going on your remaining leg. Roll your left pant leg up to the knee.” CT-9904 did as he was told, rolling up the leg of his blacks with one hand while holding the knife in the other. “Very good,” the Vice Admiral told him in a sickly sweet voice, “Now, this time you will be doing the cutting. I want you to be precise about it and I suggest you get it right the first time or I’ll have you cut deeper. We’ll start just below your knee on the inside of your calf.”

Something about this wasn’t quite right, but CT-9904 wasn’t sure what. “Make the first cut, CT-9904,” Rampart ordered mildly as he stood back up just long enough to sit down in his desk chair and brace his elbows on his knees, his fingers interlaced under his chin. His eyes were bright and hungry and his smile was just the tiniest cruel twist of his lips. “Maybe if you’re good I’ll give you a reward afterwards,” the Vice Admiral told him in a liquid voice. CT-9904 knew what Rampart’s ‘rewards’ entailed and he’d never heard anything less motivating in his entire life. 

Hands ghostly on his skin, the taste of Rampart in his mouth, on his tongue… The threat of it made his body tremble and his hands shake even if he didn’t understand why.

Regardless, the clone placed the blade against the flesh of his calf, just below the knee as instructed…but he didn’t draw it across. Something was wrong, something about this wasn’t right. As before, pain exploded inside his head at the disobedience and he screwed up his face against it.

“Make the cut, CT-9904,” Rampart ordered, more forcefully this time.

MAKE THE CUT! screamed the voices in CT-9904’s head as they tore his brain apart.

CutCutCutCutCutCutCutCut

But there was a different voice there, beneath the screaming, a familiar voice. “You mustn’t hurt yourself, Crosshair,” it said firmly, leaving no room for argument. 

CT-9904 tried to figure out whose voice it was, why it seemed so familiar, but it was far away.

Rampart broke through the storm in his head with the bitten off command, “Make. The. Cut.”

Cut!Cut!Cut!Cut!Cut!Cut!Cut!

No this was wrong. It was wrong. He shouldn’t—

CUT!CUT!CUT!CUT!CUT!CUT!

He had to make the cut, he had to, good soldiers follow orders.

“YOU MUSTN’T HURT YOURSELF CROSSHAIR!”

GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS!

“ YOU MUSTN’T HURT YOURSELF!”

GOOD! SOLDIERS! FOLLOW! ORDERS!!!

Rampart made a furious noise and grabbed the hand holding the knife, spitting, “Must I do everything myself?!”

Somehow that did it. The feeling of Rampart touching him did it. The wall that had been separating CT-9904, had been separating Crosshair , from the rest of the world shattered and he was back in his body full force. The pain in his head was blinding, but he didn’t care about that, all he cared about was the fact that Rampart was once again touching him, was once again trying to hurt him. Blistering boiling fury flooded through his body and propelled him forward. Crosshair lunged and buried the blade of the knife up to the hilt in Rampart’s left eye. 

The man was dead before he could even scream.

It was over so fast. 

Crosshair stood there for a moment, panting, unbalanced, and wrong-footed. A shiver slid through his body as he fully came back to himself. He was Crosshair, Crosshair , not CT-9904. CT-9904 was just his serial number, not who he was.

Looking down at Rampart’s slumped over body filled Crosshair with some kind of feeling, but he couldn’t for the life of him identify what it was. Deciding now wasn’t the best time to dwell on it, Crosshair reached past the Vice Admiral’s corpse to hit the call button on his desk. It blinked red and a female voice came through, “Yes, Vice Admiral?” the woman asked.

Crosshair had to wet his lips before he could speak, and when he did his voice came out raspy, as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time. “Vice Admiral Rampart has been murdered,” he said, and then hit the button again to end the call.

His body wanted to sit down, but Crosshair suspected that if he obliged it he wouldn’t be getting back up any time soon and he’d rather not be physically dragged out when they came to arrest him, so he remained standing, motionless, watching blood bubble and ooze out from around the knife buried in Rampart’s face to slide down his chin and stain his perfectly cleaned and pressed uniform when it dripped onto his chest.

Rampart was dead. Crosshair had killed him. He was dead and would never cut or kiss or touch or torment Crosshair again. He was dead.

Chapter Text

Crosshair was clapped in binders and escorted out of Rampart’s quarters by a couple of TK troopers only a minute or two after he made the call, but even then the response time was slower than it would have been if he were dealing with clones. Not only that but they also left his hands in front of him instead of putting them behind his back. He was a commando, they knew he was a commando, they should have known better than to give him even a centimeter of free movement when they didn’t have to, even the regs would have known better. Somehow the constant failings of the Empire’s new soldiers didn’t make him feel better that they had all been replaced. It made him feel worse if anything. What was the point of it all? 

He didn’t fight them as they shoved him down the halls of the star destroyer at gunpoint. The nat-born troops led him through the winding labyrinth of corridors until they reached the brig. Crosshair passed by two occupied cells before being shoved - binders still on - into an empty one across from a third. All three cells held clones and the clone across from Crosshair watched the TK troopers warily as they left before getting up and moving to stand in front of the ray shield separating him from the hall. 

Crosshair ignored him as his wobbly legs finally gave out and he sat down hard on the floor. His whole body was shaking. It was starting to sink in, not that he’d killed Rampart, or that Rampart was dead, but what he had done to himself. Crosshair had made a mistake, it was a mistake coming here. His brothers had been right, he hadn’t been ready to face Rampart and he’d almost paid dearly for it. That was the other thing. What had almost happened, what Rampart had almost made him do, what Crosshair had almost done to himself.

“Hey aren’t you the sniper from the Bad Batch?” asked the clone standing across from him.

Crosshair nodded mechanically and the clone whooped, “Hey Boil! Catcher! Guess what the tooka dragged in!”

There was a sigh from the cell to the clone’s immediate left, the closer of the two Crosshair had passed, “What is it, Trapper?” the occupant asked, he sounded tired and fed up.

“A clone commando!” Trapper told them excitedly

“Really?” asked the third clone, the one who was furthest away.

Trapper nodded, even though the other two couldn’t see him. “Yes really!”

Crosshair dragged his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them, shaking violently and breathing in short gasps.

“Oh kark,” Trapper said.

“What?” asked the tired sounding clone.

“He uh…he’s not looking so hot…hey pal are you okay?”

Crosshair didn’t respond. He felt sick, his stomach roiling, he was sweating profusely and yet at the same time he was also freezing cold.

The tired clone sounded a lot more alert all of a sudden. “What’s wrong with him?” 

“I dunno,” Trapper told him, he sounded worried. “You hurt, buddy?”

Crosshair shook his head, just to get the clone to shut up.

“He says he’s not hurt,” Trapper said to the other two clones before turning back to Crosshair, “He’s shaking real bad. You having a panic attack?”

Crosshair didn’t dignify that with a response, everything was so loud, in his ears, in his mind, the pain in his head was still killing him even though there were no more orders for him to disobey.

“What’s he in for?” asked the furthest away of the three clones.

“What’re you in for, buddy?” Trapper repeated as if somehow Crosshair hadn’t heard.

“Stabbed Vice Admiral Rampart in the face,” Crosshair replied with a breathless laugh. He felt out of control, pulled in too many directions by the elation of having killed Rampart and the revulsion of both what he’d almost done to himself and what he had done to himself.

Trapper let out a whistle, “No kiddin?” 

“You killed Rampart?” asked the far away clone.

“Dead,” Crosshair replied. 

“What for?” asked Trapper, “I mean he totally deserved it, but murdering a superior officer is kind of suicidal.”

His shaking was getting worse and Crosshair clenched his arms around his legs a little tighter. “H-he ordered me to— He almost made me—” The full force of what had happened hit him then and Crosshair ended up on his hands and knees, retching onto the floor of his cell.

“Yikes,” said Trapper.

“Sounds like psychological shock,” sighed the tired clone, “If he was ordered to do something terrible and resisted then it’s most likely a psychosomatic thing.”

“I don’t know what that means, Doctor Catcher Sir. I’m not smart like you, you’ve gotta use little words,” Trapper huffed.

“Ha ha,” Catcher replied in a deeply unamused voice. “Commando,” he called a second later, raising his voice slightly, “Normally I’d give you a blanket and some food and water, maybe a sedative, but we’re kind of not in an optimal medical environment right now, so how about you talk to us instead. What division are you with?”

Crosshair sat back on his haunches, breathing hard but no longer retching, as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, “No division,” he replied. He wasn’t sure why he was engaging with these regs, other than the fact that he’d do anything to get out of his head at that moment. His brain was a terrible place to be and he’d gone far far too deep. It was nothing short of a miracle that there’d been enough of him left to resist Rampart’s orders.

“What do you mean no division?” asked the clone who - by process of elimination - must be Boil. 

“He’s from Clone Force 99,” Trapper explained, “They’re an independent spec ops unit.”

“How do you know that?” Boil asked.

Trapper tilted his head, “How do you not?  They worked for Commander Cody sometimes, he even called them in to help turn the tide on Anaxes. Bunch of lunatics nearly crashed their attack shuttle every time they made a landing on base.”

“What happened to Cody?” Crosshair asked before the two of them could get into an argument.

Trapper winced, “He’s still got his chip in.”

Crosshair grimaced and sat back so he was pressed against the wall, as far away from the puddle of sick as possible, although he sat cross-legged this time instead of curled into a ball. He hated to admit it, but the clones distracting him was helping. “So he’s off being a good little soldier then,” he grumbled.

“Pretty much,” said Boil.

A niggling thought occurred to Crosshair then, almost buried under everything else in his brain, “How do you know about the chips?”

Trapper grinned, “Mr. Smarty Pants Catcher here figured it out and then started sneaking clones into surgery with various excuses so he could take them out.”

“That’s Doctor Smarty Pants to you,” Boil replied with a cackle.

“Laugh it up,” Catcher sighed, “You’re both hilarious .”

“I take it you’re in here because you got caught,” Crosshair replied dryly.

“Yeah…” huffed Trapper, “Boil and I started helping him after he took our chips out and they caught all three of us.”

“How many clones did you free before you got caught?” Crosshair asked them curiously.

“Thirty-three, including these two,” Catcher told him with a hint of pride in his voice. “Four of which were other medics who haven’t gotten caught yet. They’ll keep it up without me. We were actually working out how to get Commander Cody under the knife the morning before they caught me and the boys here, so hopefully he’ll be back to his old self soon and can help…but that’s up to our brothers now.”

“They’re smart cookies, they don’t really need our help anyway,” Trapper added brightly.

“Once they fix Commander Cody they’ll be able to get ahold of any brothers they want, maybe even the other commanders,” Boil agreed, “Catcher started it, but it’ll go on without us.”

Crosshair let out a thoughtful hum. “Sounds like you’ve started a little wave of disobedience here,” he said.

“Well knocking over dominoes is fun, especially when they end up tearing apart fascist military forces as they fall,” Boil replied with a sharp grin in his voice.

It was debatable how much of an effect losing large chunks of the GAR would have on the Empire’s forces, considering they’d already been phasing the clones out in droves, but it was a nice idea nonetheless.

“So the fact that you were able to disobey a direct order enough to kill a superior officer means your chip must not work, right?” the medic asked.

Crosshair shook his head even though Catcher couldn’t see him, “It worked, they just had to take it out after I had a head injury.”

“Oh, well that’ll do it I guess,” Catcher replied dryly.

The regs continued to talk to him, with Crosshair responding minimally, until they heard more people coming down the hall. He was relieved when the guards marched Wrecker past at gunpoint. He saw as they passed that his brother didn’t appear to have any extra injuries from his extended stay in ‘interrogations’ although he was trembling slightly. Crosshair felt more than a little bad about that. They’d known it would happen, had planned for it, but he still felt like he should have done something to stop it, but no instead he’d turned himself into a braindead meat droid until the very last possible second and had nearly botched the mission entirely. Crosshair was a terrible mission partner and a terrible brother. No wonder Hunter was afraid to let him out of his sight.

The TK troopers had bound Wrecker’s hands behind him instead of in front, which wouldn’t do them any good given Crosshair’s brother could tear through a pair of binders like that as if they were made of wet tissue. Regardless Wrecker cooperated - his eyes widening when they passed by Crosshair’s cell and he saw how horrible his little brother undoubtedly looked - and the troopers locked him in the cell to Crosshair’s left

Once the guards had walked away again Wrecker said, “Cross? You okay? You…Are you back?”

“Yes,” Crosshair mumbled, loud enough for his brother to hear but not actually loud by any stretch of the imagination, “Rampart’s dead.” That much should be obvious given he’d been locked up, but he felt the need to say it anyway, just to hear it out loud another time. Rampart was dead, he was gone.

“He didn’t hurt you did he?” Wrecker asked. He sounded genuinely afraid, but that wasn’t a surprise. He’d come along on the mission to protect Crosshair and they’d been separated immediately, leaving Crosshair once again at Rampart’s mercy. 

“He tried,” Crosshair told him honestly, “but he failed.” Barely. He’d only barely failed.

Wrecker let out a growl and Crosshair heard his binders clink like he was leaning back against the wall. “That stinkin’ bastard.”

Crosshair made a noise of agreement.

“When, when you were talking to ‘im, what happened? You were…” Wrecker spoke up again and then trailed off, sounding ill.

“Gone?” Crosshair provided, because that’s exactly what he had been. Gone, out fishing, present only in the most physical sense.

“Yeah,” Wrecker mumbled.

Crosshair sighed and stared up at the ceiling of his cell tiredly, “I panicked when we were finally face to face,” he explained, “but we didn’t have the luxury of panic, so I killed myself, just a little, temporarily. I knew the shadow of the chip would know what to do.”

“Crosshair,” Wrecker said, his voice raw, “Don’t…don’t you ever do somethin’ like that again. I thought you were…I thought… Never do that again.”

Wrecker didn’t really need to say what he’d thought, it was obvious. He’d thought Crosshair had killed himself off for real, that CT-9904 had consumed him, eaten him up, and they’d lost him forever. 

“I didn’t do it to scare you,” Crosshair said, apology adjacent.

“I don’t care why you did it, never do it again,” Wrecker told him, more forcefully this time, “Promise me.”

“You don’t have to make me promise,” Crosshair said hoarsely, “It was no fun, I’m not doing it again.”

He heard Wrecker let out a gusty sigh, “Good.”

The brothers were quiet for a while before Trapper seemed to be unable to bear the silence and couldn’t hold himself back.

“So you’re clone commando number two?” the clone asked curiously. 

“Yeah?” Wrecker answered, sounding perplexed. 

Trapper grinned, “Cool! We met your brother already. He wasn’t looking so hot but he seems a little better now.”

“Nice to meet you,” Wrecker told him, sounding distracted.

The three regs all introduced themselves and Wrecker chatted with them for a while while Crosshair spaced out. After what might have been a few hours of Wrecker and the three regs talking amiably about something Crosshair didn’t care to pay attention to the TK troopers reappeared, although their attention was on Crosshair this time. They stopped in front of his cell and one leveled his rifle at Crosshair’s chest while the other disengaged the ray shield. 

“Out,” said the trooper who’d hit the control panel to make said action possible. Obediently Crosshair stepped out of his cell and refrained from breaking the trooper’s neck when the man grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him forward down the hall. Wrecker might have been able to break out of his binders with zero effort, but Crosshair’s hands had been left in front of him and he’d easily be able to kill the two troopers if he’d been so inclined, even shackled as he was…not that having his hands behind his back would have saved them if he’d really intended to kill them. The knowledge that they lived only by his mercies soothed some of the sniper’s annoyance as they manhandled him back down the hall.

“You’ll be okay, Cross!” Wrecker called. They both knew where he was headed. This had been the sticking point for Hunter…well aside from the fact that he rightly assumed Crosshair was too mentally unstable to be faced with his tormentor. 

Interrogation.

The TK troopers led him down several more identical hallways until they reached a door, which one of them opened with a code Crosshair memorized the instant the man tapped it into the pad, since you never knew what might come in handy mid-mission, and then the two of them frogmarched Crosshair into the dimly lit room and strung him up in a containment field before leaving him alone to wait for his ‘appointment’. The two troopers laughed as they walked out of the room and Crosshair reminded himself that between being tortured and being a slave of the Empire like they were he’d rather be tortured. After all, he'd experienced both in the last year. 

They made him wait, which Crosshair knew was a scare tactic. It didn’t work. Whatever they were going to do to him he’d already faced worse. Hell, he’d faced worse that day, not that he was looking forward to being tortured again. Eventually an officer graced him with his presence, bringing a trooper with him to actually pull the levers and read the dials. Hopefully they wouldn’t kill Crosshair by accident from sheer incompetence.

“CT-9904” the officer said, his voice pure scorn, “You’ve murdered Vice Admiral Rampart, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Yes,” Crosshair told him snidely, “Gray is an ugly color on you, it makes you look sallow.”

The officer stared at him for a split second, surprised, before the anger hit and he turned to the trooper who’d moved over to the control panel for the containment field, “Level five, three seconds,” he snapped.

The TK trooper nodded and then pain arced through Crosshair’s body like a million of Nala Se’s large-bore needles stabbing into his bones. He didn’t scream, although he did spasm involuntarily. It was a good thing Tech and Echo had proofed his prosthetic leg against electrical surges, he thought as the officer said something else to him. Crosshair wasn’t paying attention anymore and the electricity arced back through him. He zoned out further instead of paying attention. It was an automatic reaction, although fortunately it wasn’t the same as letting the chip eat his personality. Rather than being totally vacant Crosshair just felt like he was watching the officer and trooper torture him from the other side of a window. He felt the pain, but it didn’t truly register. He wasn’t tempted to talk. Crosshair had never broken under torture before and he wasn’t about to this time either.

After who knew how long the officer finally got bored with him and left with his little follower trailing after him obediently. Crosshair was still behind the window in his mind, unfortunately he didn’t get to decide when to come back, that was something his brain and body had to come to an agreement over without his input. Two more troopers showed up to take him down some time later and shoved him back through the hallways to his cell. Crosshair managed to walk…mostly, his legs gave out under him once or twice and the troopers ended up dragging him. The two of them tossed him unceremoniously back into his cell across from Trapper, reengaged the ray shield, and strolled away.

“Cross, are you okay?” Wrecker asked once their footsteps died away.

Crosshair barely registered the question and the need to answer was practically nonexistent, so he said nothing.

The lack of response seemed to only make his brother more worried. “Crosshair?” Wrecker’s voice was higher than it usually was and some part of Crosshair felt that that was important, that he should do something about it, but that part was so distant and hard to reach that it barely affected him.

“What’s going on, Trapper?” Catcher asked, “What’s he look like?”

Trapper frowned, “Unfocused, like he isn’t really paying attention. His eyes are glassy.”

“Crosshair,” Catcher called, his voice steady and calm, “I’m going to ask you a question and I need you to answer me, it might not feel important but it is. Can you do that?”

Could he answer a question right now? That had been the whole point hadn’t it? Not answering any questions. He didn’t respond, but Catcher asked his question anyway. “I need you to tell me, do you feel like you’re far away? Or like there’s something separating you from the rest of the world?”

That seemed like a lot less meaningful question than what the officer had been asking. Listlessly he thought it over and then Crosshair gave a vague nod, without really considering that Catcher couldn’t see him. Fortunately Trapper could.

“He nodded,” Trapper declared.

“Sounds like he’s dissociating,” Catcher said, “Not the best thing to be going on, but given the situation it’s not surprising…and considering he was already in psychological distress a little while ago, getting tortured probably did him no favors.”

“He’s doing what?” Wrecker asked, sounding fearful.

“Dissociating,” Catcher explained, “It’s a defense mechanism the human psyche sometimes engages in to cope with traumatic experiences. Doing it too frequently or when in situations that don’t warrent it is bad and doing it in combat can be dangerous, but dissociating while being tortured is both absolutely normal and probably also a good thing, so long as he snaps out of it pretty soon.”

“Okay,” Wrecker said, “Okay. You’re alright, Cross. I toldya you’d be okay and you are. This is just like when we were cadets, remember? You’d come back from one’a Nala Se’s experiments and wouldn’t be able to talk for a couple hours…but you were always okay after a while, so I know you’ll be okay now.”

Crosshair did remember. He’d felt then the way he felt now - although they hadn’t had a word for it at the time -  so he was pretty sure he was alright…or he would be once his brain turned the rest of the way back on. 

The wall between him and the world didn’t shatter this time. There was no surge of fury or sudden act of violence, instead he slowly sunk back into his own skin, his mind reconnecting with his body over the course of what must have been an hour at least. Crosshair found himself lying on the floor of his cell staring blankly up at the ceiling. He blinked and then pushed himself upright, touching his head and feeling a little woozy still.

“Hey there pal,” Trapper said, “You look better.” Crosshair glanced at him and inclined his head in agreement.

“Crosshair?” came Wrecker’s concerned voice, “Are you back?”

Crosshair let out a huff and a shaky sigh, “Yes,” he said, “I don’t know where I went, but I’m back.”

“You alright?” his brother asked.

Crosshair nodded before he remembered Wrecker couldn’t see him, “Fine. Tired, sore.”

Wrecker grunted, “Me too, those things hit pretty hard huh?”

“Pretty hard,” Crosshair agreed. “I prefer this to the knives though.” Rampart’s knives had been something he’d never been able to tune out, not like he had with this. The orders had always kept him too present for him to shut the pain away in the depths of his brain. Rampart had wanted him to feel it and Crosshair had been nothing if not slavishly obedient to every one of Rampart’s whims.

“No more knives,” Wrecker reminded him, “Rampart’s dead.”

“No more knives…” Crosshair repeated, tasting the words as he said them. Yes, Rampart was dead, there’d be no more knives.

The TK troopers ended up coming for him another three times to take him to an ‘appointment’ with the officer and each time when the pain hit him Crosshair zoned out, or whatever Catcher had called it, for the duration and then for a while after the troopers dragged him back to his cell. He’d have thought Wrecker would be less worried about it the third or fourth time it happened, but if anything he seemed more worried. 

Each time his brother asked him questions he was too far away to answer. Catcher, Trapper, and Boil talked to him, trying to pull him back. Whether any of that worked Crosshair didn’t know, he had no perspective on how long it took him to come back. If talking to him shortened the duration he had no way of knowing that unless somebody told him and none of them mentioned it, they just kept doing it regardless.

After four appointments where the only words that came out of Crosshair’s mouth were his initial snide comments the officer lost all interest in him. The TK troopers didn’t come a fifth time and all of the clones let out a sigh of relief.

Wrecker seemed to get along really well with the three regs that were locked up with them though. The bubbly Trapper, down-to-earth Catcher, and sarcastic but friendly Boil meshed well with Wrecker’s naturally jovial personality and Crosshair wondered if his brother would have his own reg trio once this mission was over. He wasn’t opposed to the idea of one having reg friends the way he would have been before they’d rescued Howzer, Scroll, and Klacks; he could see now that the regs could be perfectly fine when they didn’t have their heads up their asses. It had been something of a revelation for all of the Batch really. Echo had been the first, kind and compassionate and competent, he opened the door for his reg brothers to slip through and slip through they had. Who would have ever imagined?

Crosshair didn’t mind Trapper, Catcher, and Boil either. The way Trapper and Boil joked with each other and Catcher complained loudly about it was distracting if nothing else and without his audio player he needed something to distract him. Wrecker checked on him frequently, asking if it was too loud, which sounded innocuous enough to outside ears even though he was really asking about the imaginary crap in Crosshair’s head bothering him rather than the regs’ chattering. Sometimes it was too loud and Wrecker would goad the regs into bickering over some trivial nonsense to give Crosshair something to pay attention to. Unlike Crosshair, Wrecker was a good mission partner and a good brother. The knowledge that he’d have been having a significantly harder time with this mission if Wrecker weren’t there sat bitterly in his gut, he’d wanted to come alone, had thought he could handle it alone, yet another mistake. 

He realized now that whatever desperate defenses he’d built up against Rampart’s games, the harsh environment of the Empire, and the solitude over the duration of his capture had been broken down by his brothers in the months since they had reclaimed them. Crosshair had needed those things to survive, but around his brothers they had only made him unstable and he’d grown out of them. Being back in the hands of the Empire was a regression he no longer had a means to deal with on his own. He knew that now and was intensely thankful his brothers had insisted Wrecker accompany him on this - as Howzer had accurately put it - absolute shit-show of a mission. 

Finally after what must have been a week at least, although none of them had a good sense of time in a place without chronos or a day/night cycle programmed into the lights, a hoard of TK troopers showed up and pulled the lot of them out of their cells. At gunpoint the clones were escorted down the indistinguishable halls of the star destroyer towards an unknown destination, although they had their suspicions. Crosshair would have thought the TK troopers were using a map to know where they were going in the labyrinth of featureless hallways if he himself hadn’t spent so much time on this exact ship. He knew in reality they had simply memorized the routes after treading the ground over and over, only newbies needed a map to find their way.

To Wrecker and Crosshair’s relief their destination was one of the docking bays where they were loaded onto a prisoner transport and locked in more ray shielded cells, each so small they could stand in the center and put their arms out to touch both walls at once. Poor Wrecker was practically in a coffin. But this was good, firstly it meant they probably weren’t going to be executed, and secondly it suggested that Crosshair had judged correctly that they would be transferred to the clone prison. Hopefully that was where they were going or this whole thing would have been a massive unnecessary risk full of needless pain and suffering for the both of them. 

It had always been a gamble, which was probably part of why Hunter, Howzer, Echo, and Tech had been so vehemently against it, as futile as their misgivings were. The mission had to happen and this was the only way forward. Nearly suicidal risks were frequetly a part of the job and nothing new to the Batch, it was why their plans always seemed so ‘insane’ to the regs. The rank and file troopers weren’t used to the kind of missions the Batch were expected to complete, with the cost of failure being impossibly high, and didn’t need to use such unorthodox tactics just to survive, although that also seemed to be something Howzer had a problem with, if his threat of an ‘attitude adjustment’ was anything to  go by.

The five captured clones weren’t left to their own devices, two guards were posted down in the belly of the ship where the cells were and Trapper and Boil seemed to make it their mission to annoy the TK troopers as much as possible, as if they didn’t realize it would blow back on them as soon as the troopers had an opportunity to retaliate. They would have that opportunity too, but maybe the regs did know that and were just lippy little shits who couldn’t help themselves. Crosshair had repeatedly taunted the officer in charge of interrogating him, but that had largely been because he knew the man was just going to hurt him anyway and he figured he may as well draw a little proverbial blood of his own while he could. Admittedly he himself had been a lot more snide and willing to goad enemies and allies alike back before his time with Rampart had taught him the true dangers of disrespecting the wrong people.

The trip to wherever the hell they were going took a long time, even after Crosshair felt the bump and then the swoop in his stomach that suggested they’d entered hyperspace. It took long enough for there to be five whole guard rotations. Trapper and Boil dug their metaphorical teeth into those guards too, jeering and mocking their armor and weapons, their parentage, their skills, and anything else they could think of and only stopped when Catcher snapped at them to shut up because they were giving him a headache.

As Crosshair had known they would, when the ship finally dropped out of hyperspace and then the bump of landing came the TK troopers let Boil and Trapper out of their cells one at a time so they could beat them senseless with their fists and feet and the butts of their rifles, however the two clones seemed to be of the opinion that the entertainment was worth the beating it had called down upon them. Catcher grumbled irritably about them having no sense of self-preservation and giving him more work to do, not that the TK troopers let the clone medic see to his brothers.

After the TK troopers had taken care of their business all five clones were escorted down the ramp of the ship only to be hit by a wind so cold and cutting it felt like razor blades on their skin the instant it touched them. They had not been given any protective clothing and so they were made to trek through the blistering cold and knee-deep snow in just their blacks and boots. They made it to a door built into a recessed structure buried under a mound of snow that only became visible through the blizzard once they came within ten meters of it. There was a vague dark shape in the distance that Crosshair suspected was the cliff Howzer had told them the prison was burrowed into, but the snow made it impossible to see more than just the shadow of it. The relief of being out of the wind when they were shoved through the door into the narrow tunnel beyond was all-encompassing, although eventually it faded into a sense of sheer insidious cold that sunk into their bones like a disease. 

Crosshair suspected they’d be given some kind of protective clothing eventually, no human could survive in cold this deep for long without it and Howzer had been in the prison for months before he was sent to the slave market, but at the moment that didn’t seem to be their escort’s priority. The five clones were led through a series of winding narrow passages until they came out into a larger room that was just as freezing as everywhere else but at least felt a little less suffocating. The large room had other clones in it, eleven of them, all shivering and blue lipped, standing in neat rows in a way that Crosshair knew was absolute second-nature for them. Crosshair and Wrecker got confused looks from the other clones as they fell into line beside Trapper, Catcher, and Boil, since it was reasonable to assume that all the prisoners were clones, yet the two of them didn’t look like clones. Hopefully they’d only have to explain it once before it got around. Crosshair knew rumors and information alike spread like wildfire among regs.

The room had three exits, Crosshair noted, all appearing to lead into more cramped tunnels. Spread out around the perimeter of the room were more TK troopers armed with rifles and carrying stun batons on their hips, all wearing cold-weather gear. The troopers that had brought the five of them from the ship had disappeared back into the tunnel from whence they came, probably hustling along to get out of an environment their equipment wasn’t meant to protect them from. 

Three nat-born humans in fluffy coats and thick pants and gloves appeared after a moment and two of the three started distributing winter clothes. To Crosshair’s irritation the regs accepted their bundles of gear but remained standing still in tight formation. He put his coat on the second it was given to him even if it was too short at the arms and too large at the shoulders. The two nat-borns came up short when they reached Wrecker and looked uncerntainly between him and their last set of clothes, before turning to the third nat-born who had been supervising in a way that screamed ‘commanding officer’. 

The officer sniffed, whether a reaction to the cold or an imperious gesture, Crosshair couldn’t tell. “Give him some blankets instead, he’ll figure it out if he wants to live,” she told them disinterestedly. The two lower ranking nat-borns hustled out of the room while the officer looked over them all. After they reappeared and piled Wrecker’s arms with thin scratchy-looking blankets they stepped back to flank the officer. 

“Right,” the officer said, giving the gathered clones a disgusted once-over, “You’re all here because you’re useless insubordinate sacks of shit that can’t fulfill the only reason for which you exist. You’re going to stay here and do some actual work to serve the Empire until you die. Save the tears for somebody who cares.”

What a lovely woman. Crosshair only barely managed to resist rolling his eyes.

“So here’s what you need to know: I’m the warden here, Colonel Greeves, what I did to land myself in this absolute shitpile I have no idea, but seeing you gutless vermin work yourselves to death makes me feel better, so not one of you is going to see the light of day ever again, it’s my personal mission to make sure of it. You will do as you’re told when you’re told. Insubordination will land your ass in solitary, failure to meet your quota will land your ass in solitary, irritating me will land your ass in solitary. The period of time you spend in solitary will be equal to how much you have annoyed me.”

Colonel Greeves tilted her head and gestured to the two nat-borns at her side, “These are Lieutenants Hastum and Rok, you will obey them when I am not around. You will obey any order you are given by any of my personnel. Welcome to the rest of your short miserable lives.”

With that the ray of sunshine that was Colonel Greeves turned and walked away with the two lieutenants trailing after her. From there a TK trooper who looked to be higher ranking than the others based purely on his attitude, a sergeant maybe, stepped up and barked at them to put on their protective clothes, to much relief from all clones present. TK troopers didn’t wear rank insignia because the rank of whoever they were looking at showed up on their HUD via some kind of network Crosshair knew almost nothing about. It was a good system for avoiding your officers getting targeted, at least until there was a technical malfunction and suddenly nobody knew who the hell anybody was. Another one of the many basic failings of the overcomplicated TK trooper system that made them inherently inferior to the GAR.

As it turned out, the thick pants Crosshair had been issued were too short for his legs, no surprise there, and the gloves didn’t fit his hands either, which was probably bad. The maybe sergeant stalked through the assembled clones, then stopped in front of Crosshair and looked him over with obvious distaste.

“Wipe that look off your ugly karking face,” he growled.

“What look?” Crosshair asked him in his blandest voice. 

The trooper grabbed him roughly by the jaw and brought his face mere inches away from Crosshair’s, so close he could hear the slight crackle of his vocoder when he breathed as he snarled something. Whatever he was saying though, Crosshair didn’t hear it. The screaming in his ears drowned out every other noise in the world and even if it hadn’t he wouldn’t have been able to focus with that hand on his jaw. The feeling was so familiar, Rampart holding him still so he could claim Crosshair’s mouth hungrily, twisting his head to the side to reach his neck with his teeth, or using the grip on his jaw to force his mouth open. It was too familiar and Crosshair lashed out blindly, desperately, with an animal snarl.

He ended up slamming the trooper onto his back and ripping his helmet off so he could grab him by the hair and start pounding his skull into the duracrete floor over and over, even after he felt the man’s skull crack, even after the blood started to pool. All around him there was shouting and then somebody, several somebodies, jammed stun batons into his spine and ribs. The pain from the electricity arcing through his body was blinding and he howled, spasming.

Beyond it he thought he heard Wrecker bellow something and then more shouting and the crackling of electricity as his older brother also let out a cry of pain. It was distant, because Crosshair was swimming in and out of consciousness as hands gripped him and started dragging him away. He had a sense that he’d really karked things up. That trooper was almost definitely dead and they were probably going to execute Crosshair for killing him. Hopefully Wrecker would be enough to pull off the rescue on his own, it wasn’t like Crosshair was the only one with a tracker in him. The Batch would come for the regs, Rex and Howzer would come, and if Crosshair was dead by then? Well at least nobody would ever be able to touch him again.

Chapter Text

To Crosshair’s immense surprise, the guards didn’t take him out back and shoot him as he had expected them to. Instead they dragged him through the prison to a place unpopulated by clones. He was still out of it, woozy and fluttering in and out of consciousness, but he could tell in between his dips into darkness that they were passing cells with solid metal doors rather than ray shields or bars. 

One of the guards that was dragging him dropped him for a moment and Crosshair cracked his head on the floor, too disoriented to stop his fall. That only made his wobbly vision worse as black spots flickered across his field of view. There was a distant beep and then the guard who had dropped him picked him back up, before he and his partner unceremoniously chucked Crosshair into the little room behind the metal door they had just opened. Crosshair smacked his head against the wall this time instead of the floor and completely blacked out.

When he opened his eyes he was confused. He thought he was conscious, but everything was still black. Were his eyes really open? He blinked a couple times and felt certain they were. There was a splitting pain in his head when he moved and Crosshair had to hold still against the wave of nausea that hit him, but it passed after a second and shakily he stood up. He still couldn’t see anything and a horrible fear gripped him, was he blind? Had all those cracks to the head caused that? He waved his hands in front of his face but saw nothing. The fear heightened, sharpened, until he couldn’t breathe. Without his vision he was truly useless , even if his brothers did come to rescue him, if he was blind he’d be worthless to them!

Some part of him tried to drag words to the forefront of his mind, Omega saying he wouldn’t be useless even without his sight, Howzer saying things could still have value without a practical purpose, that there was no such thing as a useless person, but the words weren’t enough to fight the sheer terror. Crosshair didn’t know how long he stood in the middle of that room, blind and choking on the darkness, on the fear, but he couldn’t stay panicked forever and eventually the feeling dulled as his body ran out of energy to devote to his emotions. It left him jittery and anxious, but he was no longer struggling to breathe.

Weakly he put his hands out and tried to feel for anything around him, shuffling so he didn’t trip on something he couldn’t see. When his hands met cold stone he breathed a small sigh of relief. From there he felt along the wall until he met a seam, one of the corners of the room. He shuffled along the adjoining wall until he met another seam, only about three paces away from the first. Whatever room he was in, it was very small. Following the same practice he found what could only be the door. He felt up and down along it, finding the place where it was set into the walls and where it met the floor. There was no gap whatsoever between the bottom of the door and the floor or the sides of the door and the walls. 

Crosshair let out another shaky breath and sat down for a moment. If the door was sealed that tightly and there were no lights or windows inside the room, then it was possible it was simply pitch black inside and he wasn’t actually blind. Crosshair clung desperately to the idea and forced himself back up to finish his search of the room. There was a vacc tube, but no other features, not even a rack or bench to sleep on. He wouldn’t be staying in the lap of luxury, that was for certain.

The conclusion he came to when he was finished with his investigation was that rather than shooting him, the guards had put him in solitary confinement. That wasn’t great, Crosshair had no idea how long he’d be left there alone and he knew humans were too social to do well by themselves for extended periods of time. Solitary confinement was one of the things the Republic had banned within their territory on the grounds of it being ‘cruel and unusual punishment’,  inhumane in other words…not that they seemed to have an ethical problem using slave armies to fight their wars for them. Crosshair would never have called the Republic a bastion of morality even when he was still theirs to command.

It was absolutely silent within the cell on top of being pitch black, all Crosshair could hear was his own breathing and heartbeat. If he were Hunter he might have at least been able to hear the guards walk by outside. He felt like the lack of sensory input also boded poorly for him. Crosshair shuffled back along the walls so he could sink down to sit with his back to the metal door. It was cold, everything was cold, but that at least was a sensation and he knew he’d need it the longer he had to stay there. Intentional sensory deprivation was another thing the Republic had banned, as they classified it as a form of torture. That was the point of this sort of thing though. No people to interact with, no sensations to ground oneself in. Just floating adrift in the darkness as you slowly lost your marbles. 

Crosshair almost would have preferred it if they had taken him out back and shot him. He hoped beyond all hope that they hadn’t thrown him in here with the intent to leave him to rot. If that were the case he’d definitely rather be dead. 

Time passed, but Crosshair couldn’t tell how much or how quickly. He drifted in and out of consciousness, his head still killing him. It wasn’t the only thing that hurt either, his leg ached terribly from keeping the prosthetic on all the time for over a week when he was supposed to be taking it off every day. He couldn’t though, he wasn’t going to be down a limb in a hostile environment.

When he was awake the voices in his ears rose and fell. In hindsight he was at a disadvantage being in solitary, given he was starting out already crazy, he suspected he’d end up a lot worse off a lot more quickly than somebody who had started out perfectly sane.

The one good thing about the voices, the whispering in his ears, even the shouting, the insults, the taunts, was that Crosshair never experienced the crushing silence the sealed room was meant to invoke. Of course that was only good if you ignored the fact that listening to the voices, unable to distract himself from them with the audio player, was almost as distressing as the silence would be. He scraped his nails over his head and without anybody to pull his hands away he knew he drew blood, he could smell the tang of iron in the air, could feel the sting of the open wounds. He raked his fingers down his neck to dig out the sensation of ghostly lips and teeth when he heard Rampart’s voice in amongst the cacophony, tearing the skin open there as well. Shakily he tried to remind himself that Rampart was dead. He called up the image of the man, the monster, slumped over in his desk chair, his favorite knife buried in his face while he bled sluggishly. 

When the scent of his own blood became almost overpowering, when he could almost taste it on his tongue, the words that had saved him from the blade, from Rampart’s sadistic machinations, drifted back to him.

“You mustn’t hurt yourself, Crosshair.”  

Tech’s words, Tech’s voice. Firm and uncompromising, but coming from a place of worry, a place of love. Crosshair forced himself to stop digging his nails into his flesh, wrapping his arms around his middle instead. 

Time went spinning onwards until a sudden sound made him nearly jump out of his skin. He was almost completely sure he hadn’t imagined it. So far he’d only ever heard voices that weren’t real, not other sounds. There was a clank of the metal in the door and then a scrape as something was pulled back. The light that shone through space that had opened up was so blinding after the endless pitch black that Crosshair almost cried out, but it only lasted for a second before disappearing. Once there was another scrape, another clank and the light disappeared, Crosshair felt along the door where it had been. 

There was a small slot there and what he guessed was part of a ration bar and a small container of water had been pushed through. That was good, his throat had been getting more and more dry the longer he sat in the dark until his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, he needed the water, and the chunk of ration bar, small that it was, might settle his upset stomach.

He ate and drank slowly, savoring what he guessed would be his only meal for a very long time. They apparently weren’t going to let him die, but that didn’t mean they were going to keep him well fed and watered either, this wasn’t a hotel.

The food and water kept him distracted for a little while, but eventually it was gone and he was back to nothing but darkness and the voices in his head. Covering his ears did nothing to abate the cacophony, since they weren’t a real sound blocking his ears did nothing to muffle them. Crosshair tried to think back on Tech’s words about them so long ago, when he was recommending treatments. There were three things, he remembered. The audio player was the one they had gone with, but there were two others. Crosshair sat in the dark trying to remember what they were. 

Earplug. That was one, he was fairly certain, but Crosshair didn’t have an earplug and using his fingers didn’t seem to help. What was the other? He sat puzzling over it for a while, trying to think through all the noise. It wasn’t an easy task, the voices were only getting louder as time passed.

Singing! That was it. Crosshair let out a sigh of relief. That one he could do. He tried it and found that the noise subsided a little as long as he kept it up. The voices weren’t gone by any stretch of the imagination, but they were quieter and Crosshair had something to concentrate on as he tried to recall melodies he’d heard and the words that went along with them.

He sang to himself until his voice went hoarse and crackling. The voices ramped back up in volume when he stopped and in desperation Crosshair forced himself to continue even as his throat began to hurt. He slept when his body couldn’t physically stay awake anymore and only came back to full awareness some indeterminate amount of time later. He’d run out of songs and had to repeat ones he’d already done, but it was better than listening to the screaming in his ears. Again there was the momentary light as the slot in the door was opened, again Crosshair ate and drank, then went back to singing until he passed out from exhaustion before it all repeated, again and again. He had lost what little sense of time he’d had in the dark and had long since lost feeling in his fingers and face. He buried them in his coat, curling up in a ball and relying on his breath to provide some warmth.

He kept the singing up until his voice failed him entirely and then he was just karked. No sound came out of him even when he tried to shout, tried to scream. 

The panic came back with avengence. His last defense against the voices was gone. He had no other way to fight them. Crosshair ended up curled back in a ball on the floor, arms wrapped around his head, trying futilely to stifle the noise. He shook violently and his stomach roiled. Pain was splitting his head apart. He felt like his brain was liquifying inside his skull.

Another noise broke him out of the spiral of panic. A real noise. It was the familiar clank-scrape of the door that he’d heard now and then, marking the passage of time. He’d been too distracted to keep track of it, but if they fed him once a day as he suspected then he’d been in solitary for quite a while already. This time he did scream when the light broke into the room, pain like somebody burying an icepick in his skull, like somebody pouring acid into his eyes, overtaking him, but no sound escaped him even as he shrieked. When the light winked back out Crosshair sat on the floor and panted, rubbing at his eyes as they teared up. He wondered if it was this bad for everybody in solitary or if it was worse for him because of his enhanced eyesight.

The water was icy cold and had a metallic taste, just as always, but it felt like a godsend against his abused throat. 

More time passed. Whenever Crosshair’s voice started to come back he drove it back into nothingness with desperate shouting. He was starting to feel panicked all the time, desperation clawing at his insides. He needed to get out. He was going to die in here like a rat, like vermin, and his siblings might never even find his body. How long had he been there in the dark? Had they already staged the rescue? Pulling all the clones out but unable to find him and forced to leave him behind? The idea made him scream even more and pound his fists on the floor, the walls, the door, until he smelled blood again.

He wanted to see them again, he wanted to see his siblings. He’d give anything to see them.

More time passed and then while Crosshair was once again curled up on the floor, voiceless from screaming, shaking from the ambient chill of the room and sweating from uncontrolled panic, the door swung open. The light hurt like nothing he’d ever experienced, but suddenly there were hands on him and for once he didn’t fight them. He heard voices, and was able to recognize them. Wrecker and Tech. They had come for him! If Tech was there then they must have started the rescue. Crosshair let them pull him to his feet, towards the door and he saw through the blinding light as they turned to smile at him. He’d never been so relieved in his life.

Crosshair jerked awake with a start. The room was pitch black, deathly silent, and he was alone. He screamed until he tasted blood and then screamed some more. 

It happened again, not too long afterwards. His brothers came for him, and then he woke up in the dark and the cold and the silence filled only by the voices in his head. Then it happened again, lasting longer this time, then again, longer still, again and again, but he always woke up alone in the dark and the cold. Crosshair could feel himself losing his grip on his sanity. He wished he was dead. He wished the guards had shot him. He didn’t want to lose what little he had left of mind. The only thing that kept him from bashing his brains out against the wall then and there was the fear that if he died his brothers might find his body and he knew they’d never forgive themselves.

More time passed, more darkness, more cold, more screaming, his own and the voices. He dreamed again and again and again. For the millionth time he dreamed the door opened and people came into the cell. Two people. Crosshair couldn’t see them, the light was so bright, so painful, but he could hear their voices. Not his brothers, he didn’t know them. They grabbed him by the arms and hauled him to his feet and then out of the room. He stumbled and they ended up having to drag him. The two of them talked, but Crosshair ignored them. They were fake. There was no point in listening to them.

The fake guards dragged him back through the long hallway full of metal doors and then through two more hallways with normal cells until they came to the central space where all the clones were when they weren’t working or in their cells. Crosshair barely paid attention. The guards dropped him on the floor once they reached the bottom of the stairs, laughing. And then walked away.

The fake clones milling about were watching and once the guards had moved away several of them came up to him.

“Hey vod, you okay there?” asked a clone with a white hair.

Crosshair stared at him blankly. He didn’t want to play along. This was all pointless. None of it was real and if he engaged with it it would only hurt that much worse when he finally woke up.

There was a knot of clones around him and one with a long scar on his face and a cybernetic eye pushed his way through the crowd. That was Commander Wolffe, Crosshair vaguely recalled, the Batch had done a few missions for General Koon and he had met Wolffe a couple of times, although he'd never spoken to him. Imaginary Wolffe looked Crosshair up and down before turning to the others, “Where’s Wrecker?”

“With beta squad, they’re getting rations,” said another fake clone.

Wolffe sighed in relief and said, “Somebody go get him, he’s going to want to know his batchmate’s out of solitary.” 

“Is that what’s wrong with him? How long was he in for?” asked a fake clone to Crosshair’s left. 

“Three weeks,” somebody said and the others all hissed.

“Kark,” one of them swore, “No wonder he looks like hell.”

“What’d he do to get that long?” asked a redheaded clone that came up and swung an arm over the white-haired clone’s shoulders.

“He killed Sergeant Nasher,” somebody said, “Bashed his brains out on the floor.”

The white-haired clone and a few others whistled, “That’ll do it,” he said.

“Why the hell’d you go and do something stupid like that?” the redhead asked Crosshair, who’d been watching the exchange blankly. The sniper just blinked at him. If he engaged would the hallucination last longer? He wasn’t sure whether he wanted that or not.

“Looked like a combat response,” a clone Crosshair vaguely recognized said when he didn’t answer. He must have been one of the ones that was there when he and Wrecker had been brought in, “Nasher grabbed his face.”

“Come on, we can’t leave him on the floor like this, let’s get him to a table,” ordered Wolffe. Several of the imaginary regs dragged him up and Crosshair let them, too tired to fight. At this point he didn’t care enough to fight.

They set him down on a bench at a table and he spaced out as things happened around him, clones talked and moved around and touched him, but he didn’t pay attention to any of it.

A sudden loud noise made him jump. It was a yell, a familiar yell. “ CROSSHAIR!” somebody cried. Instinctively Crosshair looked up and found the sight of Wrecker barreling through the room towards him with a trio of other clones on his heels.

Fake. It wasn’t real. That knowledge hurt, pooled dark and cold in Crosshair’s stomach even as Wrecker dropped to his knees like a sack of bricks in front of him and wrapped him up in what was possibly the most crushing hug Crosshair had ever experienced. Crosshair closed his eyes and tried to engrave the feeling of it, the warmth, into his bones where a deep dreadful chill had settled. He knew it wasn’t real, but if he could hold onto it even when he woke up he might be able to keep a grip on his sanity for a little bit longer.

“Crosshair I’m sorry!” Wrecker sobbed, “I promised to protect you an’ I-I couldn’t!”

Crosshair patted him idly on the bicep, but didn’t respond other than that. Wrecker frowned, searching his face for something and becoming more and more distraught when he failed to find it.

“What’s wrong?” Wrecker asked him, “You’re—you’re not actin’ normal.”

“He’s been in solitary for three weeks , Wrecker,” somebody said next to him on the right, the white haired clone. “That’s a really long time. Solitary messes you up, he’s probably not going to be back to normal for a while.”

Wrecker swore and ran a big hand through his little brother’s hair. It had grown and was starting to get long enough for somebody to actually grab. If he ever got out of there he’d have to cut it, otherwise somebody could do to him what he’d done to the sergeant that had landed him in solitary in the first place.

“Wrecker, I need you to move so I can take a look at him,” said one of the trio who had been following his brother when he barreled into the room. It was Catcher, Crosshair noted distantly.

Wrecker hesitated and then shuffled to the side, arm still around Crosshair's shoulders but no longer blocking him from view.

Catcher touched Crosshair lightly on one temple and then checked his neck. “Self-inflicted,” the medic said quietly, “maybe a week or two old. Whatever made him stop tearing himself apart I can only be glad for it.” Crosshair spent a moment puzzling over what he was talking about before he remembered he’d scratched himself open.

“Tech said I shouldn’t hurt myself,” Crosshair mumbled. His voice was so weak and thready that it was barely audible, but Catcher seemed to hear him, along with Wrecker.

“Yeah,” Wrecker said thickly, “It’s good you remembered that…even…even if it wasn’t right away…”

“I don’t have a scanner, so I can’t actually see how he’s doing internally, but he’s obviously lost a lot of weight,” Catcher said softly. “His voice doesn’t sound good either, probably strained it by screaming.” The medic held Crosshair’s wrist in between his fingers for a minute, silently counting the beat of his heart, “Pulse is elevated, but not abnormally so for such a stressful situation.” He pinched the skin on the back of Crosshair’s hand and eyed the result, although Crosshair had no idea what he was looking for. “Dehydrated,” Catcher said, then he carefully looked into each of Crosshair’s eyes and let out a huff, “No concussion, so at least he probably wasn’t bashing his head against the wall…his hands though…and his nails…”

Wrecker took a shaky breath and Crosshair glanced idly down at his hands. His knuckles were split open although they had scabbed over at some point and the blood had dried, but aside from that his whole hands were covered in bruises ranging in color from purple to red to green. His nails were also broken and bloody and he felt like he distantly remembered clawing at the walls, the door, when he was in the middle of a desperate bout of panic. Wrecker folded Crosshair’s hands up in his own and held them. His hands were warm just like his hug had been, Crosshair hadn’t been sure he’d ever feel anything warm again, even if it was just a dream.

“You’re okay, Cross,” Wrecker told him softly, “You’re okay now.”

Crosshair couldn’t help but snort, “That’s nice of you to say,” he told him blandly, “I’ll be sure to remember it when I wake up.”

“When you wake up?” Wrecker asked, evidently confused.

“Kark,” said one of the other clones that had been trailing after Crosshair’s ori’vod, Boil. “He thinks he’s dreaming.”

“Damn that’s not good,” said the third clone of the trio, Trapper.

“It’s hardly surprising,” Wolffe told them in a calm steady voice. “We’ll just have to try and keep him functioning until he realizes he’s actually out of solitary for real.”

“This…this is normal, Wolffe?” Wrecker asked the clone tentatively. 

Wolffe huffed, “I don’t know about normal, but I’ve seen it before in brothers who spent a long time in solitary. It’s pitch black and dead silent in there so staying too long makes you hallucinate, they tend to not be sure what’s real when they get out.”

“Okay,” Wrecker said, “Okay. This is real, Crosshair, you’re out…but you don’t have’ta believe me, you’ll see.”

Crosshair nodded his head obligingly, but otherwise didn’t respond. 

“I’m going to get him some food and water,” Trapper said all of a sudden, “He probably needs it.”

“Thanks Trap,” Wrecker said, his voice sad but sincere. He turned back to Crosshair, “Cross will you eat an’ drink? You might not think it’s important right now, but it…it’d make me happy.”

Crosshair nodded again, indulgently, “If you want,” he said, his tone mild if not distant.

“Thanks, I…I’m really sorry, Cross, it all happened so fast an’ those stun batons hit a lot harder than I thought they would…I tried to stop ‘em from takin’ you away, I’m-I’m so sorry,” Wrecker sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

Crosshair sighed and patted his brother on the arm again, “They didn’t shoot me, which is what I thought they’d do after I brained their buddy on the duracrete. I guess that’s good, although I wish that they had shot me…”

Wrecker made a gutted noise and squeezed him tighter, “It’s okay,” he said and Crosshair wasn’t certain who he was trying to reassure, his little brother or himself, “You’re okay, you’ll feel better soon I promise. Our vode will come get us an’ we’ll be back on the Marauder an’ you can go back to bein’ grouchy an’ stubborn like none of this ever happened.”

“I thought it might have happened already,” Crosshair told him listlessly, “I thought maybe the rescue was already complete and nobody could find me, so I got left behind. I hope that’s not true. I don’t really want to die in a hole like a rat.”

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Wrecker told him firmly, “An’ we’d tear this planet apart lookin’ for you if we couldn’t find you. We wouldn’t just leave’ya to die. How many times do I have‘ta say we aren’t gonna leave you before you believe me?”

“Past experience suggests you’re perfectly willing to do so,” Crosshair replied blandly. It was a cruel thing to say, but it was the truth and there was no point in censuring himself when talking to a hallucination.

Even so he felt a little bad about the absolutely wounded noise that came out of Wrecker’s throat. Maybe he should play nice, just to keep the dream pleasant until he woke up. Even if there was no point in being nice to a fake person, it was Wrecker and he didn’t want his time with him, no matter how unreal, to be painful. He didn’t need more pain, he needed something worthwhile to hold onto so he wouldn’t completely lose his mind.

Trapper came back not long after with a full ration bar and a canteen of water. More than Crosshair had had in…however long. Weeks according to the imaginary regs. Trapper handed the items off to Wrecker, but Catcher put his hand out before Wrecker could bestow the gifts unto his brother.

Crosshair glared at him, but the medic glared right back before turning to Wolffe, “Any clue how much they give them per meal in solitary?”

“About a quarter of a bar, once per day,” the commander replied, he was scowling, but something about it didn’t look like it was directed at any of them. Maybe that was just his face.

Catcher went ashen but when he turned back to Wrecker his voice was calm and professional, “They’ve been starving him to death,” he said, “If you give him that whole thing he’ll get sick. Just give him a small part.”

Wrecker nodded and broke the ration bar into pieces before handing Crosshair a small section of it along with the canteen. He was long past the point of hunger, all he felt from his stomach was pain and nausea, but Crosshair nibbled slowly on the bar when Wrecker asked him to.

“If he’s starvin’, shouldn't he be hungry?” Wrecker asked the medic, watching Crosshair anxiously.

“Do you feel nauseous?” Catcher asked Crosshair.

The sniper nodded and took a drink from the canteen when the ration bar started to make his already abused throat feel dusty. Catcher looked back at Wrecker, Boil, and Trapper who were all waiting for him to answer. “Nausea is normal, he just needs to work through it slowly and eat a small amount in bursts throughout the day. Stash the rest of that bar so he can have it later.”

Wrecker nodded and Catcher looked back at Crosshair, who was only barely paying attention, distracted by all the noise and movement around him when it felt so new and foreign. He wasn’t used to it anymore. “Finish that and if you throw up you better tell me,” he commanded, scowling. Crosshair frowned at him, tempted to snap at the medic for ordering him around, but ultimately it didn’t matter so he let it slide and just nodded instead.

Thankfully the regs decided to give the two commandos some space after that and Crosshair finished off his chunk of ration bar with another drink from the canteen. He had made up his mind while he ate. 

Even if it was fake, even if he’d just gone crazy in the dark, he didn’t want to wake up.

Chapter Text

Wrecker felt along Crosshair’s sides and abdomen before sighing heavily, “Tech’s gonna skin me alive…an’ maybe Hunter too…” he bemoaned, “You’re even thinner than when we first gotcha back, you lost all the weight Howzer an’ Tech managed to put on’ya…” 

Crosshair had been nearly twenty pounds underweight when he’d returned from the Empire and he knew from Tech’s constant monitoring of his weight since then that he’d ever-so-slowly gained ten of those pounds back, for him to have gone and lost that weight all over again? Tech was going to be livid…or he would be if any of this were real, but it wasn’t so Crosshair found he didn’t really care. He’d probably never see the real Tech again anyway.

“They’d probably work together to skin you,” he told Wrecker mildly, humoring him and trying to push the grim thoughts away, “Howzer might just cry though.”

Crosshair’s joke was rewarded with a snort from his imaginary big brother, “Yeah probably, he’s real invested in you even though he’s a reg.”

“Echo’s a reg and he’s invested,” Crosshair pointed out, “They’re sentimental, once they decide we aren’t just freaks they get attached and can’t think straight. It’s sad really.”

Wrecker full-on laughed then, “Yeah I guess so! Trapper, Catcher, an’ Boil are really nice, I think they’ve gotten invested too. It’s startin’ to look like we’re gonna be drownin’ in regs before long.”

“I like this better than when they were holding Tech down while they broke his fingers or kicking me in the head until I couldn’t breathe through all the blood…” Crosshair hummed, speaking more freely than he normally would, listless, “It's nice to know there are people out there in the galaxy who aren’t trying to hurt us…weird but nice.”

“Yeah,” Wrecker agreed softly and ran his big hand through Crosshair’s hair again, “We need’ta cut your hair, Cross,” the giant mused, “It’s gettin’ too long, ‘s not safe like this.”

“We can’t all be as vain as Hunter,” Crosshair agreed. Short hair was safer, nothing to grab, the Batch had been teasing Hunter about the vanity of his long hair for years.

Boil trotted back over after a minute, shooting a look at Crosshair that was half nervous and half remorseful before saying, “Wrecker it’s shift time, we gotta get him together enough to fill a bucket or they’ll throw him back in the hole.”

“I’ll fill his if he can’t,” Wrecker replied stiffly, “he’s not goin’ anywhere without me.”

Boil nodded, “He’s your batchmate, so I guess you’d know what he needs most, we’ll follow your lead, but I’ll see if I can’t steal him some different sized gloves from the nat-borns, so his hands don’t fall off. Then at least one of you will have them.” 

Crosshair hadn’t noticed it before because his head was so full of tar and cotton, but Wrecker was not wearing a coat or any of the other cold weather gear all the other clones had, he was too big for it. The sniper remembered vaguely that he’d been given a huge pile of blankets to make up for it and he could see that Wrecker had used them to pad out his blacks so he’d retain heat. The gloves wouldn’t have fit him either, but his hands were wrapped in strips of torn fabric like he was about to climb into a boxing ring and apparently that was enough.

Wrecker smiled at the reg, a warm smile that was usually reserved for when one of his brothers did or said something touching, “Thanks, Boil.”

Boil clicked his tongue and winked before walking back over to Trapper and Catcher so he could sling his arms over their shoulders and lead them away.

“Right,” Wrecker said, then stood, stretched his huge arms over his head until his spine popped audibly, and pulled Crosshair to his feet with unusual gentleness. “The asshole warden is makin’ us mine these little crystals outta the ice caves,” the giant explained as he steered Crosshair by the shoulder through the crowd of regs all heading in the same direction. “They give you a big bucket an’ you gotta fill it with crystals before the shift’s over. The lieutenants come by with a datapad an’ check everybody’s buckets before they have us start haulin’ it up. Okay?”

Crosshair nodded to indicate that he was listening, if only barely. Figures the good dream he was having, no matter how bittersweet it already was, would turn sour. Hallucinating hard labor was just typical for him really. 

The clones all filtered through the tunnels shepherded by TK trooper guards with hands on their stun batons, until there were about thirty or forty clones per tunnel. Things got dimmer and stuffier as they descended downwards into the caverns, the path lit only by weak strings of lights. The edges of the darkness curled around Crosshair’s senses but the shadows weren’t deep enough to drag him down just yet. He could see just fine, even though Wrecker and the Regs were all squinting.

Deep into the tunnel they passed a series of big metal carts on wheels, one of which was filled with pickaxes and another full of buckets, which each reg grabbed as they walked past. Wrecker picked up two of each and handed a bucket and pickaxe to Crosshair as they walked by, “We empty out the buckets into the carts after the lieutenants finish checking everyone, they don’t got motors because the warden says we don’t deserve the help, so the regs split into teams’a five to push ‘em back up the tunnels. I can do two by myself if I push with one hand an’ drag with the other, but Wolffe says I shouldn’t attract attention from the guards or the warden.”

“Better not to or they might decide you’re not working hard enough,” Crosshair replied blandly. He knew almost nothing about Wolffe, but apparently his mind had decided the Commander was a practical man, only reasonable given his position as head of an entire legion.

The regs spread out through the tunnel so they were about five meters apart and started swinging their pickaxes against the glittering rocky walls. 

Crosshair remembered once during the war how he and his brothers had been given candy by a band of locals as thanks after a mission where they blew up a factory that had been taken over by the Seppies and chased the invaders away. The candy had been an opaque blue, jagged and faceted like gems all growing on a wooden stick. Crosshair hadn’t liked how sweet it was and had given his to Wrecker, but the shape of the tunnel walls brought the memory of it back to him. He was tempted to ask Wrecker if he remembered the rock candy, but his brother had already guided him to an empty spot and was watching him intently to see if he’d participate in the mining efforts or if the giant would need to come up with a different plan.

Feeling indulgent of his brother, given he wasn’t sure he’d ever see him again once he woke up, Crosshair swung the pickaxe at the wall and watched as the impact knocked loose a small shower of crystals. Wrecker let out the breath he’d been holding and then walked a few meters away to start on his own patch of wall.

It was backbreaking work and Crosshair's arms had started trembling after only a short while. He was too thin, too weak, to be doing this. His body had been burning through his muscle-mass in order to survive on so little food and it showed. The sniper filled his bucket about halfway before his hands seized up and the pickaxe clattered to the ground. The cold was eating him alive, with his ill-fitting garments and lack of gloves, his hands and arms up to the elbow and his flesh shin were, against all logic, burning hot. He tried to clench his hands into fists and the movement was stiff and clumsy. 

The sound of the dropped implement drew his brother over as well as drawing the eyes of the reg on Crosshair’s other side, Catcher. Both of them set their axes down and came over.

“What’s wrong, Cross?” Wrecker asked him quietly, worried his voice would echo and draw unwanted attention.

“M-my hands are b-burning,” Crosshair mumbled around his chattering teeth. The rest of him felt cold, the hard labor not warming him sufficiently when he was so thin, but his fingers were another matter. He hoped he wouldn’t lose them, he needed them to be able to shoot his rifle.

Catcher gently took hold of Crosshair’s hands and inspected them, “Superficial frostbite,” he said after a moment, “you’ll probably get blisters when we manage to warm your fingers back up, for now breathe on them and press them against warmer parts of your skin like your under-arms or inner elbows, Wrecker and I will help you fill your bucket the rest of the way.”

Wrecker was frowning but he nodded, “Boil said he’d getcha some gloves,” his brother told him like he hadn’t been standing right there when Boil said it, “So just hang in there for a day or two okay? We’ll help you.”

Crosshair nodded stiffly. He’d have protested, but he couldn’t move his hands properly with such stiff joints and he didn’t think he’d actually be able to hold the pickaxe anymore.

“His weight’s probably not doing him any favors,” Catcher muttered as he eyed the way Crosshair was shivering even under his hooded coat and thick pants. “We’re going to have to use our breaks to warm him up I think,” the medic said, “I’ll ask if anybody else will help us so we can take turns.”

Catcher trotted away while Wrecker raked his pickaxe down the wall to shear off more of the crystals to fill Crosshair’s and his buckets. He was clearly making more progress than either Catcher or Crosshair had been, but that was hardly a surprise.

“Br-breaks?” Crosshair stammered.

“The regs worked out a system,” Wrecker explained as he raked the axe over the wall again, “Nobody comes down here ‘til the shift’s over cause it‘s too kriffin’ cold, but it’d be suspicious if everybody stopped at once, they’d hear it up top, so they stagger fifteen minute breaks down the line, that way nobody works themself to death but the guards also don’t notice.”

Catcher came back with a stiff-backed clone that sported a huge blue arrow tattooed on his face trailing after him.

“Dogma, Crosshair, Crosshair, Dogma,” Catcher said, gesturing between the two. Dogma grimaced when he looked Crosshair up and down, but still came over and grabbed him around the waist. The noise Crosshair made was something between a growl, a yelp, and a wheeze and he tried to shove the reg off him, but Dogma’s arms only tightened as his jaw set in a firm stubborn line and he dragged the already weakened sniper over to the opposite wall and down to sit on the floor where he wrapped him up in his arms and tucked his chin over the top of Crosshair’s head. Wrecker was chuckling, but he said, “Relax Cross, he’s tryin’ to keepya warm. For once in your life try to cooperate.”

Crosshair sent him a venomous glare, but he was shaking too much to free himself from the reg’s embrace without resorting to violence, so he resigned himself to the humiliation. It wasn’t real anyway, so who cared, he was cold.

The regs took turns cuddling him to death, when one had to get up another appeared before Crosshair could escape. Some of them chuckled at his feeble attempts to worm away, but none of them let him go, determined to help for some unfathomable reason. Wrecker must be better at making friends than Crosshair thought.

Once Wrecker had filled Crosshair's bucket he went back to his own and eventually he finished that too before starting to help out any other clones who were lagging behind, maybe that was why they all liked him so much.

Crosshair, not for the first time this mission, felt like sheer dead weight. It would have been better if a different one of his brothers had come. Hunter would have killed Rampart easily, with glee even, and Tech would have known better than to kill the TK sergeant, neither of them would have ended up losing half their body-weight in solitary. They wouldn’t have needed help from the regs. Regardless it was Crosshair who was there and he shivered miserably in the arms of his helpful cousins while he watched his brother make everybody’s lives less difficult with his easy strength.

Things went as Wrecker had explained when the shift was over. Crosshair was still freezing, but less so by the time the regs had to line up with their buckets for inspection. “Don’t kill anybody this time,” Wrecker told his little brother softly.

Crosshair wanted to protest that he had never intended to kill the TK sergeant in the first place, but he kept it to himself. Arguing with a hallucination was pointless. He didn’t want to fight anymore, he was tired.

Inspection went fine, although the lieutenant grinned at the way Crosshair was shivering as he passed, then they all started step two and dumped their crystals into the carts so they could work on hauling them up out of the tunnels. Crosshair didn’t sit out for this part, he was weak and stiff, but pushing the cart didn’t require fine motor skills and he could manage to help at least.

When they finished they all ate another meal together, or rather Wrecker and the regs ate a meal and Crosshair had another small chunk of the bar Wrecker had saved. The regs tried to talk to him more than they had before, with Crosshair recognizing the ones who’d snuggled him, but he was tired and only responded minimally. He ate only because Wrecker watched him with large nervous eyes until he buckled, but when they went to the cells to sleep on their shelf-like beds, Crosshair didn’t lay down. 

No amount of coaxing, pleading, and cajoling from Wrecker made him give in. In this Crosshair wouldn’t bend, wouldn’t break. 

He would not sleep.

He was exhausted, beyond exhausted , but he knew if he slept when he woke up he’d be alone in the dark and the thought was so terrifying he could hardly breathe around it.

The next cycle came and went much the same. On the third Boil handed him a pair of gloves that actually fit him, slightly larger and longer in the fingers than the ones the regs had been issued. He still had to stop part-way through the work, shivering too much to stand, and the regs came to cuddle him into submission, but he was too weak and tired to stop them. Catcher allowed him to have steadily larger pieces of the ration bars as he continued to eat what he was given.

He and Wrecker, along with Commander Wolffe and what remained of his so called ‘Wolfpack’ - the white-haired clone (Sgt. Sinker), the redhead (Boost), and three others (Shifty, Tack, and Cpl. Comet) - planned the riot, going over their observations of guard schedules and checkpoints, tracing a map of the tunnels in the dusty floor for them to memorize and then erase before it got them in trouble. Discussing means of egress and mob tactics. Crosshair listened, Crosshair contributed, but he was dying, everything in his mind was dying as the fear ate holes in his head for the screaming voices to occupy. This plan would work and he didn’t want to wake up, because then it would happen without him. He had to last long enough to get out. He needed to see his siblings, his vode, one more time before he went back into the dark. He wanted to apologize, he wanted to say goodbye.

When there was a technical malfunction in the tunnel during a shift and the lights went out, leaving the clones in total darkness down in the depths of the ice, Crosshair discovered his already damaged psyche had developed a new feature. He didn’t scream when the dark descended, but only because he couldn’t breathe at all. His knees buckled and he ended up on the ground, his breath coming in rapid panicky bursts. The darkness was heavy, cloying, and all-consuming. He felt like he was being eaten alive, like he was being strangled, like he was being crushed, like he was drowning. By the time they fixed the lights he was curled into a small shaking ball, barely conscious from the lack of oxygen caused by his hyperventilating.

Wrecker knelt next to him and tried to coax him back out of his panic attack with soft gentle words and warm touches while the regs stood guard. Nobody said anything about it, they all knew what solitary did to people, they just kept watch until Wrecker had gotten his little brother on his feet and back to some semblance of sanity.

Cycles came and went and mentally Crosshair was drowning. Drowning in noise, drowning in exhaustion. He knew he had to wake up eventually, he knew that if he slept it’d be all over. He knew Wrecker was worried sick, that the regs were starting to worry too. Catcher had lectured him twice already. He didn’t know how long he’d been awake; how long he’d been asleep. Maybe he was dying and this was a death-dream concocted by his fading neurons before they winked out like stars. Maybe he was already dead.

Crosshair had lost track of the passage of time completely when Wrecker took matters into his own hands. It was the sleep cycle, Crosshair was up and pacing around their cell. Boil had already passed out, capable of going to sleep anywhere instantly, but Trapper was watching Crosshair move with a pinched expression. Eventually something in Wrecker snapped and the giant grabbed his little brother and yanked him off his feet to tuck him against his chest like the regs did during the day. With one arm he held Crosshair against him and with the other hand he covered Crosshair’s eyes. Crosshair wheezed and clawed at Wrecker’s hand, drowning in the dark.

“You gotta sleep, Cross,” Wrecker pleaded, “You’re fallin’ apart. Why won’t you sleep?”

“I’ll wake up,” Crosshair whispered back, like if he said it so quietly that nobody heard then he wouldn’t jinx it, “I don’t want to wake up…let go Wrecker, it’s-it’s too dark.”

Mercifully, Wrecker took his hand away from Crosshair’s eyes and the sniper gasped for air, not because Wrecker had been suffocating him, but because he could see again, could see he was still dreaming, he hadn’t woken up yet.

“You’re already awake,” Wrecker insisted just as quietly, wrapping them within the whispers like the two of them were cadets again, hiding in the cupboards so Nala Se couldn’t find them.

Crosshair shook his head, “I’m not…” he wheezed, “I don’t want to wake up, Wrecker, please don’t make me wake up. I want to stay until our vode come…I don’t want to die alone.”

Wrecker tucked Crosshair tighter against his chest. “You won’t. You’re not alone an’ you’re not gonna die,” he insisted, “If you sleep you’ll see, I’ll still be here when you wake up. Everythin’ll still be here. You’re out, you’re not dreamin’.”

“Liar…” Crosshair mumbled. Now that he wasn’t moving anymore he felt Wrecker’s warmth seeping into his frigid body, dragging exhaustion through him along with it. “You’re lying…”

“You’d know if I was lyin’” Wrecker rumbled back, Crosshair could feel the vibrations of the giant’s chest against his skinny back, tumbling through his bones, “I’m a horrible liar. You know that, Cross.”

Crosshair was losing the fight, Wrecker was so warm and he was so cold and so tired, “I don’t want to die in the dark…” he breathed.

“It’s not dark,” Wrecker assured him, “The stupid guards keep the lights on all night. Go to sleep, Cross. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“I don’t want…” Crosshair protested weakly, but Wrecker shushed him and the dark dragged him under like a riptide.

Chapter Text

All at once the Marauder had gone from six occupants to four. It shouldn’t have seemed like such a difference, but it felt huge. Even just the loss of Crosshair the first time around had left a major hole; suddenly they couldn’t rely on unseen but perfectly aimed covering fire during missions, suddenly one of them could make a stupid remark without there being an immediate snide rebuttal, suddenly there was no scratch of pen on paper, no firepuncher leaned up against the wall tripping people, no smug grin on sharp features, no littlest brother. Now they were missing all that again, but this time they were also missing Wrecker’s booming laugh, his infinite enthusiasm, having to walk sideways to get past his sheer bulk, listening to Gonky bloop as the giant used him to do curls, everything. It was all gone, they were both gone , and Hunter hated every second of it.

Not gone , he reminded himself for the hundredth time. Just away. They were coming back. It was up to the rest of the Batch to bring them back when the time came. 

He still hated it. He’d always hated it when they were seperated, even for just a little while. How was Hunter supposed to take care of them, how was he supposed to keep them safe if he wasn’t with them? He couldn’t. He couldn’t and it scared him.

Tech was little better, the four original members of the Batch had always been close, almost codependent, because whenever they were split up something bad always happened and they all knew it. Tech had always used activities to manage his anxiety, when he was anxious he buried himself in work, in data-retrieval, slicing, decryption, statistics, and troubleshooting. He worked himself into the ground on a good day, but with two of his brothers so far outside their reach he never seemed to so much as look up from his datapad, vambrace computer, or whatever other projects he was newly obsessed with. Anybody who tried to interrupt him was brushed off, even Hunter, sometimes only distractedly, but more often than not Tech snapped at them that he was busy and couldn’t entertain them just then.

Omega was taking it just as hard, Hunter saw that and tried to spend extra time with her to make up for the loss of their two brothers. Not lost, he reminded himself, just on-mission. Regardless, Tech used his machines and computers as an outlet and Hunter used his remaining siblings as an outlet, being maybe a little too overprotective, a little too quick to anger, hovering a little too much. He knew it was bad but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t help it.

Hunter could tell it was driving Echo and Tech up the wall, even if Omega both liked and needed the extra attention. Tech and Hunter ended up getting in snarling fights while Echo ushered Omega as far away as possible. Echo and Hunter sat in depressed silence during the night cycle while Omega slept and Tech hid himself in the cockpit.

None of them wanted to admit it, but they were falling apart. This mission needed to end soon before they all lost it completely.

He knew Tech was tracking Crosshair and Wrecker’s signals obsessively, which was the only thing that kept Hunter from collapsing into a mass of sheer stress and raw nerves. They knew where their brothers were. They knew they were together, their signals close enough for them to be in the same room after they’d initially split up - which in itself had been terrifying - but it still took over a week for them to be moved and Hunter felt every second of that time twisting him in knots.

When the signals turned weak and intermittent his anxiety only increased. What if something had gone wrong? What if they’d been hurt? What if they’d been killed and it was just the bodies that were being moved? What if, what if, what if? Endlessly Hunter fretted over every possibility he could think of until Echo asked Rex to intervene and the Captain, with Howzer’s help, got him to drink with them until he passed out. The hangover afterwards was terrible, killer, and Hunter generally avoided alcohol for that reason alone, because his enhanced senses made every small light or sound into an icepick straight to the brain, but he’d needed to shut off for a while and if nothing else the hangover was highly distracting.

So their brothers had been brought to the imperial fleet as planned and they had been moved as planned. Whether any of that was because they had succeeded in their goals was pure insanity-inducing speculation, but as far as they could tell things were still going as planned. 

The planet Tech tracked the signals to once they’d been moved was an iceball called Ilum. Rex had recognized the name, saying it was an important planet for the Jedi, something to do with lightsabers, but that was all he really knew about it. Tech had gone and found them every scrap of information on the planet he possibly could. Weather patterns, geography, topography, political history, religious significance, Jedi history, mining certificates, military records, encrypted transmissions, data data and more data. In the end what it all came down to when the lot of them - Howzer and Rex included - had sifted through everything Tech had dredged up was what they already knew. There was a prison there where the prisoners mined crap out of the planet, valuable crap, sacred crap, possibly dangerous crap, but crap Hunter did not particularly care about nonetheless. 

The military records were more helpful. There was a full battalion stationed on Ilum, a battalion of clones - the 481st legion apparently - but not all in the same place, which was good. They’d be able to bust open the prison without the entire planetary force swarming them in an instant. While having to use stunners on the clones could possibly hamper them, the prison itself was guarded almost exclusively by TK troopers, whom Hunter personally had no qualms killing. Regardless, if they were quick about it they might avoid interacting with the full numbers of the 481st’s battalion entirely. There was also an attachment of ships guarding the planet -  nat-borns rather than the 481st, which was another piece of good luck since it was hard to take out pilots non-lethally - but Rex and Howzer had already planned for that. They had recruited every pilot at their disposal and had, as the two of them insisted on calling it, ‘tactically acquired’ numerous gunships and fighters for the pilots to fly. Stolen. They had stolen them. But that was none of Hunter’s business.

Truthfully he was more than a little surprised that so many nat-borns were willing to stand up and fight for a bunch of imprisoned clones, they’d never seemed to value clones before, but maybe Rex and his troops had changed their minds. The problem with the nat-borns though was that they took for-goddamn-ever to do anything. Rex whipped them into shape with the help of Captain Gregor’s enthusiastic if not unorthodox training and encouragement, but they weren’t the GAR. Dear gods were they not the GAR. Rex, Howzer, and Gregor had to be a lot nicer about it then anybody had ever treated the clones for one - and that might have made Hunter a little bitter, just a little - but it got done eventually. They repaired all the stolen ships and stocked everything and got everybody ready and then finally finally they headed out to rescue the regs and the rest of the Batch.

Hunter spent the time in hyperspace praying to any god or spirit or anything that might hear him that his brothers were okay. That Crosshair had killed Rampart without getting hurt, that they hadn’t been tortured too badly, that they weren’t starving or injured or in distress. With their luck none of his prayers would be answered and all of Hunter's fears would come true, but he couldn’t afford to think about that or he’d go nuts.

So finally the Marauder was headed to Ilum. The plan was for the Batch - what remained of it - to go in first, to infiltrate and give the signal to start the prison rioting. This was something they had discussed with Crosshair and Wrecker, so unless something had gone horribly terribly wrong, Commander Wolffe would know what to do when everything started. Once the riot was underway Rex’s group would attack the forces stationed above the planet to split their troops and attention while Howzer’s group moved in to mop up the ground forces and extract the clones. All of it needed to be done quick, because while Tech had come up with a way to scramble the imperial forces’ transmissions, if they took too long somebody somewhere would figure out something was wrong and send troops to investigate.

***

They were just two days out from Ilum when Hunter found Tech asleep in the cockpit, where he often was at night even when things were normal. It was late enough into the night cycle that his little brother had finally crashed. Tech had always had a bad habit of staying up too late and waking up too early and Hunter had been tempted on more than one occasion to disable his alarms so he’d get more sleep, but he knew his brother would be livid, so he had never done it.

Hunter turned on his heel and walked back out of the cockpit so he could pull the blankets off of Tech’s bunk and bring them in to cover him with. He grimaced at the weird uncomfortable-looking angle his little brother’s head was resting at and went back to get him a pillow to prop it up with so he wouldn’t wake up with a crick in his neck.

Echo and Omega had long since gone to sleep, although both of them were only sleeping fitfully. Echo’s nightmares had come back with avengeance when Crosshair and Wrecker left and Hunter knew he was only getting a few hours of sleep a night in-between them. He himself had been struggling to sleep as well, but he was unwilling to use any of Tech’s sleep aids. Medicine was expensive and he didn’t want to use it unless it was absolutely unavoidable…at least he didn’t want to use it on himself . Hunter could admit he was always the first to suggest it when somebody else was in pain or couldn’t sleep and mostly his siblings took advantage of what they had…except Crosshair who hated to admit he even needed it, let alone actually take it. Maker, why was he always so difficult?

Hunter missed him so badly.

He eventually laid down to get some sleep for himself and then after an hour realized he’d forgotten to eat. He really was falling apart at the seams…but Hunter was supposed to be holding things together, he couldn’t let himself fall apart or everything else would follow. With a sigh he dropped back down off his bunk and paced out of the bunkroom to go eat.

With two of his brothers gone, the sergeant could afford to eat a whole ration bar per meal for once, but he didn’t. Better to have a surplus than to be toeing the line of disaster, and besides, Wrecker and Crosshair weren’t gone , he reminded himself stubbornly, they were just away. Not gone dammit . Away. They’d be back soon and the extra rations would be useful. They never had extra anything so maybe for once he wouldn’t have to stress quite so much about how he was going to feed his squad. He loved Omega dearly, but now instead of five mouths he could barely feed he had six .

Hunter went to bed for the second time after he’d stowed the remaining half of his ration bar back in the supplies so he could eat it in the morning. He was still hungry, but that was a fact of life. He’d been hungry since he was a cadet and had first started splitting his rations with Wrecker so his brother wasn’t starving all day long and that wasn’t about to change any time soon. 

When he finally did manage to sleep he dreamed about the fall of Tipoca City. He dreamed that Wrecker was consumed by fire in the imperial bombardment. He dreamed that Crosshair drowned with nobody to save him. Hunter woke up with tears running down his face and quickly swiped the evidence away with his sleeves before anybody could see him falling to pieces. He was the sergeant, the leader, he had to hold it together. Keep it together dammit!

He forced himself to go back to sleep, Hunter knew he needed a few more hours to be able to function even minimally, but all he had were more bad dreams. He dreamed of needles and Nala Se, of having to stand and watch as the trainers beat Tech unconscious for correcting something they’d said that he felt was inaccurate, of that first time Crosshair had come back from Nala Se’s lab without crying and Hunter had known the reason there were no tears was because his littlest brother had finally realized nobody would come to help him no matter how much he sobbed. He still wished Crosshair would cry when he was upset or in pain, but he never had after that point and Hunter knew it was because he’d failed to protect him. He always failed to protect his brothers when it was down to the wire, when it was most important.

When Hunter woke up he was too nauseous to go back to sleep again and gave up on it. He regretted eating that half ration bar, it had only made him feel more ill. In the end he got up and went to take stock of their supplies, hoping that seeing the unusual surplus would make him less miserable.

The next day was just as bad, as Tech and Hunter got in another fight, one that was so vicious it made Omega cry to hear their shouting even after Echo had dragged her away. Hunter had to spend almost two hours trying to reassure her that he and Tech were just struggling and didn’t actually hate each other. Even once her tears had dried he still felt nauseous, but forced himself to eat anyway, still felt tired but forced himself to stay alert. He checked their weapons and equipment obsessively, making sure that if anything went wrong with the mission - and didn’t it always? - it at least wouldn’t be that .

When they finally came out of hyperspace over Ilum he almost cried from relief. Soon it’d be over and they’d have Wrecker and Crosshair back. Hunter wouldn’t have to kill himself trying to keep everything together, Echo’s nightmares would abate, Tech would stop hiding in his work, and Omega wouldn’t have to live in the midst of brothers that were constantly at each other’s throats. They just had to finish the mission and then everything would be okay.

Tech got them through the beginnings of a blockade around the planet by slicing into the computers of the flagship and spoofing access codes to present back to them. It worked and they got through unharmed. The access codes put them down as imperial officers and on the fly Hunter pulled out the old infiltration staple of conducting an inspection. It might have been cliched, but it was a staple because it worked so damn well. Hearing somebody was there to inspect them encouraged those in charge to show them around, which was always great for an infiltration. The only drawback was it was hard to move around unaccompanied because nobody wanted them to see all the little things they’d karked up. They were going to have to split up.

When they landed on the surface of Ilum, Hunter and Tech unhappily left their armor behind in favor of heavy coats and other cold-weather clothes. The armor was too memorable and didn’t fit their cover anyway, even if it did have built-in thermals to keep them warm. If they got shot while dressed in civvies like they were then they’d be karked, so Hunter resolved not to let anybody get shot. The only saving grace was that the coats were bulky enough for them both to bring their pistols and a collection of knives each.

He had already apprised his brothers and Omega of his plan as they’d been descending through the planet’s atmosphere. Echo couldn’t stroll in like him and Tech, he was too obviously a clone, and neither could Omega, child that she was. Echo would be infiltrating the old fashioned way while Omega stayed with the ship and Tech and Hunter distracted the officers and TK troopers as much as possible. Hunter busted out the makeup to cover his tattoo and the hair gel - something he loathed because the stuff reeked, even if Tech insisted it was unscented  - and despite their earlier argument Tech was willing to help him put on the makeup and fix his hair so it was slicked back in the sort of perfectly asshole-ish manner that imperial officers seemed to prefer. Fortunately his little brother was professional enough not to let a fight, no matter how vicious it had been, get in the way of a mission, certainly not one as important as this. He was just as determined to extract their brothers safely as Hunter was. He knew the cost of failure.

With Tech and Hunter all gussied up they descended from the Marauder and tromped through the blizzard to meet with the prison’s warden, whom Tech helpfully informed him was a woman named Colonel Pik Greeves. Hunter hated the woman the second he caught sight of her through the storm. She had a smug, disdainful look on her face which smoothed out into something polite and helpful when they got close enough for her to think they could see it. She held herself like somebody who knew unequivocally that she was better than everybody else in her midst and there was something dark in her pale gray eyes that made Hunter think she had a mean streak ten klicks wide. He didn’t like the idea of his brothers having been at the mercy of such a woman for so long. Standing on either side of the colonel was a pair of toadies, both with something sniveling and weak about them that made Hunter think they’d bolt the second they heard a loud noise.

“Colonel Greeves,” Tech said primly when they were properly face to face. Hunter’s little brother was channeling his natural fastidiousness to the point that he was surrounded in an aura of ‘stick up his ass bureaucrat’ so heavy Hunter could practically smell it. Greeves tried to hide her grimace, but Hunter saw it in the slight downward twitch of her lips. If Tech saw it he ignored it completely, just plowing on like nothing in the galaxy was more important as he scrolled through documents on his datapad. “I am Major Coric Artess from Internal Affairs and this is my assistant Captain Geruss Shide. Don’t talk to him, talk to me.” Tech told the warden sharply. 

Being a major technically meant Tech was posing as somebody lower ranked than Greeves, but being from Internal Affairs, especially if he was there for an inspection, put the balance of power firmly in Tech’s hands and everybody there knew it. People lived and died by the whims of bureaucrats the galaxy over, they were the ones in charge of rations, medicine, and other supplies. They were the ones in charge of when people got paid and when they got leave. They were the ones in charge of who got what weapons and when. Pissing off the wrong beaurocrat was a ticket to hell, everybody in the military knew that. The fact that Greeves had been posted in such a shithole meant she was probably well aware of the consequences of angering the wrong person.

The colonel looked like she would like nothing more than to shoot Tech in the head, which was both amusing (because Tech could be really really aggravating when he put his mind to it, impressively so) and something that set Hunter’s teeth on edge. He didn’t like people threatening his brothers, even if it was just a passive sort of threat.

“I wasn’t warned there’d be an inspection,” Colonel Greeves ground out through her teeth.

Tech gave her an unimpressed look, “Obviously. If I were to warn you then you’d have time to cover up any mistakes you have made. What would be the point?”

“Of course. I understand,” Greeves hissed, trying and failing to keep her utter fury out of her voice. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the facility.”

“Where is your guard detachment?” Tech asked her sharply before they’d even started towards the prison, “Are you really so cocky as to let officers walk around unattended?” He was having fun with this, Hunter could tell. Tech had a mean streak of his own which really only came out when he was very stressed and with how things were going so far, Hunter was getting the impression that Tech intended to take his bad mood out on Greeves in the most sadistic way he had available to him. 

“There is no need for such a thing,” Greeves snapped back at him as she started walking, “There’s nothing out here to guard against.”

“Failing to follow regulations right out the gate,” Tech snapped right back, “Typical.”

Hunter almost laughed at the look on Greeves’s face, but managed to hold it in. How Tech was keeping a straight face he didn’t know. Together the five of them walked through the storm past the guard posts and finally inside the prison complex proper while Greeves explained the various security features of the facility and Tech continued to torment her. 

Unbeknownst to the Colonel and her toadies, Tech had a live feed going straight to Echo’s helmet from his datapad, although nobody would be able to tell just by looking at the thing. Hunter watched with bated breath as they systematically unraveled every layer of security for his brother to see and work out how to pierce. Both Hunter and Tech were wearing earpiece comms, which were easily justifiable, since imperial officers used such things as well, and about twenty minutes into their tour Hunter heard Echo say, “Headed out now.”

Hunter worked his jaw to click the comm twice in the Batch’s silent confirmation signal and turned his attention back to Greeves’s explanation of the lockdown procedures. What he got from that lecture was that once the riot started they were going to need to disable the prison’s central security system or nobody would be going anywhere. He glanced over and saw Tech was already slicing into said system on his datapad while he continued to find something wrong with literally everything Greeves told him. Hunter’s little brother was a master multitasker.

“First checkpoint passed.” Echo said a few minutes later. Hunter clicked his comms again and waited. Greeves walked them through a series of small cramped tunnels until they made it out into a larger space. It was barely any warmer inside the prison than outside, the only major difference was the lack of wind. Howzer had warned them the place was cold, but being there in person really made Hunter that much more unhappy to know his brothers had been there for so long. They were going to have to have one of Omega’s ‘blanket parties' to try and warm Crosshair and Wrecker back up when they were done with this karking mission. He knew they still had a little tea left and he’d heard once that cider could be drunk hot, so they’d have to do that too.

There were regs in shoddy-looking winter gear milling about the large open space below where Hunter, Tech, and the officers stood on a catwalk. They were eating rations and drinking from battered canteens, clearly having just finished a shift in the mines based on how exhausted they all looked. Even though Hunter wasn’t the biggest fan of regs, the absolute disgust in Greeves’s voice when she talked about them made the sergeant’s temper flare. The regs could be total assholes, but they were loyal to each other, had been nothing but loyal to the Republic, had died for their brothers and their duty. They shouldn’t be treated like vermin. Besides, Hunter had to admit he liked Rex, Gregor, and Howzer. All three captains, though vastly different personality-wise, were good men. Hunter was starting to think regs were fine individually and it was just when you got them together that they acted like morons.

Idly, as Tech and Greeves talked, Hunter searched the crowd of regs for his brothers’ faces, but he didn’t see them. The colonel had said they worked the clones in shifts all day and night, so maybe Wrecker and Crosshair were sleeping.

“Inside the facility now.” Echo said, “Heading to the trooper barracks.”

Hunter clicked his comms yet again and followed behind as Greeves guided them through more tunnels, showing them the locked cells where the clones slept when they were off-shift and then through a hallway of closed cells with thick metal doors.

“These are our solitary confinement cells,” Greeves was explaining, “We have a total of two hundred and we make liberal use of them. I find these rats are particularly social, even more so than a normal human, and being separated and put in solitary is a highly effective form of punishment not just for the individual but for the group as a whole.”

Hunter’s blood ran cold as Greeves explained how they’d specially designed the solitary cells to be nearly silent inside and have no way for light to get in. Solitary confinement was bad, very bad, and sensory deprivation was worse. Again he was left praying to anybody or anything that might hear that his brothers hadn’t been subjected to it. Crosshair especially was already balancing on a tightrope of tenuous mental health and something like solitary confinement could easily send him tumbling over the edge. 

“ Charges set,” Echo told them. Hunter clicked his comms, dragging himself back to the then and there, and put his hands in his sleeves to slide his fingers over the vibroblade strapped to his forearm. Thirty seconds later several things happened in quick succession. First an explosion rocked the facility, then Hunter lunged and slashed open the throat of first the toadie on the left of Greeves and then the one on the right at the exact same time as Tech drew one of his pistols and shot the colonel in the head, then the three bodies hit the cold stone floor and all hell broke loose.

Chapter Text

It was the explosion that woke Crosshair up, but even if it hadn’t the screaming alarms that followed it would have. He went from dead unconsciousness to full battle readiness in an instant, or rather he ended up in a wrestling match with Wrecker, who was still holding onto him, as Crosshair simultaneously tried to get up and to protect himself from an unknown threat at the same time. Wrecker released him once the giant realized what was going on, and Crosshair lurched to his feet in the middle of their cell. Boil and Trapper were both awake now as well, both alert and climbing off their racks to the floor. 

Unless something really strange and unlikely had happened, that was the remainder of the Batch’s signal to start the riot, of course the little group of clones that included the two commandos couldn’t do squat while their cell was locked up, but a few seconds later there was a loud buzz, one echoed a hundred times over by all the cells around them, and the ray shield dropped. Wrecker grinned hugely. “I think that’s our cue,” he boomed. 

Boil and Trapper cheered and bolted out the door, looking for Catcher like they had planned. Catcher was perfectly capable of fighting for himself, but his friends still felt he should be protected, something they had justified during their own little planning sessions by claiming as a medic he was more valuable than a regular clone. Catcher had cussed them out until they relented and agreed that none of them was more valuable than any other, but he hadn’t actually argued further when faced with the tactics involved. Strategically, medics were a commodity to be protected and he recognized that. He’d have been stupid not to.

Crosshair glanced at Wrecker as the regs bolted. His brother looked more than ready to bust through every obstacle between them and freedom, so Crosshair took stock of himself. Was he ready for this?

Was this even real?

That thought drew him up short. Was it? He looked around at the cell, but found it looked the same as it had before. He had woken up in exactly the same place and condition as when he’d gone to sleep, with his prosthetic leg hurting from being left on too long and the ever present headache, but he was a little less dead on his feet now - that was probably the adrenaline though, you didn’t go gods knew how long without sleeping only to be fine after a few hours of rest, that shit had consequences - so his logic was telling him it was real. Dreams were inconsistent, so if he’d slept and woken up with everything the same then it made sense for him to have been actually awake the whole time…even if some deep part of him was still in denial, still scared that it was all in his head and he was slowly dying in the dark and silence. He wasn’t sure he’d be rid of that fear for a long time, so for now the sensible thing to do would be to treat it as if it were real and pray the rug didn’t get pulled out from under him.

“Cross?” Wrecker asked, his voice almost lost in the still wailing alarms but effective at jolting Crosshair back to the present nonetheless. He looked over at his brother, who was watching him cautiously. “You…You don’t still think you’re dreaming do you?” he asked nervously.

Crosshair let out a huff, “The evidence seems to be pointing to this being real,” he replied, channeling Tech just a little as he rubbed his aching knee, “So I’m pretty sure I’m awake…and have been the whole time. Happy?”

The look of sheer bone-deep relief on Wrecker’s face made Crosshair feel a little guilty. He must have really scared him. “Yeah,” Wrecker said with a grin that was just a little bit weaker than usual, “You think you’re up for a little brawlin’?” 

Now Crosshair grinned, it was a mean-spirited expression that wouldn’t have fit on any of his brothers, but somehow worked perfectly for him, “I could crack some skulls,” he replied. After all the shit the guards and staff of this damn prison had put them through, the idea of handing out a little payback was extremely appealing.

That was apparently the right answer, because Wrecker’s smile turned huge as he shed the last of his anxiousness, “Well let's go bust ‘em open then! Time to blow this joint!”

Without further ado the two of them bolted out of the cell and down the corridor. The Batch’s message hadn’t gone unheard, the prison was in absolute chaos. Wolffe had been very careful to make sure every damn clone in the place knew what was going to happen and was smart enough about it to keep it quiet from the guards’ ears. Crosshair wasn’t sure how he’d managed that, regs seemed like they’d be likely to let it slip with the way they gossiped, but apparently even they understood when blabbing could get their brothers killed. The two commandos pushed through the crowds of regs all rushing through the halls to the agreed upon points of egress and when they broke out into the wider areas they found there was already fighting in progress. 

Wrecker barreled into the thick of it like a bowling ball into a formation of unsuspecting pins and Crosshair ducked just in time as a TK trooper jabbed out with his stun baton when Crosshair came around the corner. The electric charge crackling in the head of the weapon made the hair on the back of Crosshair’s neck stand up as the strike slipped past his head by less than a handbreadth. The TK trooper tried to recover from the missed swing, but Crosshair caught his wrist and twisted against the bend of his elbow, breaking both joints in one sharp movement. The trooper dropped the baton and Crosshair caught it before it hit the floor then jammed the head of it right into the man’s throat. The trooper spasmed and sunk to the floor, unable to take the shock he dished out to others on a regular basis. 

Another trooper slammed into Crosshair and sent him sprawling, but Crosshair rolled over his shoulder and back up to his feet in a single smooth movement, twisted out of the way of the stun baton the trooper swung at him, then ducked under the strike before it could be reeled back in and jammed his stolen baton into that guard’s throat as well, turning in the same movement to pull the man’s body against his back to take the shots fired at him by a third trooper with a rifle. When that Trooper stopped firing, realizing he was hitting his own man, Crosshair dropped the dead body and twisted away to close the distance before the man realized he had an open shot.

The trooper’s brain caught up with the rapid turn of events once Crosshair had gotten in his face and he swung his rifle like a club right at the sniper’s head rather than trying to get a shot off in close quarters. Crosshair caught the rifle, wrestled it to the side to keep the barrel pointed away from anybody the TK trooper might see fit to shoot - like him - and then slammed his foot into the side of the man’s knee. Crosshair wasn’t nearly as strong as he used to be, as he had been before he’d spent weeks rotting away in the dark, but it didn’t require a huge amount of strength to destroy a knee joint if you hit it from a bad angle. That’s why Crosshair liked joints, they were easy to ruin. The trooper yelled in pain as his knee dislocated and his ligaments tore, but Crosshair didn’t give him time to react further, instead he jabbed the stun baton into the man’s throat and then when the trooper’s hands went slack on the rifle for a second Crosshair relieved him of it and jammed it up under the chin of the trooper’s helmet so the shot couldn’t hit anybody in the chaos when it burned through his head and came out the other side.

The body dropped and now Crosshair had a firearm, which made him happier than he had been in weeks. He turned and shot two guards who were in the midst of fighting with a battered-looking Dogma straight in the throat, dropping the both of them. Dogma turned and then gave him a lopsided grin and a thumbs up before he jumped back into the chaos that tore through the prison like a hurricane trapped in a bottle. After that Crosshair ricocheted a shot off a shiny patch of catwalk to hit a trooper that was blocked from his direct view by a group of clones that were trying to keep him from shooting anybody. That trooper dropped with a smoking hole that started in the top of his shoulder and came out his hip on the opposite side. 

Wrecker was laughing uproariously as he smashed a TK trooper’s head into the ground like a melon, his cheap helmet a pitiful defense against the giant’s strength, only to turn and practically rip the arms off another as he took his gun away. He didn’t need Crosshair’s help, but the sniper still shot a hole into any TK trooper who so much as looked at him funny. The two of them knew where they were headed, which was not where everybody else was going. The plan they’d worked out with their siblings before the mission started was that they’d meet up in the control center of the prison in case they needed to disable any security that couldn’t be sliced into by Tech remotely. They’d need to all meet up anyway, so there was no reason not to do it there.

Crosshair and his older brother plowed through any resistance in their way as they barreled through the prison’s tunnel-like hallways towards the heart of the place’s security system. Wrecker busted open security doors like they were made of eggshells and wet cardboard and Crosshair bounced shots from his stolen rifle off of metal railings, shiny patches of ice, and anything else that held a reflection to shoot guards without hurting any clones in the way or hit around corners before they had to run into enemy fire. When they finally reached the doors to the control center they found that the lockdown hadn’t been engaged there, or it had been deactivated. They stepped into the room cautiously and Crosshair brought up his rifle when they found the room full of dead bodies, save two men in fluffy coats. One of the men turned, pulling up a pistol as he did, but he froze and then his face broke into an expression of relief. That was enough to stop Crosshair from shooting him for the second it took to recognize the man.

Crosshair understood why he hadn’t realized it was his older brother at first, with the tattoo covered up and the slicked back hair Hunter looked exactly like an imperial officer. Between that and the civvies, the sniper deduced that he and Tech - who was busy slicing into the control panels in front of him - had done a social infiltration instead of sneaking in the old fashioned way, which could be a problem. They looked like imperials rather than allies, so the regs might mistake them for the enemy, hell Crosshair had nearly shot Hunter in a knee-jerk reaction. He and Wrecker would have to stay close to them. Regardless Crosshair lowered his rifle, let out a disapproving noise as he glanced at Hunter’s getup, and said, “Fix your hair, you look like an asshole.”

To his surprise the look Hunter gave him was one of somebody about to burst into tears, although the expression was one of pure exhausted relief rather than hurt feelings.

Wrecker laughed, then trotted over and reached down to ruffle up Hunter’s hair so he looked more like himself and less like an imperial scumbag. Even Tech smiled at the exchange, looking almost as relieved as Hunter, although he had only glanced up from his work for a second.

“Wiping off the makeup might make us look like less of a target,” Tech added distractedly “The Empire has strict regulations on tattoos and would never allow somebody with a large facial tattoo into the ranks. It’s unprofessional looking.”

Hunter didn’t seem to be offended by that and instead nodded before leaning down to wipe it off on the sleeve of one of the dead imperials, not wanting to ruin one of the sets of civvies they used for disguises for this exact sort of mission. It didn’t get all the makeup off, which left him with a strange streaked appearance, but the tattoo was visible and between that and his newly messy hair he no longer looked like an imperial officer. Of course he looked like he’d just been run over by a truck, but that was better than being mistaken for the enemy and getting shot.

“Where’s Echo and Omega?” Wrecker asked.

“Echo’s headed in our direction, he was the one who set off the explosion so he was on the opposite side of the prison, and Omega is with the Marauder, ready to take off if things start to get too hot in that area,” Hunter told them.

“You expect the girl to pilot?” Crosshair asked him incredulously.

“She has piloted before, although only briefly, and I have trained her enough that this should be within her capabilities,” Tech told him without looking up.

Hunter’s eyes raked up and down Wrecker first, since he was closer, and then Crosshair, looking for injuries probably. “You’re both okay? You both look thin and Crosshair you look…just awful,” the sergeant observed unhappily.

“I’ve looked awful since the Order,” Crosshair snapped, this was not the time or place for Hunter to find out what had happened. They didn’t need him to have an overprotective big brother meltdown in the middle of a mission. He saw how Wrecker frowned at that, but his older brother clearly knew why he was deflecting and didn’t rat him out just yet. Crosshair was just glad his ill-fitting coat disguised his scrawny figure. As Wrecker had said after Crosshair had first gotten out of solitary, Tech and Hunter were going to flip when they found out. Echo too probably. Crosshair silently prayed that nobody would cry, he never knew what to do when he made his brothers cry.

“And done,” Tech said suddenly, straightening up. There was a loud blaring noise on top of the already wailing alarms and when Crosshair looked out the control room’s massive windows he could see red flashing lights reflected in the blizzard outside. Tech had probably opened up the vehicle depot and every other door in the place in one fell swoop. The security system of some podunk imperial prison stood a snowball’s chance on Mustafar against him.

Crosshair was glad he’d been let out of solitary before the riot had happened, Wolffe had assigned a bunch of regs to drag everybody out of the blackout cells and he could only imagine how much of a liability he would have been in a fight after having been locked up for weeks. Wolffe had put more regs on that job than was strictly needed just so they could protect the clones who were in too bad of a shape to fight…speaking of Wolffe, there were footsteps clattering down the hall and the Batch pointed their weapons at the door only to lower them when the clone commander in question and two of his Wolfpack rounded the corner. 

“There you two are,” Wolffe said to Crosshair and Wrecker and then nodded at Tech and Hunter, “Good to see you boys pull through on this. Ready to blow this joint?”

“We’re waiting on–” Hunter started to say only for Echo to burst into the room a moment later. Unlike everybody else he was in full armor, but thankfully the clones recognized Katarn-class Commando Armor when they saw it, even if it was modified to hell and back, and didn’t mistake him for somebody working for the imperials.

“Crosshair! Wrecker!” Echo said in a voice that had a slight shake to it as he crossed the room and pulled the both of them into a tight hug. Crosshair grumbled but allowed it for a few seconds at least before he tried to push his brother off him, only for Wrecker to wrap them up in his own hug so crushing it lifted their feet off the floor.

“The gang’s all here?” Wolffe asked them and Hunter nodded.

“I blew the trooper barracks to smithereens, so more than half of the TK troopers here should be out of commission,” Echo said, “Is the security system disabled?”

“Completely,” Tech said in a self-satisfied voice, “I’ve gone through and not only turned everything off but also purged all the programming required to engage it in the first place. If they want to close any of the doors they’ll have to reinstall all their software first.”

Wolffe was sporting a grin that matched his name as he nodded, “Good, I sent my boys to raid the armory so we should have a fighting chance.”

“The prison is run by TK troopers,” Hunter informed them, “But there’s a battalion of clones on this planet that we might have to fight if we take too long. The 481st legion.”

“Just a battalion? Not the whole legion?” Wolffe asked.

“Fortunately,” Tech answered him, adjusting his goggles, “I suggest we get a move on, we don’t have infinite time.”

Wolffe turned to Boost and Sinker and said, “We’re going to tell everybody we pass to turn their weapons to stun, we don’t want to kill any vode even if they’re trying to kill us. If you can knock one out and grab him without putting yourself in danger then do it, Rex’ika will be able to take their chips out if we bring any of them back.”

“Got it,” Boost said with Sinker nodding.

“Alright move out everybody we’re burning daylight!” Wolffe barked, spurring everyone into motion.

“The Colonel liked to tell us we’d never see daylight again,” Sinker pointed out wryly while he kept pace with his vode and the group of commandos.

“Did she?” Tech asked, his voice innocent, “I think she herself will be less likely to see it again than all of you, considering I shot her in the head a little while ago.”

Wolffe gave the engineer a vicious grin as they all ran down the cramped icy halls, Boost and Sinker calling out to any clones they passed to relay the commander’s message, “Good, somebody had to,” he said.

When they made it outside a problem became immediately apparent and that was the fact that visibility in the blizzard was pretty much nonexistent.  

“Osik!” Wolffe yelled over the howling wind and screaming alarms as clones streamed out the doors around them. There were flashes of red light from out in the blur of snow as well as blue flashes from stunners, that must mean that at least some of the 481st had arrived and engaged.

Crosshair could only hope this didn’t all go belly up at the last second. Rather than running out into the landscape blind, Wolffe had his troops take over the prison's defenses while everyone else holed up in the vehicle depot and front yard and waited for evac.

It didn’t take long until blaster fire started streaming out of the storm at them and everyone had to take cover, unlike the clones who’d been in the prison, the 481st probably had thermal vision in their helmets and didn’t need good visibility to shoot at them. Crosshair could only pray that Rex’s men had thought of that before setting this plan in motion. If not this was going to go very badly.

The clones fired stunners back at their chipped brothers, even if they were largely firing blind. Crosshair was hidden next to Wrecker and Hunter behind the leg of a walker and he peeked his head out every few seconds, surveying the storm. In the flashes of light from the flying blaster bolts he could see the silhouettes of the 481st clones, picking out the subtle variation of shadows that wouldn’t be visible to anybody else, and that was enough for him to take shots at them. The rifle he had wasn’t a sniper rifle or even a designated marksman’s rifle so he couldn’t shoot anybody terribly far away, especially not with it set to stun, but it was enough for him to take the front line of advancing clones down whenever he caught sight of them. The good thing about stunners was that they bypassed armor, so he didn’t have to worry about aiming for the gaps in the clones’ armor.

When he glanced back at all the regs in cover around him, taking stock of them quickly, he was more relieved than he’d be willing to admit to see all the faces he’d come to recognize over his stay. Dogma was there, looking even more battered than before, but upright and armed with a hand blaster. He recognized the rest of the Wolfpack, saw some clones whose names escaped him but who had cuddled him to death during his shifts in the ice tunnels. All of them looked worse for wear, clearly showing that they’d been fighting unarmed against better equipped opponents, but Wolffe had been confident that his men were better trained and more skilled than the TK troopers and that they could handle it and apparently he was right. There were some injuries, Crosshair saw Catcher working on stabilizing a clone who was bleeding heavily from his abdomen with the help of Trapper, Boil, and a trauma kit they had stolen from somewhere. There were other medics doing the best they could with what they’d managed to steal as well. All in all it seemed the gang was all there and largely in one piece, with the bulk of them armed and taking turns ducking out of their cover to fire blue stunner bolts into the ranks of their advancing brothers.

After a long period of nerve-wracking half-blind firefighting a new sound broke through the storm. Engines. Lots of engines.

Crosshair saw Hunter grin before he heard the sound himself, but he kept firing into the blizzard. If Rex and Howzer had brought people willing to fight with them in their evac then they might be able to trap the 481st with fire on both sides and take them out in a pincer…provided there were fighters and provided they had some way to see through the storm.

“What’s goin’ on, Cross?” Wrecker asked, “Can you see anything?”

“Yeah,” Crosshair answered immediately, peeking out of cover again to fire another shot. “I can’t tell how many there are left, but I think we’re thinning them pretty well just by putting up a wall of stunner fire and I see blue shots from further back, so I think they’ve been engaged from the opposite side.”

Hunter nodded, “I can hear Howzer’s nat-borns firing on them with stunners.”

“Nat-borns are the ones rescuing us?” Boost asked, “We’re dead.”

“They’re better than most,” Hunter reassured him, “A clone commando named Captain Gregor has been whipping them into shape.”

“Better nat-borns than nobody at all,” Wolffe said and effectively silenced all complaints as they all took turns ducking out of cover to provide that ongoing wall of stunner fire.

When the last of the red blaster bolts stopped cutting out of the storm and slamming into their cover Crosshair peeked out once again and then ducked back down, “I think they’re all down—”

“YOU BOYS OKAY IN THERE?!” Boomed a magnified voice through the howling wind and still blaring alarms. 

“HOWZER!” Wrecker bellowed back, his voice one of sheer delight. Out of everyone he was the loudest so they let him talk. It was indeed Howzer’s voice who’d spoken and the fact that it was recognizably a clone speaking relaxed all the regs around them.

“YOU BOYS ARE ALL CLEAR! COME ON OUT SO WE CAN GET THE HELL OFF THIS ICEBALL!” 

Wrecker looked at Wolffe, who nodded, and then he bellowed, “COPY THAT!”

Cautiously the clones all left the cover of the vehicle depot and moved out into the storm only to trip - quite literally in some cases - over the stunned members of the 481st where they lay in the snow. The regs all got to work picking them up before they continued to move towards the sounds of ship’s engines. Eventually they came close enough to the transports for them to be visible through the snow and the relief was palpable. Turns out there were a plethora of nat-born fighters, all kitted with thermal goggles (and where Rex had stolen those from Crosshair didn’t want to know) and other cobbled together winter combat gear, and they started coming forward to help the regs with their unconscious brothers.

“Captain,” Wolffe said when they ran almost headlong into Howzer.

The captain saluted shortly and then gave them a grin as he started ushering clones onto the closest transport, “Great to see you in one piece Commander, Rex is looking forward to seeing you again. I recommend we get outta dodge before anybody shows up to stop us.”

“Agreed,” Wolffe replied with a nod.

“Our ship is close by, but not in this exact location,” Tech pointed out, “Are we needed or shall we evacuate?”

Howzer looked them all over with a relieved expression, clearly happy to find the Batch in one piece, and then looked to Wolffe rather than answering himself. 

“You boys are good to go,” Wolffe told them as he and Howzer reached up to take the two unconscious 481st Wrecker was carrying.

“We’ll see you back at Rex’s base then,” Hunter said and nodded at the both of them. Howzer and Wolffe both nodded back, then Hunter turned and led his brothers back out into the snow to return to the Marauder and their waiting little sister.

“Omega had to move the Marauder when the 481st arrived,” Tech informed Wrecker and Crosshair, who weren’t wearing comms like the rest of them, as they trudged through the storm. The combination of the freezing wind and the way the adrenaline that had been keeping Crosshair going was rapidly draining away was leaving him feeling dead-limbed and uncoordinated, he’d been shivering almost perpetually since he’d first arrived at the prison all those weeks ago, but the shivers where turning more violent now and he stumbled. 

Wrecker caught him before he could land face first in the snow. “I gotcha little brother,” the giant told him as he helped him back to his feet.

“You alright Crosshair?” Hunter asked urgently, all the worry he’d apparently been holding in check rushing to the surface. 

“C-c-cold,” Crosshair forced out around his chattering teeth. He wasn’t so frozen that he let Wrecker pick him up, but he accepted the steadying arm his big brother put around his shoulders even if the fact that the support was the only thing keeping him up stung his pride.

“Right,” Tech said, “I think it’s about time you two were somewhere warm.”

“Sounds like heaven…” Wrecker hummed as he helped Crosshair along.

“I’ll heat up some of our cider for you two when we get inside,” Echo piped up, “I’m sure Omega is going to wrap you up in all our blankets too. We’ll get you both nice and toasty.”

Crosshair couldn’t force any words out, focused entirely on the idea of not having to be constantly freezing his ass off anymore. The shape of the Marauder appeared out of the storm so suddenly Crosshair was almost startled by it as they stumbled across the ship where Omega had landed it.

“Open up Omega,” Hunter said into comms, “We’re back.”

There was a moment where nothing happened then the ramp descended and a wave of warmth rolled over them that stole Crosshair’s breath away better than the icy wind ever could. Wrecker pulled Crosshair up the stairs rather than having him stumble on his own.

“Just think Cross,” he said happily, “Warm blankets, hot cider, you can take off your leg finally so it’ll stop hurtin’ and then catch up on your sleep.”

“S-s-sounds g-good,” Crosshair replied a little wistfully as the warmth of the Marauder enveloped them like an embrace.

Chapter Text

Being surrounded by the warmth of the Marauder made Crosshair feel like he was sinking into quicksand. He was exhausted, obviously the meager rest he’d gotten a few hours ago was paltry in comparison to the length of time he’d been awake before that. He was definitely feeling it. 

Omega jogged out of the cockpit as Tech took her place in the pilot’s chair and brought the Marauder out of atmo and into hyperspace back on route to Dantooine. The smile on her little round face was huge and she full-body tackled Wrecker only to be immediately swept up into his massive arms and spun around, squealing in delight all the while. Hunter grinned at the reunion, but Crosshair must have looked genuinely horrible if the way he and Echo were hovering was any indication. After a meaningful nudge from Hunter, Echo got the hint and ran off to go use their electric kettle to heat up some cider for them while the sergeant dragged Crosshair into the bunkroom.

“We can have cider,” Wrecker said, carrying Omega into the bunkroom on his shoulder, “But then Cross has gotta sleep.”

Tech sighed, resigned, as he trotted back into the room, “I imagine he had trouble with that in that environment.”

Crosshair grimaced and hoped Wrecker wouldn’t actually tattle on him, but unfortunately no such luck.

“We can talk about why later, when we debrief, but he’s only slept four hours in the last week,” his big brother rumbled unhappily.

Crosshair’s other siblings blanched and turned to look at him.

“You’re saying he has only slept for four out of at least one hundred and sixty-eight hours?” Tech asked him sharply.

Wrecker nodded and Tech and Hunter were suddenly all over Crosshair. Hunter was practically growling like an angry massiff when he said, “Bedtime. Now.” 

“What am I a cadet?” Crosshair snapped as Hunter shoved him bodily down onto his bunk and Omega clambered down off Wrecker and ran to go grab her fluffy pink blanket. He didn’t actually fight his brother, not when exhaustion had crept into his bones and turned his whole body into lead. The fact that he was in someplace warm for the first time in weeks wasn’t helping him either. Even if Crosshair didn’t want to sleep - too many bad things in his head waiting to come out - his body was begging him for it…or more accurately it was gearing up to force it upon him.

“You act enough like one,” Hunter grumbled, “Shut up, drink your cider, and then go to sleep Crosshair. You’re on rest until I say otherwise.”

Echo had returned with two steaming cups that he handed to his frozen brothers. Crosshair tugged off his stolen gloves and marveled at the feeling of the heat sinking into his icy fingers as he held the cup. Once Echo’s hand was empty he took the fluffy pink blanket from Omega as she trotted back in. She had Wrecker’s stupid doll with her and Crosshair glared at the thing as if it had personally insulted him. He had a sneaking suspicion his little sister was going to try and convince him to snuggle the thing and the thought made his lip curl. Rather than saying something unkind he took a sip of his drink and closed his eyes at the way it warmed his insides.

“We should stay with ‘im,” Wrecker said as he pulled the strips of cloth off his hands and accepted his own cup of hot cider. “He was in solitary an’ he’s been shaky since.” 

Shaky was a word, not the word Crosshair would have used since it was less accurate than saying he was panicky, unstable, paranoid, delusional, or just completely out of his karking mind, but shaky was…a word.

Hunter jerked like he’d been electrocuted, “They put him in solitary?” he asked sharply. 

“For how long?” Tech snapped at almost the same time.

Wrecker shifted guiltily. “I…I tried to stop ‘em, but those stun batons hit real hard an’ they dragged ‘im off before I could do anythin’…”

“How long, Wrecker?” Hunter pressed in a voice filled with purest dread.

Wrecker looked like he was going to cry and Crosshair sighed, “Three weeks apparently, at least according to the regs. I honestly couldn’t tell,” he told his siblings truthfully before Wrecker managed to force the admission out. Time had no meaning in the dark, if the regs hadn’t told him how long he’d been in there he’d have never been certain of the duration.

There was a long moment where the only noise was the humming of the Marauder’s engines and then Hunter broke the silence by swearing violently. 

“That is far far too long, Crosshair!” Tech cried, his voice unnaturally high.

“You think I don’t know that?” Crosshair snarled, “I didn’t ask them to throw me in there.”

“Are you alright?” Hunter asked him shakily, he looked like he was about to hurl and Crosshair rolled his eyes before taking another big swallow of his blessedly hot cider.

“I’m fine,” he growled.

“You liar,” Wrecker snapped, startling all of them with the quiet heat in his voice, so different from the normal overzealous anger he normally expressed when something upset him, “A couple hours ago you were freakin’ out. You wouldn’t sleep, they starved you so much you could barely eat anythin’, you had a panic attack when the lights went out, an’ you were freezin’ constantly… you’re still freezin’. You aren’t fine , Cross.”

“Alright,” Crosshair hissed back at him, “I’m doing better . Happy?”

“No,” Wrecker mumbled, “I’ll be happy when you can eat an’ you sleep until you aren’t a nervous wreck an’ when you stop shiverin’.”

Crosshair hadn’t even noticed he was still shivering, but then again that had been his state of being for almost a month, so he’d honestly just gotten used to it. 

“They starved him?” Tech asked, searching around the room for where he’d left his medical scanner.

“He does look thinner,” Echo said unhappily as he touched Crosshair’s cheek with gentle fingers. Normally the sniper would have shoved him away, but Wrecker wasn’t wrong, he’d been freaking out only a few hours ago and having somebody there touching him, grounding him, was a relief.

Wrecker made an unhappy noise. “Wait ‘til he takes off his coat.”

Personally Crosshair didn’t feel like taking his coat off thanks. He was still cold inside, in his bones, even if he was starting to thaw in the warmth of the Marauder.

Tech returned with the scanner and Hunter forced his littlest brother to hold still so Tech could scan him. When the device beeped that it was done Tech spent about thirty seconds looking the results over before swearing even more violently than Hunter had.

“What?” Hunter asked, his voice anxious.

“He has lost almost twenty pounds since we left him on JanFathal,” Tech snarled. Hunter and Echo both made matching choked noises.

“That’s really bad right?” Omega asked softly, finally speaking up as she crawled up onto Crosshair’s bunk and then onto his lap. “You feel bony,” she observed and then slipped her arms around him in a hug, insinuating Wrecker’s kriffing doll into the gesture like she thought he wouldn’t notice. Again Crosshair did nothing to stop her, simply adjusting his arms so that she could snuggle into his chest without knocking his drink out of his hands, she was warm and the touch made him feel less like he was about to drown, stupid doll be damned.

“Extremely bad,” Tech said, “He was already too thin for comfort before, but at this point he is on the verge of serious consequences. We don’t have the resources to treat something like this on the Marauder,” he told Hunter, who nodded, always aware of exactly how much food they had, “We will need help from Rex.” 

“I think Captain Howzer is going to be all over us the second we’re back on Dantooine,” Echo lamented, “Especially when he hears about this.”

Crosshair could only sigh. It hadn’t occurred to him that Howzer was going to climb up his ass about his weight again, but it should have. He blamed the oversight on the lack of sleep.

“We can fix that later,” Wrecker said firmly, “He needs to sleep.”

“Do you want to take your coat off?” Omega asked Crosshair, looking up at him from where she was buried against his chest.

He frowned at her, saying no would make them more worried about him, but damn if he wasn’t still freezing cold. Eventually he sighed, “No,” he grumbled, “I’m still cold.” He hated to admit it, but with the way he was still shivering it was blatantly obvious.

Hunter, amazingly, frowned even deeper and glanced at Tech, who sighed, “That is hardly surprising,” he said, “Honestly I’m a little surprised you aren’t suffering from hypothermia after being there for so long in your condition.”

“The regs helped keep ‘im from freezin’,” Wrecker said, then took Crosshair’s empty cup and used one of his massive hands to shove Crosshair over on his side - taking Omega down with him -  before he set the cups down and pulled off his little brother’s boots then worked on taking off his prosthetic leg - although he waited for Crosshair to give him permission before he disengaged the clamps that kept the limb in place. Crosshair was tempted to resist the pushy treatment, but he didn’t actually want to, so he let the manhandling slide. Omega buried herself deeper against his chest and he surrendered and wrapped his arms around her to keep her from falling off the bunk. She smiled up at him and he looked away. Echo finally swept past his brothers with the stupid pink blanket and draped both that and the blankets that had already been on Crosshair’s bunk over both him and Omega. Wrecker put Crosshair’s prosthetic on the box at the end of his bunk that contained his armor and other equipment, easily within reach should he need it.

“We’ll turn the lights off for you, Cross, and we’ll be right here,” Hunter said softly, but something in Crosshair’s heart seized and his breath got caught up in his throat. 

Hunter obviously heard it based on the way he froze, but Wrecker clapped a hand on his older brother’s shoulder and said, “We’ll turn ‘em down but not off. It won’t be too dark for’ya to see, okay?”

Understanding spread across Hunter’s face, followed immediately by fury, but he didn’t say anything and Crosshair nodded stiffly at Wrecker, mortified by the fact that the reassurance made the knot in his chest unravel. He’d ended up scared of the dark like a toddler. Even literal actual child Omega wasn’t scared of the dark.

“You’re alright Cross’ika,” Echo told him softly, having seen the unhappy look on Crosshair’s face, “ Anybody would have problems with the dark after being locked in a sensory deprivation box for weeks. You’re not weak or anything else you might be thinking.” 

Crosshair grumbled under his breath and hid his reddening face in his pillow. He listened to them futz around the bunkroom, Echo dragging the bedding off all the bunks and the lot of them arranging themselves among the blankets and pillows in a cozy nest on the floor all squashed up against Crosshair’s bunk. Hunter’s hair tickled Crosshair’s ear when the sergeant leaned his head back and Wrecker picked his cider back up while Echo turned the lights down as low as they could be without being turned completely off. They knew he only needed the tiniest amount of light to be able to see, it was only in total darkness that he was blind. Tech had his datapad lit up while he fiddled with something on it even as he leaned into Wrecker’s side, with Hunter and Echo snuggled in just as close, and that alone was more than enough light for Crosshair to see the room with perfect clarity.

Omega shifted slightly in his arms as she reached up to run her little fingers through his too-long hair in the same way Hunter always did for her. Crosshair didn’t want to sleep though, and while it thankfully wasn’t because he was caught up in the delusion that he would wake up back in solitary this time, now it was just because he was afraid of dreaming about it. “You’re okay,” Omega assured him in a quiet voice, picking up the mantra his brothers were always telling him, “If you have a bad dream I’ll wake you up, ‘kay?”

He sighed and said nothing, even though the reassurance was comforting. So long as she kept her word that is.

His vode’s tactics worked, Crosshair was too exhausted to truly resist and fortunately being slowly warmed back up, having Omega curled against his chest breathing softly into his collarbone, and hearing his brothers whispering to each other in the room with him chased his nightmares to the back of his mind. He slept in fits and starts. Waking up to find Omega gone, which caused him a moment of panic before he realized Echo was leaning against his back. He woke up again to find Hunter with his hip pressed against Crosshair’s side, humming tunelessly under his breath, and then again when he felt Wrecker sit down on the bunk so Hunter could get up. Each time Crosshair was only awake for a minute or so before being dragged back under, but the fact that it wasn’t dark or cold, he could hear the quiet humming of the Marauder’s engines, and he wasn’t by himself kept him from panicking.

As it turned out he slept for almost four whole days and only woke up for real when the ship bumped as it touched ground on Dantooine. It was Tech who was with him this time, sitting on the end of his bunk with Crosshair’s leg across his lap, doing something on his datapad. Wrecker’s doll was snuggled into the crook of Crosshair’s neck and the sniper shot the thing a glare when he sat up, the blankets sliding off him to reveal that somebody had taken his coat off at some point and he was in just his blacks again. He scrubbed at his face. He felt muzzy, but that was hardly surprising after sleeping for so long. 

“We have landed,” Tech told him unnecessarily.

Crosshair gave him a look and pointedly asked, “Why are you here and not flying the ship? Who landed us?”

“Echo is - was - piloting the Marauder in my stead. I suspected that if I woke you early you wouldn’t go back to sleep after being out for so long, so I chose to stay where I was and trust that Echo wouldn’t crash us.” Tech explained as he stretched his spine out now that Crosshair’s leg was no longer in his lap.

“It’s probably better that way,” Crosshair sighed, “ Echo doesn’t fly like a lunatic.”

Tech snorted, “Captain Rex has expressed dislike for my rapid entry landings, but there’s nothing actually dangerous about them. They're efficient.”

“Right,” Crosshair said, not willing to argue when he knew Tech would never be convinced.

“WHERE IS THAT SKINNY SHABUIR?!” Howzer demanded extremely loudly from outside. 

“I think Captain Howzer would like to speak with you,” Tech told him in a mild tone.

Crosshair couldn’t help but grimace, however he wasn’t a massiff and didn’t come when somebody whistled for him, not anymore, so instead he took his sweet time reattaching his leg, putting a toothpick between his teeth, fitting his audio player in his ear and selecting something to listen to, and pulling his boots and armor on, then he stood to properly stretch out all his limbs. Apparently Howzer understood that the Marauder was the Batch’s safe space, because he didn’t come in to drag Crosshair out, but the sniper knew it was a near thing, given how the captain was standing at the bottom of the ramp when he and Tech made their way out. Crosshair’s other siblings were a little ways away, talking to a thoroughly harried-looking Rex. Hardly a surprise considering his little base had gone from three hundred or so occupants to over eight hundred, almost tripling in the span of a couple days, and that wasn’t even counting however many regs from the 481st they had to keep captive until they could be dechipped.

“Captain,” Tech said primly as Howzer glowered at Crosshair, eyes running up and down him as if cataloging everything he didn’t like. “I take it you received my message.”

“I did,” Howzer replied, finally looking from Crosshair to Tech, “Glad you boys made it out, but I knew this whole thing was a terrible idea and I was right.”

“You have your brothers back don’t you?” Crosshair couldn’t help but point out. It had been a terrible idea, but somehow he still felt obligated to defend his decisions, even the ones he knew were mistakes.

“I knew you were going to say that,” Howzer growled, “And just because it worked didn’t mean it wasn’t the stupidest plan I’ve heard in my entire life.”

“You signed off on it,” Crosshair argued. He should probably stop because Howzer was starting to look like he was going to strangle him, but he couldn’t help himself.

“And that was my mistake,” the captain snapped before his face fell into something raw and upset that made Crosshair shrink back, “One you suffered for…I..I’m sorry Crosshair.”

Crosshair didn’t know what to do with the apology, but fortunately Tech saved him, “I think the best thing to do at this point is work on getting him back up to a healthy weight. We have to start all over, unfortunately, but it can be done,” he said.

Howzer took a breath and pulled himself back together, “Right,” he said sharply, “First thing’s first, Needle wants to examine you and Wrecker both and then we’ll get you something to eat.”

“Great,’ Crosshair grumbled, “More medics.” He hated medical anything, but exams especially. The only thing worse than exams were procedures .

“Don’t worry, they hate to see you just as much as you hate to see them,” Howzer told him in a wry tone. Then the captain turned and yelled, “Rex! I’m stealing Wrecker!”

Rex gave Howzer a stressed out look and called back, “Take him! In fact, take all of them! I have osik to sort out!”

Howzer gave him a shit-eating grin, “Have fun with that, vod!” he replied just as loudly and then grabbed Crosshair and Wrecker by an arm each when the giant wandered back over with the rest of Crosshair’s siblings so he could start steering them away. “Alright kids, off to medical we go!”

Crosshair genuinely had no idea how Howzer managed to have so much energy; he was as bad as Wrecker and Omega, but about fifty times more pushy and annoying.

***

Needle had just clucked his tongue at the results of Crosshair’s examination and said, “This boy needs to eat ,” like it wasn’t the most obvious conclusion in the world. Swamped as he was by new patients to check over, Rex’s CMO signed off on Wrecker and Crosshair’s medical checks once he commanded that they both eat three two-thousand calorie meals a day and have two meal supplement drinks in between. 

Turns out Wrecker was significantly underweight as well, although Crosshair knew that if somebody had bothered to scan the rest of them (except Echo and Omega) they’d all show up as at least slightly underweight. All three of them had a habit of splitting their rations with Wrecker, so even though it meant none of them got as much as they probably needed, Wrecker at least wasn’t starving. It seems that without that in the prison he had started losing weight, which only cemented in Crosshair’s mind that they had been doing the right thing. They’d never told Echo or Omega about the ration splitting because they didn’t want to get yelled at, but it was something they’d been doing since they were cadets. Naturally Crosshair had been banned from doing so after they’d got him back from the Empire because he had lost too much weight, but he knew that Hunter and Tech still did it. Of course Tech said nothing about it and made no move to provide Needle with any additional information, which didn’t surprise Crosshair in the slightest. Nobody was dying, so the natural caution - aka completely justifiable paranoia - Tech had about sharing their medical information had returned.

Once Needle had finished stating the obvious and had given them a chit for extra meals - and wasn’t that weird, being included in the regs’ supply chain - Howzer herded them off to the mess hall for the first of those meals. He was putting off debriefing them, Crosshair could tell, it was obvious. His siblings were no better though, there was an air around all of them like there was a blade above their necks and they were waiting for it to fall. Nobody wanted to find out exactly how much of a disaster the mission had been. Crosshair didn’t particularly want to tell them either. He knew they were all going to flip, so he didn’t say anything about it either.

The base was absolutely swarming with regs now that all the transports had landed and offloaded their passengers, all elated to be out in the sunlight Greeves had sworn they’d never see again where it was warm and bright and they weren’t all being worked into an early grave. Howzer practically had to shove his way past them all, although once the regs saw the single-sided pauldron that denoted his rank they got out of his way. Crosshair had to wonder as the captain led them across Rex’s base how they planned to feed all these damn troopers, but maybe that was why Rex looked so stressed. “Do you actually have enough food for everybody?” he asked Howzer as they finally got to the mess hall and joined the line that was much longer than it had been the last time they’d been there. So long they actually ended up standing outside the mess as they waited rather than inside it,

“We do,” Howzer replied, “We’ve been planning this op for ages, even if we didn’t know how we were going to find the actual prison, and Rex pulled every string he had to open better supply lines for us. Now that Commander Wolffe is here that’ll probably be easier too, I’m sure he has his own strings to pull.”

Speaking of Wolffe, There was a shout and Crosshair turned to look in time to see the commander, still dressed in the same shabby blacks he’d no doubt been wearing in the prison, although he’d ditched his winter gear, shoving his way through the crowd of regs towards some unknown goal that immediately became apparent when he shouted “WHERE’S MY ANNOYING LITTLE BROTHER?!”

The regs laughed and the mob seemed to move like a living thing before it spat Rex out right in front of the commander, who gave him a stern once over before embracing him. Rex’s eyes were huge and maybe a little too wet, but everyone politely looked away as the two officers - the two brothers - saw each other for the first time since before the Order. After a second Wolffe stepped back and said, “I’ve got a present for you vod’ika,” then waved somebody over. Dogma, now all covered in bacta patches but still looking a little rumpled, was spat out of the crowd just like Rex had been and the 501st’s captain made a wounded noise when he saw one of the last remaining troopers of his legion walk up to him. “Dogma…” Rex breathed, “You made it.”

Dogma gave him an embarrassed smile and scuffed his boot against the dirt, “Sure did,” the clone trooper said awkwardly. 

Rex lunged forward and pulled him into a hug. “I’m sorry Dogma, you took the fall for the whole Umbara incident when it should have been on me. It was all I could do to keep you from getting decommissioned…”

“That’s alright, Captain,” Dogma said quietly, “I probably wouldn’t have survived if you’d done anything else and prison wasn’t so bad...”

“We’ve got catching up to do and while giving a little public theater performance is fun, I’d rather do it in private, vod’ika,” Wolffe said, shooting the onlookers a look that made them all quail and find literally anything else they could think to look at suddenly fascinating.

“I’ve got an office,” Rex said shakily, hand still clasping Dogma’s shoulder like he was afraid the trooper would disappear if he let go of him.

Wolffe nodded, “That’ll do.”

Rex led them away and Crosshair, now bereft of entertainment like everybody else, turned his attention back to Howzer and his siblings.

“Is Wolffe takin' command of the base?” Wrecker asked curiously.

Howzer grinned, “Nah. Technically he should , since he’s the highest ranked clone we’ve got, but this has always been Rex’s operation and Wolffe has said he doesn’t want to take it out from under him. He’s still in charge in theory, but he’s going to be taking direction from Rex. Mostly we’re thinking he’s just going to be in charge of any ops we do in the future. He and Rex will be like co-commanders now. In fact Wolffe might actually promote him to make it official.”

“And where does that leave you?” Crosshair asked him snidely. He knew that before this Rex, Howzer, and Gregor had all worked in tandem to manage the different parts of the operation. Rex being in charge of the overall runnings of the base, Gregor being in charge of the nat-borns, and Howzer directly managing the clones and security, but now? Who knew.

“All this really means is we’ve got somebody else to offload some of the work on,” Howzer told them in a chipper voice, “Sure there’s somebody who gets to tell me what to do, but that’s life and if it means less stress then I’m perfectly okay with it, and again, Wolffe isn’t taking anything out from under us.”

They eventually ended up at the head of the line and were bequeathed with food, which they all ate as slowly as possible once they found an empty table, still trying to put off the debriefing. 

After a while Skroll and Klacks joined them, both giving Crosshair’s condition disapproving looks to match Howzer’s own before they sat down and single-handedly turned the conversation ten times rowdier than it had been. The chaos redoubled when Trapper, Catcher, and Boil appeared, invited themselves into the gathering as if they weren’t insinuating themselves uninvited into a group containing a superior officer, and then Catcher and Skroll immediately got into an argument about nothing as if they’d known each other their whole lives instead of just having met.

Echo, along with the rest of the regs, were clearly having a blast as the imprisoned clones enjoyed the first hot meal they'd had in ages and they all loudly bullied each other. Crosshair and the rest of the Batch, save Omega and Wrecker, who were both feeding off the boisterous energy like starved plants in the sunlight, were left a little shell shocked by the turn of events. Howzer obviously caught on and gave the anxious commandos a grin, “Relax kids,” he said, “You’re part of this party too, besides if you keep yourself so wound up you'll pass out and then these brats will probably steal your equipment and hide it from you. Deep breaths.”

Hunter, Tech, and Crosshair glanced at each other nervously, but did as they were told and tried to relax. Crosshair had to admit that it was a little…fun. Everyone was so happy to be around each other and while the Batch had always been happy to be together, they’d never had anybody else seemingly so happy to be around them. Crosshair had to dodge a flying elbow as Boil, Klacks, and Trapper wrestled over Catcher’s last flatcake, Skroll chucked his empty cup at Catcher’s head as their playful argument swelled to include a shouted chorus of outside opinions, and then the group went on to laugh uproariously at the trio of newly free regs when they all tried their nutrient drinks (black cherry flavored this time) and ended up with painfully puckered faces at the blindingly sour taste.

By the time the meal was over and Howzer broke up what had turned into a playful brawl by ordering everyone to “Go karking clean yourselves up already you damn goblins!” the Batch were all beyond confused, if not also rather amused and a little more relaxed. Of course that feeling didn’t last long as the blade finally fell. They had to debrief, they had no more excuse to put it off. Howzer let out a deep sigh that seemed to age him years in a single breath before he led them back across the base to a building attached to the command center and then into an empty meeting room.

“Alright let’s get this over with,” Howzer said despondently once they’d all sat down, “Start from the beginning and tell me what happened.”

Chapter Text

Crosshair and Wrecker ended up arguing over who was supposed to talk first, since neither of them wanted to do it. Eventually Hunter got fed up and picked one at random. “Crosshair you start,” he ordered. 

His littlest brother shot him a venomous look, but surrendered nonetheless and told them in the most clinical way possible about how the pair trekked through JanFathal, how they called for pickup, what information was requested and given, and then how the Imps came and got them without any suspicions being raised as to their duplicitous intentions. So far that was all good, although there was a tone in Crosshair’s voice that Hunter didn’t like while he was recounting it all. Hunter could tell his little brother had some strong feeling about the events, but he was attempting to stifle it, not only that but he was leaving something out. Hunter’s big brother senses were combining with his experience as a soldier and squad leader and telling him there was some facet of this that was bad and that Crosshair was avoiding talking about it just as he had in the past with other such things.

“What is he leaving out, Wrecker?” Hunter asked, knowing if Crosshair wasn’t saying it outright he probably wouldn’t say it when pushed either, but Wrecker was honest if only because he was a terrible liar.

Crosshair looked like he wanted to strangle Hunter, and the sergeant did feel a little bad for going around him instead of engaging in the contest of wills he knew trying to get the information out of Crosshair would inevitably entail. Maybe he should have had Wrecker explain from the beginning.

Wrecker gave Crosshair an apologetic look, “He isn’t lyin’, Hunter,” Wrecker told them, hedging.

“But?” Captain Howzer asked, picking up on what Hunter had been thinking.

Wrecker fidgeted and shrunk his shoulders a little when he caught Crosshair’s glare.

“He’s not lyin’, it all went like that,” Wrecker said again, “But he is leavin’ out the part where he didn’t eat or sleep for two days…it’s not his fault though, I wouldn’t want to either if it’d been me. We were goin’ to see Rampart after all.”

Hunter, Echo, and Tech all sighed. Even Captain Howzer let out a tired sigh.

“That’s understandable,” Howzer said, “Just…bad.” He sounded tired, dismal in a way Hunter recognized from his own feelings, and the sergeant was reminded of just how protective of his littlest brother the captain had seemingly become. Whether that was a good thing Hunter wasn’t certain, but so far Howzer had been nothing but helpful and friendly. He’d been supportive of the rest of the Batch as well when Crosshair was injured and sick and they were all losing their minds with fear, he’d proven himself trustworthy during all the periods the Batch had gambled by leaving Crosshair alone with him. Hunter had silently included him in the buddy system, just like he had included Echo. He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d come to the conclusion that it was safe, but that decision hadn’t bitten him in the ass just yet. Hopefully it wouldn’t come back to bite him at all, but he could worry about that when he wasn’t already stressing about what kind of disaster his brothers had been subjected to.

Tech nodded and then it was Crosshair’s turn to sigh. “May I continue?” he asked testily.

Hunter glanced at Captain Howzer who nodded, so he waved his brother on.

Crosshair raked his fingers through his hair in a way that read pure stress to Hunter and he considered again that maybe it would be better for Wrecker to tell it. However Crosshair continued his recounting of events before Hunter was able to make up his mind about it.

He told them in an unnervingly distant tone about meeting Rampart in the hanger, recounting the exchange with exact wording that made Hunter think he had internalized the interaction in an unhealthy way, but then again, as Wrecker had said, this was Rampart they were talking about. Crosshair probably remembered every single word the man - the monster - had ever said to him.

Hunter’s temper stirred as he watched Crosshair chew his toothpick to pieces while he recounted what had been said to him in something close to a monotone. It was another peek into how his littlest brother had been treated while he was under the Vice Admiral's thumb; how he’d been talked down to, belittled, dehumanized, and manipulated. 

Crosshair finished with telling them how Wrecker had been dragged away and he’d gone to do as Rampart had told him and then waited for his chance to get the shabuir alone so he could kill him, but surprisingly, Wrecker interrupted.

“There’s somethin’ else,” Wrecker told them urgently, “Crosshair did something to ‘imself when we met with Rampart he…I dunno, it was like he went away and it was just the chip left. Like he — like he erased ‘imself.”

Crosshair’s siblings all went stiff and whipped their heads back to stare at him as one.

“I don’t understand,” Captain Howzer said, “I thought his chip was gone.”

“It is,” Crosshair told him sharply, “but the Kaminoans, while it was still in, they did something to it to make it louder, stronger, and it burned a shadow of it into my brain.”

The captain’s frown deepened, “What do you mean ‘a shadow’?”

“You—“ Crosshair sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “You know I hear voices…”

“Tilorrli and Needle said you might, after looking at your brain scan,” Howzer told him darkly, “You should have mentioned that to Rex and I at some point if this is some kind of chip thing influencing you. That’s a security risk.”

Crosshair shook his head sharply, “It’s not enough to influence me unless I—unless I let it influence me, that’s…that’s what happened.” He laughed a little weakly and glanced from Hunter to Echo to Tech, “You were right, I did freak out when I came face to face with Rampart…but I knew I couldn’t afford to freak out…”

Somehow, being right only made Hunter’s heart sink. He didn’t want to hear this, it was going to be bad, he knew it was going to be bad.

“You told me you— you said you ‘killed yourself’ an’ let the shadow of the chip take over,” Wrecker said shakily as he looked helplessly between his siblings. “I made ‘im promise to never do it again but…I didn’t even know he could do that in the first place.”

Neither had Hunter, and he hated the sound of this, even when Tech cut in to translate it into something that made more sense. “It sounds like you caused yourself to have a severe dissociative episode,” Tech replied sharply, “Which is not a healthy thing to be doing on purpose.”

He’d had an episode; that made more sense to Hunter, Crosshair had been so scared to see Rampart that he’d had an episode. Apparently now after the Order and all that osik, having an episode meant what was left of the chip could influence him…at least if he ‘let’ it. That was no good. Hunter ran his hands over his face and tried to take a steadying breath.

Crosshair laughed bitterly, “I overdid it,” he admitted breathlessly, “by the time I had to deal with Rampart in private I’d killed my brain off so much I couldn’t even remember why I was there.”

While that was a karking awful thing to hear, it wasn’t surprising either. Not really. Tech had explained in the past that Crosshair’s episodes were something his mind did to protect him, so it only made sense that the worse the situation he was in, the deeper he’d go. The fact that it was so obvious just made Hunter that much stupider for not considering it as a possibility.

“You didn’t tell me that,” Wrecker said, horrified. “You didn’t tell me what happened, just that he tried to hurt you an’ failed.”

“He wanted to punish me for getting captured and not killing you all, even though I brought him Wrecker,” Crosshair said, but paused when he heard Hunter’s gauntlets creak. The sergeant was clenching his fists almost as hard as he was clenching his jaw. Hearing about what Rampart wanted to do to his little brother was bad enough, but the way Crosshair talked about it, the way he said it so flippantly, like it was normal, like it was something he expected in his day to day life, twisted Hunter between rage and horror until his guts felt like they didn’t know what shape to be. 

This is what Crosshair had experienced for the eight months that Hunter was sitting with his thumb up his ass instead of rescuing him. He was being tortured as a punishment for even just partial failures, was being tortured as a ‘reward’ for success, was just, just being tortured over and over until it became normal for him, until it barely rated an explanation in his eyes.

When Hunter didn’t actually say anything Crosshair went on explaining in that same horrible airy voice, like he was talking about the weather. “Normally that would mean he’d give me fifteen new cuts, but he wanted to play a new game this time,” Crosshair let out a helpless little laugh and Hunter ground his teeth.

“What did he do to you, Crosshair?” Howzer growled, he sounded as furious as Hunter felt.

“He wanted me to do it myself,” Crosshair answered lightly. 

Hunter sucked in a sharp breath, but Tech held up his hand to stop the outburst before it came. He was going to be sick, Hunter was actually going to retch. Rampart that sick sadistic motherfucker .

Tech stepped into the silence he’d created and said, “You said he tried to hurt you, but failed . I take it this means you didn’t comply?” Hunter grabbed onto that question like a lifeline, like a gasp of air when he was drowning. 

Crosshair nodded and the sergeant’s breath escaped him in a shuddering relieved rush that scraped up his throat on the way out. Crosshair hadn’t done it, Rampart hadn’t managed to make him hurt himself, although obviously not for lack of trying.

“I…it was hard,” Crosshair said haltingly, “there was so much noise in my head, worse than anything I’ve had since the chip was in…”

“Likely because you were actively encouraging and engaging it,” Tech replied with a scowl.

Crosshair took his toothpick out and tapped the end of it on the tabletop, “Probably,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “I stabbed him in the face with his own knife instead.”

That was the best damn news Hunter had heard all day. Rampart deserved to get stabbed in the face and Crosshair deserved to stab him…although a large part of Hunter wished he could have killed the shabuir himself. But Crosshair deserved that vengeance, that closure, after what he’d been through. Hunter had no right to take it away from him even if he would have liked to flay Rampart alive with the same knife he had used on Crosshair.

“What snapped you out of it?” Howzer asked urgently, dragging Hunter back to the topic at hand, “It sounds like you were going to do what he told you, but then something happened and you resisted right?”

“Got it in one,” Crosshair told him with a self-deprecating smile that Hunter loathed, “It was the same reason I stopped tearing my head open with my nails while in solitary.”

“Solitary?” Howzer growled, voice pooling with dread.

Wrecker twitched, “You said you remembered Tech told you not to hurt yourself,” the giant recalled.

Crosshair nodded and some terrified vibrating thing in Hunter’s chest settled ever-so-slightly. Crosshair had remembered Tech telling him not to hurt himself even while in the midst of an episode. A severe episode. He’d been listening to them this whole time after all. 

Tech went so far as to look relieved and Hunter couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment, he’d latch onto any glimmer of good in the midst of this unmitigated disaster no matter how small, “I’m glad my words didn’t fall on deaf ears,” Tech said, “still, you were reckless Crosshair. This is never going to happen again, and I mean never . You will not be purposefully putting yourself in traumatic situations anymore.” 

Not if Hunter had anything to say about it that was for sure.

“The mission called for it,” Crosshair snapped, exasperated, “I didn’t do it because it was fun .”

This again.

“The next time a mission requires us to put you in a situation we know is going to hurt you I’m turning it down. Flat out,” Hunter snarled, and looked at Howzer as he said it, daring him to argue, “I don’t care if the universe is about to explode and we’re the only ones who can save it. I don’t care what the stakes are. This can’t happen again. I won’t let something like this ever happen again. I shouldn’t have let it happen this time. ” This was all Hunter’s fault, as always , but that just meant that if he didn’t make the same mistakes he could keep something similar from ever happening again.

“We got lucky ,” Echo said quietly, bitterly, “Crosshair, you could have just as easily not remembered what Tech told you and then you would have—Rampart would have—Hunter’s right, we can’t take risks like this anymore. We knew putting you in a room with Rampart was a bad idea. We knew your judgment was clouded…” Hunter’s older brother ran his hand over his face, he looked like he was going to be sick, another sentiment Hunter felt on a bone deep level. “We’re terrible vode…”

Them not so much, they’d all argued as best they could, but none of them had any authority, so they could argue all day long and it’d make no difference. Hunter did have authority though, he was the squad leader, an NCO, and he hadn’t put a stop to it. He hadn’t cut and run when it looked like they were being forced into something that would destroy them yet again and he should have. He had that option now that the Kaminoans were gone and the Republic had collapsed and he hadn’t taken it. He had gotten caught up with the semblance of the GAR that the regs were maintaining and had forgotten that the Batch were only there out of good will rather than obligation. Tech, Wrecker, Crosshair, and Echo were good brothers, but Hunter wasn’t . Hunter was a terrible brother and a terrible leader. He’d known that for years. 

“You made a mistake,” Howzer told them sharply enough that Echo and Hunter both jumped, “but really we all made a mistake. Rex and I should have listened, we shouldn’t have forced you into that situation. If we had waited something might have changed in our favor and we’d have been able to come up with a better plan. You kids shouldn’t blame yourselves when it was the two of us that forced you into an untenable situation.”

“You’re right, blaming you is much easier,” Crosshair told him dryly as he put his toothpick back between his teeth. 

Hunter glanced over when Omega moved, she’d been quiet the whole time, although her eyes were big and wet. She was looking between all of them like she wanted to hug them but wasn’t sure who needed it most. Hunter could use a hug honestly, but probably not as much as Crosshair and when she looked at the sergeant he tilted his head in his littlest brother’s direction. Omega nodded subtly, with a slight sniffle, and then slipped down off her chair and trotted around the table to clamber up into Crosshair’s lap and wrap her arms around him while she buried her face in his collarbone. The sniper seemed a little nonplussed, like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do in this situation, but to Hunter’s relief he didn’t shove her away, simply sighing deeply, tiredly, and then wrapping his arms loosely around her small frame.

“That thing you called it, Tech,” Wrecker piped up again, “Disassociation.”

“ Dissociation,” Tech corrected immediately, “What about it?”

“That’s the word for Cross’s episodes right? That’s what Catcher said Crosshair was doin’ after the Imps interrogated him. He came back and he wasn’t really respondin’. It was exactly like how he was after Nala Se’s experiments when we were cadets or after the resistance trainin’. Cross went back to normal after a while, but he dis-dissociated every time they interrogated him. Is that bad?”

“By ‘interrogated’ I take it you mean ‘tortured’,” Howzer jumped in. Hunter noticed the way his frown had deepened when Wrecker mentioned Nala Se experimenting on them, how his heart rate picked up ever so slightly, but it appeared that he felt right then was not the moment to get into it, for which Hunter was grateful. That was a whole other can of worms that he would be happy to avoid opening for the rest of his life.

Wrecker just nodded.

Tech sighed, “It’s not good for it to be happening, especially in light of his self-induced episode. Crosshair has always been prone to it…but dissociation is a defense mechanism he uses to protect himself, it’s not hurting him unless it happens at the wrong time…like mid-mission when he has to make important decisions such as not to follow the chip’s directives.” He said that last part reproachfully and Crosshair had the good sense to look contrite. Even if it hadn’t actually been his fault that he’d had an episode, he’d still volunteered for this mission, something Hunter would never not be pissed off about.

“You said ‘every time they interrogated him’,” Hunter pointed out, “How many times did they do it?” The festering anger was back, big surprise. If he could stab every person who’d ever hurt his brothers - Crosshair especially - he’d be karking delighted.

“Four times,” Wrecker answered immediately, “He came back like that every time an’…an’ it took longer each time for him to come back to normal. If…if they had kept doing it you don’t think he…”

He trailed off, but his question was clear enough regardless. ‘If they’d kept torturing him, would there have been a point where Crosshair simply didn’t come back?’ The mere suggestion of it made Hunter’s blood turn to ice in his veins.

Judging by the surprised look on Crosshair’s face, he hadn’t known it’d taken longer for him to come back each time, which made sense. Hunter knew Crosshair had no sense of the passage of time while he was having an episode and if nobody had mentioned it before, then he’d have simply not been able to tell. Regardless, the logic behind Wrecker’s absolutely horrifying question seemed sound and it was terrifying that Tech didn’t immediately jump in to correct him. 

Nobody answered, although it was obvious what Wrecker had been asking. Hunter wished somebody would say something. Anything.

After a long second Howzer clapped his hands together, making all the Bad Batchers jump, and said, “Right, well I say no more torture for Crosshair, can we agree on that? No more torture for Crosshair?”

“Agreed,” Hunter replied thinly, clasping his hands together in his lap under the table so his brothers wouldn’t see the way they shook. 

Tech nodded, “Yes I think that would be for the best.”

“You make it sound like a hobby,” Crosshair griped, still holding onto Omega.

“You did sign up for it this time, Cross’ika,” Echo pointed out, “You knew they were going to do it and volunteered for that mission anyway.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “It was the best option we had at the time.”

This again!  

Hunter knew why Crosshair was like this, knew that his complete and total focus on mission results over every other factor was a product of their training, training about being efficient, being effective, that his littlest brother had taken to heart more so even than Tech. He knew why Crosshair was like this, he just didn’t know how to fix it. Hunter didn’t know how to fix anything.

Howzer growled under his breath, “We should have figured something else out, we rushed, we were in a hurry, and it made us too impatient to truly look for other options. This is on Rex and I, not any of you, got it? We’re the commanding officers and we signed off on that banthashit plan when we shouldn’t have.”

“Everybody karked up,” Echo said sharply, “We can argue about who’s to blame for it all day long and it’ll get us nowhere. All of us let this happen so we all karked up.”

Hunter personally disagreed, but he didn’t argue. Instead he looked back at his littlest brother, taking a deep breath and letting it out before speaking so that his voice didn’t shake. “We’ve jumped ahead again, so let’s back up a little. What happened after you killed Rampart?”

Crosshair sighed, but told them about being arrested and meeting Boil, Catcher, and Trapper, going so far as to recount the conversation they’d had where Catcher explained the plan he and the other medics had had to free Cody and eventually the other clone commanders. That was good news. The first piece of good news untainted by Rampart’s manipulations that they’d received so far. Hunter approved of anything that could potentially cripple the Empire’s military forces, even temporarily, Commander Cody being freed would just be a bonus. Howzer for one seemed delighted by the news.

“I’m going to have to pull those three in for a debrief of their own it sounds like,” the captain hummed.

“After that we waited around for ages, I got tortured a bunch, we waited around some more, and then they transferred us to the prison,” Crosshair said in an incredibly bland voice. Hunter saw Omega let out a huff and then adjust herself so her chin was hooked over Crosshair’s shoulder. Again the sniper did nothing to stop her from snuggling him and simply adjusted his hold on her to match. That made Hunter a little happy, even in the midst of this horrible talk. When they’d first got him back from the Empire Crosshair had hated Omega and hadn’t been shy about it either. They’d come a long way since then.

“I’m assuming you met up with Commander Wolffe as soon as possible?” Howzer said, but then frowned at the way Wrecker and Crosshair both winced.

Crosshair looked away in something akin to embarrassment, “ I didn’t because when they were first bringing us in I killed one of the guards and then they threw me in solitary for three weeks.”

“ Kark ,” Captain Howzer hissed, grimacing in sympathy. He had been in the camp for months before he was sold into slavery, so there was a chance he had been in those cells himself, and even if he hadn’t he clearly knew what the punishment entailed.

Hunter was glad he’d been told Crosshair was in solitary before they’d had this talk, because if he’d found out like this he’d have had a full-blown meltdown right then and there, he was sure of it. He’d been freaking out enough hearing about it on the Marauder, even if he’d tried his best to keep his head on straight to avoid making his siblings just as upset.

“Why did you kill a guard? Tech asked, his brows furrowing, “surely you knew nothing good would come of it.”

“I thought they were going to shoot me afterwards,” Crosshair said, “so yes I knew that.”

“Then why?” Echo pressed. 

Hunter wanted to know too, it felt like after the mission where they’d rescued Captain Howzer when they knew something bad had happened, but didn’t know what or why. Hopefully Crosshair would actually tell them this time instead of repeating that situation.

Crosshair bit down on his toothpick and looked away, “He…he grabbed my jaw…Rampart used to…” he shook his head helplessly. It seemed like he couldn’t explain further than that, like the words were out of reach and he couldn’t grasp them enough to line them up into sentences. The meaning was obvious though, especially since the inability to speak about it seemed to only ever cover Rampart’s ‘rewards’. 

Hunter took a deep shuddering breath to try and control the rage eating up his insides. Rampart was dead. He was dead. He could never hurt Crosshair again. As if reading his mind, he heard Omega whisper, “It’s okay, Crosshair, he’s gone,” in Crosshair’s ear, which made the sniper look away from her again, his skin pallid and his expression wan, but he still dipped his chin in the slightest of nods.

“A trauma response,” Tech said with a sigh, “I suspected as much. At least we know your automatic reaction to being grabbed is to fight rather than go limp, that’s a good thing in this line of work.”

Thank the Maker for small blessings.

“What about you, Wrecker?” Captain Howzer asked, “I’m going to go out on a limb and say you didn’t just stand around while this happened?”

Wrecker grimaced, “I broke one’a the guards’ arms tryin’ to stop ‘em from takin’ Cross away, but they ganged up an’ zapped me with their stun batons ‘til I could hardly move, then put me in solitary for two days.”

Crosshair jerked like he’d been electrocuted and whipped his head around to stare at Wrecker with big terrified eyes, and if that didn’t speak volumes about how bad solitary was then nothing did. “They put you in there too?” the sniper asked shakily.

Wrecker reached over and ran his big hand through Crosshair’s too-long hair in short gentle swipes. The fact that Crosshair didn’t bat his hand away made Hunter grimace, he was really upset by this news apparently and was willing to accept comfort over it. Between Wrecker and Omega he was practically allowing them to baby him. 

“Only for two days, nothin’ like you,” Wrecker reassured him in a low voice, “It sucked, but it wasn’t the worst thing I ever went through.”

Crosshair let out a relieved breath and then actually did bat Wrecker’s hand away, sufficiently comforted it seemed.

“When I got out I was ready to tear the whole karking place apart lookin’ for Cross,” Wrecker told them, a deep frown carved into his features, “But Wolffe stepped in an’ told me to get my head outta my ass, said either I’d suck it up an’ get a sick brother back or I’d try to fight every damn guard there, end up dead, an’ leave Cross all by himself, so…so I sucked it up.”

Howzer sighed, “Sounds like Commander Wolffe. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.” The captain glanced up at Wrecker and smiled, “For what it’s worth I’m proud of you Wrecker, sometimes you have to make tough calls like that and you managed to do it.”

Wrecker nodded, although he still seemed to be disappointed with himself. Hunter would probably have to talk to him about this later to make sure he didn’t let it drag on him too much. “Wolffe knew us,” Wrecker went on to say, “Since we did those missions for General Koon, even if we never really talked to ‘im, so he vouched for me with the other regs an’ they didn’t act like assholes like they usually do…” the giant trailed off when he remembered Captain Howzer was a reg and grimaced, “Sorry Captain, I don’t mean you , just, y’know…”

Howzer sighed, “No offense taken,” he said, “I know we’ve always been shitty to you kids. I’m glad Wolffe put a stop to that osik before it could really start.”

“It is fortunate Commander Wolffe was able to see past our differences so readily,” Tech chimed in, “He was never against us working with his general the way some commanders were. He gave us the benefit of the doubt I suppose.”

“Wolffe’s good,” Wrecker agreed, “He got me situated and kept me from going too nuts while I waited for them to let Cross out. We talked about the plan a little, but he said we should wait for Cross before we really discussed it in depth, he wanted both our opinions.”

“How nice of him,” Crosshair grumbled and Hunter couldn’t help but snort. It really did seem to be almost a knee-jerk reaction for his little brother to make a snide comment whenever one of them turned too complimentary towards somebody.

“Cross was…not doin’ good when they let him out,” Wrecker said, bringing them back around to the topic this whole briefing had seemed to focus on, which was how extremely bad for their little brother this mission had been. Hunter felt his stomach twist anxiously as he waited to hear what ‘not doing good’ meant.

“And what exactly does ‘not doing good’ entail?” Tech asked their brother sharply, obviously following the same train of thought.

Crosshair turned his head away, looking mortified of all things, and Hunter saw Omega give him a squeeze and heard her whisper “It’s okay,” to him again. Crosshair just let out a huff instead of answering her.

“Well you already know he lost a whole lotta weight,” Wrecker told them unhappily, “so there was that, ‘is face an’ neck were all scratched up, ‘though he said he stopped scratchin’ ‘imself apart when he remembered Tech tellin’ ‘im not to hurt ‘imself, like I said earlier…Catcher looked at ‘im an’ said he was dehydrated and stuff like that…”

“You’re stalling,” Hunter pointed out sharply, “Why are you stalling? What happened?”

Wrecker grimaced guiltily, caught red-handed. “He…Cross wasn’t in ‘is right mind, he thought he was dreamin’, he thought nothin’ was real.”

Hunter jerked his eyes over to his littlest brother for confirmation and his stomach dropped at the way Crosshair bit his lip.

“That is hardly surprising,” Tech cut in, jolting Hunter out of his mounting horror, “He was in a sensory deprivation box for three weeks , hoping for it to not affect his mental health adversely would have been beyond wishful thinking. So long as he snapped out of it I think he’s probably safe.”

Crosshair and Wrecker both grimaced then and somehow Hunter’s sinking feeling got even worse.

“What?” Captain Howzer asked, looking between the two of them.

“He wouldn’t sleep,” Wrecker said, “He thought if he slept he’d wake up back in solitary and nothin’ I did could make ‘im do it until it’d been a week an’ he hadn’t slept at all . He was so tired at that point that he passed out the second I grabbed ‘im and forced ‘im to lay down.”

“He’s okay now though isn’t he?” Echo asked, looking from Wrecker to Crosshair, “You’re okay now aren’t you? You don’t think this is all fake do you?”

“I’m fine,” Crosshair replied stiffly, “I got over that once I woke up. I just needed to sleep.”

“Sleep is critical for one’s mental health,” said Tech with a heavy sigh. “None of this is good but it’s also not surprising .”

“We should have been slower about killing the karking warden,” Hunter growled, caught between anger and a horrible sick feeling in his guts and leaning into the anger to try and defend himself from the other option.

“Agreed.” Tech said, “If we had known about any of this I might have aimed for somewhere other than her head. Perforating her stomach would have been acceptable. The gastric acid would have done a great deal of very painful damage to her internal organs and they didn’t have the facilities there required to save her, she would have died quite slowly…but we didn’t know about it.” Tech sighed like he’d been denied a hot meal, but knew there was no use trying to kick up a fuss about it,  “No use crying over spilled milk I suppose.”

Hunter forced out a sigh of his own, trying to calm down. If he heard one more piece of terrible news he was just straight up going to burst into tears. How could he have let all this shit happen? He’d tried to stop it, sure, but he hadn’t tried hard enough . They’d gone with Crosshair’s stupid self-sacrificial idea and his littlest brother had been ground down to his very last shivering frayed nerve because of it.

“ Please tell me nothing else happened,” Hunter begged.

“No more bad news,” Wrecker assured him sheepishly, “We just had to deal with the cold and do some hard work, the regs helped keep Cross from freezin’ so nothing bad happened there. After that you guys showed up and busted us out.”

Hunter let out a relieved sigh and sunk back into his chair, feeling like his bones had turned to jelly. He didn’t have any words to describe how much he was never letting something like this happen again. There weren’t enough words in Basic to describe it, there weren’t even enough words in Mando’a and Basic combined .

“Well that was karking awful,” Howzer sighed, “but if it’s all out of the way, then you boys are free to go get some rest. I do want you to write me up a report so I can discuss the details with Rex and Commander Wolffe, but you don’t have to do it right this second.”

“Yes sir,” Hunter said softly as he pried himself out of the hunched slouch he’d been sitting in so he could stand up. He felt as if all his joints had locked up in the effort to keep himself from shaking apart.

Howzer gave Hunter a sharp, thoughtful look and the sergeant could tell he had some kind of concern, but the captain didn’t voice it and Hunter was too tired to pursue the problem. He felt like he hadn’t slept in weeks, he felt like he’d just run a marathon. He was just so exhausted.

Without any of them really agreeing to anything the Bad Batch ended up drifting across the base back to the Marauder and their familiar home turf. Omega had allowed herself to be peeled off by Crosshair and had switched to holding Hunter’s hand as they walked, apparently having determined that now that they were no longer making him relive the whole thing, Crosshair didn’t need her to cuddle him. Hunter wouldn’t begrudge holding her little hand, but he really wanted to be alone…or rather he felt like it would be better for him to be alone. In reality he hated being by himself, being separated from his brothers, but he was on the verge of crying from stress and he didn’t want them there to see it. He was supposed to be the put together one, he was supposed to keep everybody else from spiraling, he didn’t want to cry in front of them. “I need you guys to do me a favor,” Hunter said, hating how his gravelly voice gave away his emotional state, “I need…I need a minute. Just take five, go take a walk, something. I’ll stay with the Marauder…”

Hunter’s siblings all gave him an unhappy look. “Are you certain?” Tech asked him cautiously.

“Buddy system,” Crosshair said sharply out of nowhere as they all stood around near the back of the ship.

“What?” Hunter asked him shakily.

“Your own rules,” Crosshair told him in a blithe tone, “Nobody goes anywhere alone. Don’t tell me you forgot that given you instated it before I was even decanted. If we have to use the buddy system then so do you, you hypocrite. I’ll stay and they’ll clear out.”

Echo opened his mouth to protest but Crosshair turned and gave him a look and the ARC snapped his jaw shut before nodding stiffly. “Very well,” Tech said, “Provided Crosshair is with you, we will leave you to your own devices for a while.”

Hunter wanted to argue that they should all leave, that was the whole point of this, but he couldn’t now that Crosshair had thrown his own rules back in his face, so he just swallowed past the lump in his throat and nodded. They all shared another unhappy look, but his siblings obediently left Hunter and Crosshair alone next to the Marauder. Crosshair waited until they were both inside before he rounded on Hunter and snapped, “ Shut up .”

Hunter blinked at him, “I…I didn't say anything…”

Crosshair flicked his toothpick at Hunter and it bounced off his chestplate, “But you were going to,” he told him with utmost certainty, “You were going to say something stupid like telling me to stay back here while you go up front, or telling me to do something to distract me so you can beat yourself up without intervention, or worst of all apologize because you apologize for everything . So. Shut. Up.”

Hunter opened his mouth, realized that Crosshair was one hundred percent right on all accounts, and then closed his mouth again.

Crosshair nodded to himself when Hunter didn’t argue with him. “I’m going to say this exactly once and if I hear you say anything about it again I’ll hit you so hard you’ll taste your own tonsils you hear me, Hunter?” The sniper snarled at him and then waited for Hunter to nod before continuing, “This isn’t your fault, it’s not. It’s my fault. I made my own decisions and pressured everyone else into listening to me. Got it? I know you blame yourself for everything because you’re the one in charge, so I’ll point out that there have been exactly zero cases where I wanted to do something and you were able to talk me out of it, so blaming yourself for this is like blaming yourself because it’s raining. There’s literally nothing you could have done to stop me, I’d have found a way to go after Rampart if it killed me, all you did was help plan around that so it didn’t kill me.”

“But–” Hunter started only for Crosshair to give him a look so dark and furious that the words immediately died in his throat.

“Shut.” Crosshair told him slowly, “Up.” Hunter stood there for a moment trying to fight the oncoming tears and failing as they swelled inexorably up and up and then finally spilled down his face.

Crosshair walked over, grabbed Hunter by the shoulders and steered him to the bunkroom before shoving him none-to-gently down on his own bunk and sitting down next to him. The sniper dragged his mess of blankets, which still included Omega’s fluffy pink one, around Hunter’s shoulders and then handed him Lula from where she was laying discarded off to the side of the bunk. Crosshair didn’t say anything after that, just sat next to him with their shoulders pressed together as he silently reassured him that he was still there, was still alive and whole if not worse for wear, and let Hunter cry himself out.

Their siblings gave them a half hour before they returned, which thankfully was enough time for Hunter to sob and then drag himself back to some semblance of composure. He knew it was blatantly obvious just from looking at him that he’d been crying when their siblings walked back into the Marauder and found the two of them playing go fish on Crosshair’s bunk, but fortunately Crosshair gave all their siblings that same quelling look and nobody said anything about it. Go fish turned into sabacc once Wrecker gave Crosshair one of the two meal supplement drinks he’d been carrying, starting on drinking the other one himself once he had, and Crosshair handed the deck of cards to Tech in return. That was fine with Hunter, he’d been losing anyway.

He still felt bad, still angry with himself, still guilty, but crying had helped blunt the emotions into a dull ache and Crosshair’s reassurance had lodged itself somewhere deep in Hunter’s chest like a piece of shrapnel, pulsing with warmth along with his heartbeat and reminding him of that rock solid foundation of pure logic. Even if he should have been able to stop it, even if he should have done something more, something else, he knew that Crosshair really was so stubborn that Hunter wouldn’t have been able to stop him no matter what he did. It had been unavoidable and if anything they were lucky nothing worse happened. Crosshair was alive and that could easily have not been the outcome if Hunter had managed to shut the whole mission plan down and Crosshair had taken matters into his own hands. 

Hunter tried to keep that in mind while he listened to his siblings all talk around him, even as he was eventually drawn into more relaxed conversation himself. Crosshair was alive. He and Wrecker were both alive , thin and tired and maybe a little more traumatized than before, but they were alive and that wasn’t nothing. Hunter hadn’t lost anybody. He’d failed, but he hadn’t failed utterly and he could live with that, even if it still hurt.

Chapter Text

A week passed in relative quiet. Relative being the key word, because Rex’s base was bustling all hours of the day and night. Crosshair and Wrecker did as Needle had commanded and ate their three meals a day and drank their two supplement drinks. It was a trial for Crosshair, he wasn’t used to eating so much, but Wrecker was clearly delighted by the chance to eat more than he normally got, especially after going so lean during their month in prison. 

Hunter had been a pain in the ass, even after the lecture Crosshair gave him, but fortunately he hadn’t actually gone down in a guilty spiral and given Crosshair a reason to punch his lights out. Tech and Howzer were also being a pain in the ass, but for different reasons. Tech was monitoring Wrecker and Crosshair’s progress closely, too closely in Crosshair’s opinion. His anxiety was obviously making him go overboard, making him overcompensate, the way he often did when something really bad had happened that had been completely out of his hands. Control freak that he was. Crosshair might need to tell him off too if he got too wrapped up in his banthashit. Meanwhile Howzer was just…Howzer, opinionated and obnoxious and pushy.

They’d resumed the habit of taking runs around the base, this time with the intention being for Crosshair to build his lost muscle mass back up. With that in mind Howzer also took Crosshair to the gym and spotted for him on weights and other activities. They sparred sometimes too (armor off) and as it turned out Howzer was a half-decent combatant, certainly much better than his troops. He had a style similar to Echo that made Crosshair wonder if reg captains were given something akin to ARC training, he knew the commanders were.

Thankfully not all of the people Crosshair saw on a daily basis were making a nuisance out of themselves. Echo was as level-headed as always. He’d been clingy for the first few days after the mission, but that had eased off quickly. The ARC listened patiently while Crosshair bitched about how everyone else was constantly bothering him, he clearly didn’t sympathize, being on their other siblings’ sides, but Crosshair had to complain to somebody or he’d lose his goddamn mind and all Wrecker did was laugh at him and say he deserved to spend ‘quality time’ with everybody. Omega was the other one who was back to acting relatively normal. Sure she trailed after Crosshair sometimes like a lost puppy and insisted on hugging him when he was worn out or worn down, but that was all normal for her, she was naturally clingy and tactile in a way that Crosshair chalked up to childhood.

So some things were back to normal and others were frustratingly different. It was once they had settled into something of a routine that Howzer declared one afternoon that he hadn’t forgotten about that ‘attitude adjustment’ he had threatened Crosshair with before the mission. Crosshair let out a gusty sigh when he brought it up, because he had been hoping Howzer would forget about that crap. No such luck, if there was an opportunity for Howzer to make a nuisance out of himself he always took it, so Crosshair was ordered to tell his vode about it, to warn them, and then a few days later Rex and Howzer dropped in on the Batch once Crosshair had taken a sonic after their daily workout. Howzer had brought a peace offering in the form of Wrecker and Crosshair’s supplement drinks, which he handed out amiably, like he wasn’t gearing up to tear them all a new one.

“So did Crosshair tell you what this is about?” Howzer asked once they had all sat down. They were spread out in the back of the Marauder, seated on the floor or on the crates while Howzer and Rex stood.

“He said, and I quote, ‘Howzer wants to lecture us about our training’,” Tech replied from where he was sitting cross-legged on top of a supply crate, his datapad untouched in his lap as he actually paid attention to what was going on around him.

Howzer snorted, “Well that’s the basic idea, we are here to chat about your training and how it applies now that the war is over and the Kaminoans are gone.”

“What’s wrong with their training?” Echo asked, looking between the two captains and his squad with a frown.

“From what Howzer has told me it sounds like the long-necks were trying to kill them more than train them,” Rex said.

Echo frowned and looked at Hunter, who grimaced. “They weren’t trying to kill us,” the sergeant said slowly with a razor’s edge of absolute hatred in his tone, “They were trying to break us so they’d know what it would take.”

“We’re experimental,” Tech told Echo and the two captains, Crosshair could see the flippant way he was talking about it annoyed all three of them, “If they didn’t thoroughly test us they wouldn’t have accurate data.”

“And literally torturing you during resistance training to see if you’d break down is a reasonable test?” Howzer asked icily.

Echo sucked in a sharp breath and looked between his siblings, when none of the Batch refuted the claim his already pale face went gray with horror.

“For their purposes, yes it was,” Tech replied in an annoyed tone, like this was all perfectly obvious and he felt explaining it was a waste of his time. Personally Crosshair agreed with him, none of this was anything they didn’t already know. 

“The long-necks and the trainers were all shit-heads,” Wrecker grumbled, “But we probably wouldn’t’ve survived so long if they didn’t train us so well.”

“That’s the other thing this is about,” Howzer said sharply, “As Crosshair has told me repeatedly, you have a 100% mission success rating. Frankly that shouldn’t be possible unless you’re prioritizing mission success over literally everything else. So this is a question for Hunter, during missions what happened if one of you was grievously injured and the mission went belly up? Did you extract?”

Hunter bristled with anger, “Are you accusing me of not taking care of my squad?” he hissed, “We had to complete our missions or they’d decommission us. Leaving Tech to deal with the injured party while salvaging the mission with the rest of us was the best I could do. We couldn’t afford to extract, if we didn’t extract my brother might die, but if we did and the mission failed then all of us would die. Don’t you dare act like I didn’t agonize over it every karking time!”

Rex held up his hands in surrender as the sergeant snarled at them, “We’re not accusing you of anything, Hunter, I know keeping your vode safe is your priority. You did the best you could in an osik situation.”

“The issue is that you kids have bad habits left over from your shabla training,” Howzer added, “This armor-on sparring for instance. If you care so much about the health and safety of your brothers then why are you willing to beat them unconscious?”

Hunter drew up short, caught completely wrong-footed. “I—” he started and then stopped, frowning as he actually considered the question.

“I royally pissed him off,” Crosshair interjected, “Of course he’d want to beat my ass.”

“Wanting to beat the stuffing out of your little brother when he’s being willfully stupid is perfectly normal,” Rex said, “Actually doing it isn’t. Nobody should ever come out genuinely injured from a spar.”

The four original members of the Batch stared at the two of them in confusion, “But what you’re talkin’ about…that’s…that’s just play-fighting…” Wrecker said, tilting his head, “People get hurt in actual fights.”

“They don’t have to!” Omega argued, “The regs don’t get hurt when they spar and it's still fighting isn’t it?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tech argued, “It can be self-destructive if taken too far or done under the wrong circumstances for the wrong reasons,” he glared at Crosshair when he said it and the sniper rolled his eyes, “But we have a line we do not cross and so long as we only do it infrequently, when we have ample bacta to spend on it, it has no permanent consequences.”

“The point of a spar isn’t to actually hurt your opponent,” Rex snapped, “It’s to refine your technique, which you can do just fine without going all out. Wrecker you always hold back when you spar don’t you?”

Wrecker frowned, “Well yeah, I don’t wanna kill anybody…”

“ Exactly,” Rex said, “You hold back all the time when you spar, but that doesn’t make you any less combat effective. You still can use the things you learn in a spar in the field and you can do it without damaging anybody.”

“I always knew it was shabla!” Echo snarled, “I knew there was something wrong about it, but they never listened to me when I said it wasn’t normal!”

“What’s the point of this?” Crosshair growled, crossing his arms over his chest and flicking his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You don’t want us to do armor-on sparring on your base? Fine. Done. Who cares?”

“You shouldn’t be doing it at all , Crosshair, and that’s not the only problem,” Howzer snapped, “The problem is that to some extent you kids are still all wrapped up in your shabla training, you especially Crosshair are obsessed with being useful to the point of panic, Wrecker is way too okay with getting hurt, Tech is a complete workaholic who has to control everything in his environment or he turns into a nervous wreck, and Hunter has a massive guilt complex, this isn’t normal or healthy, and while yes mission success is important, it’s not the end all be all. Missions fail all the time either because of bad planning or osik nobody could have predicted. What you do when a mission looks like it’s going to cost more than it’s worth is pull back not double down.”

“We get that you couldn’t afford to do that while the Kaminoans were breathing down your necks, but they’re gone, it’s all gone, you don’t have to do that anymore,” Rex told them gently.

The Batch all turned to Hunter, who chewed on his thumbnail as he thought about it. “I’ve already been saying that…” the sergeant said after a moment, “We don’t have to kill ourselves trying to complete missions anymore. I know that, I’ve been trying to remind myself of it in the field, but you’re both right. It’s a bad habit. You’re right about sparring too, we’re brothers, we’re on the same side, we shouldn’t be genuinely hurting each other I…I lost my temper with Crosshair and that wasn’t good.”

“I always thought it was strange,” Tech said in a quiet, almost weak voice, “Why have such a policy? What’s the point? It made no sense that Nala Se would scrap an entire years-long project over a single failed mission…the only logical conclusion was that it was yet another test. The Kaminoans told us we’d be decommissioned if we failed in order to add pressure, they were always doing things to add pressure, more and more, waiting for us to finally crack…”

“We couldn’t exactly call their bluff even if that was true,” Crosshair growled. The fact that Tech was probably right, that it might have all been just another damn test…it made him sick with anger. How many times had one or more of them almost died, how many times had they been injured, been starving, been against overwhelming odds for a mission that meant nothing and still had to continue? 

“Well like Klacks said: they’re all dead and you’re all alive, so that shows them,” Howzer said blandly. 

“We have an opportunity to change now,” Tech said, his voice a little stronger, “We have the option to prioritize things other than mission success, we can prioritize our lives without putting them in danger at the same time, nobody will separate or punish or decommission us if we choose survival over a mission objective.” He looked up at his siblings with a frown, “We bought what they sold us, that life is brutal and so we should also be brutal, even to each other.”

Hunter sighed and brushed his hair out of his eyes, “This is my fault,” he said quietly, “I shouldn’t have kept perpetuating it after the Order went out and everything collapsed. I had a feeling it was all wrong, that it had to be wrong and that we didn’t need to do it anymore, but I never did anything about those feelings…I never put a stop to it. I actively participated. Crosshair wasn’t the only one being self-destructive, but he was the only one I focused on.”

“The important thing is that you realize that now and can make a change,” Rex said.

Hunter nodded, “Let’s sort this out now, since we’re all here anyway.” He looked at Wrecker, “I’m going to devote more of our funds to rations. I-I don't know how, but I’ll figure it out, I’ll cut something else out, you shouldn’t have to be hungry all the time. It’s not right. I should have done it sooner, I should have made it work, but we’re always so strapped…”

“It’s okay Hunter,” Wrecker told him, “I eat too much, fuel an’ medicine an’ things like that’re more important than me eating a zillion rations a day.”

Howzer and Rex’s expressions turned stricken. “You haven’t been eating enough?” Howzer asked sharply.

Echo looked horrified, “You never said anything!” He cried, “Why didn’t you ever say something?”

“I get enough,” Wrecker said, “I haven’t been losin’ weight or nothin’, before the prison I mean, not like Crosshair, an’ Hunter and Tech’ve been givin’ me half’a their rations,” Wrecker shot the two of them a grateful but apologetic look and while the sergeant shrunk slightly under Rex, Howzer, and Echo’s indignant stare, Tech looked back at them unrepentantly, “I’m just always hungry,” Wrecker continued, frowning, “It’s been like that as long as I can remember…”

“That’s still not acceptable,” Rex said, “I get that resources are scarce and that you have to prioritize,” he gave Hunter an understanding look, but Hunter was too busy beating himself up to notice, “but you all should be eating enough, nobody should be going hungry. Hunter, I have some black market contacts that can get you things cheaper than you’d find them anywhere else. I’ll give you their info as soon as we’re done.”

Omega scooted over, then crawled into Hunter’s lap and wrapped her arms around him. “You’re a good big brother,” she reassured him, “You did your best.”

Hunter shook his head, “Too little too late…always too damn late…”

“You’re alright, vod,” Rex told him gently.

“I don’t understand,” Echo said, looking between his siblings in dismay, “How could we not have enough food for everybody? We always have so many snacks…”

Hunter sighed, but stared down at his boots instead of looking his brother in the eye as he automatically ran his fingers through Omega’s hair, “Rations are expensive, snacks are cheap, I’ve been using them to try and make up the difference so if nothing else we get enough calories.”

“Rations are expensive because they’re nutritionally complete,” Rex said, although there was nothing scornful in his tone, he sounded like he genuinely understood and sympathized, “We might need to give you all a health check to make sure you’re not malnourished if you haven’t always been able to eat proper food.”

“I perform a health check monthly,” Tech interjected, “Aside from Crosshair in recent months and Wrecker since the prison, we are only slightly underweight and Hunter ensures that we have vitamin supplements so we haven’t been struggling with any deficiencies.”

“Do you keep a record of these checks?” Howzer asked him.

Tech hesitated and Crosshair knew it was because he was fighting that same ingrained urge to give as little of their records away as possible. It was another old habit, if the Kaminoans had seen Tech’s records they’d all have been in danger, since his files on them didn’t match the official files.

“…yes,” Tech said eventually, “I…I can let your medics take a look so they can make recommendations, but I would…I would prefer it if they didn’t make copies.”

The three regs all frowned at him, since to them it probably sounded overcautious, but Rex nodded anyway, “I’ll tell them not to if you promise you’ll let us know if you find a problem during any future health checks.”

Again Tech hesitated before he finally gave a short uncomfortable nod.

“Hunter,” Crosshair said before anybody else had a chance to speak up. His brother turned to look at him, his expression cautious, he must have heard the subtly displeased tone in his little brother’s voice. “You morons bought me a bunch of gifts to try and get on my good side when you first got me back, how exactly did you pay for that?” He was ninety percent certain he already knew the answer, but since they were dragging everything into the light he felt he may as well ask.

Hunter grimaced guiltily and scratched his cheek as he glanced away, “I uh…may have gone without rations for a week…”

The regs stared at him in horror, but Hunter’s batchmates just sighed. Really it was absolutely typical for him. He had wanted to get his brother things to make him happier, so he had put that ahead of his own needs, it was just so frustratingly Hunter . The hypocrite.

“Right,” Howzer sighed, “so we’ve got all four of you,” he shot Crosshair a look that said ‘don’t think I’ve forgotten about you’ and Crosshair couldn’t help but roll his eyes, “not eating enough when off base, let’s see if we can’t do something about that.”

“Yes, let’s fix this now,” Rex said, “How many rations do you need to not be hungry, Wrecker?”

Wrecker frowned and then shrugged, “Dunno, however many it’s always been more than we could have for each meal.”

“We’ll have to do a test then,” Howzer said and gave him a reassuring smile, “and work it out from there. And Hunter, Tech, if I hear about you skipping meals or giving your rations away again I’m going to suffocate you both. Hunter, you're the responsible party here, I know you know that, but you need to realize that that means you need to take care of yourself as much as you take care of everybody else. Got it?”

Hunter grimaced, “I get what you’re saying, Captain, but that’s not always realistic…”

“I will. Strangle you.” Howzer snarled, taking a threatening step in Hunter’s direction and bringing his hands up in a pose like he was about to throttle him as if to demonstrate.

“What Howzer means to say,” Rex cut in with a sigh, “Is that you need to include yourself in your priorities. You don’t have to be perfect, we know sometimes tough decisions have to be made, but not considering yourself at all is just as bad as putting yourself above everybody else. Understand?”

“Yes, Captain,” Hunter sighed, looking sufficiently contrite. Apparently that was enough for Howzer, because the captain’s expression smoothed back out and he dropped his hands.

”Now, what else?” Rex asked “I get the feeling that this isn’t the only issue.”

“Hunter needs to actually take our pain medication, he and Crosshair both,” Tech piped back up, his confidence returning now that he wasn’t being scolded or asked to give out sensitive information, “The both of them have chronic migraines but only take painkillers when they can no longer function, not when they are suffering unreasonably.”

“Painkillers are expensive , Tech,” Hunter snapped, “I’m not wasting them on myself when Crosshair needs them more.” Apparently he’d learned nothing in the last five minutes. Crosshair almost laughed outright at the look on Howzer’s face.

“Hardly,” he snorted instead, “You’re the one with the constant sensory overload problems. My pain is just chip osik, painkillers hardly do anything for it.”

“So neither of you is taking them because both of you think the other needs them more?” Omega asked with a little frown on her small face.

“Typical,” Howzer griped.

Rex sighed, “It’s not wasting it if you need it vod’ika,” he told Hunter patiently, “you both should be taking them, and I’m sure you can, we’ll work on your budget.”

“Tech’s no better,” Crosshair said vengefully, “We all know he hardly sleeps even though he rides my ass about sleep constantly.”

“Unlike you I sleep enough to be functional,” Tech shot back immediately, “ I am not an insomniac.”

“But you’re tired during the day right?” Echo jumped in, this was apparently something he had actually been aware of, “You work yourself into the ground because you’re anxious and then only sleep five hours a night. Just because you think you don’t need more than that doesn’t mean it’s actually true.”

“Maker give me patience with these kids,” Howzer said, turning his eyes skyward, “Why is it only Crosshair I knew about, why didn’t any of you ever say anything about this?”

“We thought it was normal,” Hunter replied bitterly, “If we’re still functional then it’s fine, that’s what we always thought, that’s what they told us…but now you’re making me think that might not be right.”

“It’s not right. Being functional is different than being okay,” Rex told him gently.

“Right, so you kids need to eat, Tech and Crosshair need to sleep, Hunter and Crosshair need to take their damn medicine, and all of you need to chill the hell out, anything else?” Howzer asked with clear irritation.

“No, that’s the long and short of it,” Hunter said with a sigh, “the supply problems are left over from when everything they gave us was rationed, but I haven’t been able to fix it because even though we work plenty of jobs we never have enough credits to get everything we need.”

“We’ll help you,” Rex told him instantly, “like I said, I have contacts, and we can work on your budgeting, obviously your financial priorities need to be rearranged. If you still can’t afford everything you need after that then we can supplement you from our own supplies.”

Hunter waved a hand in tired acceptance. “Thank you, Captain,” he sighed.

“I never got the chance to ask about this before, but since we’re on the subject,” Howzer said slowly, visibly changing gears, “What did you mean when you mentioned Nala Se’s experiments during debrief, Wrecker?”

Wrecker frowned and tilted his head, his eyes sliding to Hunter, seeking permission to talk about it. That was something they had never spoken to anybody but each other about, something they had kept under the hood purposely, different than how they had simply failed to discuss their training with Echo. When none of them seemed inclined to answer, it was Omega who spoke up to rat them out.

“Nala Se did tests on them,” she explained in an uncharacteristically shaky voice. That answered a question Crosshair had been wondering since she’d mentioned how she’d known them when they were escaping Kamino. Had she known about the experiments? Had she been present for them? The sudden threadiness of her voice suggested she had.

“ Omega ,” Hunter chided, but to all of their surprise the girl turned and snarled at him.

“ No! You shouldn’t have to keep it a secret! It was scary and you should be able to talk about it so you feel better!”

Hunter blinked at her in surprise and then looked at the regs.

Echo was still gray and drawn, wearing a look of pure dread similar to the ones on Rex and Howzer’s own faces. The rest of the Batch glanced at each other nervously.

“Omega this is highly classified information,” Tech tried to explain, “We were sworn to secrecy…”

“The Republic is dead,” Howzer spoke up suddenly, “I say let her secrets spill, so long as it’s between brothers.”

Rex nodded, “Please tell us what happened.”

The four original Bad Batchers looked around at each other again, lost. Even if they were to talk about it, how would they start?

As always, it was Hunter who bit the bullet, “Nala Se…wanted to test us…” he told the regs slowly. Omega gave him an encouraging smile and ran her little fingers through his hair in a comforting mimicry of what he always did to hers. He smiled back at her briefly before he continued speaking, “She did these…tests…on us to see how our enhancements worked, to see what we could and couldn’t do with them…”

“What kind of tests?” Rex asked in a careful, controlled tone.

Something about this secret was familiar, they had all been hiding from the words, from the memories, Crosshair recognized the slick squirming feeling in his guts.

“One time when we were cadets she locked Tech in an airtight box, then hid him in the facility and told Hunter to find him before he ran out of oxygen,” Crosshair said, deciding to toss the sickening thing into the light so it could no longer poison them all.

He remembered the aftermath of that test vividly. The two of them had come back to the Batch’s quarters tear-streaked, shaking and clinging to each other like they were afraid Tech would be taken away again and neither Crosshair nor Wrecker had been able to get them calm enough to let go of each other for hours and hours. Tech was still claustrophobic even after almost four years.

The regs stared at him, disbelieving, like they were waiting for him to say ‘psych!’ and laugh at them. Crosshair just waited for them to react along with the rest of his siblings.

“She…” Howzer breathed, “You’re joking . You’ve got to be joking…that’s…that’s just sick. ”

“That was a particularly severe one,” Tech said softly, “not all of her tests were like that.” His voice was shaking ever so slightly and Crosshair hadn’t understood before, but now he really really got what it felt like to remember being trapped in total darkness, waiting to die. He had plenty of extra nightmares about it these days. He shuffled over to sit next to Tech so he could lean into his shoulder. His older brother glanced at him and Crosshair pretended not to see how grateful he looked.

“Great,” Rex said flatly, “tell us what a ‘less severe’ test was like then.”

“She once made me lift durasteel slabs ‘til my shoulders both dislocated…” Wrecker piped up after the silence stretched so long it became agonizing. “Tech fixed ‘em though,” he reassured quickly, “He’d already started ‘is medic modules by that point.”

“She…” Omega said quietly, “she did medical experiments on them sometimes…like when she injected Crosshair’s eyes with a special fluid to see if they’d get more powerful or if he’d go blind…he was still awake and… Nala Se made me help her…he was screaming so loud and-and,” a little shaky sob fell from her lips and Hunter was spurred out of his stupor to bury her in a hug.

“That’s enough,” the sergeant said sharply. “We’re not talking about this anymore.”

He was right, it was too much. The memories curled through Crosshair’s mind like a poison gas, like a disease, putrid, rotten, and festering, and all he wanted to do was bury them again. He shouldn’t have let them out in the first place, should have deflected instead of spilling that secret at the regs’ feet like the guts of a carcass. This was different than telling his brothers about Rampart. It was different, they should have kept it to themselves. 

Crosshair’s back was soaked in cold sweat and he tried very hard not to start shivering, instead leaning further into Tech’s side and biting down on his toothpick until it splintered apart. All of his batchmates had gone just as shaky and pale as he was, drawn. The regs were shaking too, but for a totally different reason. 

“That…that BITCH!” Echo yelled out of nowhere, making the rest of the Batch jump.

Rex took a shuddering breath through his teeth while Howzer kneaded his temples.

“The Kaminoans are dead,” Crosshair told them in order to head off whatever ballistic rage the three of them were careening rapidly into. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“DOESN’T MATTER?!” Howzer shouted, something in him finally snapping, some threshold finally crossed, “Are you fucking KIDDING ME, Crosshair?!”

The volume had all of them flinching back and Crosshair could see the stricken guilty look cross Howzer’s face before he visibly hauled his temper back under control. Rex clasped his fellow captain’s shoulder and gave him a look Crosshair wasn’t able to decipher.

“We haven’t found a mind-healer yet,” Rex said, maintaining some semblance of calm, although it was riddled with cracks through which his ire seeped like a miasma. The man was livid. “But the second we do, I'm scheduling you kids to talk to them. This is unacceptable, we can’t leave you stewing in this.”

“That’s not necessary,” Hunter told the captain quickly, his shoulders up and tense like he was expecting a blow, “We don’t need a mind-healer.”

“ Sergeant! ” Howzer barked in a way that made Hunter’s spine go ramrod straight, “Stow that banthashit this goddamn instant! You want to take care of your vode? Well this is taking care of them. All you’re doing by keeping this osik to yourselves is covering for the karking long-necks!”

“W-we…” Tech piped up and then shrunk back into Crosshair’s side a little when all three regs glowered at him, “We have h-had plenty of time to process what was d-done to us on our own,” he plowed onward stubbornly, forcing the words out even though he couldn’t meet any of their eyes, even though he stuttered over the sounds like he had as a cadet only when he was truly feeling helpless, “dr-dredging it all b-back up at this p-point might b–be…m-m-might be harmful. ”

“You’re scared…” Echo breathed like this was somehow a massive revelation. Of course they were scared. They were never meant to talk about this, about these sick poisonous memories, especially not with the regs. The damn regs of all people, the ones who had chased them down, had cornered them and beaten them half to death for no reason , who had tormented them just as readily as Nala Se. How could Crosshair have forgotten who he was talking to?

“Take a hint, regs!” Crosshair snarled in a voice filled with years of hatred as he surged to his feet, suddenly violently angry. He hated seeing Hunter look like he was expecting to be beaten for talking back, hated listening to Tech stammering the way he used to when Nala Se asked him questions he knew he couldn’t lie about but also knew would cause something very bad to happen if he told the truth, “Can you genuinely not tell when something is none of your business?! You don’t understand anything! All you ever do is push and push and push like your precious beloved little vode didn’t break my ribs or Hunter’s jaw or Tech’s fingers! You wouldn’t have been on our side then so stop acting like you’re some righteous avengers now! Just LEAVE! IT! ALONE!”

“Crosshair,” Hunter said urgently, trying to calm him down before his temper got them in even worse trouble. “Crosshair, it’s okay, they’re trying to help, they’re not trying to hurt us. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

Wrecker finally moved, unfreezing from where he’d been anxiously pressed into the corner of the room to wrap his arms around Crosshair as the sniper shook and tried to control years worth of suppressed rage. 

Howzer, Rex, and Echo all looked more shocked than like they were going to lash out in reprisal, they looked like they’d just stepped on a landmine they’d had no clue was there and it’d blown up right in their faces. 

“I-I’m sorry, Crosshair…all of you,” Howzer stammered, suddenly contrite.

Rex mirrored him almost exactly, “We’ve overstepped. We were trying to help, but we shouldn’t be forcing you to talk about something you’re not ready to discuss with us. We’re sorry. You don’t have to forgive us, but I hope you will…”

“I’m sorry too…” Echo mumbled, head down and fingers tapping on his knee nervously, “I just thought…I thought I had a right to know, since we’re part of the same squad, but I wasn’t there , and I am a reg. I know we were part of the problem, so..so I guess I don’t really have a right to it. If you want to tell me about it at some point then I want to hear, but you don’t have to tell me…”

Crosshair panted heavily in Wrecker’s embrace, still shaking, while his big brother scritched his massive fingers through his hair, trying to settle him. Hunter looked between his brothers - the uncontrollably angry Crosshair; Tech caught like a rabbit in front of a massiff, ready to bolt any second; and Wrecker desperately trying to defuse the situation as best he could - then he looked down at the teary-eyed Omega still wrapped in his arms and took a shaky breath. “Let’s just get back to what we were talking about before and forget about this for now…Rex you were going to give me some contacts?” the sergeant said in an admirably steady voice, even if his every muscle and tendon was strung as taught as piano wire about to snap. 

Rex let out an equally shaky breath and nodded, pulling up his vambrace to transfer the contacts. The tension broke and everyone in the back of the Marauder seemed to slump and let out a sigh of relief. Wrecker sat down on a crate and pulled Crosshair down so the sniper was sitting at his feet and he could keep playing with his too-long hair. “Tech?” the giant said softly. 

Tech started and turned to look at his older brother, “Yes, Wrecker?” he asked. His voice was tight but he didn’t stammer. Hearing him sound more normal settled some of Crosshair’s leftover fury.

“Can you get the clippers so I can fix Cross’s hair? It’s way too long,” Wrecker asked gently, speaking more softly than usual in an effort to help his little brothers relax.

“Of course,” Tech said with a relieved sigh. Whatever he’d been worried Wrecker wanted, it hadn’t been what he asked and Tech was obviously grateful for that as he trotted to the fresher to fetch the clippers.

Omega slipped out of Hunter’s lap into Crosshair’s and the sergeant glanced at his brothers again, let out a sigh, and stood to talk to Rex and Howzer about their funds or budget or whatever. Crosshair didn’t really care what they were talking about so long as Hunter continued to look like himself and not like he thought Rex was about to execute all his little brothers right in front of him.

Tech re-emerged with the small green bag that contained the clippers and all its guards as well as a towel, both of which he handed off to Wrecker before sitting down next to the giant on the storage crates, a little closer than he might normally have been, but not so close that it made Crosshair’s protective fury flare back up. Wrecker scritched his fingers through his little brother’s silver hair one last time before he draped the towel around Crosshair’s shoulders, put the appropriate guard onto the head of the clippers, and started buzzing it to the right length. Crosshair held still, but tried to relax his breathing at the same time, focussing on the soothing sound of the clippers and the music in his audio player thrumming beneath it, on Wrecker’s tuneless humming, on how Omega was playing idly with his hands, even if her eyes were still red and her cheeks splotchy. 

After a moment he looked up and met Echo’s eyes by accident. The ARC was still seated on a crate, his shoulders hunched unhappily, and he flinched when Crosshair met his gaze. Crosshair glowered at him for a moment before he sighed and pulled one of his hands out of Omega’s grasp so he could wave Echo over.

“You look like you’re about to cry,” Crosshair said to his reg brother disapprovingly, “Stop it.”

Echo screwed up his face for a second before he let out a huff of laughter and tentatively crept over to sit down on the floor next to Crosshair and Omega, realizing he had been forgiven and knowing not to poke at an issue that had - in his brothers’ eyes - been dismissed.

Chapter Text

Things were tense for a few days after the captains’ lecture. Howzer in particular acted more hesitant than usual, not being quite so pushy, quite so loud, or opinionated, or authoritative. Crosshair had thought he would have preferred that, considering how annoying the captain’s usual behavior was, but instead this new trend just made him angry. Eventually he lost his temper with the captain when Crosshair offered a spar during one their normal workout times and Howzer made a face like Crosshair had just asked him to shoot him in the head.

“Stop this osik right kriffing now ,” Crosshair snapped at him from where he was sitting on the end of the bench-press with Howzer standing hesitantly a few feet away, just having finished spotting for him.

“Stop what?” Howzer asked unhappily.

Crosshair gestured between the two of them, “This walking on eggshells banthashit. You’ve always teased me for my age but you never used to actually treat me like a baby.”

Howzer grimaced, “I’m not treating you like a baby, I’m…I’m trying to be more considerate …”

“Well stop it, ” Crosshair snarled, “You’re annoying and pushy and loud, not considerate. I know I yelled at you and I’m not apologizing for that because you deserved it, but you’re overreacting now. You went too far, but that doesn’t mean what you were doing before was…was bad. It…you’ve helped me, a lot, by being that way.” Crosshair swallowed thickly, struggling to put into words what he needed to say, “I wouldn’t have started eating again or trying to sleep if you hadn’t pushed me. I wouldn’t have relearned to walk, or run, or fight nearly as fast if you hadn’t pushed me. I…I don’t like the way you’re acting now. It’s wrong . I thought we were–” were what? Friends? Family? Crosshair didn’t know the answer, so he didn’t finish the statement.

Howzer frowned at him and then scrubbed at his face with his hand before sitting down on the bench next to the sniper, although not actually facing him, perpendicular. “Look Crosshair, I…I said it before, but I’m sorry. I was wrong to push you about what Nala Se did to you like that, but you do need help . You and your batchmates. I just…I don’t think I’m the right person to give it to you.”

“Is this because of what you said before, about our bad habits? The…the thing with Tech being a workaholic control freak, Wrecker being reckless, and Hunter blaming himself for everything?” Crosshair asked him hesitantly. He understood what Howzer had been getting at there. He hated that his brothers were like this. He knew they were all trapped in these behaviors, that none of them knew how to stop even when they all knew it was bad. He knew he was no better. He just didn’t know how to fix anything.

Howzer sighed, “Yeah…that’s exactly what I was talking about. You might think it’s all over because you’re off Kamino and the long-necks are dead, but they’re still hurting you Crosshair, passively, by having instilled these bad coping mechanisms in you. You don’t have to be like this anymore. You don’t have to have these problems, you just need help getting over them.”

“But you can’t help us,” Crosshair replied bitterly.

“No I…I’m sorry Crosshair, but this is way above my pay-grade,” Howzer told him softly, remorsefully. “You need a professional, somebody who knows what they’re doing, who’s had more than just GAR crisis intervention training. I’m not qualified for this. The fact that I overstepped so badly is proof enough of that.”

“So a mind-healer, like Rex said,” Crosshair grumbled. 

He saw Howzer nod from the corner of his eye and Crosshair clenched his fists where they were resting on his knees. “Hunter will never agree to it,” he said instead of the myriad other things scrabbling around in his head.

Howzer turned his head to look at him, “Why’s he so against it? He has to know there’s a problem, he’d be completely blind not to see it.”

“Because mind-healers are doctors,” Crosshair replied matter-of-factly, “ Nat-born doctors.”

“And you kids have a bad history with nat-born doctors,” Howzer finished for him and then sighed, “Kark I hadn’t even thought of that. He let Tilorrli work on you after Belgaroth though…”

Crosshair shook his head, “It was too serious a problem for Tech to handle, which is why he didn’t kick up a fuss about it, there wasn’t anything else he could have done that wouldn’t have put my life in danger. Besides, Tilorrli was being supervised by a clone, even if Needle is a reg, so it could have been worse.”

“What about Dura Fenn? Physical therapists are like doctors, I think…” Howzer trailed off uncertainly.

“We needed him to help me walk, Hunter didn’t have a choice in that either, not one that wouldn’t have risked me being permanently crippled. I know he and Tech got in a shouting match about it anyway though. Wrecker and Omega came and hid in my hospital room while Echo tried to break it up, but the two of them always refuse to talk to each other for a day or two after they fight so it’s really obvious when it happens, I’d have known anyway.” Crosshair shrugged and let out a sigh.

Howzer hummed thoughtfully, “So he’ll only cave if he knows it's really necessary…” 

“Hunter’s a good leader and he cares about us,” Crosshair told him plainly, “But that also means he gets terrified and overprotective whenever something threatens us…it’s happened so much in our lives, but he’s only gotten more reactive to it rather than less.”

“So somebody just has to convince him that the problems you’re having right now are worse than the risk of seeing a nat-born doctor?” Howzer asked a little hopefully.

Crosshair made a noncommittal sound, “you say that like it’s easy.”

Howzer turned to face Crosshair, his expression earnest. “You understand this right? That this needs to be fixed, that you need help?”

Crosshair looked away anxiously, he understood, he didn’t want them to be this way. It was hurting everyone and he wanted it to stop…but seeing a nat-born doctor about it…

“What does a mind-healer even do? ” He asked in a tight voice.

“They talk to you,” Howzer told him gently, “They give you advice and strategies to help you work through your problems and make positive change. Sometimes they give you medications if you really need them, but you can always say no to that.”

“ No medications,” Crosshair snapped. He remembered the powerful muscle relaxants Nala Se had given them before any procedure she thought they might mess up by spasming, remembered how helpless he’d felt when his body wouldn’t respond when he tried to move it, remembered the other things she’d given them in the course of her experiments. Painkillers were about the extent of the medications Crosshair would willingly take these days and even then he’d rather not take them if he could get away with it.

Howzer just nodded, “I’m sure that’ll be fine, you can just talk to them and even then you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

Crosshair sighed and sat there for a moment, thinking. He knew Howzer was right, something needed to be done, they couldn’t continue on like this, he didn’t want them to… “If the mind-healer is bad…we can stop seeing them right?” he asked the captain cautiously. Howzer nodded immediately, firmly, and Crosshair sighed again. “I…I’ll talk to Hunter about it. It’s worth a shot at least, if it’d make things better…”

To his immense surprise the sniper found himself suddenly enveloped in a hug, “Thank you ad’ika,” Howzer told him in a slightly shaky voice, “Now that we actually know what’s going on, seeing you kids like this has been kriffing awful. Whatever help you need to convince him, just tell me and I’ll handle it okay?”

Crosshair shoved Howzer off him and stood up, “Save the celebrations until I’ve actually talked to him,” he snapped, “There’s probably no way to convince him. I’m just agreeing to try. Now are we going to spar or are you going to start crying?”

Howzer chuckled and also got to his feet, “Sure, I guess I’ll let you beat me up for a while,”

“Oh you’re sure?” Crosshair sneered at him, “You’re not worried you’re going to put a dent in my soft baby head?”

“Your soft head has nothing to do with you being a baby,” Howzer cackled as they paced across the gym to the mats, “That’s just because Wrecker’s skull is thick enough for your entire batch.”

Crosshair snorted and squared up.

***

He didn’t talk to Hunter immediately. Crosshair knew if he went in without a plan of action it’d turn into a fight, a bitter one most likely, one that’d end any chance of further discussion then and there, so he had to be careful how he approached this. In the end he went to Tech first. Normally to convince Hunter of something he’d try to get Echo on his side, but while Echo was part of the Batch, was still their big brother, in this he had no say. He was a reg, he hadn’t been with them on Kamino, his opinion on the matter held no weight. 

Thus Tech. 

Tech was their own stand-in for every sort of doctor they needed and Crosshair knew how helpless he must feel in the face of their problems. Tech was smart as hell, so if Crosshair could recognize that something was wrong, he knew Tech had probably seen it ages before it had ever even occurred to the sniper. He also knew that it was one of Tech’s greatest and most pervasive fears: that there would be something wrong with his brothers that he couldn’t fix.

Crosshair caught Tech in the Marauder while Hunter, Echo, and Omega were out talking to Rex, but didn’t manage to get him alone. Wrecker was hanging around too and got a stubborn look about him when Crosshair tried to get rid of him. He didn’t like being excluded and when Crosshair told him he needed to talk to Tech alone, Wrecker folded his arms and sat down on his bunk with a scowl, “You’re bein’ sneaky Cross, somethin’ always goes wrong when you turn sneaky.”

“It does not ,” Crosshair snapped. He was excellent at stealth. Hell, he'd stolen them medical supplies from the Kaminoans since he was old enough to walk and he’d never been caught, let alone his not insignificant skills as a sniper. Things just went wrong no matter what they did and always had. The Bad Batch had the worst luck Crosshair had ever seen.

“I believe, Crosshair, that Wrecker is referring to when you are being conniving , not when you are engaging in stealth-related activities,” Tech told him blandly, “And frankly I agree with him. Whatever you’re up to I’d rather you brought it out into the open.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes, “ Fine. I–I talked to Howzer…and he and Rex are right. We’re all karked up six ways to Benduday, I know you know that, Tech.”

Tech looked away unhappily, his arms folded across his chest as he tapped his fingers nervously against his bicep. He knew, that’s what that reaction told Crosshair loud and clear. Tech knew exactly how messed up they all were.

“So…so what is your end goal for this conversation, Crosshair?” Tech eventually asked him, still looking anywhere but at his little brother, “I-I can’t fix it. I’ve been trying to figure out how to for years, but I don’t…I don’t know how to fix it, how to fix…anything…I can’t…”

Tech bit his lip and Crosshair swore under his breath, he’d known Tech would know what he was talking about, would be frustrated by it, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he’d be distressed . Before Crosshair could think of something to do, Wrecker snaked an arm out and pulled Tech down to sit next to him on his bunk before resting said arm around his little brother’s shoulders.

“It’s not your fault, Tech,” Wrecker told him quietly, “You can’t fix people, nobody can do that, but you’ve been keepin’ us in one piece an’ that’s the next best thing.”

Tech cleared his throat in a way that sounded like he was trying to keep from choking up. Crosshair sighed, “You agree with me then,” he pushed forward. Wrecker glared at him, a look that warned him to drop it, but Crosshair ignored him. This was important . “Well maybe you can’t fix it…maybe Wrecker’s right and nobody can fix it, but that’s not what Howzer thinks. You remember him and Rex saying we should see a mind-healer…”

Tech pushed his goggles up his forehead and scrubbed at his eyes. “We would likely benefit from consulting with a mind-healer, if only to attempt to correct our detrimental coping mechanisms and self-destructive habits rather than to dig into…Nala Se’s actions…it was a sound suggestion, however you know Hunter will never agree to that Crosshair, it was hard enough to get him to agree to let you continue to see Tilorrli and Dura Fenn.”

Crosshair sighed and Wrecker looked between the two of them with a frown, “How will a mind-healer fix anythin’?” the giant asked, “They’re just a kinda nat-born doctors right? What, are they gonna give us a hypo an’ we’ll be all better?” There was a deeply bitter tone to his voice when he said it that Crosshair couldn’t help but sympathize with.

Tech pulled his goggles back into place and took a deep breath. “No, mind-healers specialize in psychology, some give medications, but most focus on cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, and other such non-invasive methods to assist their patients in solving their own problems. They provide an expert opinion when a patient presents them with their personal issues.”

“So they…give advice?” Wrecker frowned, “How does givin’ advice make ‘em a doctor?”

“It is advice entrenched in a great deal of medical science, it is simply non-invasive medicine,” Tech explained.

“We need advice,” Crosshair said, jumping back in, “We need help . You know we do. Both of you know we do, and either we convince Hunter to let us try this damn mind-healer thing or we try and fix it ourselves, but we’ve already been doing that for years with things only getting steadily worse .”

Wrecker and Tech glanced at each other and then Tech sighed, “I don’t believe we’ll be able to convince him,” he said, “but you can’t win if you never play.”

Both of them looked to Wrecker, who was frowning, “What if they’re bad?” the giant asked after a moment, “What if they give bad advice and make things worse ?”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Crosshair told him, “and Howzer says if they’re bad we don’t have to keep seeing them. Look, either we try something or we do nothing and you’ve seen how well doing nothing has worked for us.”

Wrecker scratched the back of his head and then sighed expansively, “Yeah alright…but if the mind-healer is a sleemo Imma punch their head clean off.”

“You would be welcome to under those circumstances,” Tech said with a wan smile.

“You’d be doing us a favor in that case,” Crosshair agreed.

So that was two of his brothers on his side. Crosshair wasn’t sure whether it was good or bad that Echo and Omega’s opinions wouldn’t be part of this argument. He suspected both would agree with Howzer - and him by extension - given how aghast Echo had been at all of those revelations and how Omega had been the one to rat them out in the first place, but again, Echo’s opinion didn’t count here and this was a grown up problem, so Omega’s opinion couldn’t be the deciding factor, even if she was good at wheedling Hunter into giving her what she wanted. If anything Omega being present might make Hunter even harder to convince, might put his hackles up higher when faced with a threat… and Crosshair knew that’s how Hunter would see this, as a threat to their well-being. That’s why he was dreading this so much. Hunter was nothing if not viciously protective. 

Crosshair waited a week, trying to work up the nerve, and he could feel the tension in them all building. Howzer was patient, but Wrecker and Tech had been holding their breath waiting for him to bring it up, waiting for the fight to start, and while Hunter, Echo, and Omega had no clue what was wrong, they all picked up on it. As always in Crosshair’s life, his hand was eventually forced before he was really ready to go through with it. 

It was during the night cycle and they’d all just gotten back from the mess hall and settled into a game of sabacc on the floor of the bunkroom. It was anxious though, Crosshair, Wrecker, and Tech were all tense, the way they had been whenever they were around Hunter these days, none of them sure how to broach the topic in the least threatening way possible, and their anxiety was making everybody else anxious. 

Omega seemed to have forgotten what was happening in the game as she watched all of them with an openly concerned expression, her cards face up in her hands where the rest of them could see them. Echo was chewing his lower lip and Crosshair suspected that before Howzer’s lecture he would have been the one to break the silence and demand to know what was going on, but now he was more hesitant around them, now he knew some things weren’t open to him, some things he didn’t have a right to even as their brother, and it had made him hesitant. Crosshair wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Bad, he decided after a moment of thought. He’d never wanted to exclude Echo, who was just as much his brother as his batchmates were…but facts were facts and Echo was a reg, was naturally excluded purely on those grounds, at least in this case. He didn’t deserve to be excluded, but there was a newly-formed chasm there that none of them could cross, maybe the mind-healer could help with that too. If this worked.

Ultimately it was Hunter who got fed up. Them being tense had made him tense, coiled like a spring waiting to be released, wary like he was waiting for a firefight to break out. “If somebody doesn’t tell me what the kark is going on with you three I’m going to completely lose my mind,” Hunter eventually growled, setting his cards face down on the floor in front of him, effectively putting the game on pause. The GAR may be gone and they were really only following military doctrine out of sheer habit, but Hunter was still the one in charge. He had always taken their opinions into consideration, but ultimately he was the authority, the leader, and his brothers had always recognized that even as cadets. 

The game was over until this had been sorted out, that’s what Hunter putting his cards down meant to all of them.

Tech and Wrecker both looked to Crosshair and the sniper let out a slightly shaky breath through his teeth. No more putting it off. “Echo and Omega have to leave if we’re going to talk about this,” he said.

Hunter’s eyes narrowed, “Why?”

“Because Echo’s a reg and Omega’s a child. This is an adult matter and it needs to be between us first,” Crosshair replied, choosing his words carefully. He grimaced at the way Echo’s shoulders went up, at the expression of hurt that he was trying to hide from them, but it was unavoidable. He could probably have stayed and just kept out of it, but somebody needed to watch Omega.

Hunter turned his gaze to Tech and Wrecker, who both nodded, although Wrecker looked immensely guilty. Tech’s expression was locked down completely the way he got when he didn’t want them to know what he was feeling. 

“That’s not fair—!” Omega tried to argue, but Wrecker shook his head at her and the words died in her throat. Of all of them Wrecker was almost always on her side, seeing he was against her on this issue was clearly a heavy blow.

“Fine,” Hunter growled, “Echo go take Omega in the back while I sort out whatever this osik is.”

Echo looked between them all nervously before he took Omega by the hand and led her out, although she looked back at them over her shoulder, tears in her eyes.

“So.” Hunter said once the two of them had left, “Who’s mutinying and why?”

It was a joke, but there was something tense in his voice that made it come out wrong and nobody laughed.

Tech adjusted his goggles and said, “Nothing so serious,” however he didn’t elaborate and Crosshair realized unhappily that they were expecting him to take the lead on this. It had been Rex and Howzer’s idea, not his, but he was the advocate for it here it seemed.

“Hunter…” Crosshair started and then stopped as he struggled to find a way to put it that wouldn’t freak his brother out. Hunter’s sharp eyes cut over to his littlest brother and Crosshair’s throat closed up. Kark this shouldn’t be nearly as hard as it was turning out to be. 

“What?” There was an edge in the sergeant's voice, something anxious. They were freaking him out already and that was bad. The whole point was to keep Hunter from getting scared, from getting defensive. Crosshair was failing miserably.

“We think Rex an’ Howzer are right,” Wrecker blurted, making all three of them go stiff.

Dammit Wrecker! That was too blunt! Much too blunt!

Hunter frowned at him, “Right about what exactly?”

Crosshair seized control to try and head off the oncoming disaster. “You agreed with them that we’re having problems,” he said quickly.

“I’ve been handling that,” Hunter told him, his brow furrowing in confusion, “Rex gave me contacts that I’ve been following up with and he and Captain Howzer have been helping me sort out our budget.”

“It’s not just that,” Crosshair told him, “It’s everything…”

Hunter stiffened, “This is about Nala Se? That’s why you’re acting like you're waiting to go under the knife?”

“It is only tangentially related to Nala Se,” Tech cut in before Crosshair could think of a way to defuse that particular bomb.

“It’s the other stuff,” Crosshair said, finding his words again, “You remember what Howzer said, that we’re wrapped up in all the shit they taught us? That we’re being self-destructive?”

“ Spit it out , Crosshair!” Hunter snapped and there were his hackles, finally fully up, scared because his little brothers were acting strange and he didn’t know why.

“We agree with them,” Crosshair said, biting the bullet. There was nothing left for it. “We think we should take Rex up on his offer and see a mind-healer.”

“ Absolutely not!” Hunter barked, on his feet in an instant, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Hunter—” Tech tried, but the sergeant interrupted him.

“ No. Not happening,” he snarled, “You can’t be seriously suggesting this. Are you kidding me?”

“We’re not jokin’,” Wrecker told him unhappily, “We’re bein’ serious.”

“ Why?!” Hunter demanded, “I get that you trust Captain Howzer, Crosshair, I do, but he’s a reg and you said it yourself, they don’t understand! That’s why you asked Echo to leave, isn’t it?!”

“It is, but just because Howzer doesn’t get it doesn’t mean he’s wrong,” Crosshair bit back, standing up so he wasn’t craning his head back to meet his brother’s eye. Wrecker and Tech followed suit. “We’re karked up!” Crosshair snapped, “We’ve been karked up for years and none of us know how to fix it. Tech doesn’t even know how to fix it. We need help!”

“So you want to trust a kriffing nat-born to fix us?!” Hunter hissed, “Are you insane?! ”

“Tilorrli fixed my leg,” Crosshair said, trying to keep his voice from rising in frustration, yelling at Hunter would only escalate the situation, “Dura Fenn helped me walk. Without them I’d be crippled. I probably would have never walked again and they’re nat-borns . I wouldn’t trust them with a lot of things but they did what they said they were going to do! They helped! I’m not saying that that makes all nat-borns trustworthy, but Hunter if we don’t do something we’re fucked.”

“I know you are aware that we are struggling, Hunter,” Tech added, much more calmly than Crosshair, “I cannot solve this problem, I’ve tried and tried, but Crosshair is right, the regs are right, we need outside assistance on this matter.”

“Tech says a mind-healer isn’t gonna do anything bad to us,” Wrecker said softly, “He said they just give advice, they aren’t gonna do procedures on us. They do… non-invasive medicine …”

“And you think that makes it okay?!” Hunter snapped, “You think you can’t hurt somebody like that?! Like Nala Se never said anything poisonous! Where do you think all this shit came from?! They told us all the wrong things and we believed them! Now you want to do more of that?!”

“It won’t be the same,” Crosshair argued, “There’s a difference.”

Hunter threw his hands up, “ How is this any different?!”

“Because we can stop if it’s bad,” Crosshair snapped back at him, “We’re not being forced! This is a choice we’re making and if we do it and it turns out to be the wrong choice we can stop!”

Hunter seemed to come up short at that and then the sergeant looked away, glaring a hole in the wall. 

“How would we even know if it’s bad?” he asked darkly, looking back at his brothers. “The whole point of manipulating somebody is that they don’t realize they're being manipulated. If they do then it doesn’t work.”

“You’re afraid,” Tech told him, “and for good reason. You aren’t wrong, Hunter, about any of this, but we are out of options.”

“We’re not stupid,” Wrecker said suddenly, “We know better than we did before, so if they tell us somethin’ that smells like banthashit we won’t just take a bite.”

“Even if we were still gullible cadets, think about it logically, Hunter,” Tech jumped back in, “Think about motives. The trainers and the Kaminoans had a motive for lying to us, for manipulating us. What motive would an unconnected mind-healer have for hurting us? If anything it would be detrimental to them. We’d obviously report it to Captain Howzer or Captain Rex and they’d be punished. So not only is there a negative consequence, but what do they gain? Nothing. The only reason for them to mislead us would be sheer incompetence.”

“Like nat-borns aren’t the epitome of incompetent,” Hunter snapped, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Occasionally,” Tech allowed, “But the regs can be equally incompetent. Nobody is perfect. We have made our fair share of mistakes as well.”

Crosshair huffed, “We just have to take everything with a grain of salt,” he said, “We just have to be careful and think about what we’re told instead of accepting it out of hand. If it doesn’t make sense then we don’t have to listen to it. We’re in control here, not them.”

Hunter hesitated, clearly torn between a lifetime of justified paranoia and the solidity of his brothers’ logic. He looked at Tech, “They won’t touch us?” He asked a little shakily.

“No,” Tech said, “Some mind-healers prescribe medications, however they will not force us to take them. They cannot force us to do anything and if they try we will simply cut our losses and stop seeing them.”

“Won’t they try to seperate us?” Hunter pressed.

“They might suggest individual therapy, however as I said, they will not force us,” Tech answered him in a calm soothing voice, “We can maintain the buddy system or all stay together and simply ask to receive group therapy.”

Hunter shifted from foot to foot anxiously, Crosshair suspected that he wanted to pace, which he always did when he was stressed out, but also didn’t want to turn away from them. He looked them all in the eyes, as if trying to divine their thoughts, before he let out another shaky breath, “You’re really dead set on this…” he mumbled.

“We need help, Hunter,” Crosshair said, going in for the kill, “You know we do.”

Hunter nodded silently, his shoulders slumped and his hands twisting together as he finally genuinely thought it over.

“We will stick together,” Tech assured him, “Nobody will be able to hurt us if we watch each other’s backs.”

Wrecker nodded, “An’ if they try I’ll smash ‘em flat!”

Hunter couldn’t help but chuckle at that, although the sound was quiet and strained. They gave him another minute to think and eventually he sighed, “Alright we…we can give it a shot, but the second it goes wrong we cut and run, got it?”

“Perfectly acceptable,” Tech said while Crosshair and Wrecker nodded.

The sergeant looked between them again and then scrubbed his hand through his hair, “We should talk to Echo and Omega, it’s not fair to cut them out completely.”

“They might benefit from therapy as much as the rest of us,” Tech suggested lightly, which made Crosshair go stiff.

He shot his brother a warning look. Putting them under the threat of the nat-born doctor was bad enough, but putting Omega in that position was not going to help them get the outcome they wanted.

Hunter growled slightly at the suggestion, but Tech held up his hands to quell him, “With our supervision obviously. Echo is an ARC and can care for himself, but we would not leave Omega alone with anybody. All I’m suggesting is that she might be able to seek outside advice just like the rest of us.”

That seemed to smooth Hunter’s hackles back down and he let out a huff, “Maybe,” he said, “If we make sure it’s safe first.”

“‘Course we would,” Wrecker rumbled, “Whaddya take us for?”

“I will fetch Echo and Omega, if we are in agreement?” Tech asked carefully.

Hunter just nodded and sat down on the nearest available bunk, which belonged to Wrecker, so he could glare helplessly at the floor and run his hands through his hair. Tech left and returned a moment later with their two elder siblings before settling back on the floor where he’d left his hand of cards. Wrecker and Crosshair both sat back down and with a hesitant glance Echo followed suit. Omega had a hurt, betrayed look about her and instead of running over to Hunter or Wrecker like she might have normally she sat down in Echo’s lap.

“So you guys have worked it out? Whatever it was?” Echo asked haltingly, arms wrapped loosely around his little sister.

Hunter nodded silently and then let out a heavy sigh. “They want to see a mind-healer…I told them we could try it…”

To Crosshair’s surprise Echo and Omega both lit up like they’d been told it was their decant day. “Really?” Echo asked in a hopeful voice, “You’re okay with that?”

“No,” Hunter replied bitterly, “Frankly I’m not, but it’s been pointed out to me that we’re out of options if we don’t want to keep going like we have been and run ourselves straight into the ground.”

“A mind-healer will help you all feel better right?” asked Omega, her eyes wide, “They won’t make you take bad medicines or do any procedures on you will they?” Crosshair saw the way Echo bit his lip, looking a little sick at the reminder that those things were very real concerns for them.

“They will not,” Tech assured her just like he’d assured the rest of them.

“Okay then I think it’s a good idea,” the little girl said in a decisive voice. “You’ve all been feeling bad for a long time and you deserve to feel better, so if a mind-healer will help then that’s good.”

Hunter sighed, but then gave her a smile, even if it was stressed and a little weak-looking. Crosshair let out a relieved breath. That had gone better than he’d thought it would. Howzer would be overjoyed, just based on how happy he’d been when Crosshair had so much as said he’d give talking to Hunter a try . After Tech rehashed some of their earlier talking points to Omega, assuring her that it would be safe, they managed to coax Hunter back down into their loose circle on the floor and he picked his hand of cards back up.

So they’d see a mind-healer. Fortunately they had plenty of time to prepare for that eventuality, given they had to wait until Rex could actually find one. Crosshair was okay with that though, he was still nervous about the idea himself, even though he’d been arguing for it so vehemently. With any luck Rex would come through with somebody really good. They could hope for that at least.

Chapter Text

Hunter wasn’t happy about the idea of seeing the mind-healer, even over two months after he’d agreed to let it happen. Rex was still searching for one, which was the only saving grace in the situation, because Hunter was stressed just thinking about it, but at least it wasn’t happening yet. He understood the need for it, he really did, he wanted his family to be healthy and happy just as much as his brothers and sister did, but it still scared him that this was the route they were taking. All he could think about was the myriad ways it could go horribly wrong. They’d been hurt enough, they didn’t need to be hurt more.

One good thing though, was that with them hanging around Rex’s base Crosshair and Wrecker were back up to a healthier weight. Crosshair was still skinny, still a little under, but he wasn’t thin to the point of illness anymore, which was a huge relief, and Wrecker was doing better than ever now that he could eat his fill instead of trying to make it on what little food they could afford. Hunter hoped he’d be able to keep that trend up even once they started taking jobs and missions again instead of spending all their time at the base. It wouldn’t be easy, because it turned out the number of rations Wrecker needed a day was nine , three times what they could really afford…or at least what they had previously been able to afford. Hunter had reached out to the contacts Rex had given him to inquire about prices for the things they needed and found that as the captain had said, they were significantly cheaper than getting them anywhere else.

After their talk, Howzer and Rex had insisted on Hunter and Tech working on their weight as well, although they weren’t nearly as underweight as either Crosshair or Wrecker had been. Regardless the captains had insisted that being underweight at all wasn’t okay and that they needed to do something about it. Rex had promised not to get his medics involved so long as they ate three full meals a day and Tech added the two of them to his weekly weight checks. Tech had complained, but Wrecker was amused and Crosshair seemed to be vengefully pleased that they were getting hassled just like he had been for months on end. Echo and Omega were just happy that the four of them were working on it at all. 

It was weird to be able to eat until he wasn’t hungry anymore though, Hunter definitely wasn’t going to be used to that any time soon, not after having been hungry for his whole life. So yes it was strange, but he wasn’t complaining, that part of the situation was great. He just hoped he could keep it up off-base.

The regs from the prison had really settled in nicely over those two months since the jailbreak. The base was still always bustling at all times of day and night, which Hunter found made it a little harder for him to sleep, just due to the extra noise he could hear from outside even with the Marauder's ramp up and door closed. As it turned out they had rescued about two hundred clones from the 481st legion during the jailbreak and Rex had had a hell of a time keeping the chipped clones from causing trouble while his medics worked tirelessly to free them. There had even been one instance of a chipped ARC trooper breaking out and freeing several of his brothers that then had to be pursued before they could find a way to call the Empire for help, but fortunately Rex had Hunter available and the sergeant had obligingly tracked the clones down for him so they could be recaptured.

The Batch had lent AZI to Needle so the droid could help with the surgeries and Tech had donated his second portable atomic scanner to the cause just like he’d donated the first one so many months ago, back before they’d rescued Crosshair. Giving it away the first time had caused them a little trouble since Tech had had to build that second one to check Crosshair for the chip, but with the Batch all together and dechipped Hunter didn’t see it being a problem again and Rex needed all the equipment he could get his hands on. 

So with AZI and the medics working around the clock they managed to dechip all the 481st clones within those two months, freeing all of them and adding another two hundred clones to the population of Rex’s base. Apparently once he’d been dechipped the rogue ARC trooper had been extremely apologetic for all the concussions he’d dished out to the clones that had been on guard when he broke out, which everyone seemed to find more amusing than anything, and Captain Gregor had quickly roped the ARC into helping him with his continuing efforts to train the nat-borns. Regardless Hunter didn’t envy the officers trying to manage all those people, although technically Rex and Wolffe had managed entire legions back during the war, so this was probably much easier, even if the resources required were harder to get ahold of. 

Several things had all converged at the end of those two months though, there was the dechipping of the 481st, Rex’s promotion to commander, and - although not of great importance to the regs - Crosshair’s decant day. As such at the end of the month the regs threw a massive party to celebrate. The clones and nat-borns alike went all out, making a festival of sorts with homemade games, costumes, and special food. It was all a little make-shift, given they didn’t have a lot to work with, but Hunter was still impressed by what they managed to accomplish with so little and in such a short period of time. 

The event really started in the evening, when the colorful lanterns hanging off every building and stand lit up like stars in the night. Some of the nat-borns had musical instruments they had taken with them when they fled their old lives and they made an ensemble to play for everyone. People danced and cheered and laughed raucously. Unsurprisingly several stills had been set up at some point since the formation of the base and there was alcohol on offer.

The Batch was a little overwhelmed by it all, Hunter especially with all the noise, but Omega had never been to a festival before and her eyes were like saucers as she ran from stand to stand, playing games and trying to win the prizes of candy and handmade doodads. Crosshair obligingly won her a special treat that was some mysterious cross between a dumpling and a cake by shooting at a target with a toy gun, hitting it dead center with all six shots. In turn the rest of them tried to win him prizes for his decant day, trying for the games with edible rewards that weren’t overwhelmingly sweet things he wouldn’t like. He acted like it didn’t matter to him in the slightest, but Hunter could tell he was having fun and that made the sergeant happy just on its own. His littlest brother had been through so much over the last year and he really deserved to have a good decant day.

Commander Wolffe had insisted on there being a ceremony for Rex’s promotion, even though Rex seemed to be embarrassed by the spectacle of it, especially all the cheering. When that was over and the Batch had gotten themselves actual food from one of the many stands rather than just sweets, they had settled down on a little hill that overlooked the rest of the base. Captain Howzer showed up out of the blue with his own food not long after, settled in next to Crosshair, and immediately started teasing him. Crosshair griped back at him, but Hunter could tell he didn’t mind that either. 

As if they had some semblance of Hunter’s own tracking abilities, more regs showed up and invited themselves into the gathering. First were Howzer’s two buddies, Sgt. Skroll and Klacks, who plopped down on Crosshair’s other side and joined in making fun of him. Then came the three regs Crosshair and Wrecker had apparently made friends with in the prison, Catcher, Trapper, and Boil, who settled next to Wrecker and took turns distracting each other so they could try to steal food off each other’s plates. The regs they had rescued from Actlyon and Belgaroth stopped by, with Snare and Needle making a ruckus while Crys did nothing to stop them and Hawk and Warthog, sporting strange costumes and a pair of painted wooden masks that reminded Hunter of animals he’d seen on Pantora, showed up to pleasantly enjoy the boisterous energy even if they mostly kept to themselves. 

Hunter was more than a little overwhelmed by the ever-increasing group of regs and he could tell Tech felt the same way, even if Crosshair was largely distracted by Howzer and his buddies, Wrecker by the prison trio, and Echo and Omega by everyone in general. If somebody had told Hunter a year ago that something like this would happen, that they’d be surrounded by regs who wanted to party with them instead of harass them, Hunter would have called that person a goddamn liar. Yet somehow that was what had happened. It was so contrary to everything Hunter had always known about the regs that he had a hard time processing it. 

“So I hear it’s your decant day, ad’ika,” Captain Howzer said to Crosshair in a stage whisper. The other regs whooped when they heard it, but they seemed to know better than to slap the sniper on the back or shake him the way they did to each other. Crosshair put up with that sort of thing from Captain Howzer and his siblings, but the regs seemed to know it was a select allowance that didn’t extend to just anybody. That was something that had always been true about Hunter’s littlest brother, but Hunter suspected it had become more important after Crosshair’s time with Rampart. Only certain people were allowed to touch him and only in certain ways and surprisingly even the regs who didn’t know why seemed to respect that. Another thing Hunter would never have guessed they were capable of being so considerate about.

“How old are you now, Cross?” Boil asked curiously.

“Six,” Crosshair said with a sigh like he knew exactly how everyone would react to that.

“You’re kidding! ” Catcher gasped, choking on a bite of his dinner and falling into a fit of coughing and hacking that caused Boil to thump him on the back.

Crosshair raised his eyebrows at the medic and Trapper grinned, “You're not kidding!”

“He is not,” Captain Howzer said lightly, “He is but a babe in the woods.”

“You guys are a batch right?” Boil asked, looking around at Hunter, Wrecker, and Tech, “So isn’t it your decant day too?”

“Nope!” Wrecker said brightly, “Just Cross. We’re a batch, but Hunter an’ me are a year older than Cross an’ half a year older than Tech.”

“How does that work?” Klacks asked them curiously after taking a sip of a drink that smelled so strongly of alcohol that Hunter was surprised it hadn’t melted through his cup, “I’ve been meaning to ask.”

Skroll nodded, “I was wondering about that too.” He had one of Dex’s super powerful nutritional drinks that smelled just as strongly of artificial grape flavoring as Klacks’s did of alcohol. 

“We had different cook times,” Wrecker replied, which only served to make the regs look at him funny.

“What Wrecker means to say,” Tech cut in, “Is that while we all were created as a single batch at the same time, our mutations caused our development periods in the tube to vary wildly.”

“Ah, Wrecker was just saying some of you had to cook longer than the others to be ready for decanting,” Catcher concluded, once he was capable of breathing again.

Wrecker grinned, “Yeah exactly. Cross had to cook the longest so he’s the baby in our batch.”

Crosshair made a face at being called a baby for the second time in less than five minutes, but he didn’t actually say anything about it.

“No wonder Captain - er I mean Commander - Rex and Captain Howzer call you ‘kids’,” Trapper laughed, “You’re crazy young!’

“You’re just old,” Crosshair said snidely, to which Trapper brought a hand to his chest and gasped like he’d just been horribly insulted. 

“Excuse you!” Trapper shot back, “I am third gen! If anybody is old it's Catcher!”

Catcher sighed and Howzer grinned, “First gen I’m guessing,” the captain said and Catcher nodded.

“Us oldies are always stuck keeping these brats in line,” the medic lamented.

“Ain’t that the truth!” Howzer laughed. 

Snare made a series of gesticulations and the group of regs laughed. Apparently Rex had set up Galactic Sign lessons after all, although the Batch had been too busy getting their asses repeatedly kicked by the universe to be a part of that. Tech clearly knew it though, as he gave a mellow nod in response to whatever Snare had said. 

“This is sorta like a big decant day party for Crosshair!” Omega said cheerfully.

“If you squint,” Echo added with a grin.

Omega laughed, “I’ve never been to a party like this before! It’s really fun!”

“Just wait until you’re big enough to drink!” Needle crowed, holding up his own cup of painfully strong smelling rotgut, “Then you can get absolutely trashed and have your brothers drag you into the fresher while you puke your guts out.”

Omega made a face and the regs cackled, “The perks of being an adult,” Howzer said, chuckling, “The first time my batchmates got me really drunk I threw my back out vomiting.”

“That’s disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself,” Crosshair said dryly.

“I am never ashamed of myself,” Howzer replied in a mild voice, “I have no shame, you should know that by now.”

“Yeah Crosshair, haven't you been paying attention at all? ” Skroll asked with a laugh.

Crosshair bit out a sharp remark that made the regs all laugh again, but Omega had gotten distracted and had crept over to Hawk and Warthog which distracted Hunter in turn. He watched her carefully, always ready to intervene if something bad happened, although he was starting to feel like that was less likely than it had ever been before.

“I like your costumes,” she said a little shyly.

The two of them had pushed their masks up to the tops of their heads so they could eat and they both glanced at each other before smiling at her. 

“Warthog’s started a romance with a Pantoran refugee here and she insisted on giving us these. She made a whole bunch for the party,” Hawk explained mellowly, “They’re some kind of cultural thing Pantorans make for celebrations.”

Warthog elbowed his brother in the ribs at the teasing way he said ‘romance’, but Hawk just laughed at him.

“Do you think she’d give me one?” Omega asked hopefully.

Warthog hummed thoughtfully and then nodded, “Yeah I know she made some youngling-sized ones, since some of the other refugees have kids, so she probably has one that’ll fit you.”

Omega whipped around and fixed Hunter with her most killer puppy eyes, “Can we Hunter? They’re so cool! ”

Hunter sighed. He really couldn’t say no to her when she was making that face at him. “Sure, once everybody is done eating we can go find this lady and ask her.”

Omega flung herself at Hunter and nearly knocked his plate out of his hands as she looped her arms around his neck and thanked him profusely while kicking her little legs excitedly and if that wasn’t worth the hassle he didn’t know what was.

The regs laughed at the happy display and Howzer immediately jumped on the opportunity to tease somebody by saying, “And I thought I was a softy!” he crowed in delight, “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger, Hunter!”

Omega grinned as she sat back enough for Hunter to see her face, although she was still in his lap.

“You are a softy, buir Howzer,” Skroll cackled, “The only difference is the kid that’s got you wrapped around his little finger is a lot meaner .”

Crosshair snorted into his drink, but didn’t deny the accusation on either account. Hunter couldn’t help but smile at that too, woe be upon Howzer for that, Crosshair could be just as much of a nuisance as Tech when he felt like it, worse even, since he caused trouble because he was just like that even when he wasn’t actually trying to stir anything up. Hunter’s littlest brother was 60% trouble, 30% attitude, and 10% pure deadly skill.

Hunter and Howzer had settled back on even terms since the lecture he and Rex had given the Batch. Admittedly Hunter had been extremely annoyed with Howzer for a few weeks after the sergeant had been made to accept the idea of his brothers going to see the mind-healer. He’d known it had been Crosshair who’d convinced Tech and Wrecker and Hunter blamed Howzer for putting the idea in his littlest brother’s head to begin with. They’d talked about it though, with Howzer checking in with him a few days after the decision was made.

The sergeant had been simmering with anger at the time, still frustrated that they were taking this risk, but what could he do besides completely override his brothers wishes, knowing it’d only lead them to going around him? The fact that the captains were right about what his brothers needed had only made it worse, because they’d known what to do when Hunter had been struggling to figure it out for gods only knew how long with no success. He’d felt so helpless for so long and then they’d put forth the worst possible solution like it was nothing and his brothers had accepted it, how could he not be angry with Howzer?

“How’re you holding up?” Howzer had asked him when he’d pulled the sergeant aside after dropping Crosshair off at the Marauder after their daily workout. The captain knew they felt better when they knew Crosshair wasn’t wandering around the base by himself and had taken to walking him back.

“Frankly Captain I’m extremely unhappy about this,” Hunter had bitten out, his voice tight. Howzer had just given him an annoyingly understanding look.

“I’m sure Crosshair went over everything I said to him about the safety of this, so I won’t repeat it to you, but you’re making a good call here, I promise you. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”

Hunter had bared his teeth at him for a split second before purposefully reeling his temper back in. Howzer making promises about things he couldn’t possibly guarantee hadn’t done anything good for his mood. “You can’t know it won’t go wrong, maybe if you had somebody already, somebody you knew then I’d accept that reassurance, but you don’t know who this person is going to be anymore than I do. I respect you Captain, I do, but I won’t say I’m not angry with you.”

Howzer had sighed and nodded, Hunter suspected that here he would have put his hand on Crosshair’s shoulder had he been in Hunter’s place, but Hunter and Howzer didn’t have that sort of relationship. Maybe at some point they’d get there, but they definitely hadn’t reached that point yet. Hunter did trust Howzer, but he didn’t really know him like Crosshair did.

“I’m sorry for putting you through this kid, I know you’re scared, I’d be scared too, but just know that if this person turns out rotten and they do anything to hurt you or your vode you can come to me or Rex and we’ll turn them into paste, in fact if that happens and you don’t come to us about it I’ll turn you into paste too,” the captain had smiled even as he made the threat and Hunter wasn’t sure how he was supposed to take that, “We’re here to watch your back, Hunter. Let us do that, even if you’re pissed at us.”

“I trust Rex,” Hunter had said slowly, “And I’ve trusted you this far…so I’ll trust you again. Just don’t let me down. This is a high stakes gamble and if it goes wrong I’m putting it on you for roping Crosshair into this and pushing him to convince everybody else. If I didn’t know you were trying to help I’d call you a manipulative son of a Hutt for that alone.”

Howzer had given him a slightly apologetic looking smile, “I’m a sneaky shabuir sometimes, I’ll admit that freely, but I just wish I could get my hands on whoever it was that made you so afraid of this, digging graves is hard work but it’d be worth it just to put them in the ground.”

Hunter had just snorted at that, “The people responsible don’t deserve graves, you’d be better leaving them to rot in the sun for the animals to pick clean.”

The captain had let out his own snort and sighed, “It’ll be alright kid, if this doesn’t work out something else will, we’re not about to give up on you. Just do what you do, keep your vode out of trouble to the best of your abilities, and Rex and I will pick up whatever slack is left over. I can promise you that much.”

“Alright,” Hunter had huffed, “I’ll hold you to that.”

Somehow Howzer’s smile had stilled something tense and shivering in Hunter’s heart. He understood how Crosshair had come to be so close to the reg captain, Howzer was pushy and opinionated, but he was also stable, kind, and reassuring. Hunter got it, he really did.

“Hunter!” Hunter blinked, brought back to the present by Omega’s voice and her little hands shaking his shoulder insistently, “Hunter if you don’t eat your dinner then we’ll never get to talk to the lady before she runs out of costumes!”

Hunter refocused and smiled at her indulgently, “Yeah alright, sorry for spacing out, kiddo. I’ll be finished in a minute.”

Omega sat back, eyeing him suspiciously, checking to see if he was just saying that to pacify her, before she scampered out of his lap and over to Tech to get him to finish his food as well. Hunter shot his little brother a commiserating look over Omega’s head when she started patting him insistently on the knees and Tech returned the look with something unbothered. He truly didn’t mind her pestering him it seemed, Hunter had always wondered how Tech simultaneously managed to have both very little patience for nonsense and yet at the same time have the infinite patience of a Jedi master the rest of the time. 

“I will finish eating when I finish eating and not a second before,” Tech told the little girl blandly. He would not be hurried it seemed and she fixed him with a mighty pout that bounced ineffectively off Tech’s durasteel nerves like a pebble against the wall of a fortress. Hunter was a little jealous, Omega really did have him wrapped around her little finger. 

Echo laughed at Omega’s melodramatic despair and set his empty plate down next to him so he could ruffle her hair, “Patience cadet.”

Omega turned her pout on him instead and he quailed underneath its weight. Hunter laughed, at least he wasn’t the only one that couldn’t withstand it. Surreptitiously he checked on Wrecker and Crosshair’s plates and found to his pleasure that both of them had eaten everything they’d had. They'd both been good about eating everything they were given recently, but after months of fighting with Crosshair to get the sniper to eat anything at all, checking on him was pure habit and so was the relief he felt. Wrecker had just been added on to that because he’d lost all that weight, not because he’d ever resisted eating his meals the way their littlest brother had.

Satisfied that his brothers were alright, despite being surrounded by regs, Hunter started to actually eat his food for real. 

In the end they all waited for Tech to finish, although the only one who was really in a hurry was Omega. Wrecker and Crosshair seemed content to spend time with their family and reg friends doing nothing in particular and Echo was basking in the happy atmosphere like a lizard in the sun. Hunter was happy too, even if some part of him was still unsure about the situation deep down. He did his best to stifle those shivering nerves in his heart, this was fine, everybody was happy and relaxed, the regs weren’t going to suddenly turn on them, this was safe. It was safe. Maybe if he repeated that to himself enough he’d eventually believe it.

“Fiiiinally!” Omega cried once Tech had finished eating and stood up. Hunter got to his feet as well and the movement got Crosshair and Wrecker’s attention. 

“We goin’ somewhere?” Wrecker asked curiously.

“Hunter promised we’d go see if I can have a costume like Hawk and Warthog!” Omega chirruped.

Wrecker glanced over at the two clones in question, looking over their outfits with interest before nodding and getting to his feet. “Could I have one?” he asked in a hopeful tone.

“Sorry bud, but you’re definitely too big,” Warthog said lightly.

Wrecker pouted but Crosshair stood up, stretched out his long limbs, and said, “Your head might be solid fat, but you should at least be able to wear a mask.”

“Yeah!” Omega said happily, “You can ask for a mask! Maybe the lady will have ones that match so we can be twins!”

Wrecker grinned hugely at the idea and laughed, “Then nobody’ll be able to tell us apart!” He joked.

“I can’t imagine how confusing that’ll be,” Echo chuckled as he got to his feet as well and with all the Batch up Omega started dragging on Hunter’s arms.

Hunter glanced at Warthog and Hawk and asked, “So where are we going exactly?”

Hawk grinned and said, “It’s the first stall on the right of the armory. Warthog’s girlfriend’s name is Nalia. She’s dressed up in purple with a mask that has really big teeth on it. It’s some Pantoran predator, but I don’t remember the name of it. You remember Warthog?”

“I don’t know what it’s called either and she’s not my girlfriend, osi’kovid,” Warthog snapped.

Crosshair snorted and Omega started dragging on Hunter’s arms with her full bodyweight.

“Let’s goooo!” she moaned.

“Don’t be bratty or we’ll sell you,” Crosshair chided her. All it did was make her turn and stick her tongue out at him.

“Well I guess we’re off then,” Echo said to the other regs as Hunter gave up and started walking down the hill.

The regs laughed, “Don’t let the little girl tell you what to do all the time or I might promote her over you, Hunter!” Howzer called as Crosshair and Wrecker said their goodbyes to everybody.

Snare signed something that Hunter didn’t understand, but Tech replied with a snort and “Yes I would be interested in seeing that as well.”

“Huuunter!” Omega groaned as she hung off him.

“Alright alright we’re going,” Hunter sighed and let her pull him along, seeing to his relief that his brothers were following behind with no complaint. If Crosshair had really wanted to do something else Hunter would have told Omega no on this whole thing, given it was his decant day, but he seemed perfectly happy to go along with it, so Hunter saw no reason not to indulge her so long as she didn’t misbehave too badly.

They did eventually make it to the stall with the woman in question, Nalia, and to Omega’s delight she did have costumes left. None of the Batch were about to take off their armor to put the soft brightly colored robes on, although they did accept cloaks that they pinned at their necks with wooden pins as intricately carved and painted as the animal masks that they also accepted from Nalia. Omega did put on the robe, since it fit easily over the clothes she was wearing already and she did a twirl to show them once she’d picked out a mask. Wrecker picked out one that matched hers, just like they’d hoped, and then the giant picked his sister up and put her on his shoulder. Nalia inspected her work once they’d all been dressed to her satisfaction and then she allowed them to leave with a kiss on the cheek, even if the teeny woman had to stand on her tiptoes to kiss Wrecker’s cheek despite him bending down for her.

Hunter looked over his siblings with interest. Wrecker’s cloak was deep blue with a dark pin at the collar in the shape of a fish and a mask that looked like some sort of sea monster. Omega’s was the same although she had purple and red robes to go with it. Crosshair was dressed in a forest green cloak with a pin like a twisting vine and a mask like some sort of feline. Echo’s cloak was gold with a sun shaped pin and a primate mask, Tech’s mask looked like a great bird and his cloak was blood red with a black feather shaped pin, while Hunter’s own cloak was sky blue with a pin shaped like a predator’s talons and a toothy wolf-like mask. They looked like a pretty impressive group all together and Hunter had to wonder not for the first time how Nalia had managed to do all this. She must have been working on it for months. He had listened to her explain how she’d figured out Dantooine substitutes for the Pantoran plants and minerals she’d been taught to make the paints and dyes with and that alone must have taken ages to do.

Finally appeased, Omega let her brothers go back to doing whatever caught their eye for the rest of the night, happy to let Wrecker carry her around until something bright and distracting inevitably grabbed her attention and she squirmed until her big brother set her down on her feet so she could run in the direction of whatever had interested her. When she was done Wrecker picked her back up and carried her until it happened again, with the cycle repeating until all of them had been worn out by the festival and decided to retire for the night.

Inevitably they were all hungover the next morning and Omega, realizing they all felt terrible, helpfully grabbed everyone hydropaks and painkillers before applying all the patience she had seemed to lack the night before and letting them rest. Regardless of his pounding head Hunter forced himself to get up and get himself together. 

“Where are you going?” Crosshair mumbled from the pile of blankets on his bed, face pressed flat into the padding on the bunk to protect his eyes from the light. 

“Wanted to check and see if Wolffe or Rex need us to do anything, we’ve been sitting idle for a while and it’s making me anxious. If not then I might have us swing by Ord Mantell to check in with Cid,” Hunter explained.

“Oh joy ,” Crosshair grumbled.

“I’ll go with you, Hunter,” Tech said, pushing himself up. He’d had less to drink last night than the rest of them so he was the most put together, like he always was.

“Somebody’s gotta,” Wrecker huffed into his pillow. 

Echo just let out an agonized moan at the continuing noise and shoved his head under his own pillow. Hunter could relate, he felt the same way, but laying in his bunk with all his worries swirling around in his head was making him feel worse rather than better. He’d rather do something about it even if every photon of light and decibel of sound was like an ice pick in his brain.

***

Hunter felt better after talking to Rex, he and Wolffe actually had had something for them to do and that had been something of a relief. Hunter understood that the food and space in the hanger weren’t conditional, but he knew he’d feel better if they were doing something to earn it, so long as it wasn’t something that would kill them.

When he and Tech got back they entered the Marauder and strode towards the bunkroom past Echo and Wrecker, who were awake sitting on crates and leaning against the walls in the back as they chatted softly with each other, but before he could make it to the door Echo grabbed him by the crook of his elbow. Hunter stopped and turned slightly to look at him, surprised.

“Don’t go in there,” the ARC said softly, “not for a while.”

Hunter frowned, “Why? What’s going on?”

His brothers glanced at each other and then Echo and Wrecker grinned when they looked back at Hunter. “Crosshair’s paintin’ his armor,” Wrecker told him in a voice so low it was practically a whisper.

Hunter sucked in a startled breath and had to school his face so he didn’t break out into a massive delighted grin of his own. “You’re worried if one of us interrupts him then he’ll change his mind?”

His brothers glanced at each other again and then Echo shrugged.

“It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done such a thing,” Tech pointed out, leaning sideways to meet Hunter’s eye. He looked both extremely pleased and a little cautious.

It wouldn’t, but Hunter could hear Omega in the bunkroom chattering at his little brother happily, so he figured if Crosshair had been in a mood to let something change his mind he wouldn’t have put up with the little girl talking his ear off in the first place.

“Omega’s in there,” Hunter reassured his brothers, “if he was going to stop because he was interrupted, he’d have done it the second she showed up. I think it’s safe.”

“You’re certain? If he changes his mind now he might never paint his armor,” Tech said, having caught on immediately to Echo and Wrecker’s concerns.

Hunter heard Crosshair make a snide remark in a low voice and his sister let out a peel of giggles. He smiled, “He’s in a good mood,” Hunter told them, “He won’t be bothered by us.”

They glanced at each other again, but when Hunter opened the bunkroom door they all followed him in and cautiously settled into their own activities. Crosshair, who was indeed painting his armor, had Omega draped across his lap and the both of them looked up.

“Look!” Omega chirped at Hunter, “Crosshair’s finally painting his ugly imperial armor! Now he’ll look good!”

Hunter chuckled as he hoisted himself onto his bunk, “Wouldn’t take much to look better than a stormtrooper.”

Crosshair snorted and to Hunter’s relief - for there was always a little nervous part of him that second guessed every decision he made - the sniper dropped his eyes back to the familiar dark chestplate he had in front of him and dragged his red-stained brush down the armor’s center.

“I’d rather not look like them anymore,” Crosshair said blandly after a moment and Hunter’s heart swelled. 

They’d had their littlest brother back for a while, but now it was finally official.