Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It started right when Hunter saw Crosshair go over the waterfall with ghostly familiar figure. Starts before he even hits the water, and the sticky humidity turns to rain, the rushing waterfall turns to thunder, and dark purple trees and sky warps to blue.

The energy fields are off, and he’s alone.

There’s a jagged flash of lightning, brightening the outside. Towering, jagged mountain peaks rewrite the rough jungle terrain.

Thunder crashes in the background.

An entire world, re and unwritten.

Hunter turns, blaster drawn, but nothing. He couldn’t have teleported. That doesn’t happen. It doesn’t. Something’s wrong, and he’s not dreaming.

Lightning flashes again, their surging electric current flickering across the sky and ground and prickling over his skin.

The others were just here, but now they’re gone, and Hunter doesn’t know what happened. He has no idea where he is, or where his family is, He needs to be helping Crosshair. He just went over a waterfall, but there’s nothing here. There’s no one here. His entire squad – his family is gone. Hunter’s here alone.

Something about this planet is wrong. Hunter can always feel an entire planet’s surface, but this is vast and unending. Open and seamless. He doesn’t get it. He has to get home. That shadow was chasing them, and they need help. He doesn’t know where he is.

Hunter’s never been alone before, but he is now. And he has to agree with Echo on one thing – he hates solitary. He’s not crazy, because this place is very much real, but nothing about it makes sense. People don’t teleport. Hunter feels every flicker of electricity, every pulsing and shifting electron. It’s overwhelming and his head throbs at the flashing of energy light.

Lightning flashes again, and Hunter sees someone else the same time he senses and smells him. “Echo?”

“Hunter?” he asks over the rain, looking at his hand and scomp, then back up at him. “How’d you get here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah. Same.” He huffs out an annoyed sound.

Lightning flashes again. The storm is bad. They need shelter. If Echo’s here, Hunter doesn’t know what it means for the rest of his family. Focus. He has to get himself and Echo somewhere safe until the storm is up enough they find a transport, or way to contact someone.

The energy tenses up ahead – some sort of concentrated source. Something distantly bluish white shimmers through the darkness, shining down on a towering structure. “There,” Hunter says, pointing, “It might give us some cover.”

They could be hostile. He misses Tech. Tech would know. He always knew, but he’s gone because of Hunter, the same way everyone else is now.

Lightning crashes beside them, a zillion electrons rippling outwards and twisting through the air, rushing through him. Prickling over his skin and inside and out. He feels it coming, and Hunter ducks aside. The bolts are too frequent and violent, twisting and jagged. He tackles Echo aside as another comes down, and they roll into a rocky formation together.

“Storm’s getting worse,” Hunter grunts as they stumble to their feet – Echo gives him a hand he doesn’t need to stand. There’s a long way on, and they have to keep moving.

“No kidding,” Echo agrees, “I’m not so sure we’re making it through in one piece.”

Lightning flashes again, and this time the energy doesn’t fade. It stays, flaring and flickering and burning, the air vibrant and energy waterfalling into him. Everything’s slow, too slow. Hunter turns back to Echo, and another jagged bolt zigzags downward.

This one is different, tinged with purple, and Hunter tries to move, to tackle Echo to safety again, but the current is drawn to the metal interfacing in his older brother’s entire body. It lights with a flash, and for a millisecond, Echo looks glow-y.

Hunter yells his name, trying to move because the current will short him out and kill him, but something explodes. He’s thrown backwards towards the rocks, but something ripples and shifts and Hunter hits a duracrete floor somewhere.

He lands on his back, blinking up at the stormy sky. “Echo?” The thunder and rain drown out his voice, shattering it into a million pieces against the mountainsides. Hunter stumbles to his feet, turning toward the storm. “Echo!”

Nothing.

He’s alone.

Echo’s – no. Echo survived getting blown up. He got three of his limbs ripped off at once and fractured his spine and got half of him burned off by the fire and lava fumes – no. Echo’s not dead. He can’t be.

But is that any less possible than Tech?

Echo. All of them. He’s supposed to be with Wrecker and Crosshair and Omega and Emerie. Not here. He failed them again, and he can’t – They’re going to die and that’s going to be his fault because he can’t stop it. He can’t stop anything.

He hits the ground on his knees. Tears burn his eyes and Hunter rips his helmet off as they spill down his face. Crosshair. Echo. Omega. Tech. He failed all of them. His brothers his purpose his family his –

“They’re all going to die here because of your failed leadership.”

“You’re becoming a liability.”

“Every choice you’ve made since Kaller has been wrong.”

“She went through what she did because you failed.”

Helplessness is exhausting. Just like it was watching Tech fall and feeling the charge in Crosshair’s blaster pressed to his back when all he could do was stand and watch. Helpless.

He keeps on failing. All he wants is his family safe, but he can’t do that can’t do anything.

“They’re all going to die here –”

“ – because you failed.”

No. No. They can’t.

His hands flicker out into an aqua mist before reforming.

Okay.

Yeah.

He’s definitely hallucinating.

Nothing hurts, but something is definitely wrong.

Hunter looks up. He’s at the base of the building they were heading towards. The dim light from the diamond-glowing structure shines down on him. It’s a softly glowing light in the darkness, and it feels more than visible. The lightning and storm suddenly feels far away.

“This is your test,” a disembodied voice says.

Hunter tenses, jerking to his feet and going for his blaster. “Who are you?”

“Go inside. You’ll find what you need.” That could just as well be a bad thing. He doesn’t know what’s inside, but the lightning is bad, and he does need cover. Echo. Echo could’ve used the cover. Lightning’s drawn to him, but that was too fast. He can’t –

He has to find his squad. They need his help. (Do they? Or does he just think they do? Does he just want them to? Because he has nowhere else to go and it’s his only purpose? He’s the one who got Tech killed. He’s why Omega was captured, why Crosshair was hurt. He let him walk away. Made him walk away. And – Crosshair made his own choices and Hunter did everything he could to stop him, but that doesn’t – make the guilt go away. Maybe it wasn’t enough.)

He doesn’t know where they are. They all could be hurt, and that was because of him. It always is. He wants to cry or scream his throat raw. His tears are hot on his face, and standing is hard, but Hunter takes up his helmet and moves for the tower.

Hunter knows the most difficult part of being a leader sometimes is trying to survive. Comms spark and static when he tries to reach out. There’s no use. He has no way of helping them when that’s the only thing that matters.

There’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing he can do, and all Hunter wants – as always – is to protect his squad and get them out of here. They need to get back to Pabu safely.

He shouldn’t’ve let Crosshair go, but he wanted to trust him and Crosshair knew what he was up against, but then – this. There’s nothing Hunter can do for him. For anyone.

He can’t lose them again. It’s his entire family.

He can’t fail them again.

“They’re all going to die here –”

All he can do right now is wait.

Inside is black and aqua. Hunter’s colors. Just minus the red.

The energy field is rippling as though there’s a person in here, but Hunter sees nothing. He can’t feel the heartbeat. He lowers his blaster, holstering it.

Energy is burning in the air again. The same as when Echo – when the air whips around him and energy pulses and burns, touching his skin and snaking beneath. Hunter gasps at the burning that flares up. His knees hit the floor.

It’s waterfalling into him, burning and twisting and something’s reforming. He cries out against it as something is ripped apart inside him. It feels like every cell of his body is on fire, burning in and out, shredding him to nothing until darkness finally claims him.

***

The waterfall ends far below. The night air is sticky but cold and everything is cold or maybe it’s just Tech. Maybe it’s just that he’s fighting his brother who killed all of Rex’s men and is trying to kill him, too. Crosshair doesn’t know, but when he throws them both over the cliff edge, he expects to hit the water. He doesn’t.

Something changes. It’s shifting and morphing, the dark purple surroundings rippling and shifting, rewriting into dark orange, and they hit the ground together.

Crosshair grunts as his side smacks into the rocky ground and they roll away from each other. His armor absorbs most of the blow, but ow – pain stabs through his side and a good dozen other places from the landing.

Also, what the kriff?

Crosshair pushes himself up, looking around. He’s on –

They’re – actually, where are they? There’s the rushing sound of something too thick to be pure water but waterfall-like in the background. Lava. They’re on a rocky ledge out of the middle of a lava flow, which wasn’t here earlier, and they’re in a pit somewhere. The walls around them are towering and he can see the top way up, but with the lava flowing from the inside down, melting the walls and burning everything away, there’s no way out.

It should be sweltering here. It should be too hot for them to breathe and anything to live – there’s no plants here, just bare rock – but something feels cold.

This isn’t where they were. Something’s not right. But he’s here, and Tech’s here, and the others aren’t. There’s no way out.

There’s a flowing lava river parting them off from an island in the center of the well. There’s a design in its middle. Not one he recognizes, though Tech probably would. Hunter and Echo might. It’s jagged and the turns are too sharp and the angles too narrow. Whatever it is, Crosshair’s guess is it’s bad.

A shuffle and a hiss has him look to where not-Tech is picking himself up, knife in hand. Crosshair flips himself aside as the blade slashes down at him.

(It’s just him and Tech. Like right back in the training room.)

Something red and misty crawls out of the ground, the design lighting up and shimmering red, creeping towards him.

Something’s wrong with this place, something’s –

Crosshair ducks barely in time to dodge a vibroblade Tech pulled out of stars-knows-where. He ducks back into a roll, jerking his arms up to keep the blade away. “You had your chance to be one of us.” His words are violently furious with an anger Crosshair knows so well.

“I’m going to give you what you never gave me. A chance.”

“You offered us a chance, Crosshair. This is yours.”

Crosshair kicks him back and jolts to his feet, going for his hand blaster. Tech shoves his hand aside and the blaster falls, clanking onto the rocks. His back slams into the rocks again when Teck kicks him. His reflexes are fast, way too fast and Crosshair doesn’t want to die here –

“– you wanna stay here and die, that’s your call –”

The blade is close, and Crosshair tries to brace his arms against it, but it’s so close. (Is that how Hunter felt? Wrecker?)

“You chose the wrong side!”

The blade is shifting closer and stars this is Tech he’s going to die he’s –

No. This is Tech stars this is his fault what did he do what did he do whatdidhedowhatwhy –

He doesn’t want to die. He’s the one who dragged Tech into this, even if he didn’t mean to and Crosshair is why his brother lost his mind, and he made this happen. He took him here but stars he doesn’t want to die he doesn’t want Tech to be the one who kills him.

He’s shaking and his arms are straining as he shoves, and there’s a lava flow right beside him. One wrong move and he’ll –

He’s going to die here.

“ – you wanna stay here –”

Stop.

Crosshair gasps, trying to angle the knife away so it doesn’t hit him or at least nothing vital, tears of raw desperation burning his eyes. He wants to be able to make it. He’s tired of being nothing. He wants to get out of here. He wants to go home. He wants Hunter.

He maneuvers Tech’s blade aside, and it rebounds off the rock wall, thumping onto the rocky ledge.

Crosshair shoves himself upright, and Tech’s helmet smashes ungracefully into his face and he throws him. Crosshair hits the ground next to the lava flow and rolls over. This is literally begging someone to get burned to death. This is lava – someone’s gonna end up incinerated, and Crosshair can’t think of anything other than the desperate, gnawing panic in his chest. He can’t let his brother kill him.

He deserves to die here and he knows that but everything hurts and he’s so, so tired of being in pain. That’s all there is to feel, all that never changes.

He rams his boot into his brother’s stomach, shoving him back, and rolls to his feet again. The heat of the lava is licking at his boots, and he shifts forward to avoid it.

Tech’s standing again. Crosshair’s blaster is near his foot, and his rifle is stars-know-where. The molten rocks’ golden orange glow glints off Tech’s helmet. He looks sinisterly terrifying, and for the first time Crosshair just knows. He’s going to die here. He thought he would, but the knowing is terrifying. He can’t do this. Tech wouldn’t hurt him and this isn’t him but it’s still his brother and he can’t think of anything but the raw, aching need to not be hurt by his brother again.

The Shadow Tech’s fist slams into him and Crosshair steps back to catch himself but his boot hits nothing and he falls into the happily waiting lava river below.

A strangled sob wracks his body and he tries to catch something but there’s nothing and no one and he wants to stop being unseen, unnoticed and forgotten. He wants to burn the world. Wants to stop hurting. Stop feeling. Stop – just, stop.

The air is thickly dark with soot and smoke. Something explodes. He doesn’t see fire, but he hears and feels it. It’s hot and burning and it rips through every inch of him, tearing him apart. It’s burning. It’s ripping apart every cell in his body and he can’t breathe enough to scream. Tech’s here. The shadow of his brother is here and he could kill him while he can’t move and he could hurt him and Crosshair can’t – he can’t stop him.

He tries to get up, but he can’t. Everything’s distant and hazy.

He still can move but he shouldn’t be able to and something’s wrong and he doesn’t even know what. Crosshair hears something distant, but he can’t hear anything over the pounding of his own heart.

He’s on the surface somehow and when he opens his eyes and tries to find some semblance of Tech to help, the red mist wraps around shadow-Tech. Crosshair doesn’t remember seeing him go down, but he’s down. He’s struggling and Crosshair gasps faintly at his scream. He tries to move, but everything hurts too much stars he needs it to stop hurting he needs the riverbank he’s so, so tired of being hurt he wants it to stop.

He still hears Tech in the background. Just – a voice, distant and fragmented against the flowing rock.

Crosshair’s vision blacks out.

***

The electric voltage jolts through him, brilliant and lightening, exploding with a rush of purple. It runs through him, flesh and metal alike, burning at his joints and wire connections.

Echo falls, catching himself on his hand, panting. He shakes his head with a quiet angry snarl and tries to push himself up. His head is throbbing, and something feels different. He doesn’t know what it is.

The storm sounds distant, but the air is heavy and cold. There’s a burning darkness in the air, and it chills him to the core, more than the rain washing down on him. He feels something, like the million equations and numbers and information layered over programming every time he scomps in. It burns in the middle of his brain, layers of burning and heat, and he can envision the planet in his mind.

Energy swirls around and nearby – Hunter’s smoke-covered forest-presence is up at the tower. How Echo knows that, he doesn’t know. These are powers, feelings that only Jedi talk about. Something dark is burned under the ground, and another brilliant light somewhere far ahead. Everything is rolling and twisting and Echo grits his teeth as he tries to make it to his feet. He lost Hunter, and as capable as he might be, he’s still his little brother, and overwhelmingly stupid.

Echo lost his entire squad once. He has to get back to save this one.

Rex and the kid were on Teth, and he had to get back to save them. Echo doesn’t know what happened.

The sharp pain lancing through his head makes it hard to focus. He’s focusing on too much, way too much and seeing everything.

The air is staticky. It’s twisting, and there’s a bright smokey light ahead that Echo knows is there somehow even if he can’t see it.

“Well, there you are,” a voice says, and he would know that sound anywhere. A million years away and he could never forget it, lifetimes lived and gone.

Echo stands.

Lightning flashes, illuminating the figure in front of him. His armor is the same – blue and white, the red markings on his helmet. Flickers again, and his helmet’s off. His face is the same as Echo remembers. The five on his head stands out vividly, even in the darkness.

Echo tries to get his mouth to work. The most he can get out is a “what did you do to your hair?” He’s not kidding – Fives looks awful without it.

His twin throws head back and laughs. “Maybe I was trying to copy you.”

He could laugh. He wants to cry. Fives is dead. His twin brother is dead, and there’s no going back from this. This isn’t him. It’s not real. Or maybe Echo’s dead, too. “You never saw me like this.”

“I’ve been watching you a long time. I didn’t think I’d get my chance to come home, but here I am.”

He can’t breathe. His body shudders with a strangled sob. Fives. This is his brother. The only one he’s ever had, who he spent a lifetime without before he finally came home. And then – then – the war was so short, gone in a flash of flames.

Something’s burning inside him, and in his head he hears the distant “Echo look out” from a lifetime away. He remembers waking, aching and throbbing, his body foreign and remade. He remembers the agonized inability to feel as his spine fractured in half of a dozen places. And then he’d woke with a body not his own, staring at what was left of his arm with a panicky this isn’t mine this isn’t me what did they do to me.

He remembers the weight of Rex’s hands on his shoulders, the gentle worry in his older brother’s eyes and the calm steadfastness with which he stayed by his side. He remembers the “you’re safe now, you’re going home.”

Anakin and Tech had been shadowing behind him, identical looks of gentle worry in their wildly different colored eyes – the bright blue and dark brown. Both his family – his little brother, and his general – and both gone.

Gone like the shadows, and he remembers walking down the ramp of the Marauder onto Anaxes, scanning the hangar, expecting to see his twin brother waiting, but Fives was gone forever. And Echo had been furious. He’d been empty, and he wanted to burn the galaxy for what they did to his brother. It hadn’t seemed real, until it sunk in Fives wasn’t standing there as Kix and the droids checked him over. Fives would always be at his side when he was hurt, and Echo would be there for him.

It wasn’t real until it finally sunk in that Fives wouldn’t be at his side when he slept, that he never would be again, and with the shock of it came an overwhelming fierce need to burn. He wants to burn everything.

(The grief and hurt hadn’t hit until after he’d left. It’d been a couple weeks, and he’d been so moody Echo was half certain his new squad would kick him out, but they sat beside him the entire time.)

(Tech was beside him the entire time.)

(And Echo got him killed.)

(Rex was wrong about one thing. There’s no home for him to go back to.)

“You shouldn’t be here,” is all Echo can say.

Fives’ smile is as goofy as it always is. “Neither should you.”

Echo scoffs. Tears prick his eyes, but he hasn’t cried in weeks. He’s not breaking that streak. Fives. He shouldn’t be real, unless Echo’s dead, and that’s not impossible though still unlikely. Echo’s curse is being unable to die. He’d be a lot happier if he could. The mission gave him something to focus on. It gave him something so he could stop thinking. He didn’t have Fives.

All he had was to burn the Separatists out of the galaxy for what they did to him and his brother, but then the war ended, and he had nothing. Hunter didn’t want to fight, and Echo understood it, but he couldn’t live a life without a purpose. Yeah, he wanted the kid and his brothers to be happy, and leaving was hard but it was what he had to do.

The mission is always first.

They’re nothing without it.

Fives wasn’t like that. None of the brothers he loves are like that. That’s why they mean what they do to him. He wonders if Fives would have left. If he would have already won the war. It should have been him who was here instead.

There’s a gentle flickering of purple light reflecting off Fives’ armor, and Echo looks down. Ripples of purple energy are sparking off his body, flickering off his hand like shuddering electricity.

This isn’t normal.

Not a whole lot worse than being hit by a lightning bolt and surviving, though. Strange things are gonna happen from that.

“How are you here?” Echo asks, looking up at him.

“Same way you are,” Fives answers with a shrug, “Like I said. I found my way home. Couldn’t let you have all the fun without me.”

Echo chokes on a laugh, tears spilling down his face. “Fives.”

“I’m here,” he promises, and Echo wants to reach for him but he knows this can’t be right. This is Fives, but he’s gone. “You just have to reach me. Take me home, Echo.” There’s a soft gentleness in his eyes, one so hauntingly familiar, but then his form flickers and fizzes out like a hologram. Echo dives forward, trying to touch him, to make him stay but his hand falls through nothing and he hits the ground on his knees again.

Alone.

The storm’s back.

Purple electricity flickers and crackles over his body – maybe it should hurt, but it doesn’t, and Echo doesn’t care anymore.

He’s alone again. Always alone.

Fives was here, he was real, and now he’s gone.

Nothing’s there to see his tears but the distant thunder as it rips apart the skies.

Chapter Text

Omega groans quietly as she and Wrecker trudge along the narrow crevasse in the mountainside. Dead grass crunches under Wrecker’s feet. Omega’s a bit ahead, crossbow in hand, it’s green light standing out even against the flashing lightning. “I don’t understand any of this,” she grumbles, “We were just on Teth! How did we get here? Where’s everybody else?”

Wrecker pokes his comm again, but nothing happens. “I dunno.” He tries not to worry about Hunter. He can’t think his older brother won’t make it back again. They already lost Tech. He can’t let that happen to Hunter, too. Tech’s figure falling from sight is burned into his mind. He sees it every time he closes his eyes, and with Hunter’s wild recklessness, he – he wonders. He’s scared, and Hunter’s gone now. Wrecker has to keep the kid safe. He can’t let her be hurt again, either. He can’t lose her. Not again. “Just – uh, keep walkin’.”

Omega sighs. “I am.”

Lightning zigzags over the sky again. The rain won’t stop. The ground is muddy as they trek toward the cave Omega pointed out right when they got here.

“I just don’t get it,” Omega pipes up again, “Where’s Batcher? I was right beside Emerie – where’s everyone? Why aren’t our comms working, and how did we get here?”

Wrecker has no idea. Tech was the one who knew everything. Him and Hunter, and they’re just gone. He doesn’t know what happened to Crosshair, either, and he doesn’t wanna lose his little brother again. It was so hard to get him back.

Seeing everybody disappear was creepy though.

They stumble into the cave together, exhausted and wet.

Wrecker groans, shaking himself but the water clings stubbornly.

Omega trots ahead, up to the edge of –

The cave is glowing. There’s a creepy aqua glow radiating from down below, and Wrecker lowers his blaster-end toward the ground, and with all the monsters they’ve been running into, there’s probably another waiting for them.

Omega tiptoes to the edge of the cliff, then gasps softly. “Wrecker, take a look at this!”

“W – what is it?” he asks warily but follows her anyway. The drop is looooooong. They’re too close to the edge, and he’s almost certain the rock curves in a bit under them, and it could give out and they’d fall hundreds of feet just like Tech and get smashed to bits.

An aqua light shines from below, the flames licking skyward. Wrecker doesn’t see anything down there but rock. How is it burning?

“I’ve never seen that before,” Omega breathes, lowering and deactivating her crossbow. The flickering light reflects on her face, and her eyes are glinting pale green.

“Uh,” Wrecker worries, slowly backing away, “M – maybe we should just stay back.”

“I think it’s safe,” Omega whispers, “It’s calling me.”

He laughs, but she’s not joking. At least he doesn’t think she is – she’s not the same as the kid they lost. “W – what?”

“I need to go closer,” she repeats, running toward where a stairway leads down closer to the fire, “C’mon!”

Wrecker groans loudly, but he has to keep her safe, so he follows, anyway. The stairs are long, and there’s no rail. Who thought it was a good idea to carve stairs into a giant cliffside? Somethin’s wrong with this place.

Omega pauses at the end of the long, twisting staircase. “What’s that?” She’s pointing to a strange rock structure in the middle of the fire, with eight separate mini fires on the edge of the rock. It’s just rock. That can’t burn.

“Maybe we should go back,” Wrecker worries, stalled a distance behind her. The height is creepy, and he just wants to get Omega out of danger. He doesn’t want her to get hurt again. She’s already been gone so long and she’s so different now. He lost Crosshair, and then her. He can’t let either of them be hurt again.

Omega’s starting to say something, looking back at him, when the ground shudders. Wrecker yelps, scrambling away from the edge of the cliff. Something cracks, breaking, shattering, and Omega screams.

“Omega!” Wrecker yells, scrambling to his feet. Part of the wall broke off, and the stairs, and Omega’s clinging to the edge of the now-broken stairway. She gasps, trying to hold on, and the ground shudders again.

His little sister shrieks when she falls down down down toward the fire below, and Wrecker stops thinking altogether. She’s gonna die his little sister is gonna die and she’ll be hurt and he can’t let her. She’ll be gone, and won’t be coming back this time. He just needs her safe. She’s falling like Tech and she’ll be shredded before reaching the bottom. Wrecker can’t let her get hurt.

He wasn’t strong enough to help her when that’s all he is.

He won’t let her reach the end of the fall alone.

Wrecker jumps after.

(Like he wishes he could have with Tech.)

***

He tries to move, but the red-black mist is holding him down, burning and refitting, remaking like he was back in the training room, ripping him apart and re-piecing him together. He struggles but he can’t move and the raw pain of it is burning through him. Breathing is hard. That could as well be from the rushing lava, but forcing the natural cycling of his lungs is nigh impossible.

His vision blurs over, graying and then rewritten entirely.

“ – what I have to do – ”

“ – end the Clone Wars – “

“ – why – “

“ – mine now – ”

His mind spirals years into past and future.

Vividly, he sees his brothers, flashes and fragments of the life he lived. He sees Crosshair. Hears his laugh. Remembers pulling him to his feet after countless training sessions, mildly, because he was there too. Remembers sitting on the edge of his bed at night. Stares into the gutted face of his little brother. Remembers the shaky broken-ness in his voice when he called him.

Remembers the “who’s Tech?” he’d said in answer.

“He’s you. You’re my brother.”

He hadn’t understood it, but it hadn’t felt wrong, though he’d pulled his helmet on for the first time with a “if you want to survive, forget everything outside these walls.”

He sees it now, an entire lifetime flashed through his mind. Colors rolling and twisting, his life lived gone in a minute, as fast his mind itself – his mind that’s his mind it’s what makes him special that’s who he is – was ripped apart.

He had a life that was taken from him. A family.

“We’re a family, aren’t we?”

‘Then why don’t you act like it?”

He keeps seeing. A fast-forwarded swirl of his life, but it doesn’t stop. He watches the fight with Crosshair replaying, only in a water river instead of a lavafall. It’s the future, or what should have been, and it doesn’t stop.

He sees Crosshair struggling to stand and he shoves him underwater.

He struggles, unable to leverage himself up, reaching for him like he would’ve a year ago. Like any time before now. Tech feels the hand on his arm. Crosshair’s expression shifts from frantic and scared to exhaustedly accepting.

The Marauder – his home, the only home they’ve ever had, the only one that’s left – explodes in front of him, throwing Wrecker and Gonky into Pabu’s ocean. Wrecker’s hurt. Tech sees the blood streaked on his face, mostly washed off from the water.

He shoots Hunter down from a flying gunship. Takes out the pilot, and the ship veers off into the water.

“The people here are innocent.”

“Then you never should have come here in the first place.”

“Bring them in alive. Keep the damage minimal. And, CX-2. You may relieve CT-9904 of his hand. This operation does not have room for such defects.”

The hangar is lit gold by fire. Hunter’s downed, buried under a piece of rubble. CX-3 goes for Wrecker. He screams when the electricity engulfs him.

Crosshair, half conscious but still as fiercely stubborn as ever, dives for his blaster.

“You should be more careful with your shooting hand.”

Crosshair screams. His voice is raw and strangled.

The blade is drenched with blood.

Tech kneels on him, keeping his arm pinned. Crosshair’s still fighting.

The explosions in the hangar have started a good half of it on fire. He takes a twisted piece of metal, shaking the sparks off and presses it to Crosshair’s arm.

He wails, squirming and trying to wrench away. He doesn’t have the leverage to move, or the strength to pull away.

Crosshair’s crying.

The blood’s still coming. Pooling on the floor and on their armor and soaking into their clothes.

Whatever sound Crosshair’s making is something of a strangled whimper. It’s breathless and broken. That’s not a sound a human should be able to make.

Tech pulls back when the bleeding’s stopped – the metal is burning through his glove and he’d be worried about sparks if it wasn’t soaked.

Crosshair rolls away from him the second he’s free, curling in on himself, still crying. Tech watches him in silence, unable to look away. He cries himself out before finally fading into unconsciousness before Tech moves to transfer them inside.

“He is still our brother.”

“Then why don’t you act like it?”

He rips his helmet off, rolling over to the island’s edge as his insides empty their non-existent contents into the river. The air is cold, which is more likely his own emotional turmoil than reality. His body is shaking when he pushes himself up. Tech expects to see blood on his hands. There’s not. His hands are clean, and he cannot say why he expected something else – everything he saw was of the past, and is it what could have happened?

It was real. He can envision it as if it was.

Crosshair. That was Crosshair – his little brother, who he held and cared for. The screams echo in his ears and he wants to rip it out.

That was Crosshair.

He remembers the electricity burning through his head. Remembers Crosshair crying. Remembers Echo’s voice and Hunter’s strength, and he wishes they could make this better, but there is nothing they can do any more than Tech could. The last he remembers before the fall is Wrecker’s scream.

All of that was for nothing.

He died for nothing.

The twin’s screams are ringing through his head. Wrecker’s terrified gutted “no” and Crosshair’s wordless cry of pain.

He’s crying. His body’s shaking, and all he can remember is the tremors in Crosshair’s hand.

Defective.

Tech doesn’t know what caused them. It could have been anything. The damage could have stemmed from something in their time apart as well – he doesn’t know. And if not for their transport here, he would never know.

“Then why don’t you act like it?”

It does not matter how capable Crosshair is of fighting. Maybe he is defective, but that doesn’t justify – Tech hurt him.

Hemlock took his mind from him. He took everything. His mind, his memories, everything that made him – him. A raw, unfiltered fury builds up inside him. He will find a way to take out Hemlock and the operatives. Everything.

That does not change how he has already hurt Crosshair.

Tech picks his helmet up and throws it. It hits a jagged rock structure amidst the lava and bounces off, splashing into molten rock. The edges shift, melting and glowing and disintegrating entirely, carrying away with the rest of the forming planet.

The planet will either form or fall with that inside it. Nothing good could come from it.

Not if it was his.

(People are more than their actions.)

Crosshair’s scream is still ringing in his mind.

“Why don’t you act like it?”

He looks up to where his little brother is lying, now on the edge of the island, red sparks running across his body, twitching. Tech has to double check to make sure he’s whole – he’s fine, despite being down and having been thrown into a lava river.

That was Tech.

It was not his fault, and he is well aware of that, but that doesn’t change the pain Crosshair experienced at his hands, either.

He is hurt.

Tech stands unsteadily – his body aches all over, and he feels something burning inside him. His head is throbbing. Possibly from trying to reprocess his newfound memories. He’ll have to jump the distance, though it’s close.

He spots the knife he stole from one of Rex’s men – he killed them all – and after seeing what he did, he wants to leave it.

It is important. There’s something Tech can’t remember, a feeling that’s now very familiar, but he can’t leave it. Tech picks it up, hooking it back to his belt and collects Crosshair’s helmet and rifle. He sets them by the riverbank and approaches his little brother.

Crosshair shifts, rolling over when he sees him coming, trying to push himself up. He’s trying to move away. Crosshair’s scared of him. His little brother is scared of him, as well as he should be, but it hurts no less.

“Crosshair.” The name feels strange on his tongue after so long, but he finds he startlingly misses it. He lowers himself to one knee. He doesn’t want to be threatening.  He doesn’t want Crosshair to be scared.

He scoots a little farther back, though his eyes meet Tech’s and holds them. “Tech?” he whispers.

“I remember.”

Crosshair shifts farther away, shaking his head a little. “Tech.” He’s panting a little, eyes wide and wild. “I – I don’t – why are we here? Where are we?”

“I am not certain,” he replies quietly.

Crosshair shakes his head, shifting a little. He looks like he wants to move. Tech feels something in his head, foreign but somehow right. It’s foggy but sharp and tinged over with soot and darkness. It’s Crosshair, and he doesn’t know how he knows it, but it’s some sort of in-depth certainty and knowing.

His face is pale, but his eyes are wrong. They’re black. It’s hard to tell in the darkness (the golden-orange light glinting off his face on his armor, the scream – ), but his eyes are red. They’re glowing, and he looks too – too dark.

Crosshair blinks again. “Your eyes are green,” he says.

That does not seem possible, but he means it, and he is scared. “Not all of what we are seeing is real.”

“Then how do I know you are?” Crosshair scoots back from him. His mind is hit by a sudden onslaught of fear and uncertainty. Not his. He’s feeling – what Crosshair is? Somehow. He sees a thousand flashes of Crosshair, younger and scared, and remembers the sound of his crying.

For once in his life, words fail him altogether. He’s supposed to be the smart one, the one who always knows, but he doesn’t know, and he has no idea how to help Crosshair after he already hurt him so much.

“You threw me into the river,” Crosshair accuses. His eyes are black and red instead of white and brown, but Tech still sees his eyes well with tears. Words will never be enough to express his regret. Physical contact is always what they used to ground Crosshair in the past, and there is a high chance that will still work.

Tech touches his shoulder, awkward and lightly uncertain. He doesn’t mind contact, but he doesn’t understand how to initiate it. It’s always his brothers or Omega who do.

(Crosshair’s hand on his arm, clinging and desperate and trying to pull away.)

Crosshair looks at Tech’s hand like it’s a foreign object, and Tech is about to withdraw when Crosshair rocks forward and throws himself at him. He grunts disgruntledly, but Crosshair’s arms press to his back, and he buries his face on Tech’s neck.

Tech holds his weight a little awkwardly, holding him and strokes his back. Crosshair’s shaking against him, crying. The sound is guttingly familiar. “I – wanna go home,” Crosshair whispers, and his heart breaks a little farther.

“I am aware,” he replies, holding him close.

Crosshair pulls back from him finally, his face streaked with tears but too tired to cry any longer.

Tech stands, offering his hand to pull him to his feet. He tries not to think about how the hand that takes his is the one he severed. Crosshair pulls his hand back to his chest, rubbing at it self-consciously. The tremor.

Tech turns away to recollect Crosshair’s helmet and rifle, handing them to him when his eyes catch something else. Crosshair’s shoulder pauldron is – changed. It’s fully black now, a design in red written over it. It is the same design as the one in the center of the island, nearby where they are standing.

“That was not here when we arrived,” Tech points out.

Crosshair sighs, pulling his helmet back on. “You have it, too.”

Tech looks down at his arm. Over his armor, it has the same red, nearly shimmering design.

Somewhere far beyond the rushing of lava, he hears laughter. Something distant and sinister.

“I suggest we leave.”

Crosshair sighs. “Yeah.”

***

Omega screams her way to the bottom of the fall – actually, she doesn’t remember the landing. All she can think about is Tech and wonder if this is how he felt when he shot himself into freefall over thousands of meters of fog. Was he scared? Did it hurt? Will this hurt?

“When have we ever followed orders?”

In her mind, she sees a flash of lightning, Echo’s body falling. Hunter, a knife run through his heart. Wrecker’s falling right beside her. Crosshair falling into a flowing lava river. Shadow glass shatters and the ground closes over Emerie.

Omega struggles, flailing, trying to find something to brace herself with and the images burning and looping through her mind, the never-ending series of her family dying. All of them. She sees the regs fall. A crashing star destroyer. Fire.

So much death.

That end’s gonna be hers. The same as Tech’s.

Except she doesn’t hit the ground.

Not really.

Omega’s opening her eyes, laying on something coarse and rough but still flexible enough to catch her weight. The wind is howling, and grains of sand assault her face, burrowing themselves in her hair.

Sandstorm. Those are bad. Omega raises her arm to shield her eyes. She hears crying. There’s someone else out here. Another child. She stumbles to her feet, trying to make out the figure. It’s young. The sound is familiar.

She’s alone, and so is the child. Omega knows what that’s like better than anyone. She spent years desperate to get home.

Omega moves through the storm, finally spotting the small shadow curled on the ground. “Hey,” she whispers over the roar of the wind. She runs to the child, crouching. It’s not a species she recognizes, but she’s young and small. She’s bleeding. Her light colored clothes are covered in it. How old is she? Five? How could someone hurt her? “It’s okay,” Omega promises, leaning over her to shield her from the blowing sand. “I’ll get you somewhere safe.”

She looks up at her, eyes bright.

She’s standing somewhere else, in a lab so hauntingly familiar, now drowned in the bottom of the sea. The same eyes, dark backed with dark curls, stare up at her. Omega blinks, and the image is gone, but the aching longing in her heart doesn’t fade.

“You should be more careful,” a voice hisses, echoing over the storm. Omega gasps, freezing and jolting upright, holding the child close against her and while avoiding touching the wounds on her back. “Who you save.”

“Who are you?” Omega snaps. The sand is blowing in her face, and she can’t see anything. “Where are you?”

“You should have left her there to die.” Glowing purple eyes materialize through the storm, towering over her. The creature is huge.

Omega glares at it. “She needed help!”

“You don’t know what she’ll be come.”

Omega steps back, glowering harder. “It doesn’t matter. She’s just a kid.”

“She will destroy your family. Among many others.”

“She hasn’t done anything yet!”

“But she will.”

“She deserves a chance,” Omega yells. “Everyone does.”

“Not her. Actions always have consequences.”

“You sound like Hemlock,” Omega spits out, “And you’re as bad as him. You don’t know what she’s going to do.”

“I’m much worse, Omega.”

Ugh. “She needs help, and I am going to help her.” She turns and stalks away. The thing doesn’t move, though its purple eyes follow her out of sight.

She settles them down in the edge of an alleyway, at least somewhat protected from the storm. Omega tucks her knees up to her chest, turning away from the storm and trying to shield her face again. Ugh.

“Thank you,” the child whispers.

“What’s your name?” Omega asks. She looks up, about to answer, but then the world fades away and Omega’s sitting on a rocky mini-island floating midair. Literally. Aqua flames are burning around her. The kid’s gone.

Her hands are glowing.

Omega squeaks faintly, scrambling to her feet, but actually, her entire body is glowing. What in the stars is happening?

She’s glowing. She’s glowing – people aren’t supposed to glow.

Omega shakes her hand, panting, but nothing changes. It’s the same, radiating an entirely unnatural light.

Her crossbow is sitting innocently near her foot. Omega picks it up, half expecting something to explode, but everything’s fine.

She feels something. She feels pain. It’s prickling across her body, stinging in a dozen places.

Wrecker’s lying motionless on another mini island farther down, and Omega’s heart stops. “Wrecker?” she calls. “Wrecker!” He doesn’t move. He’s hurt. He needs her, just like that child did – if she was even real. Omega backs up, jumping down and landing in a roll, dropping her crossbow and running to her brother’s side. She shakes his shoulder, but he doesn’t even twitch – as motionless as Crosshair when she finally found him on Tantiss.

Omega calls him again, but there’s nothing, and in a surge of raw panic, she fumbles to find his pulse. She can’t. It always stands out on Wrecker, but she can’t find it.

No. No – Omega is not going to accept another of her brothers dying. She won’t. She can’t – not Wrecker.

Something hot and warm builds up in her hands, and she grips his shoulder tightly, tears spilling down her face. She’s not letting him go. It’s some unknown instinct, and the light and warmth seeps through his armor and into his body. Omega chokes back a strangled sob as Wrecker’s eyes finally, finally open.

“Hey, kid,” he says, blinking up at her with a tired smile. “Your eyes are green.”

“I’m glowing, too,” Omega mutters, wiping her eyes and throwing herself into Wrecker’s arms.

He hugs her tightly, cradling her against his chest. “You okay?” he asks worriedly, as though he’s not the one who almost died.

“Yeah,” Omega promises, shuddering a little. “Let’s get outta here.”

“You got it,” Wrecker promises, picking himself up, freezing when he sees something behind her.

Omega freezes, turning around.

Her energy bow lays innocently, propped up against the rocks as though it hasn’t been gone from her life as long as Tech.

***

One minute, she was on Teth, and the next… here.

Emerie doesn’t know what’s happening, either. Something is wrong with this place, and she doesn’t know how to find her way back. It’s one of the reasons she was wary about leaving Tantiss, but…

“You’re not like me.”

“That’s where you belong.”

“Just get them home.”

“You have the strength to fight, too. You’re one of us.”

“Come with us.”

Emerie doesn’t know how to fight. She can use a blaster, barely, but that never prepared her for this. She was never prepared to be alone out here.

It’s too dark to see. The air is dead, devoid of life and empty. Smoke mists over all the valley she can see.

“Emerie,” a voice whispers, familiar but foreign. It’s calling her.

“Who are you?” she demands.

“Emerieeee,” it calls again, somewhere up ahead.

It is not as though she has anywhere else to go, and she steps forward. The ground is of smoky glass, icy but not cold. There’s a chill in the air far from physical. The ground shifts when she moves, or maybe it’s just the thickness of the smoke. Her boots are definitively in the ground, and she moves forward. There’s a sound from ahead, and with a start, the glass shatters.

She falls, smacking onto the ground below. The glass closes back over her, and she can see the star-filled sky up above, though the smoke closes it over, encasing her in darkness.

“Emerie,” it calls again, the voice echoing throughout the cavern. She’s overcome with the sudden urge to run, but there’s nowhere she can go. She knows she needs to escape, but there is no way out.

“What are you?” She doesn’t have a blaster. Must’ve dropped it somewhere, though she doesn’t remember letting it go.

“Come and find me.”

She moves closer – there is nowhere else to go – and makes out a pair of glowing eyes in the depths of the darkness up ahead.

“I’ve been trapped here for so long. I just want to get out.” The voice sounds young, and her protective instincts swell up instantly, demanding she help. That’s what Omega would do. It’s what –

“What do I need to do?” Emerie inquires, looking up.

“Take my hand.” It extends an arm toward her, thin and black and smoky covered. Emerie hesitates, then reaches back and grabs its hand. The creature might be big, but it’s young, and it’s hurt. She needs to get it out. It must have a family somewhere – everyone does.

Something laughs. It sounds deep and sinister.

A cold feeling crawls up Emerie’s arm and her vision blacks out before her knees even hit the ground.

Chapter Text

When Hunter wakes, it’s with a prickling energy in his body. It burns, but not in a way that aches. His head is throbbing, and a foreign energy is tingling in his palms. He feels – something else. Across the distant galaxy, the stars and planets and energy between them, the flicker of every life on world, though there’s a film keeping it apart from everywhere else –

Every life…

His family is here. His entire family’s here. Hunter doesn’t know how he feels it, but…

He doesn’t know what this is.

“Hunter.” It’s the same voice he said earlier. He freezes, jolting upright. “Once,” the disembodied voice says, and the gentleness in it is all that calms him. “Long ago, there were four beings that carried all that wrote the fabric of the universe. Ones of dark and light, and others of chaos and order.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Hunter asks, standing.

“Those who held these powers are passed on, their powers held deep within the core of this planet. Mortis has been isolated since their deaths, until your arrival.”

He’s getting a really bad feeling about this. “You’re telling me we have these… powers?” Hunter asks tiredly.

“The wielder of chaos still lives,” he answers, “But the other three powers are now split between you and your brothers. They have been seeking vessels since their former carries past on into the Force.”

Hunter thinks something’s wrong. He can feel it, twisting and rippling deep in his core.

Hunter looks down to where his hands flicker with aqua mist. “This isn’t what we are,” he argues, “We’re soldiers. We’re clones. Not…”

“Many will seek to exploit your powers,” the voice continues.

“Who are you? Why are you helping me?”

“I was once a Jedi master,” the voice answers, “With the name Qui-Gon Jinn. Now, I am one with the Force.”

He’s a Jedi ghost? Ugh. Can he go back to this morning when he was waking up on Pabu and everything was finally normal? “How can I get back to our ship?”

“Your powers are within you,” Qui-Gon Jinn’s voice replies, “You can warp the fabric of reality, though be mindful of its consequences.”

Easy to say. Not so easy to hear when his hands aren’t managing to exist very well. Hunter shakes them a little, mentally ordering them to stop misting out, though the energy is flickering in them hot and burning. They have to get back to the ship. They’re still mid-mission.

“I don’t know how to control this.” He doesn’t even understand what this is. Forget knowing anything about it. Truthfully? It terrifies him.

“You already have what you need.”

“Do I?” Hunter moves past him closer to the storm – he still feels the flickering clouds and lightning the way he always does, and it’s strange to feel it all in another way, too.

“Your connection is to order,” the Jedi master answers – Hunter can feel a sort of energy nearby him, though he can’t see it, and he’s a little too freaked out over it to actually look. “In a galaxy in chaos.”

“With all due respect, I don’t care about that.” He’s not going to drag his family into something like this. Nothing’s changed. “I have to protect my squad. What’s left of it.”

“That’s all you need.”

Hunter glances up as he feels a prickling warmth of a hand on his shoulder through his armor, a gentle squeeze that he would once have given to Omega or any of his brothers before the energy fades away. The storm suddenly sounds louder. Hunter looks down, and in his place is a familiar shoulder pauldron.

The one that was ripped off on a jagged explosion, halfway shredded and the fire burned into his arm before Wrecker yanked him out. Hunter hardly remembers the mission. It was just one of a million.

It’s still aqua, smeared with soot that comes off when he brushes it, but there’s a gold marking twisting across it. The same one Hunter saw outside – something like stars and flowers atop each other in an overly fancy, twisted manner that he could never decipher. Tech could. Tech would, and that comes with another sharp stab of pain in his chest.

Hunter sighs, settling down in the doorway, overlooking the raging storm.

He’s missed having all his armor.

He just wants to talk to Tech again. He wants him back.

There’s a dark presence on world. He feels six of them. Knows them all. Omega’s petal-soft one – she smells flowery, and in his head, he feels her the same. Small and soft and slightly sweet. Wrecker used to be light, but there’s a sooty darkness to him now, his usual energy zapped away, and gentle even if he feels rough. Hunter knows what he feels like, and it breaks his heart. They’re tinged with a brilliance and light that Hunter doesn’t know – that’s what he meant when he said light.

Echo’s tinged with metal and motor oil, his scent has a roughness to him that all the clones have, except Omega and – and Tech. He’s sharp and jagged, but Hunter knows him, and he knows when he loves it is forever, for all that his passion and fire might overwhelm him. He feels bright now, a little too bright, but Hunter’s not off-put by it in the slightest. He must feel the same.

Emerie, far beneath the surface, her own gentle foresty-ness frothed over with smoke. Her presence is dim, unfamiliar, but safe and home. He doesn’t know why he can’t feel her as vividly, but he can’t.

Crosshair’s so much darker than the brilliant light he was once. His once feather-soft presence is darkened, soot soaked the same way Wrecker’s is, layers and layers of weighted grief smothering him. Crosshair used to be so soft, so gentle – Hunter could never understand how he could have turned on them as he did. He feels so empty now, so lost. He’s scared. Hunter doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows.

And with him is – another presence. One hauntingly familiar and Hunter knows it, but it’s impossible. There is only one of his brothers who has the same gentle smoothness, the same ceaseless loyalty, the presence. Only one of them could have that tinged coppery scent of machinery – no matter how smoked and dark it is. Only one of them could be Tech.

It’s too easy. To – he doesn’t want to believe it’s real, but he feels it and there has been so, so long he would’ve done anything to get his little brother back, to see him one more time to give him the life he deserves to –

All Tech ever wanted was their family safe and together.

It was never fair he couldn’t be a part of it.

The energy pulses deep in his heart, and below, the twisted golden markings glowing in the dark of the night. Something pulls him toward it, the energy draw prickling and rippling. He doesn’t know what it means.

He climbs down the stairs, reentering the courtyard. The rain falls across him, resoaking him through.

Hunter kneels in the center of the twisted marking – there’s some sort of symbolism in it, he knows, but he doesn’t know what. Something feels bright here, brilliant like a light shining in the darkness.

He wants to find his family, and with that comes a strange, rising, prickling energy in his palms. He tries to focus on that, the need to bring them together, and something in the air finally starts shifting.

***

Everything is empty in the wake of Fives’ disappearance. It’s the same as before. A life empty and void of everything that matters.

There’s a distant whistling. When Echo looks up, there’s a void mid-air, to a blaze of purple flames. A hilt is in the center, striped red and gold. Echo reaches out to take it, the hilt weighting heavily in his hand, but it sends a rippling charge down his arm, quiet, distant whispers of danger.

The portal mists closed, and Echo stands again. The blade is important. It looks… ancient, and the blade itself mists out of the hilt. Aqua mist. Better than purple – at least Hunter would say it is. Aqua was his favorite color.

He sighs, clipping the hilt to his belt. He needs to take it with him, because it’s – he thinks it’s important somehow.

Something is rushing, twisting a little in the air. Changing. The air is sparking. He leans forward, intrigued. It’s aqua, the same color as the unformed blade. It twists and whirls, sparking around him until the area just warps, and he’s standing somewhere else.

Hunter’s sitting across from him, in the center of some sort of massive symbol. It’s the center of a courtyard, and when Echo looks up, he sees the shimmering white diamond they saw from afar. His little brother’s hands are glowing. Shimmering. It’s a gentle gray light, shining over his knees and on the ground, on the newfound, once missing pieces of his armor. When he opens his eyes, they’re aqua.

Echo huffs a laugh, crouching down in front of him. Oh, figures. Of course, his little brother’s already gotten himself in trouble. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not really sure,” Hunter shrugs, “I’m just trying to bring you all back.”

Huh. “You can do that?”

“I said I’m trying.”

Fair enough. Echo still doesn’t like this.

He sits across from him, waiting. The air is prickling over with a rapidly growing energy, and another sparkling portal forms.

Wrecker and Omega step through together, her clinging to Wrecker’s arm. She’s holding her crossbow, but what stuns him is that Wrecker’s holding Omega’s old energy bow. Echo doesn’t even know where he could’ve gotten it from. It could be a new one, he supposes, though it has the mini scratches and dents he recognizes so well from his little sister’s. She’d loved it. He’d been so angry when it was lost.

He built her the crossbow, on the nights he was up, the nights he would once have spent together with Tech, but his little brother was gone.

He’d sat with it every night he couldn’t sleep, taking it apart, scrubbing it clean, splicing the wires back together. Like, in one lifetime, he would’ve done with his twin brother, a skill they learned from their general, and another with Tech. Like he’s done a thousand times over, except Tech wasn’t there to be his other hand and help and guide him when he couldn’t hold or touch the pieces on his own.

Just like his own.

Tech wasn’t there to – to doze off beside him, to fall asleep on his shoulder when they finally tired themselves out, and Echo will never feel the weight of his warmth again.

Losing Fives had stamped out his soul, shredded him apart and tore him to nothing, but at least Fives wasn’t his little brother. Protecting Fives was a choice and a duty, but it wasn’t an inborn instinct stemmed from the blood they shared.

And Echo has nothing but to reach for distant ashes, the rage coiling inside him burning and burning and burning and he thinks the galaxy will be gone before he’s calmed. Before the ashes of his heart will stop burning. Before the Empire is gone.

It’d been hard, but he’d pieced it together, just for their kid – the little girl he and Tech loved so much, that they would have given anything for – that they had given everything for. For her to be safe, to live the life she deserves. Echo can never give it to his brothers, but he can give it to her.

He can give it to Omega. To their sister.

Or – sisters, though Emerie is something else entirely.

Omega is glowing. Her light shines across Wrecker, lightening the floor she stands on, though he absorbs it in, not glowing, but he looks too bright against the nighttime darkness and the stormy whirlwind.

“Kid?” Echo asks, turning to her.

“Echo! How’d you get here?”

Ah, why’d it have to be the one question he doesn’t know how to answer? “I don’t know, kid.” He’s never been more confused about anything before. Finding his ship would be nice, if he knew how he got off the ship in the first place.

“Where’s Crosshair?” Wrecker asks worriedly.

“He’s somewhere on this planet,” Hunter answers. “I’m trying to find him.”

“And Emerie,” Omega agrees, moving a bit away from Wrecker and taking her energy bow.

“Could be a while,” Hunter warns, “You should sit down.”

Echo looks at Wrecker and Omega, who settle down across from him – they’re sitting in the middle of a strange, white-twisted marking in the courtyard center. Might as well. They can talk about what’s happening later.

***

“That’s a long climb,” Crosshair grumbles, looking upwards. The walls are towering. He can hardly see the top. It would be a very long climb.

Tech is here. Tech’s here again. He’s still trapped. Cornered. He wants Hunter. Wrecker. Home. The Marauder. Can’t stop shaking.

A crushing guilt and rolling fury are burning in his mind, something not his own. Crosshair wants to cry. Desperately. He wants to curl up in Hunter’s arms and forget about everything else, especially the darkly twisted echoing presence in his mind. He doesn’t want to think about being strapped to the table for the hundredth time and seeing Tech standing beside him, mindless and faceless and –

Tech is somehow freed, but Crosshair’s too scared to hope and he feels the guilt and anger and Tech just tried to kill him. He tried to stab him.

He can’t get away. The dark, twisting presence is burning in his mind, and he can’t get away. Can’t get it out. His mind’s not his own. That’s no new sensation.

“We will have to climb,” Tech replies, and moves for the wall.

Crosshair follows, grumbling. The climb is far and long. He wouldn’t have minded once, but he’s exhausted and his body throbs all over. He’s so scared.

Tech is above him. Crosshair feels the flickering fear, his coppery-smooth presence shifting and rippling and trying to hide. It’s strange. Only Wrecker’s scared of heights.

The climb’s slow. Still progressing – until Tech slips and falls.

Crosshair gasps, crying his name, but something shifts with a flare of energy. He hears this most awful cracking sound, like a hundred bones snapping at once, and in place of Tech is a giant black thing. The icy fury rolls off it in waves, and Crosshair gasps, flinching away, hands nearly slipping free of the rocks.

He doesn’t think it’ll hurt him, but he doesn’t know. Everything does.

“If you wanna stay here and die –”

“If you wanna go, then go.”

“Don’t make this worse, Crosshair.”

He wants to cry.

“I am fine,” Tech promises, his voice whispered in his mind.

“What are you?”

“I am not certain.”

The rocks are slippery. He tries to hold on, but this is Tech, and he’s –

It’s some sort of giant, bat-like creature. With very huge claws.

Crosshair tries to press away when Tech comes closer, flying and flapping awkwardly, trying to circle.

“I can carry you.”

His heart lurches. “No.”

“It would be a far more efficient means of transportation.”

He doesn’t care. He wants to cry just being so close to Tech, even seeing him again. He’s missed him. He wants him back. He wants his whole family back together and safe and just – it hurts and everything hurts and he can’t…

“You had your chance to be one of us.”

Crosshair moves to keep climbing, but his hand slips again. The giant bird-thing Tech now is plucks him off the wall, and Crosshair yelps ungracefully, grabbing his clawed hand to steady himself. Tries hard not to look at the lava below him.

Well, they’ve moving faster, even if being carried is decidedly disconcerting.

Crosshair shivers against his claws and clings tighter.

They’re out of the wall, flying across the dark terrain when something shifts, and they’re landing in a courtyard somewhere. Crosshair feels the flickers of his siblings, the safe and warmth of their constant protection. Hunter’s exhaustion rings in his mind, the achingly deep need to rest. Wrecker’s constant, mind-numbing fear and instant relief on seeing him. Omega’s worry and confusion. Echo’s just watching, and Emerie is here, though unconscious.

Crosshair smacks into the ground on his back and there’s the same cracking as Tech turns back into himself.

“Is that cracking the sound of all your bones snapping at once?” Crosshair asks disgustedly, scooting back as Tech climbs off him. “Because it sounds like it.”

“That is not an illogical conclusion,” Tech informs.

“Does it hurt?”

“Surprisingly, no.”

“Tech?” Omega breathes.

Crosshair rolls over, stumbling to his feet. Still feels unsteady.

Tech’s standing beside him, his mind still. A muted shock is in all their minds, burning against Crosshair’s. It’s overwhelming. It hurts. His head is throbbing. It never stops. It hurts and aches and stings and burns. It never stops. Never stopped on Tantiss. It hurts. He wants to cry. He needs it to stop.

“Tech?” Hunter’s standing now. He’s pale.

“I am aware you believed me dead,” Tech replies, “But I survived. I found my way to Crosshair, though not in the way I imagined.”

“You were imprisoned together?” Hunter sounds incredulous, and Crosshair feels his rising hurt and anger.

Hunter hit him already. He’s going to again. He’s going to hurt him again, A distant memory of a flash of light and burning, searing smoke – it always hurts and he deserves it if they did it but he’s so scared.

Crosshair is the one who got Tech into this state.

He deserves anything they did to him.

“We were… processed together. Not imprisoned.”

“How?” Echo. “Your mind’s more resistant, right?”

Crosshair squeezes his eyes closed and tries to breathe. Feels their crashing emotions vibrating around in waves. The hurt. The relief. The shock. The betrayal.

He remembers the room. The dark.

The screaming.

Please.

Stop.

“I had little choice,” Tech answers, voice tight and rough. “He would hurt Crosshair if I did not comply.”

Wrecker yanks him and Crosshair into a hug, pressing them to his chest. shaking. Crying. Wrecker’s crying. His twin brother is crying. Feels like his doing, too. Crosshair’s arm comes over his back. Wrecker’s glowing. He’s still soft. Crosshair sinks into it. Tries not to remember his wide-eyed betrayal from across Kamino’s hangar.

“I am fine, Wrecker,” Tech is saying, hand on his back and the other on his neck with the same telltale gentleness which he always used to bear. “Do not blame yourself.” Crosshair would have done anything to get even a shred of that in his time on Tantiss, but he didn’t – doesn’t, and Wrecker gets it the moment Tech is back, because he’s not – not the one who betrayed and hurt them. Crosshair’s not the one who deserves it.

Echo huffs a half-laugh. “Well, good to see you.”

“You as well.” Tech squirms his way out of Wrecker’s arms. “I suggest we get off this planet.”

Lightning is flashing, but the ground is glowing in a twisted design, light shining skyward, flickers and spots like stars. There’s enough light to see. Hunter’s just – watching.

Omega grabs Crosshair’s wrist, tugging his arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she hisses.

His chest is tight. The others are talking. Crosshair’s head is spinning. “I – I –”

“You knew, and you didn’t tell us?” She’s angry. Hurt. “We could’ve hurt him, and we wouldn’t have known! We could have killed him, Crosshair!”

She’s either going to cry or slap him, and Crosshair doesn’t know which he’s more afraid of.

He’s shaking. His body is trembling and he’s faint and dizzy and he’s going to fall and – he feels sick. Tears are burning in his eyes. He’s freezing.

“If you wanna go, then go.”

Her hand on him is gone. Doesn’t remember it moving. He just needs – away. She’s angry and she’s going to walk away again and she’s all he’s had the entire time there and he can’t be alone again. For one of his brothers, he’d yell back because they’d deal with it and he’s an idiot and can’t stop hurting them but Omega’s a kid and she’s their older sister and she sat beside him every night for days after he spent all day in with Tech.

He remembers Omega’s footsteps as she walked away, Emerie’s quiet sigh and sympathetic look as she followed, no matter how frustrated she was, because she’s the mature one and she cares when Crosshair is too – too –

Messed up too.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is shaking and broken and he said it to Hunter already even if that wasn’t near enough. She’s going to hurt him they’re going to hurt him stars –

“We left him behind! We don’t do that!”

“Most of the time.”

Omega’s so tense he thinks she’s about to throw something at him. “Tech died to get you back!” she yells, “We didn’t leave you!”

Yeah, no. Because he’s the one who left them.

Tech’s hand is on his shoulder and Crosshair flinches violently.

“I spent months thinking he was gone. We all did. Because you –”

“Omega,” Tech interrupts firmly, “He knew if you were aware of my presence, you would be determined to bring me back. He made the right choice.”

Hunter moves forward, gently tugging Omega back. Her shoulders are trembling and she’s glaring, and her face is wet. He made her cry, too. Great – he should probably get some sort of award for being the galaxy’s greatest little brother. After everything she’s done for him, he let her be hurt for months because it was easier than – than doing the right thing for Tech.

“Crosshair,” Hunter asks, voice far gentler though Crosshair knows he’s angry. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Because Tech was gone. He’s here now, but he wasn’t and Crosshair thought he’d never see him again. His lips part and he tries to say something – he really, genuinely does but nothing comes out and he sinks into Tech’s arms when he touches him, even if he doesn’t deserve it or him or anything.

He doesn’t deserve to be here.

Tech hurt him. His older brother hurt him, and Crosshair definitely deserved that after everything he did to them, but stars it hurts and he wishes it would stop.

“Crosshair.” Hunter’s voice is worried, and he moves closer. He feels his hand on his shoulder. Is half of the mind to pull away, but this is Hunter and Crosshair burrows against him. His warmth is around him, and curled up between him and Tech, it feels – safe. Maybe. They’ll both hurt him again. Crosshair doesn’t mean to be terrified of them, but it won’t stop. It’s been so, so long since anyone held him, since anyone wanted to.

They’re all angry at him, and they were on Kamino and Wrecker asked him back – was always the first to ask him back, but – but if…

He hurt them all so much.

“I belong in here.”

He knows what Omega said. Doesn’t mean he’ll ever be more.

“We need to get back to the others,” Echo interjects finally, voice soft. Crosshair’s grateful for it, because he’s – he can’t – at least Echo’s not trying to be angry. Crosshair doesn’t really think he is – not for that.

Wrecker’s confused, maybe a bit hurt. Hunter’s angry. He’s always angry. He’s a violent, twisting storm of rage ready to break loose. He isn’t who he once used to be. Gentle, patient, yeah, but broken. And Crosshair doesn’t think he’ll ever get to see Wrecker laugh again. He broke all of them.

He can’t stop crying. Hunter’s hand finds its way to the back of his head, pulling it to his shoulder and looping his arm around his back. He has his other shoulder pauldron again. Tech’s hand is firmly on his shoulder, and Crosshair reaches for him, clinging to him – his armor is dark and wrong and not him, but he’s just –

Tech remembers him. Finally. He wouldn’t be Tech if he didn’t remember, wasn’t when he couldn’t. His mind is who he was.

“We need to go,” Echo interjects gently.

Crosshair’s gasping inhale is shaky and broken. Hunter squeezes him tighter.

“Come,” Hunter requests, pulling him back, “We gotta go.”

Chapter Text

Reality warps around them again, and Tech and Crosshair are left standing amidst the rushing river. It splashes over his boots, rushing against the leather-covered metal of his legs.

Crosshair shifts away, swiping his hand over his eyes.

His helmet stands out amidst the rushing water, and Tech picks it up to hand it to him. His own is not here, and the burning energy is still in his hands. There is a crushing heaviness on his chest, strangling and so, so hard to breathe through – it feels like something is slowly crushing him, forcing the air out, rendering him helpless and unmovable like his life is being ripped out to shreds of nothing like he for so long made Crosshair.

Crosshair’s shaking. His hand is trembling, like it has been for months. Tech still does not understand why.

The air is heavy and smothering. Wet and sticky.

“Thanks,” he mutters, pulling it on, and they stumble for the shore.

The reg with Rex sprints into view.

“Arrest those traitors.”

“Most of my squad from Ryloth is dead because of you.”

“I’ve seen how you are with the kid.”

“You’re different than you were on Ryloth.”

He and Crosshair have an unpleasant past, clearly. The rest are behind him – Rex, Hunter, Wrecker, Omega, another girl, and Batcher. A dim but present glow lights Omega’s body, still with both bows.

This was not a dream, as he did not believe it to be. It was a warped hole of reality.

The reg – name’s Howzer – has his blaster aimed at Tech.

The girl’s eyes narrow on him, blaster in hand.

Rex’s hand blasters are pointed at Tech.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Hunter reaches for Howzer’s blaster, pushing it down before he fires. “They’re with us.”

“They?” he echoes, “He’s an assassin.”

“I was,” Tech replies, because that is the truth, though he does not know how to explain what happened to his mind. “Hemlock’s conditioning is thorough.” He altered it multiple times to shape Tech alone, and he took it. He took him – shredded his mind apart, leaving nothing.

Taking the one thing that made Tech special, that made him himself.

“There’s no time to explain it right now,” Hunter offers placatingly, though laced with more forcefulness than Tech remembers him speaking with for a long time. Hunter has changed substantially. He has an emptiness to him which he never used to have. “We need to move.”

“I might be willing to give him a chance –” Howzer nods to Crosshair. “But I would like an explanation before we go any farther.”

Tech killed all of Rex’s men. Even Rex’s visor hasn’t broken away from him. He doesn’t trust him, either. “I could recount the details of the last three hours of our experiences, or, we could move, before the Empire finds us.”

“You’re part of the Empire.”

“I was part of the Empire,” he retaliates. “And that was not my choice.”

“Tech?” Rex asks, stepping forward, “I don’t understand. I thought you were dead.”

He thought he was dead, too.

The dark-haired girl is looking between them all, quiet but assessing. Tech doesn’t know her, and yet, there is a part of him that believes her to be familiar.

“It was like reality blinked out for a minute,” Hunter explains, “We were somewhere else, and we were made into something… else. Echo was there, too. I guess Tech got his mind back somewhere there.”

“His mind is special,” she agrees – Tech will have to ask her name later – “That doesn’t sound as it should be impossible.”

Crosshair hasn’t moved from his place near Tech, and he looks down at his shaking hand, clenching it and trying to shake the tremors from it. Tech is still uncertain what caused the damage.

The weight of the vibrosword in his hand. The struggling. The burning. Screaming.

“You should –”

“And Omega came out as this,” Tech adds, gesturing to where their elder sister is standing, lit by a white hue.

“Well,” Howzer sighs, “Can’t deny that.”

“He’s right,” Rex cuts in, “We need to move before they find us. We don’t have long. Echo and Gregor will be there soon.”

Hunter grabs Crosshair’s arm to steady him as they make it back to shore through the rushing of the waterfall, and Wrecker grabs Tech. With Wecker it could just as well be a desperation to be near him again, not as though he could ever fault his little brother for that – it is something he entirely respects and relates to.

Their separation took a toll on all of them.

Teth is of rippling layers of past and future, back to when it was a rushing ball of molten lava, when its crust hardened over and the sky formed over, when the trees sprung up with layers of lives. A fighter crashed one klick north back in the Clone Wars. The pilot –

“Tech.” Hunter’s voice startles him. “Stay close.”

“This is fascinating,” Tech muses.

“What is?”

“The history of this planet.” He lifts his hand, flexing his fingers. Glistening green glitter – the same shade as the light on his helmet, until he threw it into the lava river – flows between his fingers, crawling beneath the skin of his palm and shimmering away.

“You can see that now?”

“I believe I have been seeing the past and future since we absorbed these abilities.”

Hunter sighs quietly. They start following the others, though his elder brother keeps casting glances at him.

“What is it?” Tech inquires finally.

 “I – I’m sorry,” he blurts out in a jumbled rush, “I know you’re gonna tell me it’s not my fault, and maybe it isn’t, but I should have known something would go wrong.”

“You did know,” Tech replies, “And you warned us all. I knew the risks.”

“Just…” He sighs. “I know. But still. I’m sorry.” Hunter pauses, looking at him, searching for some sort of resolution and consolation. Tech has no method of offering any more than he has to right all the wrongs he did and shaped against his family. Against Crosshair.

“I made the choice. I made the shot. Nothing you could have done would have stopped me. I knew it was not an order you could give, even if you were aware it was a necessity. I made the call I knew you never could to protect us.”

“I would never ask you or any of us to – to do that.” Hunter sighs again, rounding on him. “Don’t you ever, ever do that again.”

“I will do what is necessary to protect my squad, as I always have.” It is always Tech’s role to fill when Hunter cannot, or in this case, will not. Tech would never have requested any of his brothers do the same, though it was him, and he knew there was no other choice. It was something they had all known, but not a fact they could face.

“I figured you’d say that.”

“Ah. Well, then there are some things you have not forgotten.”

Hunter twitches, looking to the others gaining ground ahead, and back to Tech before yanking him into another hug. Tech freezes up, but Hunter doesn’t linger, though the tight fierceness of it is enough. He has missed him as well.

“Can I ask you something?” he queries, pulling back.

“Considering that you are speaking to me, it is a logical assumption that you can inquire whatever is on your mind.”

“You’re not gonna like it.” Hunter picks up the pace a bit to keep up with the others, though lingering far enough behind they can still converse in with relative privacy. “Did you hurt Crosshair?”

Tech stumbles to a stop.

The screaming. The blood.

“ – he is still our brother –“

“You’re my brother.”

“If you want to survive –”

“We’re a family, aren’t we?”

“You should be –”

‘Then why don’t you act like it?”

“Yes. And I would have again.”

To his credit, Hunter doesn’t even ask. “Yeah,” he replies with a heavy sigh. “Guess we all did.”

Tech side-eyes him as they continue walking through the woods. Whatever he is referring to, it must have been bad

The air flickers, and Hunter’s fear and crippling hurt and rage burn in his mind, a broken shard held together by the sheer need to protect the fractured pieces of his squad. Their leader, every bit as broken as they are. Once, he never would have felt like that. He had been whole, as they are.

That is most likely not something he will ever have again, and a part of him aches to know how much they have lost to the Empire, to the war.

The air ripples, twisting and with a flickering flash he’s in the sooted smoke of Hunter’s mind, a whirlwinding flash through his eyes.

“Are you going to be my shadow everywhere?”

“I know you. There’s more you’re not telling us, and I’m done waiting. Start talking, Crosshair. What did you do to finally get on the Empire’s bad side? Betray them, like you did with us? You thought we’d take you back and not ask questions? I don’t think so. Tell me what changed. What happened, Crosshair?”

The snow is bright and glaring. Crosshair’s glaring and Hunter’s hand slams into his chest, shoving him back – he’s looking away, eyes wild and furious and rageful enough to burn the galaxy – could melt durasteel from its heat, if it were able.

He is wild. Terrified.

He is scared of Hunter, trapped, caged and searching for a way out. It would always have affected him, but after having become the prime cause of Crosshair’s struggles, Tech sees it in a way he never once would have. He would not see it in this way if he could remember anything other than the broken sounds of Crosshair’s crying.

“I killed an Imperial officer. So, yes, I did betray them after they betrayed me. Oh, don’t pretend like this is all about me. I tried to warn you, Hunter. I risked everything to send you that message. You ignored it. You let Omega be taken to Tantiss. She went through what she did because you failed. You're angry because she escaped with my help, not yours.”

Their minds flicker apart like threads snapping, his temple throbbing dully at the merge. Hunter’s staring, no doubt wide-eyed if Tech were able to see his face, though his helmet conceals it. His mind whirls from the momentary sensation of being part of – another, of being part and stretched into a thread, of being more than one, his mind stretched between his own and Hunter’s. It’s… strange.

Crosshair fears them. That isn’t directed to Tech alone, though most likely, that is what triggered it all.

“Omega’s capture was not your fault. Finding Tantiss was my idea. Not yours.”

“It wasn’t yours, either. None of us knew what would happen, Tech, and I know – you would’ve chosen differently if you had.”

Possibly. Tech is not so certain. Crosshair is free because of what they went through, and Tech owes him far more than that.

***

“This is the extraction marker,” Rex reports, pausing in a small clearing in the jungle. Wrecker hates this planet, but at least there’s no monsters.

A roaring overhead has them all looking up. Hunter’s hands shift closer to his blasters, and Wrecker moves closer to him, and the kid – they hafta keep her safe. They already lost her once. They’ve come so, so close to losing their kid so many times.

A shuttle flies overhead.

Wrecker has no idea what the name is – he’s not Tech – but it’s one of those ships the Empire uses a lot now. “That’s not Echo,” Wrecker supplies worriedly.

The others are looking overhead, watching it land, its spotlight landing on them. They’re outta smoke bombs, and not many other places to run.

Batcher barks, snarling and tense, braced for the ensuing action.

Energy is high in the air, burning and burning, prickling at his skin and somethin’ just feels weird. He wants to get back to Pabu where they can be safe, and he can talk to Tech and figure out what happened.

All around are quiet whispers, like some strange sort of twisted netting intertwined and rippling. Wrecker doesn’t know what it means, but it’s very, very hard to look at anything. The world looks the same, but he knows the threads are there and it’s creepy.

The shuttle lands, the ramp lowering, and a group of regs disembarking. It’s rare they see regs anymore – the Empire got rid of most of ‘em.

“Drop your blasters,” the commanding reg barks, “Now!”

“Wolffe?” Rex pulls his helmet off, and the blasters aimed at them falter. He gestures for them to stop, and Wrecker very reluctantly lowers his blaster a bit, though Rex wouldn’t tell him not to shoot unless there was some reason he couldn’t.

The reg opposite them freezes. “Rex? I – I thought you were dead.” When he pulls his own gray marked helmet off, one of his eyes is grayed over and unseeing. Like Wrecker’s. “Reports said you were killed in action. That you went down aboard an attack cruiser.”

“Oh, I did. I lost a lot of good men that day. And today.”

“What are you doing here, Rex? Don’t tell me you’re fighting against us.”

Wrecker doesn’t want to wait. Rex has friends with the regs, but Wrecker doesn’t, and he wants to just get home. He’s so, so tired. He already saw so many of the regs die today, and he doesn’t wanna see another one of his brothers die. They lost Tech. Crosshair, Omega. Echo left. Anything could happen to Hunter, too.

He wants home. He wants them to be safe. To stop being hurt.

The threads are getting very distracting.

“No. Not against you,” Rex replies firmly, “Against the Empire. They're imprisoning and experimenting on our brothers, killed others.”

“The Empire wouldn’t do that to us,” he argues.

“They have,” Tech interjects, stepping forward, shoulders tense and eyes dark and wild. Wrecker flinches at the jarring familiarity of his elder brother’s voice. He hasn’t heard him in so long. “They imprisoned me and took my mind.”

“Ah,” the reg grumbles, instantly irked, “You again.”

“It’s true,” Rex agrees, “Some of us, they’ve taken and turned into mindless assassins. Guess Tech got lucky. She has seen it, too.” He gestures to Omega. “That’s what’s happening on Tantiss. We have to stop them. You can help us. You can stand with us.”

“I am a soldier of the Empire.” Crosshair had said something of the same, and that was right before, every time, he fired at them, and Wrecker will not risk another of his brothers again. “I have my orders. Hand the girl over, and I’ll make sure you're given a fair trial.”

Batcher snarls, as furious as Wrecker is, and he digs his fingers into the metaphysical energy net-grid thing and twists, fueled by nothing but the sheer desperation to be free and to destroy the threat, to get his family away somewhere safe and something shatters.

Something looks red. Glowing. Fuzzy.

Their blasters explode into a shattered mist of red-tinted bubbles.

“Wrecker?” Omega whispers behind him.

Something’s tearing. Ripping and breaking but he wants it to be more, wants to destroy it all for threatening them, wants to finally be free of the Empire.

The ground shivers.

His hands are burning and something’s –

“Wrecker, stop!” Hunter hisses.

Omega’s hand lands on his arm, and his mind snaps back to himself.

The order flickers into his mind, commanding and settling in with his loyalty to Hunter and his brother alone.

The ground is smoking around him. The red has vanished. The blasters facing them are gone. Wrecker blinks at the ground.

“What was that?” Crosshair hisses, an echo of Wrecker’s confusion.

“Don’t know,” Hunter replies, touching Wrecker’s other shoulder, “But try to stay calm.”

“How’m I supposed to be calm?” Wrecker whines.

“Don’t question it,” Crosshair grumbles – he’s at Wrecker’s side again, standing by Omega. He’s circled around everyone in the middle of – whatever it was.

He feels weird. Everything’s weird, and it’s freaking him out.

In the end, Wolffe lets them go, though with some pointed grumbling about whatever Wrecker just did. Not that he had a choice without their blasters.

The ship lowers behind them, and Rex waits for last as they file aboard.

Crosshair groans loudly the minute the shuttle ramp closes behind them. “Did I sound that insane?”

“Uh,” Wrecker says, “Yes.”

He groans again. Rubs at his right shoulder a little and turns away. “I was so stupid, wasn’t I?”

“We have all made mistakes, Crosshair,” Emerie interjects quietly, “Yours were no worse than mine.”

“That’s true,” Crosshair grumbles, though he still refuses to explain what she did.

Wrecker stands awkwardly, watching, not fully certain where or what he should try saying or doing. It’s hard. He doesn’t know Crosshair anymore, and the burning hurt and fear never goes away, an’ he doesn’t know what to do about it. Maybe he was too – pushy? He never meant to be. He has no idea. Maybe he was too aggressive, to forcefully playful, too…

Wrecker doesn’t know, because Crosshair never told him.

Crosshair pauses, looking up at him. His helmet’s off, and he looks troubled.

“You okay?” Crosshair asks quietly.

He’s forgotten what that meant. Wrecker hasn’t been okay since before Crosshair left and started fighting them. It’s been so, so long and he has no idea what it even means anymore. He wants to stop being hurt, too. He wants things to be normal and simple like they’re supposed to be, but nothing makes sense anymore.

Crosshair –

Crosshair shifts closer to him, looking away, rubbing his wrist – he’s on the verge of saying something, but staying awkwardly quiet. Wrecker doesn’t know what he wants. Apologies are awkward and uncomfortable, and Crosshair never offers them, anyway.

He just wants to know they won’t be hurt again.

Crosshair shot him.

He sees the scar every day. It took days to stop aching.

Crosshair.

He tried to roast them in an engine and then he left them. That’s the worst he did to them.

Crosshair’s hand trails down his arm. The others have moved toward the front. “I – I didn’t… mean it to get so far. I just…” His forehead is on Wrecker’s shoulder, and there’s a strangely quiet warm prickling inside his head. It feels soft, and he instinctively knows it’s Crosshair.

“Y’know,” Wrecker says to his head. “All we wanted was you.”

“I know,” he whispers, arms coming around Wrecker’s back. “Me too.”

Wrecker wraps his arms around his little twin brother, cradling him gently against his chest, trying to ignore the strange prickling in his hands again.

***

“Okay,” a voice calls from the cockpit – not Echo. Must be Gregor. “Is somebody gonna explain why Echo’s getting all sparky hands in here? He nearly took our ship down.”

Echo huffs.

Omega sprints up front, climbing into one of the seats and strapping herself in. “Emerie,” she calls when her sister freezes up. She responds to the call, sitting beside her. Batcher jumps onto her lap, licking her face. Emerie squeaks, leaning back in her seat and trying to pry the hound off her face. Omega laughs.

Emerie is so awkward. She thought Tech was bad, but Emerie is so much worse, she can’t help laughing. It’s funny.

“So, you’re doing it, too?” Hunter asks.

Echo flicks his scomp up – his whole arm is crackling with light, rippling purple electricity.

Between Hunter teleporting, Echo being zappy, Omega glowing, Tech being some kind of flying creature, and Wrecker crushing things and getting all red and glow-y, she has no idea what’s happening anymore.

“Get us out of here,” Rex orders, and the ship takes off. They have to move fast.

She doesn’t know what’s happening.

They’re all… weird. She’s glowing. It doesn’t feel like her.

The Empire is after them. She’s on their most wanted list.

Tech was sent after them. He hurt and nearly killed them. Crosshair never told her. He lied to her. Made her think Tech was dead for months, and the fury burns hot and raw in her chest, fiercely demanding justice.

He could’ve told her. They didn’t have to leave him. They could’ve…

All those months she thought her brother was gone. She missed him, agonized over him, tried to wrap her mind around a world where one of her little brothers wasn’t in it. Crosshair, Omega always knew, was coming back. But Tech?

She’d thought he was gone, even if he was just fine because Crosshair –

He lied to her. Omega trusted him, and he lied.

She spent months grieving Tech, thinking her little brother was gone when Crosshair could have spared her all of that. He could’ve –

“I have to respect their decision. Even though it can be difficult to understand, we must carry on.”

Omega sighs, scooting onto the floor from the lack of seats when they’re safely away from the atmosphere enough for it to be safe. Batcher curls around her, nosing at her strangely glowing hands.

Batcher is soft and light. Everyone else are varying levels of vibrant chaos and darkness. Darkness and pain shouldn’t be vibrant, but they all hurt, except Batcher, and she feels nice. Nice to feel. Nice to breathe.

Omega leans her head against the hound’s back, eyes drifting shut as exhaustion nags at her. She hasn’t been in motion for that long in a while, and it feels like she’s forgotten what it was like, even if it’s all she’d wanted on Tantiss. It’s annoying.

She’s never seen Crosshair cry before, either, until now, and it’s still freaking her out. She hurt him. She didn’t… mean to, but she was just so angry at him. Still is.

Her brothers weren’t the ones hurt, though Tech was most of all, but he’s… he’s accepting of it. She still doesn’t understand. How could Hemlock have done that to him?

“He knew if you were aware of my presence, you would be determined to bring me back. He made the right choice.”

They’re safe now, but Omega still doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t know what happened.

She fell off a cliff, and Wrecker stopped breathing.

Right now, she just wants to sleep.

“She needed help!”

“You don’t know what she’ll be come.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“She will destroy your family.”

“She deserves a chance.”

“Not her.”

“Actions always have consequences.”

“She needs help, and I am going to help her.”

Her heart throbs with an aching hole, like something inside was ripped out, and Omega props her energy bow up against the wall, her crossbow beside it. She’ll figure out her weapons later. The aching emptiness is crushing enough she wants to cry.

She saved that child. Or was it just a dream? She thought it was the right thing to do, but what if the voice, the cloud-thing was right? What if she was wrong? What if something…

They’re together again. Her family’s together. They’ll be fine.

Something light prickles at her mind, it’s feather soft, silky feathers stroking over her forehead, curled dry at the edges, thorns hidden safe from sight. In her mind, Omega sees a flicker, an orange-skinned girl sitting beneath the burning sun, a hay-covered field, swiping her hand across her forehead.

The girl’s eyes widen, looking up, and meeting hers. “Morai?” Her skin is the same shade as the girl Omega pulled from the storm, but she’s older. Much older.

“I don’t know who that is,” Omega answers, “My name’s Omega.” She blinks up at the sapphire eyes. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Ashla.” The words grate wrong, dark and dirty, flowing backward like stroking Batcher’s fur the wrong way in a way that makes it stick up and rough.

“That’s a lie.” Omega tilts her head, eyes narrowing, studying her. She looks a little like the kid she pulled out of the storm. Just a bit.

The girl shifts back, hands lowering. “How’d you know?”

“I –” Omega has no idea. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not a normal child, are you? You’re too bright.”

“I don’t know. I’m just a clone.”

“I’m Ahsoka. I – used to be a Jedi.”

She’s wrenched backward, the world crashing in and dark, burning over with grayness, the other girl gone in a flash of lightning.

“Thank you,” the cloud voice says from her dreams earlier, “For your cooperation.”

“What cooperation?” Omega snaps, jerking forward, eyes narrowing with a wild, frustrated fury. “And who are you?”

“I’ve been trying to find her for a long time, Omega. You just led me here.”

The cloud flies at her, its icy, wild darkness clawing and tearing.

Omega wrenches back with a strangled gasp, her body slamming into Batcher’s side and waking her with the force, her hair flying into her face. The hound barks, yelping at awakening.

Why does this keep happening?

Chapter Text

“And I still don’t get what’s with him,” the clone – Gregor, she thought his name was – says, jabbing a finger at the newcomer.

Tech sighs, slouching in his seat. Emerie is still not certain what to believe about how he is still alive. “In the dream we experienced, I broke through the programming.”

“Still don’t get what that means,” another says – Howzer? Emerie has seen he has some sort of conflict with Crosshair.

It is not one she understands, but she can’t say she is overly fond of Howzer for his hostility, though it is not as though she understands the source of their conflict, either. It is not her concern, unless Crosshair is in danger, which he is not.

“No one does,” Hunter answers for them. He is fiercely protective, and that is something – the one thing Emerie has been missing her entire life. All she has ever wanted is someone to hold steadfast and firm.

She still doesn’t know what to think of her… dream. It was real, but her memory until boarding the ship is fuzzy. She remembers they made it off Teth, and Echo and Gregor picked them up after a near showdown with some clones still working for the Empire.

Her head still feels fuzzy. Something’s wrong.

“I don’t even know what just happened!” Wrecker whines.

“Eh. No one does,” Echo sighs, flicking another button on the dashboard.

Omega’s sitting on the floor, leaning on Batcher, visibly exhausted, though there’s still a faint lingering glow across her body. Her eyes look green in the lighting.

“I saw someone there,” Hunter continues, “He said we somehow… got powers of some sort of… beings. I don’t know.”

“Sounds like some Jedi osik to me,” Gregor supplies, leaning back in his chair and swinging back and forth, hands behind his head. Emerie has seen clones sit like that, though she cannot quite comprehend the desire to be so… unprofessional?

“Did he say anything else?” Echo asks, looking at his hand. Emerie can’t imagine how he could survive with it, and Omega has said before she doesn’t know how he manages without Tech.

Their lives were defined by a without Tech, except he was alive and on Tantiss.

Emerie did not even know Tech to miss him. She didn’t know anyone. Emerie grew alone. Seeing Omega’s pain and longing had always made her heart ache, but it was never something she understood, because she had never had anyone to lose. It would be better to have had loss, Emerie thinks, because at least she would have had someone. Perhaps she would have understood her sister enough to know why she so desperately needed a way home. Why Crosshair did.

She could have helped them long before she did.

All that time, all those months, Emerie did so little for them.

She sees the family her brothers have, and she wants to be a part of it, of something other than a lie.

She does want freedom. She always has, but Omega never spoke of how terrifying it was. The galaxy is so vast and dark with infinite danger.

(Something ripples in her mind, dark and twisting and venomous. Something deadly.)

“Something about light and dark,” Hunter answers, “That there were four of them. But I don’t know what that means.”

“I do,” Echo replies, twisting his chair around. “It sounds crazy. Okay, maybe it is crazy, but… Omega is still glowing. Back in the Clone Wars, the general told me about a planet he went to. A place called Mortis.”

“We never really talked about Mortis,” Rex picks up, leaning on Echo’s chair. “It wasn’t a good time or place, but it was right before we lost Echo. I wasn’t there, but the general and commander landed on this planet with beings of powers the Jedi had never seen. He said they use the Force… differently.”

“What’s the Force?” Emerie inquires.

“Jedi magic,” Hunter answers without blinking, and Echo snorts.

“It wasn’t a good mission,” Rex continues, “Shook ‘em both up real bad. The Commander apparently died and came back somehow. I don’t know.”

“I thought there was three of ‘em,” Echo says.

“They met three,” Rex corrects, “There was a fourth. My general did some research on them afterward. There was a fourth they never met, a being of chaos.” He sighs. “We need a Jedi’s advice on this.”

No one points out that is not a choice they have. Emerie has never known the Jedi, and she never will. They are something lost in history, a piece of the past long gone, a part of the galaxy she never earned the right to see.

Just as the Clone Wars, the very purpose of her own creation. Emerie does not want war, but she has little idea where her place in the galaxy is. Emerie has never been able to make her own choices, and neither does she understand its meaning.

“Too bad we can’t get one,” Echo sighs.

It’s strange to hear them speak of their pasts. Emerie is aware all her brothers and sisters have their own lives and stories, all of which she was never a part of. She had her own path. Her own story. One alone and forgotten.

She and Omega aren’t that unalike.

“We need to focus on figuring out where we go from here,” Hunter interjects softly, “We’re going back to Pabu.” Something in the air feels sharp and staticky. Hunter looks down at his aqua glowing hands. A mist has been swirling around them on and off since leaving – was that Mortis?

Emerie is very uncertain of any of what happened. All she knows is that she is entirely unequipped for being free.

Emerie’s first tastes on being off Tantiss aren’t significantly better than being on it. There is danger everywhere. First the wyrm, then the assassin on Teth, though it turned out to be Tech, and Mortis in general. No one was harmed, but she cannot believe that will remain true.

“We have a few other safe places,” Rex replies, “Though not many.”

Emerie looks to Hunter and Omega, though her sister is presently sleeping. Omega has not given a specific request, but Emerie already has her own clear mission objective – finding Tantiss. That is what is most important. There are people there who they need to recover. People who require their help. Tech is not the only clone who had his mind ripped away, and Hemlock is right they are Imperial property, but they are still people.

They are still her brothers, all of them, and Emerie cannot excuse watching as their minds and identities are ripped away. She saw what that did to Omega. It destroyed his entire squad.

She saw Crosshair crying by the broken goggles, the little memorial place they set up in the Marauder just for him. She had never fully understood loss until then. Seeing Omega grieving was not the same.

“These abilities are dangerous,” Tech interjects, “We do not yet know what they mean.”

“Considering Wrecker nearly blew up a planet, I agree,” Crosshair grumbles.

Echo’s hand sparks, and he sighs, turning it over and glaring.

“Were you injured?” Emerie inquires – Omega had said he has a lot of mechanical pieces, though the electricity appears purple instead of blue and white.

“Well, I got hit by a lightning bolt and came out like this.”

“It’s not a malfunction,” Hunter interrupts with a shake of his head, “He feels the same, just… charged. Does it hurt?”

Echo shakes his hand again. “It’s like – energy. There’s – there’s too much of it. It just feels like… something’s about to blow up.”

Hunter shifts back, hands on his hips. “Feels like it, too.”

(Something flickers in her mind, a voice whispering for attention. Something cold and sinister.)

Emerie continues observing, mildly intrigued – she has always been curious as to how Hutner’s senses work. Even Omega had been uncertain when she asked. They… are different, like Emerie and Omega and… Like they are. She would like to think that means she belongs here.

“I could be collateral damage until I figure out what this is,” Echo sighs.

“It’s fine,” Rex promises, “We understand. If you need some time off –”

A startled gasp jerks everyone’s attention back to Omega. Emerie’s out of her seat instantly, genuinely expecting to see something else blown up or otherwise threatening, though there is only her sister.

When she shifts up, Hunter’s already at her side to steady her. Batcher scuttles away, whining her irritation at being awakened. Omega’s breathing rapidly, though she appears unhurt.

“What’s wrong, kid?” Hunter asks.

“I just – dreams,” she whispers, “I saw someone who said she was a Jedi.”

Emerie throws an uncertain glance at Hunter. Perhaps she heard the word in her sleep, but that she was dreaming about one right when they were discussing the helpfulness of what is not to be considered entirely coincidental.

“What was the name?” Echo queries, leaning forward.

“Ahsoka? I think it was Ahsoka.”

Not a name familiar to Emerie, though it’s not as though she knows any Jedi names. They’re something of the forgotten history she will never be a part of or have a place in.

“That can’t be right,” Echo argues, shaking his head, “If she were there, she wouldn’t’ve left us.”

“Ahsoka’s the one who freed me in Order 66,” Rex interrupts quietly, “But she’s not the same kid you knew, Echo. The war’s changed all of us. She… wanted a break, and I couldn’t refuse her. It might have been a vision. Could be time I pay her a visit.”

“Tell us what you find,” Echo requests. “I think I’d best go to Pabu for a bit. Until we figure this out.”

***

Pabu is… a nice place to live. Emerie can understand the appeal, though she still struggles to imagine how it could be as safe as her siblings insist.

Hemlock is still after Omega. Hunter explains the situation in detail after arrival. That is one of the reasons Tech was sent after them, and Emerie has a multitude of mixed feelings about that. She saw how deeply Tech’s squad cares for him, and it…

She allowed Hemlock to harm so many. She believed she was doing the right thing.

She cannot stop expecting to see danger lurking in every shadow, in every person, but there is no threat or malintent she recognizes. Just the voices in her head.

Moon-yos are jumping around Omega, running and playing with Batcher. She’s speaking to Tech and Crosshair, Wrecker pitching in every now and then. She’s filling them in on their adventures, and Emerie is listening, though she sits a distance off from the table, balanced on the edge of one of the surrounding walls.

Omega’s squad is seated around the massive table – Emerie’s never seen anything like it before. Never so calm and… peaceful. It’s evening, and the sun is slowly sliding from the sky.

Her brothers and Omega have earned their freedom. They fought for it, died for it, were hurt for it. And Emerie? She did nothing.

“You have the strength to fight, too. You’re one of us.”

“That’s where you belong.”

“You’re a clone like us, Emerie. Help us.”

“There is no way off world.”

“Yeah, there is, and we’re gonna find it.”

“It’s dangerous out there. Even if you could find a ship and get past the cannons, the jungle is deadly, Omega.”

“So are we,” Crosshair hisses darkly.

“We can finally go home. You don’t belong to the Empire, Emerie. You’re our sister. We can do this together.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I’ll explain on the way.”

“Is something wrong?” Echo asks, hand falling on her shoulder.

Emerie’s eyes flicker to him, then back at his – their? – squad. “No.”

Echo leans against the wall beside her, watching.

Omega’s leaning on the table, glowing hands raised and gesturing something about giant machines that Emerie lost track of midway. She’s so excited. Adventurous. That’s dangerous.

Hemlock’s voice in her mind.

Danger.

“So, what are you doing now?” Echo asks.

“I thought I would stay with Omega, but in the long run, I don’t know. I’ve never had my own life.” And she is terrified. The first choice Emerie made was when Omega held her hand to her and Emerie couldn’t refuse.

This was her sister, asking to go home. To stop being hurt. She knew what she had to do, even if it was hard.

“Well, we do now.” Echo shrugs one shoulder, and Emerie downs the rest of her cup.

“I’m not like you. I don’t have a place I belong,” Emerie confesses, sighing. “I’ve never had… anyone. I don’t know how to live this life.” It feels so purposeless, and she doesn’t understand. Only knows that she hurt all of them, and she needs to make it right. They have to get back to Tantiss.

Not all her family is free or safe.

“We’ll figure that out together.”

“I… want to know if I can be a part of this family. Of your family.”

“You’re a clone. This is where you belong. You can go anywhere you want.”

After what she did to Crosshair, was complicit in with Omega and – and – after what she was entirely oblivious for with Tech, it’s so hard to accept being here. She needs to make this right, but Emerie has always been determined. She has never stopped trying, either.

Leaving Tantiss was hard, and it’s terrifying, though she knows it was the right choice. The relief on her little sister’s face despite her worry had been enough. Crosshair had taken… time to warm up to her, though Emerie cannot fault him. And yet, they were already somewhat – no matter how awkward – speaking on the way to Ryloth.

Somewhat. Crosshair is not overly talkative, and neither is Emerie, but they have a comradice in understanding with one another no one else can ever share.

“I am sorry for what I did to you,” she had said to him, and talking had been hard, but she owes him. “I should have done more than I did to help.”

“I know,” was all he’d said, but she understood.

“I don’t really know what I want. I just need to keep Omega safe.”

“She’s safe with us,” Echo promises, “We’ll take care of her, and you.”

Emerie looks up at him. “I… do not need…”

“You’re one of us, Emerie, no matter what you’ve done. And we always take care of each other. I wasn’t always a part of them, either, but we figured it out. You will, too.”

Echo moves away toward the others. Emerie watches him go. She still doesn’t know what it means to have a family.

***

“I understand your need for a drink, but could you stop teleporting all of our glasses to the other side of the galaxy?” Tech asks, visibly flustered. Omega stifles a giggle with her hand.

Hunter sighs, shaking his shimmering, half-formed hand. It’s more of an aqua, swirled mist than a limb. “I don’t know how to get it to stop.” He seems firmly confident glaring at the missing limb will make it spontaneously respawn. Emerie is impressed by the persistence.

Emerie is unsure how this could have once been the most effective squad in the army. They are a nightmare. She still finds herself rapidly growing fond of them.

“I have an idea,” Omega pipes up. “I think. I don’t know if it’ll work, but we can try.”

Hunter sighs. “Might as well give it a try.”

Omega drags them out to the edge of the rocks, overlooking the sea and setting sun. “Here,” she says, climbing onto the center rock and crossing her legs, “There should be enough room for all of us.”

“You think meditating is gonna help us?” Echo asks, almost disgustedly. His scomp spits out a surge of sparks, singeing the rocks.

“Sure,” Omega shrugs, “That’s what it’s supposed to do. Gungi said it’s to help focus and control his mind and abilities. It should do the same for us.”

“What are we doing?” Emerie inquires quietly.

“Here,” she offers, “You can sit by me. I’ll show you. It’s meditation. To quiet our minds and help us connect with ourselves and heal our minds.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Emerie lingers back, mostly just confused.

“I do not believe my mind requires healing,” Tech objects, despite the fact that his mind was entirely not his own just yesterday.

Hunter grabs Crosshair’s shaking hand when he hesitates, guiding him over to Omega. Wrecker follows her almost mindlessly, like an obedient puppy. He’s loyal, doesn’t have much sense of self, but Emerie thinks he seems to be following more blindly than earlier. She was under the impression it was Hunter he followed like that, not Omega.

Energy loops around them, flickering and buzzing. Emerie does not feel it the same way they do, but she feels the tenseness in the air.

Echo and Tech share a glance, and they mutually back away. Emerie doesn’t understand that, either.

Omega shows them what to do, how to sit and how to breathe. Hunter relaxes into it instantly, closing his eyes and following. Wrecker is squirming, but he’s trying. Crosshair’s reluctant, but when they’re all looking away, Emerie hears the deep rise and fall of his breathing, too.

She is trying. The air calms around her, but calm is not something Emerie has ever really had. There is no calm in being alone, and even now, she cannot be certain there isn’t danger lurking in every shadow. She can feel it – the quiet whispers of burning chaos in every twitch and movement.

Someone’s watching. Her mind feels hazy.

She is here, but there’s another thing whispering in her mind, licking at her. Something that doesn’t belong.

Emerie hurt her family. She doesn’t deserve peace. She ought to be the one trapped back on Tantiss and – stars, she’s done so much.

“Can’t focus either?” Echo asks.

She sighs. “Letting my guard down is hard.”

Tech’s datapad is beeping – that is his way of coping as much as hers. It’s easier when he focuses on a task that must be completed instead of internally. Emotions are so confusing.

“We need to locate Tantiss,” Emerie says, standing. She moves away a bit from the others to avoid disturbing them.

“We will be unable to go to Tantiss until we can control our abilities,” Tech replies shortly, not looking up. He’s tense, and Emerie studies him, curious.

With a start, she feels something cold on her mind, something smooth but infinitely dark, a hole of nothing twisting and drawing in, a pit of ceaseless rage and hurt, sifting seamlessly through her mind and feeling, running through it. Devouring but gentle, held back with unwillingness to cause pain.

When she looks, his eyes are black, his irises a shimmering green.

“Is that you?” Emerie asks.

He stands across from her, coiled with what she thinks is possessive protection. “You hurt Crosshair.”

She sighs. “Yes.” There are no excuses. Not anymore.

She wants to destroy Tantiss, and Hemlock, but in the end, it won’t undo what she’s already done.

“This is not something you can ever truly make up for,” Tech replies. There’s a crack, and he looks down.

“I think you broke your datapad,” Emerie supplies. “Perhaps you should join them.” She inclines her head toward their squad.

Tech tenses up farther. “That is not what I need.”

“Then what is?” She wants to help, but that is not easy.

Something shifts beneath his feet, a small plant withering, curling up and falling, its leaves brown and lifeless.

“Tech,” Hunter’s voice sounds. Emerie pauses, turning to see him standing, facing them. She hadn’t noticed him getting up. “Emerie. We’ve all made mistakes. Not all ones we could help, but what matters is that we try to make it better, and we make different choices from here. I know you’ve both… done things. So did Crosshair. I have, too. And Wrecker. It’s part of living. Come.”

Emerie hesitates, but follows, sitting back beside Wrecker, who’s still trying to meditate.

He keeps wriggling.

“You’re distracting me,” Crosshair grumbles, opening his eyes.

“I can’t focus!” Wrecker whines.

“Stop focusing.”

“I’m starting to think we need an abandoned planet somewhere,” Hunter interjects.

“Or, we try something different,” Crosshair suggests gloatingly, jumping at Wrecker. Emerie carefully steps around the scuffling twins to sit back down.

“I spent enough time doing nothing on Skako Minor when they kept me in status,” Echo says quietly, watching Crosshair tackle Wrecker into the water, who yanks him after. They come back to the surface spluttering and laughing.

“I think it’s worth a try,” Hunter tells him, “If you’re alright with it.”

Echo sighs. “Alright. I’ll try.”

Emerie doesn’t know if it works, but eventually, she sinks into some sort of semblance of calm.

(Something is whispering, nipping and gnawing at the edge most of her senses, demanding attention and whispering of warning, of death and chaos. Of – destruction. Something… lethal. Dangerous. Powerful. The eyes that never stop watching.)

***

Sleeping is hard. Emerie can sleep fine – she’s a short distance from the others, Batcher curled nearby and Gonky resting at her head, but the others… Omega sleeps in the gunner’s mount, a curtain pulled over her, but Emerie hears the shuffling from the back. Crosshair wakes, gasping deeply like he can’t breathe at all, all movable objects shuddering and trembling.

Hunter randomly blinked out of existence with a swirling mist a few times. Dreams, too, Emerie thinks. He either walks back in or reforms, visibly disgruntled.

Crosshair’s curled up on the rack near Omega, looking decidedly miserable, but sits when he sees Hunter. “Where do you keep disappearing to?”

“Anywhere I think about.” He sinks into a chair, sighing. “It’s getting very… very frustrating, though we could use it to get to Tantiss once we figure out how to make this work.”

Crosshair lies back down with a loud sigh. Emerie doesn’t really think he wants to go.

Hunter looks at her, then to where Wrecker and Tech are in a pile on the floor – it’s strange to see people so close and trusting of each other – before standing and moving to the back to Crosshair. “I’ll stay for a bit,” he offers.

“Don’t teleport me,” Crosshair warns.

Hunter groans quietly, climbing onto the rack beside him. It must be tight, but they must trust each other enough for it not to matter. Emerie wishes she could be that close with someone.

She has always wanted to, even not understanding the meaning. It is… instinctive, she suspects, to crave contact and closeness with another person.

Emerie understands little about… the world outside Tantiss, but she is aware of that – she has always had a desire to be with her family. That is natural.

Tech looks up at her, the visible ability to see everything around him, through her mind and all burning in his eyes. His irises keep turning green. It depends how angry he is, but for all his anger and all his power, he has never hurt her, even if it would be fully justified.

“You are with us,” Tech speaks up quietly, “You are one of us as long as you are here.”

Emerie could say anything to that, but now does not feel like the time to speak, so she nods, settling back down.

This time, rest comes easily.

The air is smokey and dark. Soot-soaked glass shards fill the walkway, jagged and half eaten away by darkness. Tree roots curl under the pathway, their towering forms obscured by fog.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the voice asks.

“I… suppose you could say that.” She would say eerie.

“This is you, Emerie. It’s your soul.”

“I am not broken.”

“Not all fractures are breaks.” Purple-red eyes turn to her, a million squid-like tentacle swiveling, trialing over the jagged pathway.

“What is this?” The glass walls arc above, closing in, hidden and misted from smoke, the darkness crawling through the walls, eating away.

“It’s a mirror prism. I’m you, and you’re me.”

“I do not know you.”

“Because you don’t know yourself. You’re my sister, and I am yours.”

“I… only have one sister. Omega.”

The cloud laughs. It’s bitter and broken, devoid of humor. “Family is more than blood. Family is what binds us together and gives us who we are. It is all we are. And it’s something all of us deserve. You aren’t alone anymore, Emerie. We are one. Wherever you go, I’ll be with you. You can’t escape me, because –”

“You are me,” Emerie finishes.

“I’m yours, and you’re mine.”

The air is cold, filled with wild static. Emerie gasps as a purple haze floods the prism, rushing outward. Pain flares in her head, raw and blinding. The cloud lunges at her, and Emerie gasps again as a flash of purple writes her mind away into nothing.

Chapter Text

When Crosshair opens his eyes, it’s to the Marauder, though shaded and gray in a way entirely uncharacteristic. The others are gone, and he sees Hunter disappearing through the doorway. Feels a looping flicker, dark and empty.

He slides off his rack, following. This is empty. This is Hunter. It feels like Hunter. The walls. The ceiling. Floor.

He tiptoes for the door. Outside is different. Pabu, but empty. There are sounds, familiar but muffled through washing waves.

He sees Hunter with a brief flash, moving away.

He’s running, then.

It looks as empty as Hunter feels. Crosshair feels it constantly. He should be calm and relaxed, but he’s void. Empty. Lost under crushing waves of hurt and bitterness. This is his mind. It’s not real.

He sees Hunter, gray wings spread from his back. He’s gone in a fluttering flicker.

He’s going somewhere to be alone, as if he hasn’t been for so long already.

Crosshair’s doing.

He needs to make it right.

He sees flickers, mostly impressions. An empty gunner’s mount, the lights off where they used to be on. Tech’s goggles, broken and shattered. His own armor crate, untouched and caked with dust. A forever untouched holo album, moments from their childhood to now, untouched, no additions – time after Crosshair left is different. Tech… got a different holoalbum after Kamino.

They separated him from their life entirely.

Hunter can’t talk to him. Tech can’t look at him. Wrecker’s still recovering. Learning to trust again. The kid…

He misses home. He wants Hunter to hold him again, the way he always used to. Wants to rest in his arms and let him carry his pain the way they always would, but Hunter’s the one drowning.

Crosshair sees a million flashes, through Hunter’s eyes and his own. Wrecker’s gasp as he hit the ground. Tech’s yelp as the blaster shot threw him from the engine. The explosion. Flashes of a forest. Falling. Dark gray walls. Crosshair’s grip on his arm as he yanked him upright.

“Aim for the kid.”

“You never could see the bigger picture.”

“Every choice you have made since Kaller has been wrong.”

“Not the ones that matter.”

The blaster muzzle pressed to Hunter’s back. Ripples of gnawing panic. A fleeting determination, shattered by hopeless fear.

And then empty.

Always empty.

“I made my decision.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to be enemies.”

Crosshair sits beside him, tensed and awkward. Hunter doesn’t look at him. the quiet, flickered whispering in his mind doesn’t stop. Nothing. Failure. Weak.

“That’s not true,” Crosshair whispers, hugging his knees to his chest. “I do care. I do.”

Hunter sighs, looking away.

He wants to cry. Tears burn his eyes, stinging and searing. “I’m sorry. I loved you. I never stopped. I – I couldn’t. I was scared and angry and I thought I was right and I – I know what I did to you. I never thought it would be so…”

“You never thought you could hurt me,” Hunter supplies.

“I knew I could. I just thought it wouldn’t… matter.” On hindsight, that sounded awful and it’s really, really not what he meant. Hunter would’ve known that once. He has no idea if he does now, but the frantic desperation building up inside him begs to – to not be hit again. Don’t make him angry don’t hit me don’t hurt me –

He hadn’t meant to yell at Hunter when he saw him again, but he’d been angry – Hunter was supposed to protect them, but he let Tech go there, and Tech had his mind ripped away.

That was Crosshair’s doing, though. He’s the one who left.

“I’m sorry,” Crosshair whispers, arms tightening. “Daro – I didn’t know you were hurt. I was just – angry. I wanted to hurt you. I couldn’t make it stop. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Hunter looks up at him, but Crosshair can’t look back. He’s shaking. Crying.

Hunter’s hand slips across his shoulder, wrapping around his back. Crosshair sinks into his side, shivering. He wants to stay here. To belong here, in the way Crosshair was once good enough to be. If he was ever – he’s a monster. He hurt them.

“I love you,” he whispers, “And I – want to stay. I want – to be yours.”

Hunter’s right wing stretches over him, his soft feathers resting over Crosshair’s back.

He chokes on a strangled sob. “I like your feathers,” he mutters. “They’re soft.”

His older brother laughs. Shaky, but there. Hunter presses his lips to Crosshair’s head, and he shifts closer himself, resting in Hunter’s arms, hand lifting to his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, “For hurting you.”

“I know,” Hunter promises, and he’s tired, but it’s a promise, and one he believes, as the dream fades away.

***

Crosshair expects to get awoken in many ways, but a high-pitched shriek isn’t anywhere on the list. He rolls off the rack, dropping to the floor and braces for diving for the nearest weapon he can get his hands on.

Wrecker and Tech are scrambling from their pile on the floor, Hunter and Echo are absent, Omega’s still in the mount, and the other girls are curled together in a way that’s begging them to be immovable by morning. Emerie’s hair is falling loosely into her mostly hidden face, head on Batcher’s back and the hound wrapped around her.

There’s no blood.

They’re fine.

What is very much not fine are the wide, non-human eyes blinking up at him.

“Dad?” the way too high-pitched voice asks, and Crosshair jumps backwards as the tooka doll in question stands up, shaking herself off as if she should be standing, or doing anything but flopping around dead-ly as any toy should be.

Omega’s head pops over the side, and she looks down, staring wide-eyed at Lula.

Everyone is both awake and staring, or scrambled for their weapons.

Hunter and Echo stumble in from the cockpit, tensed like they’re expecting a dead body, but everything’s clear.

Lula’s head and entire body along with it swivels around. “Hi,” she chirps, and actually, her mouth is moving like Crosshair didn’t stitch that thing into her face, “I woke up, and I fell off out of bed, but I don’t have blood, so I don’t think I can get bruises.”

Omega chokes on a laugh, giggling into her hand, and Crosshair can just stare in wide-eyed, genuine horror.

Echo snorts, and Hunter chokes back a laugh of his own – to his credit, he looks like he is very deeply trying to hold it back. Well, nicer than Omega – this is not funny. He held Lula when she was in scrap piles and carefully stitched her together, piece by piece to donate her to his twin brother because he wouldn’t stop crying from the pain of growing.

She’s a toy. A cloth made from clothes scraps – and she’s talking?

His glowing sister is laughing outright now. Everyone’s staring.

Crosshair slowly backs away.

Toys don’t come to life. She’s not living – she’s made of cloth scraps, not anything that can breathe or talk, but something about her feels alive. It feels like Omega, like some twisted but little and brilliant segment of her powers. Like somehow, by existing, she breathed life into this.

She is light.

Didn’t know that meant she could… animate things.

Oh, stars, this isn’t happening. Someone wake him up.

“Dad? Pick me up!” Lula requests, raising her arms and hopping towards him.

Crosshair runs for his life.

***

The beach seems like a less crazy place to hide. His mind is swiveling, swirling. It never stops hurting. Every shifting emotion, every flicker of pain, every touch of discomfort.

Hunter’s gaping emptiness, the depression running too deep for anyone to see.

Tech’s loathing for something Crosshair can never understand.

Wrecker’s constant fear, the desperation to be seen and safe.

Omega’s need to help, their fierce determination masking an emptiness far deeper than he can imagine, an emptiness Crosshair felt so well when he was alone.

Echo’s grief and longing for those long gone, a life he can never get back. Fives. Rex. His general. Ahsoka.

Emerie’s fear and uncertainty, the constant whispering questions of whether she belongs.

It hurts. It always hurts – they never say what he did, but he hurt them, and he feels every minute of it. It feels like a curse and he wants to stop feeling, but he deserves this – to feel every shred and second of what he did to them.

Wrecker’s scared of him. Hunter’s scared of him.

Tech can’t look at him without remembering hurting him. Being here is hard. He doesn’t blame Crosshair for what happened, and he should. It’d be easier if he could. Then it’d be clear and simple – he’s the source of their struggles and he could just –

He doesn’t really want to die, but everything hurts so much and he wants it all to stop.

“Crosshair.” Emerie’s quiet, gentle voice sounds behind him, but something’s wrong. It echoes in a foreign way, the way all of his siblings except Emerie do now, laced with a power unnatural and distinctly not her. When he turns, her eyes are purple, a misty cloud flickering around her. She feels deadly. Wrong.

“What are you?” he demands, standing, eyes narrowed. This isn’t his sister.

“I’m giving you a chance, little brother.” Her voice is layered over by another, a second voice not her own, one higher and softer but more sinister and terrifying.

He’s tense, hands clenching, fear rising coiled to the surface. “For what?”

“I know what it’s like to be alone. They left you. They forgot you. You deserve more than that, Crosshair.”

“You’re lying,” he spits back. “They care. I know what I mean to them.” Hunter’s desperation and longing, his fear and certainty of never meaning anything. Echo’s smile, no matter how tentative or distantly rough. Wrecker’s crushing adoration, the terror of letting him out of his sight and seeing him hurt. Omega’s calm, steady presence by his cell every night, her voice in his mind – “none of us belong in here.”

“You’re my brother, too.”

Batcher’s exuberance and her warmth when she rubs into him, her tongue on his face – ew ew ew.

Gonky’s happy honks. AZI’s “greetings, CT-9904. This is an unexpected arrival.” The soft, fluffy feels Lula radiated as she held her arms out to him.

Tech wouldn’t hate himself for hurting him if he didn’t love him.

(There’s something else, a memory misting away from reach, shimmering dim as an ember.)

All of what he did to them, and they still love him. They want him.

“All that time, and you didn’t even try to come back.”

“Do you?”

Crosshair’s the one who was never loyal. “I know them.”

“I can give you the life you want. A life with them, as it always should be.”

“I already have one.”

“You want your past to not have happened. All your time apart unwritten. I can give you that.”

“I’m where I belong.”

The air is tensing, and Crosshair thinks he should react, but she’s his sister and he doesn’t want to hurt her. She hurt him, but she tried to help him. Tried. There was nothing she could’ve done. Not like him.

Not like Crosshair, who tore his entire family apart because he’s an idiot and thought it was fun. Okay, that’s not – that’s not why he did it but he still did, and then he came back and saw the nightmare that he shaped for all of them, and he can’t begin to understand what it was he was thinking when he made those choices. He walked away from them.

“Pity.” When she smiles, it’s something entirely uncharacteristic. “But you’ll still stand by my side, Son.”

She lashes out, hands building with shimmering power as a smoke-ridged cloud envelops her, and slams them downward with a twisting flash. Crosshair’s flung back, for all he tries to shield himself, splashing into the ocean. The last he sees is a whirl winding hole ripping through space, and Emerie’s cloud-engulfed figure stepping through, back into a familiar jungle he never wants to lay eyes on again.

***

“Crosshair!”

“Crosshair! Thank the stars.” Hunter’s arms come around him, yanking him into a tight embrace.

Crosshair gasps, shivering – the water is freezing and something’s burning across him. Fire. Flames. Burning his face, searing across him. The snapping of his arm. The – engine. Seering. Lava. The flickering of the electric current running through his head. Burning. Always burning.

No. No.

“What’s happening?” Omega’s voice is high and panicked.

“You okay?” Wrecker’s hand is on his back.

He gasps, burying his face in Hunter’s neck and clinging to him. His brother’s and sister’s panicked worry flows around him, gentle and soothing. Safe. He’s home. Loved.

Tech is hovering a little back, and when all Crosshair can remember is the dark, faceless unfeeling helmet studying him as he struggled and cried, he’s grateful for that.

“What happened?” Hunter asks, “Where’s Emerie?”

“I – saw her go. She teleported. Like you do. Just – with a wormhole?”

“What?” Omega hisses.

Batcher barks and shoves her way past Echo to get to him, shoving her nose against his side. Crosshair flails a hand to pet her. What he saw was a nightmare. Just a dream.

He pulls back, head on Hunter’s shoulder. Wrecker’s arms are around his waist, holding him against his chest. Echo’s in front of him, Tech hovering a short distance behind, Batcher shoved against his stomach, Lula riding on her back and blinking up at him with way, way too big eyes. She literally doesn’t have eyelids, but is still blinking.

“Emerie did this?” Wrecker asks, hugging him tighter. His anger flares, protectiveness bubbling. It’s been so long since Crosshair was offered that.

“I don’t know. She was – different.” Emerie wouldn’t really ask him that. She’s their sister. Omega was right about that. She helped with them, and Crosshair was wary, kept expecting her to double-cross them, but she’d straight up grabbed a blaster on Tantiss and covered for him and Omega’s escape. Idiot nearly got herself shot, but with Omega going after Batcher, she’d murder him if he didn’t bring Emerie back in one piece.

Emerie had expected him to leave. Crosshair still doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Whatever hurt him, fought him, it wasn’t her.

He’s fine. The fire, the flashes – it was a dream. A memory. He’s safe. Free.

Hemlock can’t hurt him here.

Tech won’t hurt him here.

He won’t.

“Where’d she go?” Hunter asks quietly, pulling back. He’s never comfortable lingering by Crosshair too long, and he feels sick just from that. Wrecker is scared of him, too. He tried to apologize, but – but there’s no way to make up for what he did.

“I – I think she went back to Tantiss.” He knows that jungle. It was there – the death, the depression and crushing fear is too familiar. Of – of –

“Then we have to go after her! She’s in trouble.”

“She caused ‘trouble’ here, too,” Hunter points out.

Omega glares. “She helped Crosshair and I escape.”

“We didn’t need her help,” Crosshair feels the need to point out.

“Truth is, we still don’t know much about these powers,” Echo interrupts, “Trying to intervene might make things worse, but we can’t sit it out. There’s more to this than we realize. Is there a way to learn about them fast?”

“I researched the symbols on our armor,” Tech replies, “Though there is very little available knowledge about them. I suspect going to the former Jedi Temple may help.”

“Going to the Imperial palace?” Hunter asks incredulously. “Tantiss would be less dangerous.” Even Crosshair has to grudgingly agree at that.

“We can’t wait,” Omega argues, shaking her head.

Crosshair feels something, a distant rippling, a flare of death and pain, something far away but familiar. He knows it because he knows where. Never goes away, but something’s…

“What we’re talking about is more than us being hurt, Omega,” Hunter warns, “We don’t know what these powers are. We haven’t fought since. We could rewrite an entire planet.”

Omega’s already set. Crosshair feels it. She’s not letting anyone talk her down. But something flickers, a memory twistedly distant from mind. Or maybe it’s just that – Omega did so much for him, and this is for their sister – Crosshair knows she’s always wanted to go back. They don’t have anyone to go back there for. (Yes, they do.)

“We have to go,” he interjects quietly, and the others freeze, looking at him. “If something possessed Emerie, we have to stop it.”

Hunter sighs. “Alright.” Crosshair feels the fluxing downward spiral of his mind, the way it fogs over with darkness and smoke. He’s hurt. He’s always hurt, and it’s lingering, rubbing raw with a hopeless deep helplessness.

Wrecker’s worry flickers, but laced with a fierce determination – he hardly knows Emerie, but he will do anything to keep her safe and here, though he’s angry she hurt Crosshair. Wrecker loves so much Crosshair doesn’t even understand.

Echo’s scared, having started about three dozen fires so – sparks whenever he’s angry – but he’s been waiting for this long enough.

Tech doesn’t want to go – Tantiss brings – bad memories for them both. But he’ll follow Hunter anywhere.

Or, he will follow Omega anywhere. She’s determined, refusing to back down with a ceaseless stubbornness none of them share with her.

Hunter feels empty. He never used to feel like this, but Crosshair feels it now – the raging, sliding I am nothing failure you have to follow she’ll leave you like Crosshair and the bitterness that follows, but Emerie needs their help, and Hunter accepts that. He’s just afraid.

That was Crosshair’s doing, too. Always was. Is.

He thought Crosshair never cared. That every minute of his existence while they were away wasn’t forged by his constant yearning to belong and be and have – have them. To have someone – all he’s ever wanted was to go home. To have a home to go back to.

Not that Crosshair blames Hunter – he is the one who left them, walked away like they were nothing when they were everything and he has no way to atone for it. He shot at them. Shot them. Tried to – burn them. Howzer’s the one who kept him from shooting Hunter on Ryloth on first sight. Because he would have.

He knows he’s a monster.

Just – has no idea what to do about it.

Hunter calls them back to the Marauder, and Lula jumps at Crosshair when the others aren’t looking. He catches the soft weight in his arms, sighing. She blinks up at him, big-eyed, then latches herself onto his face and all six limbs to his head.

A lot of crazy things’ve happened in his life. Might as well add a doll hugging him to the list. Why not?

Crosshair sighs and hugs her back, anyway.

***

They don’t have much time, so they make it fast at grabbing supplies and head out. Omega calls a joint meditation to find it, though they don’t even need it. Something is rippling, twisting and tearing and burning. Crosshair doesn’t know what it is, but whatever Emerie was, he’s terrified of it.

It feels wrong.

It took their sister.

He wants to be normal.

They pinpoint the coordinates easily. He just – knows it when they narrow it on the map. Hunter and Wrecker had found a sector, and from there, it’s easy. Or, finding the wrongness is easy.

They couldn’t mistake it – it feels dirty, void and wrong. Tech jerks the ship from hyperspace, and brings them down towards the surface of the far too familiar planet. They don’t get very far before the cannons start firing.

Omega appoints herself co-pilot, despite how that’s usually Echo’s job, probably so he doesn’t start something on fire again, and Wrecker and Crosshair sit opposite each other in the back seats. Echo is up front, and Hunter’s on the guns.

As opposed to how Wrecker used to scream his lungs straight out in wild flying, he doesn’t make a sound or show a sign of discomfort.

“You’re calm with this?” Crosshair has to demand.

“We dunno what’ll happen if I don’t,” Wrecker points out. Crosshair sighs. His twin’s mind flickers with its warm gentleness. The coiling, whispered iciness of fear he constantly carries, something Crosshair is certain he never used to bear, though it’s not as though he could feel it back then.

“True,” Crosshair sighs, settling back.

He’s always jittery around Emerie. Doesn’t want to see her again, possessed by some sort of… monster. This isn’t a fight he’s looking forwards to, but she is here. He can feel the fear, rippling in his mind, so many voices. He wants to claw them out, make them stop.

Something is shifting in a way Crosshair doesn’t quite know, but it’s freaking him out.

Gonky honks panickily, and Lula is clinging to Crosshair’s leg. He’s opting to try ignoring her entirely. She’s adorable, but this is decidedly not normal. Apparently, he had his first child.

Who is a doll.

The Marauder jolts violently, and Wrecker’s eyes flicker red. Even the grayed over one shudders into a different color when his powers wake. His palms glow the same color.

Omega gasps and another presence flickers into Crosshair’s mind. There are so many, it’s hard to keep track of who’s who.

“Whoa, careful!” a deep voice shrieks. It reminds him a little of Wrecker.

“What was that?” Wrecker whispers, wide-eyed, hands glowing brighter.

This one’s different. Actually, what is it?

“Omega,” Tech requests, “Can you stop animating inanimate objects? I do not believe our squad can handle any additional members.”

Echo laughs. The sound is so jarring, Crosshair can hardly remember how it sounds.

Lula wabbles backwards, looking up. “Hello?” she chirps.

“Well, hello to you, too,” the voice grumbles, and it sounds like it comes from… everywhere.

“Is that the Marauder?” Omega whispers loudly.

Crosshair thumps his head on the back of his seat. Of course, Omega brought their ship to life.

“My name is Havoc,” the ship whines, spinning them in a wild circle as the laser fire continues, “It’s so nice of you to forget that.” The ship feels annoyed. It shouldn’t be possible, but every screw and metal scrap radiates with tangible irritation, in sharp contrast to Lula’s soft, adorableness.

“Alright, Havoc,” Hunter requests, just rolling with it – he doesn’t feel even a shred of surprise, “Can you just let Tech fly?”

The ship makes an irritated sound. “You’re living in my insides, and you still want to order me around?”

Wrecker opens his mouth, then closes it again, and with a flash of red and the awful, awful sound of snapping bones, he reforms into a giant… thing. It’s some sort of half lion, half bird, a wild mix of white and gold in color, with green feathers for its mane. It feels like Wrecker – it is Wrecker. That’s his twin brother, just like Tech turned into a similar creature. Wrecker’s glowing, though.

His eyes are shimmering red, though one still unseeing and the area around it scarred and fur-less, and it sticks out with glaring wrongness.

“Ah, monsters!” shrieks their ship. Crosshair is relatively certain Lula is taking cover behind his legs.

Wrecker’s head swivels towards him, and Crosshair steps forward, stroking his hand through the long feathers to try calming him. Wrecker nuzzles his head against Crosshair’s chest.

The ship goes for another swirl, and Crosshair grunts, stumbling back. Wrecker catches him with his mind.

“There’s too many fighters on our tail,” Hunter warns, “We’ll have to land, or we’ll get shot down.”

“I got you one better,” Echo replies, sliding off his seat and crouching beside Omega’s, bracing himself with his hand on the wall and plugging himself into the port, scomp alit with purple sparks. It flickers across the ships, and the lights flicker before the ship sparks forward, jolting outwards with a renewed streak of energy.

That works, too.

“Bring us in close,” Hunter requests, “Havoc, can you fly by yourself?”

“Alright, now that is just insulting. Do I have to poke at your insides to make them move?”

“A simple yes will suffice,” Tech grumbles. He’s almost unreasonably irked over the entire conversation.

“Tech, can you shift back to whatever it was?” Hunter inquires.

“I have not, though I am sure I can manage.”

“Do it. We’ll fly in.”

The Marauder lowers its ramp, and Wrecker nudges Lula’s ears with his nose, trotting forwards.

Hunter glances both ways as they gather around, then jumps off the ramp. His wings spread in a flash. Those things are real? Well, they might as well be – it’s far from the strangest thing Crosshair has seen thus far today.

“Whoa,” Omega breathes, wide-eyed as she looks at the light gray feathers sprouting through the back of their brother’s armor.

Wrecker and Tech exchange fleeting glances with each other before jumping after, with a blurring flash of memories, thousands of heights and jumps and falls – one blurring together, white-tinted and thick with fog – Eriadu.

Crosshair grips Omega’s hand as he looks down. They’re over the tree-tops, and it’s a bad landing. Echo’s behind them.

Wrecker swoops himself by, and Omega jumps onto his back. Crosshair follows, grabbing a feather handful to steady himself. If it hurts, his brother doesn’t say anything, and a quiet flare of adoration runs over some sort of doorway, tether tying them together.

Echo’s on Tech, and the six of them land together.

Crosshair jumps off, turning back to help Omega to the ground and stroke his hand across Wrecker’s back. He’s furry. It’s just a thin layer, but enough to feel through his glove, and it’s weird. It’s sort of adorable, too. Fits him.

Echo pats Tech’s head as he climbs off. “Nice ride,” he says, jerking back when Tech snaps at him, massive fangs narrowly missing relieving Echo of his remaining hand.

Tech stumbles forwards, bones snapping as he reshapes back to human.

Crosshair’s heart is pounding in his ears. Something’s wrong. Distant. Near. He thinks there’s a tendril of smoke slipping beneath the leaves. Something’s… wrong. Maybe it’s just seeing Tech in CX-2’s armor – dark and wrong, entirely foreign.

Tech hits the ground on his knees.

Crosshair feels his anger and panic in crushing, rolling waves.

Mount Tantiss stands before them, towering against the skyline, the place where they were all taken apart and put back together. The place they were nothing. Tech is as terrified of it as he is.

Tech’s eyes glint with something purple.

Just like Emerie.

“Tech?” Omega asks worriedly.

His palms are glowing green. The air is staticky with energy, prickling down his spine and under his skin.

Crosshair backs away, sensing the explosion he knows is about to occur.

“Tech, stop!” Hunter yells, trying to move. Tech’s hands are raising, shimmering green all the way down to his elbows.

(Something is shifting, a hole in reality. Like a double echo in his head, but too fast to see.)

Tech slams his hands on the ground, and everything explodes. Crosshair jerks back, shielding his eyes. Helmet or no, it can’t filter the deafening shattering. The air is thick with smoke.

The life here is gone. Void, ripped away until there’s nothing but Crosshair and his squad, and the few life spots aboard the Marauder.

When the smoke finally clears, Tantiss is gone.

Chapter Text

“What did you do?!” Omega breathes, eyes wide as she tries shielding her face from the destruction. They came this far. All this time, she wanted to go to Tantiss to free the other clones there, but the whole place is gone.

Tech falls, dropping motionless.

Hunter and Echo are at his sides, crouching.

Omega’s heart is pounding. She can’t breathe. Everyone there died. All the clones. Their brothers and – and –

Tech is unconscious. He doesn’t even twitch when Hunter shakes him.

“Overexertion, most likely,” Echo sighs.

“What do we do?” Wrecker asks worriedly.

Hunter looks back down, sighing.

Omega doesn’t understand. They were so close. Everything was fine, then she started dreaming, and now, Emerie… her sister was hurt, and now, they have no idea where she is. They don’t even know what’s happening to her, and now Tech? He wouldn’t have done that intentionally, but the hurt frustration is still burning inside her.

They were so close, and he leveled the entire place before they could get anyone out.

She can’t believe he did that.

“That looked like what happened to Emerie,” Crosshair supplies finally.

“The… thing got Tech, too?” Omega’s hands twist together absently. She thought she broke that habit, but some things don’t quite die. She already lost Tech once. She can’t do it again. There was nothing like seeing him fall, like the months on Tantiss of thinking he was gone.

And Omega cannot let her brothers endure that again.

“I don’t know, kid,” Hunter sighs. He seems so tired now, wrapped in a constant, crushing depression.

He’s hurt. He’s always hurt. Omega can’t forget the spiraling she felt when they talked about going to Tantiss for Emerie in the first place. There wasn’t a choice, but Hunter was hurt, and Omega wishes she could understand why. She never focused on anything but the mission – her brothers were the same way – but now that she feels them, constant voices whispering in her mind, she wants to make the pain stop.

Omega didn’t even know they felt it so deeply, that they felt anything so deeply, or even any of what she is feeling. It’s confusion.

“Where’s Emerie?” Echo asks, looking up.

Omega tries to nudge outward, to feel across the planet’s surface, but the only lives here are herself and her brothers. “Emerie’s gone.”

Not dead-gone, please, though her heart is aching and burning for reasons she can’t even understand. It feels like something’s missing, like… there’s someone… gone. She wants to cry, for something she can’t quite place or remember, but really – Tech just leveled that place. Hemlock’s dead, but so are all the other clones inside they were trying to help.

They were her brothers, too. She saw them hurt. Watched for weeks and months as they were torn down to nothing.

She can’t believe they’re all gone.

A voice whispers in her head, something icy cold, dark and malevolent. Wrong.

“Whatever it is, it’s still here,” Omega warns, looking around. “I’ve been dreaming about it since Mortis. I think it’s off world now, but it’s still here.”

“That doesn’t help us unless we know where it’s going,” Echo points out.

“Until then, we should go back to Pabu,” Hunter decides.

“Wait,” Omega objects, “I think I know where it’s going. Maybe. I saw this girl. She said her name was Ahsoka. She was on some farming planet. I think the cloud said it was after her.”

Echo goes completely still. “That thing is after the Commander?”

“Your commander?” Omega asks.

“The Jedi padawan he fought with in the Clone Wars,” Hunter answers, “Her name was Ahsoka Tano.”

“How’d we find her?” Omega queries.

“Would you know the planet if you saw it?” Crosshair inquires.

“Yes, I think so.” All planets have their own… feel. Omega thought it was just her imagination when she first was on Pantora and noticed how different everything was, but now, it’s something burned deep in her veins. She saw the place well, and it seemed peaceful.

“I’ll try to get a list together,” Hunter sighs, “Right now, we gotta get out of here.”

***

Hunter’s sitting in the back beside Tech, typing on the datapad their now-unconscious brother used to carry everywhere.

This feels familiar. Too familiar – Omega never saw how they dealt with Tech’s loss, but that he’s so quiet and still, no matter what any of them do, has her scared. She doesn’t understand what happened.

“Do we know what’s wrong with him?” Omega asks.

“He still hasn’t woken up,” Hunter sighs.

Lula’s little handless arms grip her leg. “Maybe you need to check him out?” she asks. “You woke me up.”

That’s fair. She did. She brought Lula and Havoc Marauder to life somehow. She felt Wrecker’s mind fade away and back on Mortis, alighting when she touched him. Omega steps up to the rack Tech’s lying on motionless, taking his hand in hers. It’s warm, and he’s right here, but he feels far, far away.

“I think he’s fine, but something’s…” There’s a flicker, quiet ice-coldness over his mind. “I think whatever it is might’ve attached itself to his mind. He’s there, but… something else is there, too.”

Hunter sighs. Omega squeezes Tech’s hand tighter. She shuffles her feet, looking up at Hunter. She feels so lost. He’s hurt, and Omega doesn’t know how to ask what’s wrong, now to help – she hasn’t talked to Hunter about his feelings since Crosshair left, really.

It’s almost embarrassing when she actually thinks about it. They lived together, and she has no idea how he thinks or feels about almost anything.

“I… um.” She rubs at her wrist again, looking at him, and it feels so stupid to ask what’s wrong. She ought to know this.

He looks up. The blue glow of the datapad makes his features look sharper, far too distinct, and she tries not to be unnerved by how his eyes are tinted aqua now. Sometimes, they’re still brown, but they’re usually aqua. It’s weird. “What is it, kid?”

“Is something wrong?” Omega blurts.

“No,” Hunter answers, though it’s too automatic, and Omega bites her lip.

“You don’t have to lie,” she argues, “I know I’m a kid, but I know something’s wrong, and I – I want to help.”

“You shouldn’t have to worry about us.”

Shouldn’t, maybe, but she does, because the world is not a fraction as perfect as Omega once wanted to believe it was, as she still wishes she could believe it is, but Tech… she saw Tech die, even if he somehow made it back, they still lost him. He was still gone, and they thought he… and Crosshair left.

Nothing is like Omega though it would be.

Nothing.

She thought she would never have to be alone again, that she would never have to hurt, and she longs – craves for a nonexistent reality where she will never, ever have to fear the dark, loneliness of Tantiss again, and her heart aches enough she wants to cry.

“I’ll always worry about you,” Omega objects with a shake of her head. “You’re my little brother, too.”

Hunter twitches a little, lips parting in a way she’s long come to read as surprise.

He looks back at Tech again, expression tight with worry. “We’ve never dealt with anything like this before,” Hunter confesses, “It’s… new to all of us. I don’t know what the best course of action is.”

“Well, we have to get Emerie back,” Omega replies, sitting next to him, “She needs our help. That’s more important than anything else.”

“Tech already got hurt again. We don’t know what these powers are, Omega. We don’t know if he’ll even wake up.”

“What?” she breathes, jerking back. “Don’t say that! Of course, he will!” They lost him once. They can’t do that again.

“We don’t even know what’s wrong.”

It’s so hard to understand sometimes, but this is the first time her brothers haven’t known. They always have some kind of answer, but when this started, everyone just seemed… lost. For Omega, it’s no different than it ever has been, because she’s never known, but for her brothers, this is different.

They hadn’t known Tech was alive, that he was trapped on Tantiss with Crosshair, getting his mind ripped apart. They hadn’t known that, and it was her little brother. She left him behind.

That’s why he’s so lost. “We’ll figure it out, Hunter. We always have.” For a moment, it feels so awkward, flipped and wrong – Hunter always used to be the one to comfort her, to tell her everything would be fine, but she used to hold him when he was little. She remembers him. Flickers and whisps, but something amidst the blank spots faded from mind.

“I know,” Hunter agrees, though he still sounds tired. “Wrecker and I wanted to settle down, but with his… thing on the loose, we’re the only ones with the powers to stop it. We thought, after you came back, we’d finally get to settle down, but…”

“We’re not done yet,” Omega supplies. She had thought the same, but she can’t let go of what happened on Tantiss, either. There are so many who need help. She’s not even gonna get that chance anymore. “There’s still something missing.” Her heart aches, but it never stops. There’s a hole in her heart, one of years and years of loneliness and the dull, bare walls of Nala Se’s lab, but something – is gone.

“Yeah,” Hunter agrees quieter, “There is. I can’t figure it out.” He looks down at Tech again.

“He’ll be okay,” Omega whispers, and she hopes – desperately – she’s right. His mind feels tumultuous, turbulent in a way that feels like nightmares. Omega hardly knew Tech had those.

“We have no idea what we’re up against, kid. This… being, these powers are things we’ve never seen.”

“Emerie helped us when we needed her to. We owe her, and she’s our sister.”

“I know, but…” He sighs. “We just got back together. I don’t want something to take us apart again.”

“It won’t,” Omega promises, “We’ll be fine.”

Lula waddles over to hug Hunter, and he pats her head.

Omega’s heading back up front, and stumbles to a stop when she sees the energy bow propped against the wall of the gunner’s mount, and the vibroblade laying innocently beside it. Her throat closes over, and tears blur her eyes unexpectedly. She can’t look away.

Wrecker spots her, instantly coming over the way he always used to, crouching and pulling her into a hug. Omega throws her arms around his neck. “’ts okay,” he promises, holding her close, “I miss her, too.”

And that, somehow, makes perfect sense.

***

It’s not through maps they find it. It’s through dreams. Omega keeps seeing it, flashes of fire and death, and she pieces it together, maps it out in her mind and pinpoints the coordinates herself long before Rex can come back with anything. People are dying, and there’s no time to wait.

She has to get her sister back. And wake up Tech. Something tells her they’re linked, and it’s with those in mind that Omega steps off the Marauder’s ramp – their ship alternates between being chattery and quiet.

They’d left Batcher on Pabu, just in case this goes downhill.

“Good luck!” Havoc calls after as they leave the ship.

“Echo, stay here with Tech,” Hunter requests.

“Not a chance,” he objects instantly, “We’re going to see my kid.”

Echo had another kid before her. Omega still finds that hard to imagine.

“I’ll do it,” Wrecker offers immediately. Of everyone, Omega thinks he’s been clingiest to Tech – he’s the one who stood there to his last, reaching for him, and Omega still remembers his scream enough to have it looping through her head forever.

“I can stay, too,” Lula offers cheerfully, like anyone was even going to suggest her coming.

“Don’t be babies,” Havoc gripes, “He’ll be plenty safe with me, Lula, and Wrecker.”

Hunter nods to Wrecker, and they set off.

The grass is tall as they move through it, a good way past her knees, somewhere close to her waist. The planet looks normal, beautiful though plain, but something’s sinister here. Wrong.

A figure comes out to greet them, a gray cloak wrapped over her shoulders and hood over her head, but Omega recognizes the blue attire anywhere.

“Ahsoka?” she asks, moving past her brothers.

“I saw you,” the girl says slowly, pulling her hood back. Her face is troubled as she scans them.

“I saw you, too,” Omega agrees, “In a dream or something. I don’t know what it was.”

“A vision,” Ahsoka answers, “I saw you, too, but who are you?”

“We’re clones,” Hunter interrupts, “I don’t know what’s happening, but Omega keeps… seeing things.”

“She’s Force-sensitive.”

“I’m not sure. We’re all something…”

“Other,” Ahsoka supplies, studying them, “I’ve never seen clones like you before.”

“That’s no surprise,” Crosshair supplies, arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed.

Hunter shifts aside so Echo can come past. Ahsoka twitches back, eyes widening and lips parting slightly. “Commander,” Echo says, awkwardly – Omega feels it in his mind.

“Echo,” she whispers. “You survived.”

“The general got me out.”

“We – we left you there. I thought you were dead.” There’s a wetness in her eyes, and Omega has the sudden feeling of being horribly out of place. She backs away a little, trying to give them a wide enough space for it to not be too awkward. This is a private conversation, not one she understands.

Does it make Ahsoka her sister if she’s Echo’s kid?

“It’s – it’s okay, kid,” Echo replies, “I survived.”

She makes a quiet, choked sound, and runs to him, and Echo stumbles a step back when they collide, his hand and scomp resting on her back. Omega feels tears in her own eyes. Echo had another family, one she never knew, one torn away from him before he ever met her and she ever knew him. Because of how overwhelmingly unfair the entire galaxy has been to all of her brothers.

“I’m sorry,” Ahsoka whispers, her arms wrapped around his back and clinging to his armor, even if his body is sparking and sparkling, and Omega feels the static in the air. It smells like ozone, thunder clouds slowly gathering in the distance and the feeling of wrongness approaching, but nothing right now matters but the reunion of a family long ripped apart by war and chaos and death.

They deserve each other.

This is what Omega wants to help, to do, to heal. She wants everyone to have this chance.

“I was so close, and there was all – it was –”

“I’m fine,” Echo promises her gently, “I’m alright, kid.”

She pulls back, wiping her eyes with a strained smile. “I know, just – I got so many of you lost.”

“It’s not your fault, Commander.”

“Maybe not,” she says, “But I was still supposed to be the one who – who protected you all.” She sighs heavily, wiping a little at the tears still lingering in her bright eyes. “So, what are you here for?”

The coldness is gathering in the air, linked with the trickling wrongness. There’s a hole, entirely different than the strange, morphed duplicate Crosshair and Tech are. Their presence is – a depression. There’s an end.

This thing doesn’t.

It’s spinning inwards and outwards in something like a hurricane, something cold and wrong, eyes watching, eyes everywhere, eternally unseen but always seeing.

This thing isn’t dark. It’s not made of hurt and pain. It’s not made by layers of wrongs and the desperate need to survive. This is Chaos.

“That,” Omega answers, pointing at the rapidly gathering cloud, spinning and spiraling downwards like a tornado.

Ahsoka freezes, stepping back. “This isn’t good.”

“What is it?” Hunter queries.

“The Mother. A being of chaos. The legends call her Abeloth.

“Do not call me Abeloth,” the being gripes, forming as a cloud figure and jabbing a tentacle at Ahsoka. “That sounds like sloth.”

Huh? How?

“Echo, Omega, stay back,” Ahsoka warns, hands raised as she moves forwards.

The cloud’s head turns to Omega, its eyes shimmering. “Thank you, Daughter. I asked, and you delivered.”

“Delivered what?”

It moves closer to Ahsoka. Not stalking, but still dangerous. It feels wrong, and it makes Omega’s skin crawl. This thing shouldn’t exist, whatever it is. “Ahsoka,” it breathes, voice silky smooth. “Darling, did you miss me?”

Ahsoka’s eyes narrow. The air is tense around her, and she flicks her hand outward, flinging the cloud’s body back into itself.

It yowls, but now forged back into a massive cloudy blob from the semi humanoid shape it was a second ago. Omega feels its hurt, rippling and tearing and the entire world explodes.

Fire flares skywards, the ground tearing and the ground leveled, the grass melting into rushing lava, the ground cracking and trembling.

Omega gasps, stumbling, and Hunter grabs her arm to keep her upright. Or tries to, but his hand turns to mist and it fades right through her.

Echo’s blaster is in his hand, his body crackling with electricity and something sparking near his feet. Crosshair’s rifle’s out, and Omega goes for her crossbow, firing it up and shooting at the cloud.

They’re all flung backwards, a wave of energy catching her square in the chest.

Omega grunts when she hits the ground a good distance off, scrambling to her feet and diving for her bow again.

The ground is burning. When she stands, Echo’s stalking forwards, grass singeing with every step, blackening away, fire sparks in his wake.

“What did you do to my sister?” Omega demands, pulling the bow lever back to fire at the thing’s eye.

“Oh,” it says, “Emerie’s safe. She’s one of us now.”

“What do you want?” Ahsoka demands.

Its head tilts. “You.” And then it charges.

Ahsoka grunts, gasping, throwing up some kind of invisible shield to cover them, but it caves right in. Hunter joins, aqua and blue sparking fire joining the energy shield.

Crosshair’s glaring, but his expression is tensed, pale. Omega feels his exhaustion, the strain.

“What’s wrong?” she whispers.

“It’s hurt,” he answers, and Omega feels it loud and clear. This… being, this thing, whatever it is, it’s angry because it’s hurt, and she doesn’t understand why.

“What do you want with us?” Hunter demands.

“You’re my family.”

“You’re not a clone.” He’s skidding backwards a bit, feet bracing on the ground, but always too stubborn to give in.

“I can be anything I want to be.”

Crosshair fires again, and it flicks its hand. The blaster bolt freezes mid-air, transforming into a fluttering little insect.

Omega stares, open-mouthed.

“And everything is as I want it, or it will be. We can do anything. Together.”

“And what do you want with us?” Echo demands.

"We’ll make the galaxy burn for what it’s done to us.”

Echo’s purple lightning energy joins with Hunter and Ahsoka’s shield. “We’re not helping you.”

“What has the galaxy ever given to you?”

“We’re not burning everything because someone wronged us,” Hunter throws back.

“Your powers are mine. We’re linked. We always have been.”

The area ripples and everyone is gone. Everyone but Omega, and the cloud that won’t leave her alone. The area is overwritten with storm clouds, and smoke is rising out of something.

Omega gasps quietly, turn whips back to the cloud to glower at it. “Where did you take me? What did you do to them?” Are they hurt? Stars, she doesn’t want to be here alone again. She’s been alone for so long. Being without them even for a short time has her jittery now. She just wants to be safe.

“You don’t want to be alone,” the cloud says gently. It makes her skin crawl, anyway. “You think they can help you, but they aren’t strong enough. They never have been.”

“You don’t know them,” Omega snarls.

“I watched them even when you couldn’t,” it answers, “All the time they were away. All that time you were alone.”

“Let me out of here.” There’s nothing here. Omega still feels her brothers, but they’re somewhere far, far away – glowing through a haze of some sort of filtering mist. Something obscuring her mind. Just like Tantiss, like Kamino, she’s trapped and her brothers are so far away. She wants to be safe. Fighting is fun, but this isn’t fighting. It’s something oppressive and foreign, something entirely wrong that shouldn’t… be here.

“I’ll give you whatever it is you want.”

Her heart aches, an empty burning that nothing can ever fill. She wants all her brothers, but there’s something more, something not quite right. She wants that hole to stop aching, to stop longing for something that no one can fill. For as hard as it was to be on Tantiss, something there had eased it. “Then give me my sister back.”

“That’s what I’m offering,” it replies, “You want someone who was always beside you. Someone who you shared with when your brothers were gone.”

“Let me go!” Omega yells back fiercely. She can’t even say why she’s so angry suddenly. They never talk about the emptiness or all those times that she sees them staring at the gunner’s mount or at – things, places she knows there should be life but it’s empty. “Just give Emerie back!”

A voice ripples in her mind, a distant echo of her name. Crosshair’s voice. Something shudders, but it reforms, and all that’s here is Omega and the cloud.

“She’s not the one you really want.”

“No one can give me who I want.” It’s something unreachable, something Omega knows she’ll never see, because it’s not real, something she can’t even name herself. It feels like she’s the only one who misses it, or it did until Wrecker pulled her aside to tell her that he misses them, too. “It’s not real.”

“But it can be.”

“No,” Omega snarls back, tears burning her eyes. She doesn’t want to hope. It’s been such a long time that she knew it would never close over, could never get better. She’s accepted it.

“You want someone to take it with you. Someone who will never go away.”

Something flickers and for a millisecond she thinks she feels something else, something soft and warm and familiar before it’s gone in a flash. Someone. Familiar. All it leaves is the familiar aching hole in her heart and tears in her eyes.

She hears Crosshair calling her name, and Omega’s yanked back into reality, gasping and panting and tipping sideways into Crosshair, who grabs her arms to keep her upright, their former argument entirely forgotten. His eyes are black and red again, shimmering with fury, but his face is pale and strained again. He’s sweating, breathing heavily.

Stars.

“You okay?” Omega asks, though her head is hammering. Something feels raw inside, and it’s unpleasant. Her chest is heavy like something sat on it. It’s an awful feeling.

He grunts. “Yeah. You?”

“I’m in one piece,” she offers.

Something explodes across the clearing, and Crosshair tackles her down, bodily shielding her the way Hunter and Tech and Echo and Wrecker have so many times. Like he was born for it.

Her hand slams onto the ground, slicing too neatly across a rock. She yanks it up at the sting, blinking in genuine confusion when a blood droplet slips off it onto the dead grass. Something shifts and it uncoils, shifting from brown to green. Her hand stops stinging, the cut closing over like it hadn’t even been there.

Her blood is what brings things to life. That’s what brought Lula and Havoc. She’ll tell the others later.

When she lifts her head, Echo’s down in the grass, his hand and scomp twitching in the only inclination he’s conscious, purple sparking energy rippling across him. Fear is twisting in the back of her mind, on the other side of some sort of doorway binding their minds together, along with a crashing, rolling fury.

Ahsoka’s on the ground behind them a good distance away.

Hunter’s down on his hands and knees, panting, an aqua mist swirling around him, but at least he’s up, so she runs to Echo.

He’s glaring furiously, but doesn’t respond when she shakes his shoulder or calls his name.

“What did you do to him?” Omega yells, looking up.

Crosshair’s standing again, though swaying unsteadily on his way upright. He’s the one who brought her back here from whatever mind-prison she was in, wasn’t he?

“There’s not even a point fighting, Hunter,” the cloud says – it’s moving past the others towards him. “Or should I call you Father? Oh – that would be weird. We are supposed to be married.” It sounds disgusted. “But I guess we do have… relationship issues.”

“What do you want with us?” Hunter demands, standing again. He’s seconds short of going for his knife.

“You to accept your roles. As my family.”

“You’re not one of us,” Crosshair hisses. He dropped his rifle, or Omega’s certain he’d be shooting at her already.

The ground cracks, shifting apart and a flowing river of lava appears. The dying grass nearby catches fire.

Omega’s heart skips a beat, and she moves closer to Crosshair.

Wrecker and Tech are back at the ship. They’re in danger. She doesn’t know if they’re going to be alright.

She wishes Wrecker was here. Both of them – they’re always strongest together.

“Respect your elders, little one,” she scolds. She sounds amused, even if Omega feels a strange layer of rolling hurt in the mess of thousands of lives looped into one. “I’m your mother.”

“Not unless you’re the Great Mother Jar,” Echo hisses.

“You were made to spread chaos. My chaos.” The cloud has a humanoid form again, vaguely, but it’s moving closer, crouching in front of Hunter and reaching to touch him. Her brother flinches back from her, and the tentacles lower. “The Sith served me well, but they’re purpose is… outdone. You are my family. My children, and I take care of what’s mine.”

“That explains Tech,” Crosshair snarls.

“Somebody had to burn that place. His powers called to me. It was his choice. He just exhausted himself.”

Omega doesn’t know what to do. Her instincts say this thing needs to be stamped from existence, but she doesn’t know if that’s possible.

“Will we forever be a family torn apart in war?” Its eyes sweep across them. “Hunter. You want to be accepted. To be a family. A father.” It laughs. “You’re adorable. You’re only ten – maybe you need to know you already have children.”

Hunter’s flushing a little, so maybe there’s more truth to it than she realized.

“Echo. You want peace, but could you live a life of that? Omega, you want the pain to stop, but could there really be life without it? Crosshair, you want your family, but you’re always the one to reject it.”

“You’re not my mother,” he snarls, “And Hunter is not our father. I don’t care what you’ve done to us. We aren’t these powers.”

Omega doesn’t know if Hunter looks more disgruntled or hurt.

“Of course, I am,” she argues, “And of course, he is.”

The term Daughter dawns on her for the first time, and Omega scrunches her face in disgust. “I am not calling him that,” she informs flatly, “Who do you think changed his diapers as a baby?”

“Ewwww.” The cloud shudders. “That was a form of chaos I did not need to know.”

Something shudders again. The fire is spreading. Wrecker and Tech are still out there. Something’s wrong.

The cracks in the planet’s surface are widening, and all she can think about is Tech’s unconscious, still form.

“Crosshair, Omega,” Hunter calls, his voice echoing in a strangely unfamiliar way as he unsheathes his knife. “Get the Marauder out of here.” He lunges at the cloud.

Omega’s heart is racing as she watches him move, but his orders stand, and they need to get out of here. Omega whirls around and runs for the ship. She doesn’t stop until a scream sounds behind her.

Chapter Text

A tentacle grabs his wrist, jerking him around and twisting, wrapping around him sharp and nearly tight enough to crush. Hunter grunts, stumbling, trying to twist his blade to cut himself free.

“Try that again, and you’ll be taking your own hand off,” it hisses angrily. “Not kidding.”

Noted.

This thing reads their minds. Hunter’s never felt so violated or exposed before. He feels dirty. Raw and just – his mind isn’t something someone should be digging through, and the thing was able to put some sort of… hold over Omega. Crosshair had to rip her free, so yes, he is scared.  Omega doesn’t seem shaken by it, at least, though she’s certainly not appreciative of it.

It rips his knife away, turning it over way too close to his face.

Hunter leans away from the blade, teeth clenched.

“Can’t say I’ve ever held a vibroblade before,” the voice says, somewhere behind him and over his head. It twists him around, and he’s being held against something – it feels like he’s being held against someone, though he’s facing the glowing eyes. It’s holding him down, immovable, its tentacles wrapping around his ankles and one across his chest, more working over his wrists – there’s too many and he can’t get away. “I’ve been in… exile along time. Haven’t seen much of the world.”

“What made you come out?”

“Family be like that.” It looks at him again. “I had a family once. So long ago. But family is forever, and you’re my blood.” He could swear its tentacles are phasing through his armor, because he feels the pressure and uncomfortable cold warmth across his chest where it’s holding him.

It would probably feel nice if he weren’t fully certain the thing snuggling with him weren’t a millisecond short of cutting his throat.

“You’re right with that,” it crows, “I could, but a blade like this won’t kill you.”

The cloud grips his head, tugging him closer. Hunter struggles against it, but she doesn’t have – she’s not physical. He squirms, trying to find leverage to pry one of its tentacled arms off. This isn’t something he knows how to fight, and he’s – he’s scared. She’s –

“A monster?” she asks, “For being chaos? Where has your order gotten you, Hunter?”

He wants to cry. He wants – someone to be there. Someone to look out for him. To protect him. The touch is warm, and it’s not uncomfortable, except he doesn’t want it. He just wants to get out of here. To be left alone.

She presses his forehead to what would be hers if she actually had a body – her purplish red eyes are staring into his, and he glares back, stubbornly refusing to show her any farther sign of weakness. “Or would you rather I call you Father?” she asks, voice echoing with amusement, “That would make our relationship inconceivably awkward.”

“I’m not – anything,” Hunter argues.

“You are to me,” she promises, “You are everything to me.” Another mini tentacle brushes his cheek, it’s touch slippery and soft at once, foreign and certainly unwanted. A crackle of lightning flashes in it – it doesn’t hurt, but Hunter feels the zapping electrons sparking across his skin.

Her eyes – whatever parts he thinks might be her real body – draws back a little.

Hunter twitches when it flicks the electricity on his blade on, eyeing it warily.

For the record, he doesn’t appreciate her holding his knife, either.

“You feel it?” she asks, turning to him. He could almost swear he sees outlines of a figure for the first time, feels something other than a swirling nightmare of chaos and destruction. “The currents? That’s who you are, isn’t it?”

Hunter gasps when the blade presses flat against his cheek, its current sparking against him, burning in his mind like a glaring light in a way he’s never been able to describe to anyone. It stings and burns and he needs to get out of here to stop this stop her stop everything to –

“They’re all going to die here because of your failed leadership.”

“Don’t,” she orders, but he already feels his hands dematerializing. Already feels the world fading.

Her grip tightens, firm and clawing but all he can think of is the blade pressed against him and Crosshair’s furious snarl as he tried to slit his throat and how desperately badly he needs to get out of here just go somewhere anywhere somewhere safe to someone who knows what is happening, what to do, can handle this –

“Don’t!” she yells, and he doesn’t know if she sounds more panicked or furious, but he doesn’t care.

The blade’s too close and he didn’t come this far only to die now – they need to just get Emerie back and go somewhere far, far from everywhere, to just – stars, he’s so tired of fighting, he wants to live to get Wrecker and all of his siblings somewhere safe.

He doesn’t want to deal with his or her, whatever she is.

He wants… someone.

Something calls to Hunter’s mind, far away and distant, but he reaches for it and grasps it, a promise of what he needs so dearly – and the blade stabs into his chest.

He feels it, the pain registering a second later – raw and blinding and burning. He can’t breathe. Air won’t come in and out of his lungs right, and he remembers Wrecker’s hands on his neck, crushing until he couldn’t breathe at all, remembers squirming and thrashing but there was nothing he could do.

Helpless.

Echo screams, voice far and furious, but a promise that someone’s about to end up dead. Or wish they were.

And the world explodes into flames.

Hunter’s knees give out and he falls, hitting what should’ve been the scorched grass, but he sinks into snow. The air feels different. It tastes of death, but natural and soothing, and something – something – familiar. A scent he knows. A mind he’s felt.

He hits the ground, landing face-first in the snow. The blade must be digging deeper into him. Doesn’t know.

It hurts. He can’t breathe.

The pressure in his chest is crushing. Lungs filling with blood. Needs – Omega –

Wrecker.

Voices. One’s – deep. Familiar.

And a reg. Could be anyone.

Then another, softer and closer.

Hunter thinks he knows them.

A black shadow falls over him, hands rolling him over. His vision is hazy.

Safe. Cold. Dark. Fire. Familiar. Safe.

Arms lift him, too strong to be human, holding him gently, until everything fades away again.

***

When Hunter opens his eyes, his mind still hazy and chest still throbbing, he’s in a medbay. He hasn’t seen those since Bracca. Don’t bring good memories. AZI could…

Someone else is here. The same people he felt earlier are nearby, anyway, and so are… other regs. Maybe? The gravity field answer right off he’s in a star destroyer. In space.

“Where – where am I?” he rasps, trying to look around. He’s lucky they didn’t restrain him, considering how they’re almost certain Imperial, and mostly Hunter needs to know what happened to his squad.

He’s out of the top half of his armor, and he feels the softness of bandages against his skin, though his bodyglove – thankfully – is still fully on. His wings press against the soft mattress beneath him, and it’s odd to lie on them.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” a reg says, and Hunter blinks as Jesse’s face comes into view. “But here you are. Again.”

“Leave it, Jesse,” Kix scolds, elbowing him. “He’s still injured.”

Hunter tries to breathe in and out deeply, but a sharp stab of pain lights his chest again. Ah, so much for breathing. He closes his eyes again, trying to just – be. Ow. Never get stabbed. “Didn’t it hit my heart?”

“We don’t know, either,” Kix replies, “You’re recuperating at an unusually rapid rate. You’ve been here a couple of hours.”

Only?

After getting his lung stabbed out?

Jesse and Kix don’t look so good themselves, though Hunter doesn’t know why. Doesn’t ask. He needs to get back home, but there was someone… else. He needs to – assess threats. “You’re – with the Empire?”

“Of course, we are,” Jesse answers without missing a beat, “I’m betting you’re not?”

Hunter’s eyes narrow a little. He can’t well lie, but admitting it might make this worse.

“Ease it up,” Kix scolds, “The general wanted to be notified when he wakes. Go get him.” Jesse leaves with some grumbles, and the reg turns back to Hunter with a half eye roll. “Don’t mind him,” he requests, patting Hunter’s shoulder. It’s strangely gentle. “Our captain and commander went rogue. Abandoned us on that moon for about two months. Then we got off and heard it’s been twelve. Still working it through.”

Hunter blinks. That would shake anyone up. “Your general?” he repeats. “I thought Anakin was…”

A rhythmic mechanical breathing fills the room, with something like fire. Black fire. It’s burning, but in a fully different way than the Mother did. It’s dark and cold, but Hunter knows who it is instantly. “General Skywalker?”

“I am called Vader.”

Kix shrugs at Hunter’s confusion.

Well, he’s heard stranger things than people suffering spontaneous name-changes. Species changes are stranger. “We thought you were dead.” He’s thought far too much about death lately, and he can’t stop remembering Tech’s terrifyingly still form in the Marauder. Can’t stop wondering if – if something will happen to him.

Again.

“I am no Jedi.”

“He’s in denial,” Kix whispers, leaning over Hunter.

“I am not,” Anakin – Vader???? – argues.

“Probably from sleep deprivation or high on pain meds,” Kix adds.

“I am not,” Vader insists, jabbing a finger at him, “And I will speak with Hunter alone.”

Kix checks something over on some equipment piece again before leaving with a practically snippy solute. Hunter watches him leave until the door shuts, leaving him alone with Vader.

For a very, very long moment, there’s nothing but rhythmic breathing and the million questions in Hunter’s mind. He doesn’t know if Rex knew they were alive. It doesn’t seem like he could. How is he regenerating so fast? And what happened to Anakin? Why is he here? Why would he?

Are they going to hurt him? He doesn’t think so, but…

Something’s wrong in him. It’s whispering in his mind, some sort of… echo. Like for a moment, he’s looking at himself. There’s another spirit there, something Hunter feels and is too strong for him to hold, even if it touched him, and across from him is an empty vessel asking to be filled. It’s like a mirror. It feels like home.

Hunter doesn’t even know what that means.

“How did you arrive here?” he inquires finally.

“I teleported.” Hunter shifts a little, moving to sit up, but pain flares through his chest all the way to his back when he tries. Better stay down a bit longer. His wings flutter, like they could keep his weight, but he doesn’t know how to use them. He summoned them to existence on Tantiss, and they’ve been here most of the time since then. They flicker in and out of existence, and they clearly chose to stay existing now.

“How is this possible?”

“I don’t know what’s happening.” He’s being honest about that, at least.

“You are aware of more than you are saying.” His respirator cycles a few times. “The Force has felt different for a short time. There is a disturbance. A threat to the galaxy.”

“The Mother. Do you… know about her?”

“Yes,” Vader replies. He’s standing there like a statue. Does moving hurt? What happened to him?  “But that does not explain you.”

“I don’t know what happened. I just got these powers.” Hunter locks down when his hands tingle again, shaking his arm and willing himself to reform. It’s getting really, really annoying. He’ll be teleporting the medtable back to Pabu at this rate. Or the entire star destroyer. “I don’t know what they are or what they mean.”

“Your abilities are the essence of the Force,” Vader answers, “Though it has been split between you and Echo. The Dark feels of Crosshair.”

“And Tech,” Hunter adds.

“Is… your squad well?” Force, he sounds so uncomfortable.

Hunter swallows. “Yeah. We’re fine, except – one who was taken by the Mother. We’re still searching for her.”

“Her?” he queries.

“Yeah. Our sister. Emerie.”

“I was not aware you had a sister.”

“We have two.” Something feels wrong, but Hunter keeps talking. “Emerie and Omega. Nala Se kept them away from us, but when the Empire formed, we finally found them both.” He pauses. Thinks he said something else, but doesn’t remember what. He shakes that from mind.

“The Mother. What are her intentions?”

Hunter sighs. His chest burns. “Chaos. She wants to burn the galaxy. Some kind of vengeance.”

“That is a rightful concern.”

Hunter hates how much he agrees. The galaxy has only ever taken from him. He understands that need, and he hates it, but he has his family now, and that’s all that matters. Keeping them safe. Not losing himself to insanity. “I can’t let her hurt my family.”

“You have conviction.” His helmet looks ridiculous. The visor and shape reminds him of both of Tech’s. Doesn’t know why, but that comes with a flare of pain in his heart. Everything about Tech still hurts.

“I have a duty.”

“And a loyalty. It is… rare to see that any longer.”

Hunter sighs. “It’s not the clone’s fault. They’re being controlled. Rex had to get Ahsoka to safety.”

Vader’s quiet for a long time. “My men would never attempt to harm Ahsoka,” he agrees finally, “But the Mother’s attempts at destroying the galaxy is far more pressing than that of the Emperor. He will not destroy all the people who live in it. That is what is at stake.”

He wants to rest. To stop fighting. Definitely not to have to worry about some other maniac who wants to destroy the galaxy. His brothers won’t be safe unless they can stop this, and Hunter has no idea how to use these powers. He never wanted to be changed like this. “We fought her. There’s nothing we can…”

“You are the ones with the power.”

“You don’t understand. She gets in our heads and… we can’t stop her.”

“You’re clones, but you are more now,” Vader replies, “You absorbed the powers of the beings that forged the pillars of this world. There is nothing you cannot do.”

Really? Then how did he get stabbed so easily?

Something of what he’s thinking must’ve showed on his face, or the cyborg must’ve sensed it through whatever Jedi nonsense they do, because he moves a little closer. “You were not raised with these abilities. It will be difficult to remember to use them.”

“How would you know?”

“I did not always know I had the Force. I was not raised with the Jedi either.”

Hunter looks away briefly, thinking of Echo and Rex. They would want to know of this, but he needs to stay focused.

“Considering we received a recent report the planet Raada was all but obliterated, I presume that was her last location. She could not have gone far.” He turns, cape swinging behind him – seriously? He still has a flare for dramatics? Some things never change. Echo did always say his general was a show-off – moving for the door.

“Wait,” Hunter objects, flicking his hand out, blinking in genuine surprise when Vader’s actually jerked to a stop. “You can’t defeat her alone. She’s – too strong. Even for you. I think.” The cyborg turns back to him. “We need each other. But I don’t know what to do with these powers.”

“I can train you,” Vader offers at last, sinking back onto the chair, “I will teach you the Force.”

Hunter nods, turning this over in his mind. He still doesn’t know if he can trust him, but they have to work together, just like they were forced into it with Crosshair that moment in the training room. “I don’t know how to control it.”

“It requires control that you will not have time to learn.”

Not helpful.

Hunter sighs, closing his eyes again. “What do I do?”

“You must remain focused. Your intentions are what determines the use of your powers, and your focus is what determines your reality.”

Hunter nods to him, closing his eyes again. He’s tired. His chest is still stinging. He doesn’t have time to wait, though.

“You will require rest,” Vader instructs, “We will train when you are well.” He moves to sit in the chair next to his bed, and the legs screech loudly.

“I don’t have time to wait. Emerie is gone. I don’t know what happened to the others.”

“They are fine,” Vader replies without hesitation. “I can sense them as well. The Force feels of you now.”

The chair screeches again.

“I don’t think it likes you,” Hunter feels the need to say.

He feels something snapping and the chair gives out beneath his weight, and Vader crashes onto the floor.

He doesn’t mean to laugh. He swears he doesn’t mean to laugh, and it makes his chest ache, but he can’t help it, because it’s funny. Wrecker did that once, and it’s like having a flashback to their childhood. Like nothing happened at all.

“You okay?” Kix asks, popping his head into the room.

“I am fine,” he grumbles, picking himself up. Hunter tries to smother another laugh. “This is not.”

“Nice,” Jesse says, “You just ruined Kix’s nap seat.”

“Are you sure?” Kix asks, ignoring his brother entirely. Hunter should probably feel a bit bad for laughing, but it is funny. If he’s heavy enough to break a chair, it definitely would have been a painful landing, but it was still amusing.

“The chair’s not,” Jesse announces.

Kix throws a piece of splintered wood at him. Jesse dodges and runs for his life. Kix runs after.

The cyborgs vocator makes a noise conveying very familiar paternal exhaustion. Hunter Gets That with Wrecker and Crosshair so badly sometimes. “I will attempt to end this madness before there is an escalation of dead bodies.”

It’s not funny, really, but Hunter can’t help laughing again. He rolls onto his side and one of his wings, smothering a laugh on his pillow and closing his eyes.

It’s nice to left up worrying for even a few minutes.

When he dozes off again, he feels flickers, presences of his brothers and sisters from far, far away, their light and life burning safely in his mind.

His family is safe, at least right now.

***

He should’ve gotten up earlier. His chest isn’t hurting anymore when he gets up the second time, and the skin is healed over somehow, though there’s a relatively nasty scar there – not as bad as the one from Bane, though. Counts that as a plus. He redresses, dons his armor and heads out to find the others.

They don’t have time.

Whatever she is, she’s – destroying everything. Hunter can feel that – it’s like a fire, burning and all-consuming. It’s getting worse. Coming closer, like she doesn’t even need a ship to travel.

Crosshair said she teleported Emerie out.

Hunter can teleport himself.

He meets up with the others outside, atop the Star Destroyer where it’s landed back on Coruscant – he recognizes the planet instantly. Both the teeming electric field and rippling of the million presences in his mind. He hates feeling so much. It’s too much, too overwhelming and it’s distracting.

Exhausting.

There are a million voices and minds whispering in his own, and not enough life. Not enough to ground – just… sentients, in all their genuine exhausting-ness. So many lives. So many…

Hunter’s head is throbbing dully when he finally makes it to finding his way outside to where the regs tell him Vader is. It’s… strange to be near a Jedi again. Or, former Jedi, in this case.

“What were you offering to show me?” Hunter asks – they’re in a relatively uninhabited part of Coruscant. It’s not somewhere he’s been before, not that he was on Coruscant enough to be much of anywhere.

He needs to get back home. Stars, he needs to go home, soon – his brothers need him, but they need him to know this even more. He’s a little too hesitant to comm them, but if he can feel them, they probably know he’s fine.

They won’t be worried.

“You want to be accepted. To be a family. A father.”

“Who knew clones were so paternal?”

“The use of the Force.”

“I know how to use it. I just don’t know how to control it.”

“There are more than one way to use the Force. The Jedi use the Light. The Sith use the Dark.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The Jedi’s power are weak. The Light is stagnant. It prevents change or growth.”

“You really don’t like the Jedi.” It’s strange to realize. Anakin had always been respected as the greatest of the Jedi. Not that Hunter knew him from more than a few days and stories from Echo.

“I see how their powers failed them, and they betrayed all which they claimed to stand for.”

“You think the Jedi… did commit treason?”

“I witnessed it with my own eyes.”

That’s a disturbing thought, but it doesn’t get Hunter any closer to finding his squad. “What about the Sith?”

“We embrace our emotions.”

“You fight on impulse?”

“That is not what we do.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me.”

Vader’s a little annoyed, but Hunter thinks it’s mostly because he knows Hunter’s right and exactly how stupid that is – or sounds, at least. Anakin wouldn’t do something that was actually stupid. “Show me what you know of the Force.”

“Show you?”

“Yes.”

“You mean… we spar?” He’s a little uneasy at that. They’ve never sparred with Jedi before, and this isn’t something he’s ever… “I don’t have a weapon.”

Vader draws his lightsaber. “Exactly.”

Hunter takes a step back, ducking into a roll when the Sith slashes at him.

“You have the Force. Use it.”

“Try not to level the ship,” Jesse calls from the distance.

“Shut up, Jesse!” Kix yells back.

When the blade swings at him again, he reaches out, trying to feel the energy everywhere and images a shield over his hands, something invisible but there, and the blade jerks to a stop an inch from his hands and head.

“Feel my intentions.”

He can do that now, and it’s strange. Vader is more shielded and distant than his own brothers, but he feels the flaming black fire, the shifting and turning, blazing for more. He feels fire, burning in his mind, in the Force, in his veins, feels the same way he feels every electron running from his chestplate and the batteries running his limbs.

He’s more machine than man, the same as Echo.

And when Vader moves again, he feels it – the danger whispering in his mind, the fiery intent as the blade comes at him again. He’s fiercely intent, but with no desire to hurt. Hunter can feel the lives he’s taken, the hurt he’s caused – he knows it, somehow, the way it burns everyone’s hearts out dark, coating them with something smokey. But Vader doesn’t want to hurt them.

He has a loyalty, the only thing that’s keeping him intact.

Hunter catches the blade again, spinning it away and flipping himself over, wings spreading to steady himself. His feathers cut the air, steadying him. Vader skids a few steps back.

It hardly felt like he was trying.

Hunter’s feared these powers from the start, and now he does even more. He saw how powerful Anakin was. Echo said he was the most powerful of all the Jedi.

Something flickers between them, a shimmering aqua mist that dissipates before anything comes of it, but it’s gone and leaves something feeling off inside him.

Like something trying to break itself free of Hunter’s mind and reattach itself to a vessel shaped just for it.

“You can do anything,” Vader tells him, straightening, the last aqua shimmers disappearing beneath his chestplate. The energy buzzing in his own veins drops from uncomfortable to semi-tolerable. “Always remember that, and you will not be held back.”

“I already know how to make shields,” Hunter says, “It’s the rest of it I don’t get. The moving and, uh – anything mind related. That’s Crosshair’s gift, I guess.”

“Perhaps your abilities were split,” the Sith suggests, “But you will need to know how to attack as well as defend.”

“How do you attack with the Force?”

“Perhaps you should start smaller. With moving objects.”

“I don’t think you mean teleporting.”

“No, I do not.”

He is more powerful than he realizes. Hunter’s starting to think they all are. He doesn’t really know what it means.

Hunter didn’t realize how close he was to the edge of the star destroyer until a Force wave throws him off the edge. Hunter yelps, his wings spreading to catch him. “And always expect an attack,” Vader says from somewhere above.

Falling. The air slitting against his helmet, his armor, falling and falling and tree branches hitting his body and Hunter fumbles for his knife to slow his fall because they’re all the way down down down far below and he –

His wings are cutting the airflow, but Hunter’s gasping, flailing and panting, air crushing his chest. He’s falling and there’s a very, very long drop below him even if his wings steady him. He flaps, trying to climb and fly. It’s not so hard, but his heart is pounding and he’s freezing.

He mists back to the surface faster than flies, and instantly sends a violent explosion of energy outwards.

Vader’s thrown a good hundred feet back.

“I may have gone too far in a few places,” the cyborg supplies, standing.

“May have?” Hunter snarls. “You threw me off a ship!”

“Nice,” Jesse says, at Vader’s side, “You made a god angry at you.”

“I believe,” Vader replies seriously, “That I have made all the gods angry at me.”

No kidding.

Hunter glares at him, his heart still pounding. He hates falling. It’s worse when they’re unexpected. Daro, then Eriadu… yeah, he never wants to be up high again.

Not after Tech.

Something’s shifting. Hunter doesn’t know what it is, but it scares him. Something dark and sinister.

He sees the darkening and gathering of storm clouds. It’s the same as what he saw on Raada.

Uh oh.

“She’s found us,” Hunter breathes, looking skywards.

“It appears so,” Vader agrees darkly, “Though before we confront her, there is one more thing I must ask you.”

Chapter Text

Echo can only watch with raw, blinding horror as the blade cuts into his little brother’s chest. That’s Hunter. Hunter. Their sergeant, their leader, the one who led and protected them.

Hunter.

The ground explodes with it, ripping and burning. Everything is burning, and Echo wrenches free of whatever hold the Mother has on him, standing.

After seeing Fives, after meeting Tech again, he isn’t going to lose Hunter, too.

His brother is gone, misting away someplace, and he feels a flicker of something achingly familiar, but he’s standing now. The fire would deter anyone else, but Echo’s half metal, half untouchable, and he was born in fire. It’s in his blood, writes his life.

Fire and fury.

And Echo lunges at her.

Rage carries him, lights his veins, and with a thought of mind the dagger he’d picked up from Mortis is in his hand.

“What are you doing?!” hisses the Mother, a tentacle gripping his wrist.

“You messed with the wrong clones. You hurt the kid.” Echo unclenches his hand, about to stab her with just his mind when she throws him. Tantiss was destroyed, too, because of her. Their mission was a failure. Everyone there is gone. He rolls to his feet sparks harmlessly hitting his legs, standing again and lunging anyway.

With a flicker of energy, the Mother vanishes.

You’re my brothers, her voice whispers far away in his head, a thought he thinks he heard. My children. But it’s not real, and Echo stands, dagger in hand.

The world is falling around him. Everything is falling. She destroyed this entire planet. It reminds him of Lola Sayu – the way half of it was missing, the crust fractured and molten.

It’s burning away to nothing.

“Hunter!” Crosshair and Omega’s voices mix over each other’s, fear audible in their voices.

“What’s happening?” Omega’s voice is pitched high with panic, and just once, Echo has no idea how to relieve it.

The ground cracks between his feet, and he backs away, a crack in the ground carrying them apart from each other as the rocks melt away.

The others are clinging to each other, Crosshair pressing Omega to his side and her clasping his hand to her heart.

“Helloooo!” a voice sings. “Missed me?”

Havoc Marauder is flying overhead, and with it, two large, winged figures. One of white, gold, and green feathers – gentle and light, something that could only be Wrecker, and one black and red, the lower half a gray metal, smooth but sharp in a way that could only be Tech.

He’s awake. Finally.

It figures the chaos woke him up.

The two winged figures swoop down, and Echo doesn’t hesitate to yank himself onto Tech, who flaps to steady them and takes off back for the ship. Echo drops into the ramp, rolling inside and turning back to where the kids drop in, and Wrecker and Tech shift back to their human forms.

“I can fly myself,” Havoc Marauder gripes, sharply angling at them and slamming the ramp. “You can stop pushing my buttons.”

Echo looks towards the cockpit to where a small but familiar figure sits in the pilot’s seat. Tech moves up front to reclaim his seat, and she stands, turning back to face Echo again.

Ahsoka.

His first kid. He never forgot her. She’s always been there, lingering in the forefront of his mind, always whispering quiet attention, even if he hasn’t seen her since the Citadel.

She’s always been there.

Ahsoka was here even before he was, but his curse is always to be the last standing.

You don’t have to be, the Mother’s voice whispers in his mind, gentle and seductive. He shoves it away violently.

He’s not rewriting reality to be what he wants.

She’d been there at the Citadel, and all that mattered was getting her to safety. Getting her out like she should’ve been if she hadn’t blatantly disobeyed their general’s direct orders. She’d been somewhere behind him when the explosion claimed half his body and nearly his life.

“Commander.”

“Are you all alright?” she asks.

“An’ where’s Hunter?” Wrecker interrupts. There’s a chorus of panic in Echo’s mind. Of death. The entire planet below was ripped to shreds. To nothing, because the Mother… Hunter got stabbed. He won’t actually die from that, will he?

“He teleported out again.” Echo sits in one of the seats, panting a little. He’s still exhausted from her throwing him onto the rocks and pinning him there. Should probably make sure he’s not burned anywhere, but the kid’s more of a concern.

He feels Wrecker’s fear, his only real fear of loss, and Crosshair and Omega’s oppressive worry. Ahsoka’s grief and anger. Tech, well, Tech’s always angry.

“What was that thing?” Omega asks, “What do we do about it?”

“I know what it was,” Ahsoka answers, arms crossed, her face troubled. She’s so much taller. She’s almost grown up now, and her voice isn’t quite as high. It feels like he’s looking at someone – else. She shouldn’t be so dark and burdened. She’s their kid. “But I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Do you know someone who does know?” Echo inquires.

Ahsoka sighs. “There were three other people well-versed in knowledge of the Ones, even better than me. Master Yoda knew, but… they’re all… gone now.” She looks away face pained, and Omega steps up to touch her wrist, a worried look on her face.

Something sparks. Echo jerks back and the fluxing flare of power, and Ahsoka wrenches away with a gasp. “What was that!?” she hisses, wide-eyed.

Omega’s staring up at her, her own now green eyes equally wide. “I – I don’t know.”

“You shocked me? But it didn’t hurt.”

“That is highly improbable,” Tech replies flatly.

“She shocked me, too!” Lula announces, “It felt really nice.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t animate me. I’m already alive.”

“Oh,” says Lula, blinking, “I wasn’t?”

Wrecker laughs, scooping her up. “You were to me.”

Echo opts to ignore the doll entirely and focus on the Commander. “You can’t be the only surviving Jedi.”

“I tried to find them. After Order 66. There was nothing. Rumor has it that my – that Anakin died at the Temple.”

That doesn’t feel wrong. Echo thinks it’s true somehow, but he can’t imagine his general dead. Maybe he’s outlived everyone, but he can’t imagine outliving Anakin Skywalker, and there’s a fire as bright as ever in his mind. Hunter’s pulsing far away, like he always does when he teleports off-world, but near him is – okay, Echo’s not going there, even if his heart is pounding and he desperately aches to reach out farther.

He aches to know, but hope is a dangerous thing.

“It’s my blood that does it. Animates things. I think,” Omega says, “When we were back on Raada, I fell and scraped my hand on a rock. There was a plant there, and it just… came back.”

“You are the Daughter,” Ahsoka responds, “She brings life.”

“Never heard that one before.”

“She brought me back to life. Allegedly.”

Not something Echo wants to think about. Fives had thought it was funny. It kind of was.

“Wrecker, can you touch me?” Ahsoka asks, “There’s… something I’m trying to test.”

He lays his hand on her shoulder – his hand is so huge it dwarfs her already tiny frame even further.

“What is it?” Omega inquires.

“I’m drawn to your powers,” Ahsoka answers slowly, “I – I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s just because I’m a Jedi, I don’t know.”

That doesn’t sound right. Echo trusts her, but something in his mind just whispers wrong, and it reminds him of how his general could always know if something was true or not. “There’s got to be some other Jedi out there.”

“Your abilities should be able to pinpoint one. If you combine your abilities and try to focus, I’m sure you can find one.”

“You think that’ll help?” Crosshair asks.

“It helped my master.” She recrosses her arms, watching consideringly, though something’s weighing on her. Echo doesn’t know what, but he catches a fleeting image of a figure he’s never seen, a flash in Ahsoka’s mind, seen and gone just as fast.

It makes his heart ache, reminding him of how there’s something… missing. There’s an emptiness there.

“Meditating doesn’t really work for me,” Echo objects, “Or Tech. Crosshair’s got issues with it, too. And Wrecker just sleeps.”

Ahsoka smiles, though it’s strained. “Okay. Let’s, uh – sit down. Together. We don’t have a lot of room for this, but everybody, try not to get emotional about anything.”

“Yes, please,” Havoc Marauder calls, “I don’t want to get shredded to pieces when I’m flying you through hyperspace.”

Eh, he’s making it really hard not to.

“And do what?” Omega asks, though they sit down, anyway. Wrecker sits between Crosshair and Omega. She’s by Ahsoka, and Echo sits on her other side. Tech is between Echo and Crosshair, minus Lula, backed by Gonky, who happily invites herself into the circle.

“Close your eyes. Just listen, and tell me what comes into your head.”

Crosshair’s hand trembles, shaking, and Wrecker lays his hand over Crosshair’s. It sparks with light, and the constant tension in their youngest brother soothes away, even if just momentary. It’s stress related, Echo’s come to realize. It hurts to see that happening to his little brother. Crosshair always used to be unfailingly steady.

A lot of things used to.

Echo keeps expecting Tech to disappear.

“Alright,” Ahsoka says quietly, her soft presence curling with a deep aching longing. “It was back in the Clone Wars when it happened.” She keeps talking, detailing about her prior mission to Mortis, how they met the Daughter and Anakin followed her alone. How she saved General Kenobi, and they returned to the ship, met the Son, and spent the night in a cave.

The cave thing is what gets it, a flashing image of a cave somewhere, shadowed and barely enough to hide from the burning twin suns. It’s a sand planet. Tatooine.

“You’re not gonna like what I see,” Crosshair grumbles.

“Oh,” Omega whispers, “He looks sad.”

Crosshair’s expression scrunches with annoyance. “He looks cranky. Tell me that’s not the Jedi we’re looking for.”

Ahsoka gasps. “You found him?”

“Tatooine,” Echo replies, “It’s a cave on Tatooine. And I think General Kenobi might be there.”

“What would he be doing there? Are you sure it’s him?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

“I don’t want to see him,” Crosshair gripes, crossing his arms sulkily, “He could stab me in my sleep because he was bored.” Echo throws him a disapproving look solely on principle. Not that he fully disagrees. General Kenobi altered wildly from being very nice to very, very cranky.

Cody complained about it a lot.

But hey, he never hit them.

That can’t be said for, well, another certain Jedi. (In Ahsoka’s defense, she was fourteen.)

“Anybody could do that,” Omega snips.

Crosshair does this irritated growl-groan thing and stomps to the back to sulk with Lula and Gonky.

Looks like it’s settled, though Echo can’t deny being a little overwhelmed and disconcerted. He hasn’t seen General Kenobi in years.

“Can I have hands?” Havoc Marauder asks loudly.

“You have wings,” Tech tells him flatly, “And they do quite nicely.”

***

Ahsoka goes up to the cockpit alone, and Echo follows. She’s quiet, and feels far more disturbed than he would’ve thought. “Something on your mind?” he asks her finally.

“I know, I know. You’d think I’d be more excited about this.” Ahsoka sighs. “The last few times I saw Master Obi-Wan, we fought. Then, everything changed, and I don’t think we’re the same people anymore. Besides. Back then, we… weren’t alone.”

He sighs. “The general was there.”

She sighs, looking away. “Yeah.”

“The Mother locked you into something,” Echo adds after a pause. “You seemed a bit… shaken up.” He means to ask if she’s alright, but it’s mostly an offering to talk if she wants.

“She trapped me in some kind of… dream. There was someone else there. I thought she was my imagination, but now that I’m awake again, it felt like I always… knew her. I don’t know what it was. The Mother warps reality. We can’t believe anything right now.”

That’s overly fair, actually. She’s a reality warper. It’s dangerous. Not a type of game Echo’s familiar with. He can’t imagine something enough to warp Ahsoka’s mind, but she did the same with Omega, who… might be stronger than her?

“I’ve had enough mind games on Skako Minor.”

“There’s something weighing on you, too,” Ahsoka adds, “Are you okay?”

“We just got these powers out of nowhere.” Sparks flicker across his hand. “Tech… we thought Tech was gone, but he somehow made it. Hunter’s not dead now, but she stabbed him. I don’t think we can die, can we?”

“The Ones died,” Ahsoka answers, “All of them. They… were killed with the dagger you had when you came back.”

“So it’s something we need to keep away from her.”

“As far as we can,” the Commander agrees.

***

Echo has never been to Tatooine before, no matter how much he’s heard of the dustbowl. It certainly is no more to see than Anakin always said, though Omega and Lula are in awe.

Tech wordlessly flies them down to near the cave. Echo can feel clearer here, pick up what feels like layers and layers of pain and loss. He hates it here already.

Tech covers their trek from the ship to the cave with chatter about how Tatooine used to be a water planet before the suns expanded. They left Lula aboard, despite her complaints, because she’s fabric and will be trekking sand everywhere if they let her out.

“Doesn’t sound like there’ll be much left of this dungeon soon, then,” Crosshair gripes. He’s such a mood. Personally, all Echo cares about is getting to the bottom of this mess. He really misses Hunter. He always knew how to handle, well, difficult situations, even if Echo often disagreed with his methods.

Ahsoka pauses in the doorway, looks around, and then leads them inside.

They only wait another ten minutes before the general himself shows up, looking – well, worse for wear, and his clothes are awful.

Ahsoka’s on her feet first. “Obi-Wan.”

He pauses in his tracks, eyes narrowed and scanning all of them. “Ahsoka.”

“It’s okay,” she promises, “We’re just here to ask your advice. We’ve run into a problem we don’t know how to handle.”

“You’re in the wrong place,” he answers rigidly, “And you bought clones here.”

“You got a problem with clones?” Crosshair snarls, and Echo wants to bash his head on the wall.

“It’s okay,” Ahsoka promises, “They’re friends. All of them. But that’s not what’s important. It’s about the Mother.”

“Well,” he answers, still tense and guarded, “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“The Ones, too. It seems like their powers somehow got absorbed into these clones. The Mother must’ve sensed the shift, and it awakened her. She’s been stalking them ever since.”

“There is nothing I can give you.”

“Obi-Wan, we need your help.”

“There is nothing I can do,” Obi-Wan replies, “Not if they can’t.”

Echo feels like he’s watching someone else. This isn’t the same Jedi Master who led Cody in countless battles. This isn’t him, and he doesn’t understand it. “What happened to you?” he demands finally, “You used to be one of the greatest of the Jedi.”

His presence shifts with something violently complicated, something messy and a sort of hopeless, crushing grief. A darkness flares, a rippling darkness drawing in light. He’s grieving, the same way Echo was for so long, but this is different.

This is guilt. Hopelessness.

It reminds him of Tech.

A what did you do, what have you done builds in his throat, with a flash of lava and flames and smoke. Something happened to make him this way, and Echo can’t imagine how he could have done something he would regret so severely.

He has something here, some sort of mission, and he doesn’t want to leave.

“Nothing in this galaxy will matter once the galaxy’s gone,” Echo adds.

“If it’s the will of the Force that the galaxy be destroyed, there is nothing I can do to stop it.”

“That thing doesn’t do the will of the Force!” Ahsoka half explodes, “It destroyed an entire planet.”

“Systems die all the time.”

“There are people dying,” Omega protests, jerking forwards. There’s a scowl on her adorable little face. “They need our help, and we don’t know how to stop her. We don’t know these powers.”

“Master Obi-Wan,” Ahsoka adds with a sigh, “I know everything with the Empire feels hopeless, but if there’s one thing my master taught me, it’s that one person’s choice can make a galaxy of difference. I’m not going to stop trying until the Empire and the Sith are gone. We all know that’s what he would’ve wanted.”

Echo’s heart clenches sharply at the mention if his long-gone general, but the grief he feels in the Force isn’t his own – it’s from the long-lost Jedi master, who he’s starting to think is more lost than he realized, with the way there are such strong tendrils of darkness curling around him. He feels like rain, in the same way Anakin once described, but something in the storm’s center is…

It’s like a hurricane, the eye twisting around something burned black.

Something ripples. Distant and far away, but Echo still feels Hunter’s presence in his mind over whatever strange link they can feel each other’s emotions over. He’s scared.

Crosshair inhales sharply. “Something’s wrong.”

Ahsoka jerks around. “What is it?”

Echo knows what this is, though. “Hunter’s panicking.”

“It is just as likely something may have triggered him,” Tech asserts. “There may be no cause for alarm.”

“Oh,” Wrecker says, “Maybe he fell.”

“I think it’s over,” Omega pipes up, “Maybe.”

“What?” Crosshair asks, radiating confusion. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember he doesn’t know, but Hunter’s fall was before they’d even heard about… Crosshair’s chip. That was a whole very messy experience Echo doesn’t care to think about.

“Hunter’s got issues with heights,” Echo answers shortly, “He missed a jump to the Marauder and fell down the mountainside. That’s how he was captured.”

Crosshair’s quiet. He feels lost, hurt. It hurts to see that on Crosshair. He’s struggled a lot, but Echo wasn’t really there to see it or help him. Echo would’ve gladly been there to help him, but most of Crosshair’s struggles were with his other siblings, not Echo. Truth is, he’s been settling in badly. He’s been dealing badly.

But other than Hunter, there’s something shifting, something wrong. He’s felt that three times now. “She’s coming,” he warns.

Ahsoka turns to him. “Here?”

“No. Coruscant. That’s where Hunter is. And what’s left of our rebellion. The Empire found and destroyed our last base.”

He tries really, really hard not to see Tech look away, or feel the flicker of twisting shame.

“It wasn’t your fault, Tech,” Echo adds quietly. “What Hemlock did would’ve gotten to anybody.”

“Coruscant’s way more populated than Raada,” Ahsoka worries. “We’ll never have time to evacuate everyone, or anyone.”

Crosshair and Omega gasp in unison, falling to their knees in the sand. It kicks up over their armor in itching little grains. There’s a wave running through the Force, some sort of explosion like something’s ripping and tearing.

She’s destroying another place.

The dagger. He left it on the ship. It can kill the Ones. It should be able to kill her, too.

“We have to go,” Echo decides, “We could use your help, general.” He leaves it at that, breaking for the ship.

Something about what’s happening this time is different, and Crosshair and Omega are panting, hands pressed to their heads, and Wrecker and Tech are going a bit… well, feral. They’re angry, and something about them changes when the Mother uses the Force. It’s like they’re absorbing her disharmony, or maybe it’s that she’s drawing it out in them. It figures none of this is normal, seeing as there were supposed to be four beings, and now there’s seven.

He still doesn’t know what happened to Emerie. She was just starting to settle in. Was doing better than Crosshair, and for all Echo is angry at her for what she did, he respects just as much she was able and willing to make different choices than the ones she’d been raised for.

She’s one of them, but they lost her.

“I’ll get the ship.”

“No,” Tech objects, “There’s no time.”

“I haven’t seen anyone but Hunter be able to teleport.”

“The Father could do it,” Ahsoka replies, “It’s not really a natural ability, though.”

“I’m more likely to start something on fire.”

“That is the truth,” Tech agrees, hand tightly on Crosshair’s shoulder. “Go.”

Echo goes.

The Mother is going to learn very, very fast that she messed with the wrong people. She took Emerie. Hurt Hunter. Hurt Ahsoka.

***

His mind mists into something far away, something –

He sees Coruscant. Burning. Fire.

“It feels like we’re the same,” Hunter says, “Something – recognizes you. I don’t know what it is or what it means. It’s not…”

“I feel it as well,” the cyborg response, his voice deep and mechanical, but Echo knows it, knows him. Anakin. That’s his general.

“I don’t know what it means.”

“Perhaps you were not intended for these powers.”

“You think you were meant to be the Father?”

“Perhaps, though I cannot imagine how. The Force does not always lead our paths in ways we imagine.”

“What do you want to do?”

Echo feels it, the way their powers ripple, drawing out like they’re meant to be part of another, like there’s meant to be another to share it, to hold and bear the weight they drown in. the responsibility of trying to carry the weight of the Force.

“We must link our minds and fight as one if we are to delay her until the rest of your squad arrives.”

Their powers flare and flicker together, fluxing with a surge of energy Echo feels jolting through his body.

He tries grabbing the back of the pilot’s chair with his non-handed arm first, and his scomp smacks into the metal with a grating screech. His knees won’t buckle unless he means for them to – plus of metal legs – but Echo grabs it with his other hand, spinning the seat around and firing the engines.

“Echo? Echo!” Lula is hugging his leg. “You okay?”

“We’ll be fine,” he promises. The doll is starting to grow on him. It’s genuinely silly. She’s just a doll, but she’s genuinely cute. Ahsoka had a stuffy of her own, too. A bantha she’d left with Anakin when she left the Order.

The general had gotten it for her, even if Jedi aren’t supposed to have personal items.

Echo flies the ship back to the cave. They have to go.

Anakin’s fighting that thing. He’s alive. Out there. Waiting.

The 501^st finally has a chance to come back together. To make a stand, to fight together, to come home – all of them, except Fives.

Chapter Text

“We will never arrive on Coruscant before it’s been destroyed,” Tech warns. Hunter is there, and he cannot let his brother die. He may not be fully certain the destruction would harm him, but he cannot be certain it will not, either. That is not a risk he is willing to take. Not again. He harmed them all enough already. The images never fade from his mind.

He never forgets. His memory is too clear, and that is to his benefit, though whenever he remembers his little brother’s screams echoing in his mind, he wishes he could do anything to make it stop, but that was Tech’s choice, and he deserves to be haunted by this forever.

“What do you suggest?” Echo asks from beside him.

“Perhaps if we merged our powers, we would be able to create a hole in reality enough to transport us to Coruscant.” He looks over his shoulder – Wrecker, Omega, and Crosshair are safely aboard, and Ahsoka’s standing on the ramp still by General Kenobi.

“It’s dangerous,” Ahsoka warns, “But you’re right that there’s no time.”

“Are you coming?” Omega asks the Jedi Master.

“I will have to get my lightsaber.”

“Rrrright,” Ahsoka agrees, “And where’s that?”

“In the desert.”

“You buried your lightsaber in the middle of the desert where it could be eaten by mice?” Omega squeaks.

And here Tech was beginning to believe the Jedi could not irritate him any further.

***

Speaking of being a waste of time, though the Jedi would not have had a reason to anticipate such urgency. Though, Tech was under the impression that Jedi would constantly carry their lightsabers. They changed, too, after the war.

“What do we do?” Wrecker asks. He’s lost without Hunter, and admittedly, so is Tech. He is not aware of what happened while he was unconscious. All he knows is that on top of losing Emerie, they also lost Hunter. Just like on Daro, though Hunter is not presently captured.

“We can try meditating again,” Omega volunteers.

That is an effective method for Jedi, though Tech is no Jedi. It does not function the same for him as it does for them. Perhaps because, like Echo once said, he has had enough solitary as well.

He never said what the statis is like. Crosshair was fortunate to never have to endure that. It’s a sleep-wake state, a merging state between the two, but Hemlock could never allow them real sleep, or their minds would heal and free themselves of the programming he so meticulously worked into them.

Tech was mostly aware of it, hours of nothing, his mind too dull to focus but too awake to be blank – hours and hours of nothing but the red glaring light. It’s red it was always red – and the chamber’s door two inches from his face.

Lengthened silence, dark spaces sends his mind into the void, and to do nothing for such lengths is a waste of the minimal time he and his brothers already have. It is not something Omega could ever truly understand, because that was not a life she lived, and her life was a life of peace without purpose. She was always made to be more.

“Do we know of another way to transport us?” Ahsoka asks.

“Wrecker can warp reality,” Tech replies, because that was apparent to him the instant he first used his powers on Teth. “Theoretically, he should be able to transport us.”

“And what about the consequences of breaking a hole in reality? That’s what the Mother wants,” Ahsoka objects.

“We cannot leave Hunter there to fight her alone.” Tech had felt it when she was on Tantiss, her icy cold crawling into his mind, catching his violent rage and stretching it, twisting until all he could do was explode outwards with every last shred of rage he’s ever felt in his life. That wasn’t himself. It was her.

His mind is what makes him special. It always has been. Tech doesn’t know how it is that people can keep violating it. First the Empire, then the Mother, whatever exactly she is. They’re up against something he doesn’t understand, and never could. He has little idea how to calculate any type of approach. He doesn’t have enough information to know what the best possible option would be.

“How do I do it?”

“I’m afraid that’s something you’ll have to figure out on your own,” Ahsoka responds, “Just try, and do what feels right.”

Wrecker sits back, closing his eyes. His irises are red again. It is almost disconcerting to see him this way, but it is only his younger brother, and Wrecker could never be a threat. Tech very pointedly opts not to remember the hand crushing his neck. Bracca was the first time in his life that he was truly scared.

He feels the shifting, the warping, and reality outside the ship rewrites itself. They are on Coruscant again. It is… different to be here a second time. He can feel it, which is an entirely foreign sensation. It is unlike anything Tech has ever experienced before.

This is also where they first encountered the CX’s.

Coruscant is… in flames. Well, something is burning, anyway.

“We better land the ship,” Echo says finally.

“If Wrecker can turn blasters into bubbles, I think I better get Lula and I outta here,” their ship announces, “I don’t want to get bubbled.”

“It would be ideal to avoid the direct vicinity of the destruction, yes,” Tech agrees, “It would not be inconsequential if we were to lose our ship.” He would have blown up the Marauder in the future. If not for whatever warping that happened, for being sent away to Mortis and absorbing these abilities. It has aided them significantly.

“I’m up and away,” Marauder announces.

“Bye!” Lula calls, waiving, “See you soon, I hope! Be careful!”

“You too,” Omega agrees, and Tech lowers the ship to the edge of a landing platform.

The main columns of smoke are rising from the Senate building and the former Jedi Temple, now Imperial Palace. Well, that is a sentiment Tech can thoroughly share.

“How do you suggest we get over there?” General Kenobi inquires.

“There’s got to be a speeder we can use,” Echo answers. “But it doesn’t look like she’s after us right now.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and she’ll take out the Emperor,” Ahsoka suggests dryly. Tech can appreciate her dry sense of humor, anyway. He thinks he rather likes it.

“What happened to the Ones before?” Tech inquires.

“Well… the Son killed the Daughter, the Father stabbed himself, and Anakin killed the Son,” Ahsoka answers slowly, “The dagger of Mortis is supposedly the only thing that could kill them, though I don’t know if it’ll work on this.”

“She did react when I tried to hit her with it,” Echo says, “It’s probably the best chance we have. We have to stop her before she levels the entire planet.”

“That would be wise,” Tech agrees, collecting a nearby speeder, “Through Wrecker and I can fly.” It would be significantly more ideal than taking multiple speeders – they don’t have time to waste right now.

“We’ll be right behind you, then,” Ahsoka agrees, climbing into the driver’s seat. Tech watches a minute before willing himself into his other form and jumping from the platform. The rush of air against him takes his breath away, and for a moment, all he can remember is flashing smoke, burning and the tearing of metal.

But he is on Coruscant, a city planet, not Eriadu and a place of trees and mountains.

He does not need to concern himself with falling.

Wrecker is beside him, and they fly together towards the flaming palace.

In his mind, Wrecker laughs. “Maybe she’s not so bad. This is some good work!”

Tech scans the fire again. He fully approves.

The cloud is twisting in its middle, tentacles flailing and flinging back rows and rows of stormtroopers and regs alike firing at her. Her body is dark, too hazy and murky to fully make out, but her huge purple-red eyes stand out amidst the center, turning and mostly hidden by her constantly sprouting extremities.

Hunter is standing out amidst the chaos, aqua swirling around his palms as he tries to block and counter her attacks. A black figure is beside him, a red lightsaber in hand as he cuts and slashes at the misty-gray tentacles coming their direction.

General Skywalker, Tech knows somehow. He sees it in his mind and in Hunter’s.

The Force twists, its currents ripped and upended. Tech lands on a nearby platform, but he feels the wave of energy that crashes outwards, and the stormtroopers stumble, dropping. Then, one by one, they pick themselves up, turning their blasters on the two Force-users.

Wrecker jumps down, bubbling away all the blasters, twisting the way the Force’s currents flow over them and morphing them into red, sparkling liquid.

A jagged, whirling blast of lightning comes down, and Tech shields them, twisting the time on every electron forwards to its future landing and disbursement in the metal of the building, some back into the air, tearing the bolt in half and disintegrating it.

Hunter stumbles, nearly falling.

A shuttle lifts off, attempting a failed escape out of the palace’s hangar for the sky. The Mother lashes a tentacle out, snatching onto the shuttle and snapping its wings right off, unbothered by the engine searing against her. Tech feels the same awful tearing in the Force, and the outside of the ship is misted away along with most of its occupants. The brutality of it he thinks even amazes him.

She snatches out its last passenger, pulling him down, closer to her face. She’s dangling him by his neck. “Hello, Darth Sidious.”

Tech pauses, looking up – this is the Emperor. Actually, everyone is dead still.

The Emperor – Darth Sidious, every bit a Dark Side user as Tech is himself – tries drawing a lightsaber, but the Mother flickers them away into two bright red fluttering butterflies.

“Remember when you forced my sons to turn on my little girl? Remember when you left me, abandoned, alone, to die, in a desert?”

The Sith struggles against her, sending a blast of lighting down towards her main body.

“Oh, you think Anakin can help you. My best friend. If I can’t have him, you won’t, either. No, no, no.” Her voice is deceptively gentle, sinister in a way that he knows is a promise of violence. The tentacle tightens, and there’s a loud snap.

The dark, twisted presence fades away, and the Mother tosses the body over her shoulder as though it weighs and is nothing to her. She’s radiating a smug relief, and when she turns around, little trials of sparking electricity following, she seems significantly more relaxed.

There is definitely a smile in the cloud somewhere.

Anakin lunges at her, his red lightsaber cutting at her middle. She shoves him back, and there they are, locked in a straining battle against each other. He’s furious. The death gutted him, ripped apart a shard of something in his mind.

Anakin loved him. Tech cannot understand why, how it would be possible to love someone of such nature, but love does not make sense. He cannot fathom or Crosshair can love him, either.

“We’re a family, aren’t we?”

“Then why don’t you act like it?”

“You killed the Emperor,” he snarls, respirator cycling rapidly as he stumbles upright.

The stormtroopers are moving in on Hunter again, and he throws up a shield around himself. Wrecker flies at them, bodily knocking them down and aside with his now bottomless strength.

The energy everywhere is overwhelming, layers and layers of memories, people from millennia ago now long gone and forgotten. Pain and hurt, death and loss – so much, layered until it’s been drowned and forgotten.

Pain like his own, and what he and his brothers share.

Someone fires a blaster at him – the stormtroopers are mindless. He can sense the danger, but not their intent to hurt him. He spins around and lashes out, throwing the white-armored figure off the landing.

“Well,” the Mother says, “I don’t like order. He’s obsessed with it.”

Anakin stands again, sprinting at her.

The cloud seems to melt in some sort of sorrow. “Anakin,” she says gently, voice echoing, yet more mortal than she has been this entire time. “You’re the one I was never meant to fight. Why did you come here?”

“You threaten the Empire and the galaxy.”

“Not if you help me burn it.”

“No.”

It reaches up, the Force twisting over its tentacles as they hover in front of the Sith, curling in around him in some sort of cage. It’s a mind prison of sorts, he would imagine.

Anakin falls, or he would have if she hadn’t caught him, tentacles gripping either side of his helmet. And then the ground rips apart beneath them and she throws him.

The black figure falls over the edge, down and out of sight between the buildings and into the darkness below.

“Anakin!” Ahsoka’s panicked, terrified voice catches his ears, her fear burning in the Force, bright and vibrant.

The duracrete shifts, closing over him again, trapping him below as though entirely undisturbed. She just buried the strongest Jedi they have ever heard of, perhaps the strongest there has ever been, somewhere far beneath Coruscant’s surface.

He’s gone. Fallen somewhere between the buildings in a fall Tech would not once have believed anyone capable of, except he himself.

Echo lunges at her. He doesn’t wait, and she jerks back as he cuts and slashes at her with the dagger. Electricity flashes between them, sparking and rolling, burning with torrent of his fury, a trail of sparks falling behind him. She bats his arm and the dagger flies aside. Tech dives forwards to catch it out of the air, shifting back to his human form and rolling over as the blade lands in his hand.

“You should have been –”

No.

This isn’t Tantiss.

And this is not a vibrosword, not with the strength so overwhelming it sends on to his knees.

It’s burning.

The blade is burning in his hands, singing his skin and burning even deeper – deep enough Tech thinks it’s trying to rip something out of him, and he sees it, though bits and flashes of a life millennia ago.

He sees a face, a woman, with platinum hair and features sharp but softer than he thought for her.

He sees a life, her family – two children and their father.

A life they had, calm with chaos.

He sees her pull the siblings off each other, hold them in her arms with a gentle “you were meant to be one. Don’t hurt each other.” She watches them as their world falls around them, falling in the face of strife and plague.

“I won’t let them die,” Abeloth tells the Father, her voice firm.

“Death is a natural part of the sequence of life,” the Father tells her.

“If you won’t do anything to stop it, I will.”

She walks out, leaving him behind to scour a galaxy far, far away, unwilling and unable to walk away and give up on them.

Her children are dying.

She finds a world, unlike any other, soaking in the depths of its strength and warping the entirety of the galaxy. Of her family, freezing them in time eternally. He sees the power eat out her soul, rendering a void.

An all-consuming void, her body absorbed by an open well of power.

A void desperate to fill itself, unable to control the chaos it wields – and the Father strands her on the far away world and comes to Mortis.

And there she stays, in a galaxy far, far away, trapped and isolated until something rips a hole in reality, opening a path for her return.

She died for her family.

The same way Tech once did.

She did not start out the way she is now. She was fighting chaos, because she couldn’t accept the death she was surrounded by, and she gave herself to save her family. Before becoming the one thing they feared.

The same thing happened to Tech. He wanted the Empire destroyed.

He became one of them.

The Mother hated death.

She became the one to feed on it. Her powers are too strong for her to contain them in a body, which is why she’s in her cloud form.

Tech’s connection with time has given him a special connection with her as well. He understands her, and this is the first power she broke by stopping time over what was left of her family. She saved them, though they are now gone, anyway.

The Father created this dagger to kill her, but he didn’t have the strength to do it.

They fled instead.

Tech dropped the dagger in his flashes, his hand still burning. It is not a pleasant feeling – the dagger was made to combat the Mother’s powers, and Tech has a branch of hers with his ability to alter time.

The Imperial Palace is halfway burned down, explosions ripping through it over the cacophony of blasters firing and speeder engines, and the lightning that broke overhead at some undefined point in the fight.

The lightning is doing well at keeping General Kenobi distracted attempting to avoid electrocution.

Echo snatches the dagger, jumping at the Mother when her back is turned – she’s fighting Hunter and Ahsoka as they cut at her endless array of tentacles. She flings him backwards without looking, dropping him through a flashing portal somewhere else on-world. His disgruntled frustration burns in Tech’s mind.

“We’re gonna need a diversion,” Ahsoka yells over the noise, “Something big.”

“I have an idea,” Tech calls back, “Wrecker, I am going to require your assistance.”

“What do ya need me to do?” he asks.

“I need a reality hole. A door back to Tantiss.”

“Are ya sure?” Wrecker is looking at him now, in his non-human for or no.

That’s his biggest regret. “Yes. Do it.”

Wrecker crouches, the Force shifting and another hole being ripped through it, the portal red-rimmed and in front of Tech, sized just for him. The same place they went to before, where his mind was ripped away and he harmed Crosshair. He has caused so much damage that he is the only one who can rectify.

He has done so much.

“We’re a family, aren’t we?”

His palms pool with green energy as he steps into the darkness.

Tech has been here so many times. He could never forget this place. His power makes it impossible to forget anything.

It feels of death. Destruction. All his doing, just as what the Mother did.

The debris pile of the mountain is towering, and Tech snaps himself back into his other form to fly to the top center, letting it and the Force carry him.

He remembers burning this place. How good it had felt, until he remembered what he did and who he was killing. He did not mean to cause what he did. The same as when he shot himself free from the rail car.

Just like –

Crosshair’s hand.

He harmed his little brother. He harmed Crosshair, and that is not something Tech will ever be able to make up for.

All he can do is give him back – back –

Something.

Someone.

“Rise,” he whispers, pressing his hands to the ground.

The time twists, the world flaring with a surge of green, and Tech feels the people, their minds linked with his, all and every one of his brothers and sisters held here. The power crawls across the ground, crashing and rolling outwards as his energy infuses with them. Tech has led the CX’s before, and this isn’t any different. They could use a backup.

He sees them stand, one by one, the dirt and debris shifting and everyone – he sees all of them.

Tech stands, scanning the CX’s and the regs held there.

There’s – there is something –

Something is not right.

There is a spot in his memory again. Something he does not remember, though he should, and something feels abnormally calm. That is not related to Tantiss.

It’s something else – not everyone here are soldiers, and it is related to that, though he cannot remember where they are.

The gaps in his memory were supposed to end after his dream, after he relived his life, but there are still so many blank spots, things he knows but cannot remember, even though that should be the one thing that his abilities fixed.

He tries to turn back time to relive it, but it slips away again, a memory lost to the past, and with the chaos back on Coruscant, rescuing the rest of his squad until they find a way to get close enough to the Mother to defeat her is his priority.

Not figuring out the cause of the struggles he is having.

Tech doesn’t need to tell them of their mission – their connection with him has them already knowing, and they follow him across the broken ridges of what was once the training room, out onto the bridge.

Wrecker shut the portal behind him, and Tech reaches back to him, nudging his little brother’s mind in request for him to allow their return. It will not be much, but they might as well fight for something once in their lives.

(There is still the strange feeling of warmth in his chest, on his back and arms like someone embraced him, though he doesn’t remember the occurrence.)

Wrecker reacts immediately, as he always does when one of his siblings are in danger, ripping open a portal again. Tech steps through, his army following behind.

The chaos they return to is still raging. Crosshair’s panic is ringing in the back of Tech’s mind, his desperation to escape and hide, the way he always used to. Crosshair has never been a fighter, and Tantiss stamped out the rest of it from him.

The Empire has destroyed all of their abilities to fight, and Tech does not understand how they were given these powers.

They still have not located Emerie, though he is beginning to theorize the Mother absorbs people. Somehow, she merges their souls into hers.

She is going to destroy the entire galaxy. Tech can already understand why the Father locked her away on the far off world. If he and his brothers survive this, it will not be easy.

The regs spread out behind him, drawing their weapons.

The Mother turns towards them, her eyes narrowing down at them.

Omega fires her crossbow, the shot slipping through the Mother’s clouds. Ahsoka runs at her, lightsabers cutting down and aiming for between her eyes. It hits her tentacles instead, and the togruta drops into a roll.

“Come on, Snips. Really?” the cloud asks, a rippling form its center shifting and more cloudy but physical tentacles reform, sprouting.

“Don’t call me that!” Ahsoka shouts. She’s grieving, fueled by raw hurt and fury.

“You’re still cute, but I would like it a lot more if you would all stop trying to kill me. You are all my children.”

“We have no parents,” Tech replies, drawing his blaster and firing at her. She swivels, dodging aside and the shot nearly hits Hunter. This is just another time he nearly harmed one of his brothers.

“We need to restrain her,” General Kenobi’s voice comes through the chaos. Tech can hear him somehow, even if he shouldn’t, perhaps because he’s listening. They did bring him in the hope he might find the answer. This would be the first time he offered anything of use throughout the course of this battle.

“How?!” Wrecker whines, “She’s a cloud!”

“A shrinking cloud,” Tech asserts, because her form is definitely half the size of what it was when he first laid eyes on her. “I believe the fight may be tiring her.”

Nearby, Tech spots some of the Tantiss survivors firing at her tentacles with blasters they must have snatched from somewhere. The Mother swings it at them, flicking them aside like nothing. They are not dead – for whatever reason, she does not seem to enjoy the prospect of killing them.

“I’ve been sleeping for so many years,” she accuses, “I’m not starting again.”

The ground beneath their feet rips apart again, melting, forming miniscule rivers of orange-hot lava.

Another creature rises out of it, something massive with shimmering red eyes. A duplicate of her, its presence an offshoot and wrong, but not the main center branch.

The Mother leaps off the platform, taking off. towards the top of the building.

Hunter jumps after, wings catching his weight and carrying him up. Tech shifts again, jumping to Crosshair’s side, and his little brother swings onto him, arms coming around his neck. Why he came to him before Omega, he doesn’t understand – it’s instinctive somehow. He knows Wrecker is meant to protect her, and he will.

He is capable, even if he is childish. His mind impedes many of his abilities, but not the instinctive desire to protect.

They fly after, landing gracefully on the ground opposite each other. Crosshair jumps off him, landing with a roll and raising his hands, wrapping the Force around her, trying to hold her still. Hunter is doing the same. Omega hops off Wrecker, glancing at them and raising her own hands to help.

Up here, they’re safely away from where the regs and other civilians nearby are hopelessly outmatched against her. It’s a better placement for a fight, if the palace was evacuated.

The Mother’s presence is wild, her storm trying to break free.

“Distract her,” Omega requests, her voice radiating through their minds. Tech reaches out instantly, trying to feel the Force around the Mother and see if he can twist it either forwards or back, warping her in time. She’s frozen in time, too, but the energy she absorbed so long ago is almost faded.

He’s thrown back from the efforts, the backlash cutting against his mind, and Tech drops to his knees, panting.

Crosshair is on her next, throwing up a shield around her mind, trying to cut her off and incase her away from everyone else, but she writhes and twists away, snapping free of his grip and he drops to his knees, panting, palms pressed to his forehead. Tech feels his pain as his own, throbbing and burning in his mind. It hurts.

Everywhere hurts. This is destroying them. They are not meant to contain these powers, and Tech is beginning to question if they will make it out of this alive.

Wrecker lashes out at her, but she throws him backwards into one of the towering pillars. He smashes through at least three walls before disappearing amidst the debris.

Omega stumbles back, panting, hand pressing to her forehead, but her eyes are a bright and furious green. “I found Emerie.”

Hunter jerks. “What? You did?”

“Yeah. She’s in the middle of the cloud. It’s not one person. It’s – there’s at least three in there. Maybe four. We’ll have to get her out somehow.”

“That means we have to take her apart, not kill her.”

“I believe you are correct,” Tech tells him, throwing an explosive at her, even if it will likely cause very little damage.

“Stop,” the Mother argues, lashing out, “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“We’re stopping you,” Omega snaps. “You’re gonna destroy the galaxy. You took out an entire planet. Even the Empire hasn’t done that.”

“I can help you.”

“We don’t need your help,” Hunter snaps back.

“I’ll remake this world into something… better.”

“How could we trust you?” Hunter demands.

“I’m almost proud you asked.” She straightens, figure growing. “Because I’ll give you anything you want.”

Chapter Text

Wrecker peels himself out of the wreckage, stumbling out the opening in his human form again. He throbs all over, and he’s getting’ really, really tired. They’ve been fighting for a long time, and the Mother keeps conjuring monsters. Giant, spooky monsters.

He’s getting, really, really tired of all these monsters.

Wrecker stumbles through, trying to shake the exhaustion in every inch of his body. He feels wayyy more tired than he ought to. Maybe it’s from not sleeping much? He hasn’t been able to sleep in a very long time.

He’s just made it through when Hunter suddenly goes down, and Wrecker panics. Hunter’s nearly died so many times and Wrecker is terrified to lose him. Hunter’s all he’s had.

“Hunter!” he yelps, running to him.

Hunter groans softly, twitching on the ground. “It’s okay,” he whispers, panting when Wrecker grasps his shoulder and shakes him like that should be enough to bring him back. “It’s Anakin. He’s absorbing our power. It was meant to be his.”

“You’re gonna lose it?”

Hunter’s wings rustle a little. “Uh – no. I don’t think so. I don’t know.” He groans softly. “It hurts, though. I’ll be fine.”

Wrecker just hovers over him until he hears a shifting buzzing in the fabric of the energy inside him, linking him to someone else. He knows him, and it feels right.

It feels nice, actually.

The presence is dark but brighter than it was, and Wrecker turns back from where he’s hovering by Hunter. General Skywalker climbs over the palace’s edge, pulling himself up and standing.

Everything stills, even the lightning streaking through the air.

“Anakin,” the Mother says, deflating a little.

He doesn’t speak, but something snaps and twists over him, the same way Wrecker does when he shifts, and his form changes. His armor melts into a dark, coarse fabric, similar to the robes he wore. His helmet fades into the same face Wrecker remembers, except that his eyes are yellow, and his cape morphs off into a flowing cloak.

Huh. He can change his form, too? That’s cool.

“You shouldn’t have killed the Emperor,” he warns.

Wrecker is starting to think everyone mean has someone really, really who likes them.

The former Jedi reaches out, twisting at the center of the cloud, ripping.

The cloud cries out, thrashing, the voice mixing with others until he doesn’t know what’s her and somethin’ else. It sounds awful and Wrecker kinda almost feels bad for her.

“Here.” Commander Tano’s hand grabs his with her much tinier one, Omega on her other side. “We gotta help him. Our combined powers should be stronger than hers.”

“We hafta share power?” Wrecker asks worriedly.

“It calls to me. We have to try.” It feels right, and he closes his eyes, trynna just feel Omega and Echo’s kid in his mind. It comes in with a rush of calm and gentleness. It crawls up his arm and into his mind, working through him – the energy is everywhere, burning through him, but it finally doesn’t hurt.

He doesn’t know why Hunter reacted so bad. Wrecker feels all soft and warm everywhere, and it feels amazing.

He feels Ahsoka’s fierce determination and Omega’s desperation to find whatever it is that’s been fueling their longing. Their wills are the same – to save their galaxy and stop this destruction – and they reach out together, Ahsoka guiding their energy towards her center.

Crosshair and Tech are upright across from them, hands clasped between them. Their energy comes in short, cut and prickled, but it’s there enough to tear the hole they’re trying to.

An explosion rips out, leaving the air smoky and hazy.

Wrecker slowly peaks up to see the cloud again, though much smaller and shattered somehow. Emerie’s lying on the ground. She’s still, unconscious, but Wrecker feels so much better seeing her again.

Anakin ignites his lightsaber.

The Mother jerks her cloudy gray hand, shifting on her lower base – she’s too blurry for Wrecker to see her form, because she’s a cloud, but he can vaguely make out limbs moving beneath the fog. She conjures a silver blade of her own, and their blades clash. “Who do you think brought Jesse and Kix back?” He cuts at her, and she parries it, backpedaling, dodging his next stab and swinging her leg over his blade when he nearly takes the limb off.

She swings out, shoving his blade aside and kicking him in the shin. He drops to a knee, but she’s already reaching out, ripping a reality hole. It’s sparkling green and red at the edges. Wrecker Feels the hum of his and Tech’s powers in it, the parts that don’t belong to them.

There’s something of an illusion in the center of it, like watching a holo but red-tinted and distant.

What is she doin’?

He sees a star destroyer crashing onto a moon. A fighter flying away, then the Mother clenches her hand and twists. He feels the lives springing to life on the other side, an explosion of energy rushing outwards as reality itself is rewritten.

“I gave them back to you, Anakin.”

“That already happened,” Hunter argues, eyes narrowing on her.

“I don’t want to fight you,” she answers, “You’re my family.”

“You bring chaos,” Anakin replies, straightening again, his cloak blowing in the howling wind. It’s rushing through Hunter’s wings, too, rustling his gray feathers. “All you do is turn families on each other. Those who should never have fought.”

“You’re a traitor, too, Anakin.”

A speeder bike sounds, and Echo flies up with the dagger again. He jumps off, looking around and moving to Anakin’s side.

“Echo,” she starts.

“Stop talking,” Echo orders, slashing at her. She backs away, quiet, but the energy grid is twisting again, energy whirring as she reaches out and rips another soul from the Force. Omega’s panting a little, teeth gritted. Every reality warp is hurting her.

Wrecker thinks it’s making the ground feel shaky somehow. The air, too, and that makes no sense.

“Stop,” Anakin orders, lightsaber raised. “You’ll destroy –”

The red light flares outwards, ripping across all of Coruscant, and he sees figures, hears voices.

There’s a bright, smoky light behind them, and Wrecker twitches, frowning in confusion and looking back at the newcomer. Echo’s figure is overwritten by a red hologram of himself, and there’s another reg there.

“Well, there you are.”

“What did you do to your hair?” Echo asks, staring at him, disbelief and hurt rolling off of him in waves.

Ahsoka gasps softly beside Wrecker. “That’s Fives,” she whispers.

“B – but I thought he was dead?” Wrecker splutters out, confused.

“He was,” Ahsoka answers, “Abeloth is bringing people back that are already gone. She’s rewriting reality. It’s going to destroy this place.”

Wrecker feels it, too. The edges of reality are shuddering, shifting with uncertainty.

“Take me home, Echo.”

Echo ripples back into reality, and he jerks forwards. Fives catches him and then they’re wrapped in each other’s arms, the dagger clanking to the ground.

“I told you.” The Mother’s voice is soft. “No one deserves to be alone. Not even me. Which was why I made another.”

Anakin throws her. She’s flung backwards, rolling over several times before making it upright  She’s far more humanoid than she used to be. She’s a humanoid cloud, though her shimmering purplish red eyes are still huge and creepy.

They’re supposed to be fighting her.

She’s scared, though. Wrecker can feel it, and he feels really, really bad.

He doesn’t want to hurt her.

The Mother is gathering her powers again – Wrecker feels the rippling danger and he has a very, very bad feeling about it. She is gonna shred everything.

Wrecker reaches out, gripping the edges of her power and pushing against it, straining and struggling to force the energy back into her instead of letting it tear out again.

“What good will bringing them back be if you just kill them?” Hunter demands.

“I – I’m not – stop fighting, Wrecker!” The strain is draining and his head is swimming but he can’t let her kill all of his family. “Let me do this,” she demands, “Just once.”

“This is the third time, actually,” Crosshair informs her.

She lets up unexpectedly, straightening and surveying them.

Wrecker hasn’t heard from the giant monster from earlier, but hopefully those operatives or whatever they are will keep it busy. He doesn’t wanna deal with them, either.

Something feels wrong, and then gravity swivels to somewhere behind them, jerking everyone back. Omega yelps, and Wrecker stumbles, fighting against it to rip out whatever she did and reverse it too normal.

Emerie’s still lying there, and it’s freaking him out.

Anakin is wrapping the Force around her. Hunter adds his own aqua swirling mist to it, wrapping around her and holding, shielding against her and any twisting Force-attempt she could make. Crosshair and Omega join in on either side.

Tech – doesn’t. He’s just standing there, watching, and Wrecker feels inclined to do the same even if he knows he should be helpful. He’s just – she couldn’t be all bad, right? She’s scared of them, and she really, really does wanna help, even if she’s ruining everything.

She struggles, but she can’t break free.

General Kenobi is holding the dagger now. He must have picked it up from where Echo dropped it when he went to Fives. “We have to kill her,” he speaks up again.

Wrecker looks at Hunter worriedly.

It just feels kind of – wrong? She cares about them. He knows she does. Maybe there’s a way to talk her down just like there was with Crosshair?

And she’s panicking now. She’s not strong enough to break free anymore, and She might be awful, but she also gave Echo Fives back. She can’t be all bad.

“That’s not the Jedi way,” Ahsoka warns softly, hands clenched at her sides.

People are still dying nearby, still bein’ hurt, and Wrecker hates it, but the cloud girl just looks so harmless. Well, he knows she’s not, but hurting her right now just sits very badly on him.

General Kenobi turns to look at her. His eyes are red and black, the same way Crosshair’s get when he’s being creepy. He absorbed their powers? How did Wrecker not notice that? “There’s no other choice. She’ll break free and destroy everything.”

“All I wanted was you.” She’s afraid of them with a raw, gutted fear that reminds Wrecker of his own towards Crosshair back then. “I want a family. I – I’ve been alone for so long, I –”

“Stop talking,” Crosshair snaps. He’s struggling, panting and nearly falling from the strain pressed against him. Tech reaches out, trying to lock them in place, to freeze this moment in time as they fight out their next course of action.

It’d be so easy. Just stab her in the heart and be done with it all, and she’s hurt them all so much, but how can they do that?

She’s defenseless. How can they hurt her?

Wrecker watches, wide-eyed, frozen.

The cloud jerks, struggling against their hold, but they’re finally stronger than her.

“Whatever you’re gonna do, just do it,” Hunter calls. “We can’t hold this forever.”

General Kenobi feels high and Dark in his mind now. It’s freaking Wrecker out. He thought Jedi were supposed to be nice. He’s not being very nice right now. Did absorbing the Dark from Tech and Crosshair change him?

Ahsoka sighs.

General Kenobi moves closer to her, and she throws him back with her mind, struggling to jerk away. Wrecker could stop her, but he doesn’t want to. She’s awful but he doesn’t want to watch her die.

It feels to – to –

She likes them.

When nobody else does.

Wrecker doesn’t trust her, but he doesn’t want to put her out of existence entirely, either. Crosshair and Emerie got a chance. Why can’t she?

Nearby, Emerie shifts. She rolls over, pushing herself up on her elbow, eyes narrow and jaw clenched. “You’re forgetting something.” Her voice is firm despite her exhaustion. “I’m yours, and you’re mine. You can’t escape. You are me.”

The cloud’s eyes widen. “Wait –”

Wrecker has a split second to think a hopelessly confused what before purple, gray energy snakes out of the cloud’s chest, connecting to Emerie’s hand. Her body spasms at the surging voltage zapping down her arm and across her body, but she doesn’t stop.

The cloud’s energy rushes out, pouring into her and lighting the area with a brilliant purple red until Emerie’s entire body is shimmering and sparking in almost the same way as Echo’s, and another explosion rips through.

It’s the one she was trying to get out from before crashes outwards, ripping through all the galaxy, tearing and ripping and shredding.

Wrecker reaches out with a last-minute panic, trying to reach the edges and knit it back together, keeping the fraying edges from tearing.

His mind blanks out. He thinks it was just a minute, but when he’s picking himself up again with Ahsoka’s hands on his arm to help him up,

Emerie’s on the ground again. She’s still sparking, and she feels like the Mother now, though in a far calmer, more subdued way. Not all wild and explosive. What in the galaxy did she do? Could she eat the Mother because she ate her? Wrecker has no idea, and he watches, frozen and wide-eyed.

The main part of the cloud is gone, shrunk down to a humanoid figure. She’s a togruta, leaning against Anakin as she tries to stay upright. She looks so much like Ahsoka it’s creepy, but all togruta’s look about the same. Her skin is the same color, and so are her – what were those things called again?

Anakin catches her when she falls, her body sinking into his arms. She’s breathing heavily, but her eyes pry open to focus on Ahsoka as she moves closer, and Wrecker suddenly gets the sharp feeling that he’s watching something he maybe shouldn’t be. “You found her,” she whispers. She’s smiling, the slight curve of her lips visible even from here. “You found my sister.” Her Consciousness fades away and she falls, Anakin lowering her to the ground, his face closed off.

Wrecker runs from there to the kid’s side, helping her upright. She looks exhausted, but the fight is finally over.

The Emperor is… dead? He doesn’t know what that means.

Through the smoke and ash, Wrecker sees Tech moving to another form. This one motionless. He kneels beside her, wordless and unspeaking.

The presence is gone. She’s dead.

Anakin stands, turning away from the togruta to the other body and crouches beside it.

“That was the Mother’s original form?” Ahsoka asks quietly.

“Abeloth,” he answers, “The split killed her. Her family is gone. It is what she wanted.”

Wrecker can’t imagine that. What would it be like to lose your entire family? He lost Tech and Crosshair and the kids, but he never lost Hunter. He didn’t lose everybody, even if it hurt.

“She belongs on Mortis,” he continues, “So does the dagger. We took them from there, and we should return them to where they belong.”

“What will you do now?” Hunter queries, standing.

Wrecker reaches to make another mini reality hole to take the body back – if her family’s there, she’s probably gonna wanna be there, too.

“We’ll talk when I’m back.”

Anakin yanks the dagger away from General Kenobi – ignoring his disgruntled face – and clips it to his belt. He lifts the body, and they all watch as he steps through the portal and disappears from sight.

He doesn’t hear the fighting down below anymore. The Mother’s monsters must’ve disappeared when her power was ripped in half.

Wrecker hates death. It always feels so sad. Especially now that he knows what it’s like.

They wait until he’s back to move.

Ahsoka is the first over to Anakin, hands clenching at her sides as she looks up at him. “You – you survived.”

“I knew you’d find your way back.” Ahsoka jolts forwards, throwing her arms around his neck and burrowing herself in his embrace. His arms come around her, cradling her small form against his chest. Wrecker’s bond with her burns, humming with a lighted happiness.

“That was Ashla, wasn’t it?” Ahsoka asks against his shoulder. “My sister? I thought she was dead.”

“She was,” Anakin confirms, his face on her montrals. “She was my best friend. For years, when we were growing up – until her master left her to die in a sandstorm.”

“She didn’t die,” Omega interrupts. “I thought it was a dream at first. This kid. She was calling me in a dream on Mortis. I saw her there, and I pulled her out, but then the Mother came and I woke up.”

“She found her,” Anakin says, “Somehow, she – fused them into one. The power split brought her back.”

“There are three of all of us,” Tech says, “Perhaps that is what is needed to balance the power.”

Wrecker doesn’t really care about any of that – he just wants to sleep. And make sure everybody’s okay.

“I don’t know what happened,” Ahsoka confesses in a whisper, pulling back from Anakin’s shoulder though she’s still holding him. “I – the Empire – I – Maul told me about Sidious. I…”

“Sidious is gone,” Anakin replies, “We don’t need to worry about him anymore. Ashla saved us. He tried to have you killed. I’m sorry.”

“The entire cruiser – it crashed.”

“I found Jesse and Kix,” Anakin tells her softly, “And all the clones. They’re alright. You can come home. You can stay with the Empire. We can remake this into something – better. You won’t have to worry about fighting anymore.”

Ahsoka gasps shakily, clinging to him again. She’s crying.

Anakin pulls her against him, hand on the back of her head, holding her against his chest.

“Wow,” says a reg’s voice out of absolutely nowhere – is that Fives? He looks the same, and he’s standing by Echo, so he probably is, but this is all so strange. “Can I get a hug like that.”

Echo talks about him all the time, and he’s really nice, so Wrecker just yanks him into a hug, laughing at his shriek. Echo laughs, and Wrecker hasn’t heard that in forever. He looks amused. Relaxed.

Omega giggles.

The fight’s done, and Wrecker really wants to go eat something and then sleep for a very long time.

He feels energy flickering in his mind again, another little portal opening from across the galaxy, and this time, he knows what it is.

Someone else stands out amidst the smoke now hovering thickly over them.

She’s small, but all that matters is that Wrecker finally, finally remembers her. He always has, even if he feels like he never knew her.

It doesn’t make any sense, cuz Wrecker always knew her, but he somehow didn’t, and the Mother rewrote their entire life to make it work.

Vision.

She lowers her sparking hands, looking around, dark eyes bright with the same awed wonder that Omega had on Saleucami.

She never got to get off Kamino.

And suddenly, he remembers – remembers when Omega broke down the first night back from Tantiss to tell them she saw Vision there, that she’d finally seen her sister again after they were ripped away from each other for years. That Emerie talked to her every day and they had to leave her behind to get off.

They did, but then the mountain crashed down on them, and they never really talked about it since.

Omega’s gasp is quiet, and then she runs to her, yanking her little sister into a hug. None of them have seen Vision in so long, except Emerie, who’s unconscious right now.

They really hardly knew her. It was only about a month before they were sent back to the fronts, and she was gone when they came back and Omega dropped in.

She’s been alone all that time and stuck in a place as awful as Tantiss. Crosshair has nightmares about it all the time. So does the kid. He can’t believe they left her there.

Wrecker runs to them, crouching and scooping them into his arms.

“Hey,” Vision croaks, “Good to see ya, too. ’ve missed you.”

Her head is on Wrecker’s shoulder, a few strands of her shoulder-length dark brown curls brush his face as he hugs her tightly against him. She was so small and fun and cute, he’s missed her so bad. Even if it’s been years, Omega still talks about her all the time. They grew up together. Sorta. Vision is seven now, and Omega’s fourteen, but they’re the same height. Vision grows double, too.

“We’ve missed ya, too,” Wrecker promises.

“I’m sorry I left. I let you get taken just like our brothers.”

“It’s okay, ‘mega,” Vision promises, wriggling to hug Wrecker, too. “It wasn’t your fault. I know you’d have helped me if you could.”

“We weren’t supposed to get taken apart. Nala Se said she wouldn’t – I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s not your fault she had me taken,” Vision promises, “I think it was the Empire. There might be something about it on Kamino.”

Wrecker freezes up. No one told her?

“Vision,” Omega says quietly, “Kamino’s gone.”

“What?”

“The Empire,” Hunter interrupts gently, kneeling beside them and Wrecker sets the kids down. Vision turns to look up at him with wide eyes. “They had the entire facility decommissioned. The clones were transported to… another holding facility which was also destroyed. Wrecker and I pulled out the only three survivors we know of.”

“Kamino’s gone?” Vision repeats, her eyes wide. She’s horrified and angry and that’s another part of their lives the Empire took away. Wrecker is very, very glad the Emperor is dead.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

She sighs. “I guess we can’t lose much we haven’t already. Where have you been staying?”

“It’s an island,” Hunter tells her, “Pabu. You’d like it there.”

She scrunches her face a little. “Okay.” She reaches to him for a hug, and Wrecker is almost surprised when he gives right in. They all missed her, though. Never thought they’d see her again after Kamino was destroyed.

Echo comes to pat her shoulder. “Emerie told us you told her to go,” he tells her, “That was brave of you.”

“I did what you would do,” she tells him with a shrug. “She had to get Omega out of there. Crosshair didn’t have much time. Where is he, anyway?”

Wrecker looks back – he’s lingering a good distance behind them, arms crossed. Crosshair slowly moves closer at being called.

“Hello to you, too,” Vision calls, waving, “You haven’t shown up in ages. You okay?”

Crosshair scoffs. He’s struggling at a loss for words, and Wrecker thinks they all are. “Yeah,” he says finally, a little shakily, “I’m alive.”

Vision laughs. The Mother actually sounded a lot like her. Wrecker wishes he’d thought about that ages ago. “Okay. Sure.”

“Hi?” another voice attentively asks – another kid who came through with Vision. There’s three of them, actually.

“This is Jax,” Vision announces, “They’re other kids who were on Tantiss with me. Jedi. Well, they were with me, until Hemlock had me moved ‘cuz I was being too annoying.” She rolls her eyes.

“How about we all get something to eat and get some rest?” Hunter suggests, “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“Our roles will determine our future,” Anakin interrupts, “But there is room in the palace temporarily.”

“Thank you,” Hunter tells him meaningly.

Omega smiles up at Wrecker, and he pats her shoulder again. Everything feels lighter now.

He feels free.

Chapter Text

“I remember most of it,” Ashla says, staring at the glass in front of her. “Most of what I did as the Mother. I guess I am still her. I don’t know.”

“We all still have the roles we were given,” Anakin replies, sitting at the head of the table and watching her. Ashla is sitting around the corner beside him, slumped in her chair in a way that makes her look way too small. Though, she is small. Anakin is tall, but Ashla barely comes up to his shoulder. The tips of her montrals just exceed Ahsoka’s in height, and Hunter’s guess is that she might be twenty, but he knows nothing about Togrutan growth. Both the girls look far younger than humans at that age.

Ashla still acts young. So, either she’s naturally childish, or being frozen so long screwed with her mind’s aging the same way it does with his own brothers sometimes.

Hunter watches them in silence, watches everything and listens to Omega talking a mile a minute to Vision about their time apart. It’s good to hear them laughing together. When Vision was with them, Omega wasn’t. He’s never seen them together, for all they talked about each other. (It feels like she’s always been here, even if he knows there was a time she wasn’t. Their reality was rewritten, though it felt more as though she was there and they just didn’t remember. It's a strange feeling.)

“What do you remember?” Hunter asks. He still remembers it, definitely remembers getting his vibroblade stabbed through his chest in what should’ve killed him. They’re immortal, and that had hurt. He’s starting to suspect their powers are both sustaining and exhausting them – he’s far more worn out than he ought to be. His body is probably… not made for this. If Anakin was really meant to take some of it, maybe that’s not a bad thing. He doesn’t feel as overwhelmed. His powers are the same, complete with the sheer unnaturalness of it all, but it’s not so…

“I remember you,” Ashla answers, motioning towards him with her glass. “I’ve been watching you for years.” She smiles wistfully, but she’s still visibly exhausted. “I always wanted you.”

“You could see us?” Ahsoka inquires quietly from beside her. “All that time, and you couldn’t tell us you were still alive?”

Her face scrunches a little. “I wasn’t supposed to exist,” she answers, “I was meant to die as a child. In every universe, until another version of me got these powers and she reached out. She saved me, let me embrace my role as the Mother, and I reached out to – uh – I didn’t want every version of me to die.”

“I cannot believe every version of someone was made to die,” Emerie interjects quietly.

Ashla shrugs. “I was. I looked into the multiverse to see if there was any version of me that wasn’t as alone as I was, but there wasn’t. We were meant to be the same, until I reached out and changed it. I made a world where I got to live with my family. And I – I had my soul forged into another body, to know if she would be the same.”

“You mean me?” Vision asks. “So… you’re my mom?”

“I mean, yeah, but you were still cloned from Omega.”

Hunter still wonders about that. They could ask Nala Se – Tech brought her back when he resurrected everyone on Tantiss. The CX’s are here, too, and they crashed together in some room to sleep. They’re lost without the Empire. Everyone is. General Kenobi made himself scarce, too – Hunter has no idea where he took off to.

“So, I have four moms.” Vision wrinkles her nose. “Ew.”

Hunter fails to find anything about that disgusting. “Four?”

“Well, there’s ‘mega, Ashla apparently, Nala Se, and the Great Mother Jar.” She counts them off on her fingers, frowning when she sees Hunter’s desperately suppressed smile. “What?”

“Nothing,” he replies, because if he tells her she’s adorable, she’s probably going to fly at him the same way little Crosshair would’ve. They’re so similar, it’s scary. Except Vision is more obsessed with her hair than Hunter is, will never stop trying to copy him, and she’s terrified of Tech.

“You altered other realities?” Anakin asks Ashla.

She shrugs one shoulder. “I mean, sure, why not? They were pretty miserable, anyway. I shouldn’t always have to die.”

That is something Hunter can understand, even if he’s angry about how much they went through. He… knows how terrifying it is to be alone. There was nothing like the mind-numbing fear of when Crosshair held him prisoner. He’d been so scared. So terrified that one of the blasters aimed at him would go off, that things would get – worse, and his little brother would hurt him. Torture him. Or – or worse. Not that he could get much worse.

“Anyway, I – I wanted you, and I guess being merged with these powers just made us kinda… lose it. Thank you, Emerie.”

“It was the right thing to do,” she answers, “Your powers have been calling to me since I first sensed you, and I knew it was all I could do to save your life. Even if it hurt.”

“It did save me. More than you know.”

“You stabbed me,” Hunter states, eyeing her. He’s never been stabbed before. That was new.

“What?” she asks, “You were turning into mist. It freaked me out.”

Is she kidding?

“Excuse you,” Vision says loudly, straightening, “You tried to kill my dad?”

Hunter tries to ignore how warm and mushy that makes him feel inside. Maybe the Mother was right that all he really wants is to take care of someone. That’s all he’s ever wanted.

“I… actually… didn’t try to kill him. I knew he’d survive.”

“You stabbed him!”

“Hey, it was creepy!” she protests, “Only I’m supposed to know how to do that!” She still winces when she looks at Hunter again. He thinks she does regret that, among everything, but there have been so many things that just blur over.

Blowing up a planet was much worse.

“Can I be someone else?” Vision demands grumpily, slapping her hands down. “I don’t wanna be you. You’re mean.”

“In the reality I made you in, you tried to kill Omega,” Ashla deadpans.

“What?!” Vision squeaks, head swiveling towards her sister’s.

“Don’t worry,” Ashla tells them dryly, “It was your chip.”

Crosshair sinks a little in his chair, like he’s trying to fall through it. Hunter’s tempted to ask if he’s okay. He doesn’t.

“Whoa, hang on,” Hunter speaks up, “Vision has an inhibitor chip?”

“Yes, she does,” Omega answers for them, squeezing her sister’s hand. “She was meant to be a soldier. Not like me. But we can get it out.”

Vision shudders. “Yes, please. I don’t want to go murder-murder, staby-stab.”

“Did you remember me from before?” Ahsoka asks quietly, touching her own older sister’s arm. “I don’t, I was too little. Everything I know about you I heard from Anakin.”

“You have my necklace,” Ashla answers, nodding to the little gold, diamond shaped necklace Ahsoka wears, and the togruta reaches to touch it self-consciously. Ashla’s smile is pained and wistful. “I was three when I was taken from my home and was sold to Tatooine. I don’t remember much from before, but I remember you. All I cared about was finding my way back to you. Then – then the sandstorm came, and the Mother took me.”

Hunter remembers when they first fought her. The way she reacted to Ahsoka trying to kill her. It’s no wonder it was so violent. Ahsoka is the only one she truly loved.

And she tried to kill her.

He knows that with Crosshair. He went through the exact same thing with him. There was nothing like having to fight his little brother. Nothing like knowing he failed him.

“I knew you would have wanted Ahsoka to have it,” Anakin says quietly. It’s strange to see him human again. Hunter’s assuming he was able to reform himself the same way Hunter somehow did when he grew wings, even if he never meant for that to happen. It must be instinctive. “She looked like you, and I… I dug into her family a bit. It wasn’t hard to figure out what you were, if I hadn’t known by sight.”

“I did,” she promises, “Thanks. I – I guess I messed up a lot.’

“We’ll talk about that in the morning,” Anakin promises. “You all need to sleep.”

“You, too, sir,” Echo cuts in, “You look awful.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Is that a Dark Side thing?” Ahsoka asks dryly, “Because I’m still tired. It’s clearly not a One thing.”

“I have not slept since the initiation of the Empire.”

“Wow,” Ahsoka states, wide-eyed. “No wonder you’re so crabby. I think I would Fall, too. I refuse to go to bed unless you come with me.”

“That’s blackmail,” he protests. The Force says he’s not actually annoyed, just taken aback and a little overwhelmed.

“I’m your daughter,” Ahsoka says, smiling sweetly, “I think I have a right to ask you put me to bed whenever I want, right?”

Ashla snorts, poking Anakin’s arm. “What do you say? Should we tuck our daughter in bed for the first time?”

“What about our son?” Anakin deadpans.

Ashla slaps a hand over her face and yowls.

“Do our roles change that much about us?” Emerie inquires.

“I would not say that they do,” Tech replies, “Though none of our roles are unsuited for what we have been before. Hunter has always been in charge of us. He is our brother, but I would not say that this role is entirely unlike what he has always done for us all.”

“Speak for yourself,” Echo grumbles, “I’ve spent my entire time with you keeping you out of trouble, too.”

“I suppose that would mean you mutually share that role.”

Seems legit to Hunter, anyway, even if he’s still a bit freaked out. He’s ten years old. He ought to have parents at this age.

The Great Mother Jar, as Vision calls it, doesn’t count.

Crosshair is eyeing Hunter now. “If you need to adopt someone so badly, I’m still open,” he says dryly.

“Told you so,” Ashla mouths at Hunter. He ignores her entirely.

Still though.

He likes that.

***

They’re dumped off in a very large room they just crash in. Basically. Their entire squad is here, and Crosshair feels… better like this. With his family.

“Do you mean that?” Hunter asks him quietly, “About… adopting you?”

He flushes. Yeah, he was, but he can’t believe he blurted that out. Hunter’s always taken care of him, and he doesn’t know what to say to him. “Yeah,” he grumbles, avoiding eye contact. He does whenever he’s uncomfortable or if Hunter’s angry.

He still can’t believe – he hit him.

Yeah, he deserved that, but he can’t believe Hunter did that to him.

Hunter’s hand is on his shoulder now, and Crosshair very slowly risks a glance at him. He’s not upset, just a bit confused and overwhelmed and maybe a bit giddy. “You know I don’t really know what that means.”

“But it makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asks shyly. “You’ve always taken care of us. And you’re usually right.”

Hunter doesn’t ask him if he means it, and Crosshair remembers the dream-talk they had that somehow translated over to reality. He does trust Hunter, even if it’s hard of being alone for so long. He always has. He knows he’ll always do what’s best for them, even if Crosshair – resented his methods sometimes.

Okay, maybe it’s just their powers screwing with them.

Everything is so overwhelming right now, he’d rather just focus on Hunter and forget about everything else.

He remembers everything he said to Hunter, things he wishes he could unsay and fix but there’s not really a going back. “I – I do believe in you. You’ll always try to do what’s right for us.”

“I do,” Hunter replies quietly, “Thank you.”

Crosshair leans over, lowering his head to his brother’s – dad’s? – shoulder, closing his eyes. It feels soothing to the darkness so high in his veins now, the constant, never-ending whispers of pain everywhere through everything. He wants to go somewhere far, far away where everyone doesn’t hurt all the time. Somewhere that there’s not so much to feel.

Maybe Pabu’s not a bad idea. But right now, he’s really just – tired.

Hunter pulls him into a hug that he melts into, resting in the firm and familiar arms around his back. He’s safe here. This is the only place he ever has been truly safe to the world, because Hunter is – he’ll always figure it out.

“Come on,” his brother tells him, patting his shoulder. “Let’s get some rest.”

“I don’t have to start calling you dad, do I?” Omega pipes up, appearing at their side.

Crosshair scoffs, patting her head. “Only if you want to.”

“Well, not really, but I’m still sleeping by you both.”

And that’s how they end up curled up on the floor together, Crosshair against Hunter’s side the way he always used to sleep, and Omega’s laying against Hunter’s side with Vision wrapped firmly in her arms. They sleep almost the same way. It’s adorable.

Still creepy though.

Vision is wayyyyy to familiar. She’s unnerving. She’s too much like him.

Omega’s actually a lot like Hunter, too. It figures.

Not thinking about that.

Wrecker wraps himself around Crosshair, giant hand on his shoulder. He’s squeezed between Hunter and Wrecker, and it’s the best sleep he’s had in well over a year. Between his siblings around him, and the presences of all of them in his mind – Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Omega, Echo, Emerie, Viz…

It’s so good to finally be home.

***

Echo wakes long before the rest of them. He doesn’t really know what it is that woke him, exactly, but he’s blinking awake and carefully pries himself free of Tech and Emerie, though considering they automatically roll closer to each other like he wasn’t even there, he probably won’t be missed too bad.

He’s walking down the halls when he hears hushed talking. “I just – can’t believe all this happened,” Ahsoka is saying, “I was on Mandalore, and then the Jedi were just gone. I didn’t mean to leave all my men for dead.”

“They were dead, Ahsoka,” Anakin tells her, tiredly, “Ashla brought them back.”

“But you – you turned on the Jedi. On me.”

“Not you. The Jedi were overthrowing the Republic. I did what I had to do. I was trying to bring peace like I always have. I’m sorry you were caught in the middle.”

“I warned you about this,” Fives interjects quietly, “About Sidious, I – I tried to tell you.”

The door is open, and Echo invites himself inside when he hears Fives. His twin brother is alive, and that’s still something he’s struggling to wrap his mind around. It doesn’t seem possible, even if it’s no more outlandish than many of the things that have happened today.

His general’s sigh is heavy. “I didn’t realize the truth until too late. I know I made mistakes that hurt all of you.” He pauses when Echo enters, looking up. His eyes are blue. They keep shifting between blue and gold, the same way all of theirs keep changing color now.

His general was working for the Empire. Echo knows, logically, how he could have done something truly insane if he thought it would bring peace – that’s always the way Anakin’s been – but his mind is still reeling from the insinuations.

How could Echo have been fighting his general all that time? He thought he was doing what Anakin would have wanted. That’s why he held on, no matter how impossible it always seemed.

Emerie made the same mistake. So did Crosshair. Tech. Wolffe. Many of his brothers have, but Echo always thought his general would have ended up on the right side.

He thought he was dead, because he wasn’t with them fighting the Empire.

They were fighting him instead.

At least he never hurt any of them.

“You knew about the Chancellor?” Echo asks finally, because that’s the only thing he can really latch his mind onto right now.

“He told me,” Fives answers, “It was a trap. I – I don’t remember most of what happened back then, but I found out about the chips. I was trying to warn everyone of what could happen. The Chancellor had me taken to him, but he – he told me he orchestrated all of it. That we were meant to kill the Jedi.” He sighs. “That we were meant to turn on our general.”

They did.

Except they did it willingly.

Echo sighs. Fives is here. He’s here, and he can feel his brother’s presence for the first time in his life, even when he’s not beside him – a constant, vibrating reminder that he’s not alone anymore. Of what Ashla gave him, for reasons he can’t begin to understand. “Doesn’t do much good to talk about it now,” he points out finally. “Where do we go from here? With the galaxy?”

“The Empire will need a new leader,” Anakin answers, “I have served it from before its creation. Perhaps I can ensure a new leader is restored. One who will ensure peace.”

“Try to find someone who’s trustworthy this time,” Echo requests dryly. He knows his general must’ve thought he was doing the right thing, but that doesn’t fully change that he didn’t, or that he got a lot of people hurt. Echo’s not really angry at him, but that doesn’t stop the deep seeded hurt burning in his heart, either. He knows his general just did what he thought best. He was deceived, and there were so many of his brothers who made the same mistakes. He just thought Anakin would be different.

“Promise,” his general tells him immediately, “Though with these… powers, we might be able to find answers faster than we realize.”

“You remade yourself,” Ahsoka asks, eyeing Anakin’s now-human arm. She’s holding a stuffed bantha, which looks ridiculous in her current size, but Echo instantly recognizes it as the one she left. Anakin must’ve kept it and given it back to her. At least in that, he’s still the same.

“I didn’t know I could do that,” he replies, “These powers aren’t something the Jedi or Sith have ever taught us about. Either these legends are lost, or… hidden.”

“I don’t quite know what to do ourselves,” Echo admits, “These powers are overwhelming. We could cause a lot of damage with them.”

“Practice,” he answers, “We have the same power the Ones carried before, but we’ve been split into twelve instead of four. Our numbers are tripled. Perhaps that will be enough to allow us to remain in contact with the mortal world.”

Are they immortal now? Echo hopes not. Fives doesn’t have this.

Does that mean he’d have to watch his twin brother die all over again someday?

“I think I’ve been hiding long enough,” Ahsoka sighs, “I – I want to do something.”

“The 501^st has been apart for a long time,” Anakin agrees. He’s still conflicted. Echo can feel it, but he’s hiding it, opting to focus on the certainty of facts in the way he so often did back in the war. That, at least, is familiar. Almost enough that it hurts. Following Hunter was… nice, and Echo trusts him, but it wasn’t like his general.

Hunter never had that full-hearted certainty, that passion that guided and grounded them. He wasn’t a Jedi. He wasn’t… ready for what he was dealing with.

“I think it’s time we bring it back together.”

“I’m in,” Fives promises, patting his arm, “If you’re sticking around, that is.”

“You can stay for as long as you want,” Anakin tells them, “But there will be times we have to break the rules we’re used to following.”

“Like when you turned on the Jedi?”

“Yes.”

It’s strange to feel so much. Especially of his general – Anakin always said he could do something like mind-reading. Echo can’t quite, but it’s a near thing, and he knows his general is something like lost and overwhelmed to be with them again. He’s been alone for a long time, and he doesn’t know how to handle it now that he’s not.

“If you need us to kill somebody for you, we probably won’t say no,” Echo has to tell him dryly.

“I should prefer to deal with my old master myself.”

“I knew there was something there!” Fives lights up like flipping a switch, and Echo firmly digresses this is something to be excited by.

Anakin side-eyes him wordlessly. He didn’t used to be this quiet or guarded. They’ve all changed a lot.

“Maybe you should go back to sleep,” Echo advises.

“Hey! I’ve been sleeping for years!”

“You stopped existing for years,” Anakin corrects, “And Echo is right. Besides, you two have much to discuss.”

Fives fake pouts at him, and Echo grabs his arm and drags him to the door.

“I still can’t believe you lost your arm,” is the first thing he has to say to Echo when they’re finally, finally alone.

Echo’s mind is still reeling from the fact that he’s back, and that – Mortis was a twisted, warped point where present met future, and he recognized it the moment it started replaying. Except, this time, Fives didn’t vanish.

He stayed, and Echo had forgotten everything on the platform except him. He’d broken down and hugged him with everything he had, clung to him and cried even if there were people watching. He’s been without him for so long.

“Can’t believe most of what happened while you were gone,” Echo tells him dryly. They’re coming full circle now – Echo missed a year and a half of his life, trapped on Skako Minor. Fives – Fives missed two, but the timing is close, and they’re finally together again.

“No kidding,” Fives drawls, “I can’t, either. You look so…”

“I know what I look like. I’ve been avoiding mirrors just for that reason.”

“You look like an old man.”

Echo side-eyes him. Sure, he does. He took that blow for the Republic, though, and it gave him what he really needed. “We both ended up where we belonged,” Echo tells him finally, “I know it’s different here, but it was because of you that we even made it. We had no other way to know about the chips. If not for that, Rex would’ve been with the Empire right now.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Fives says,

Echo can’t imagine Fives dead, either. It’s so strange, not to be alone. He’s glad, but he really doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s forgotten what this was like. Almost makes him feel bad for the Mother. He wouldn’t turn out like that if he got left alone for too long, would he? Hard to say. They do share the same power.

Fives elbows him lightly. “Stop brooding,” he orders, “We’ve come this far. We’ll be fine.”

Fine is too farfetched for Echo now. He doesn’t remember what that means.

But his general is here. Even if they fought, it… makes a bit more sense if he doesn’t have to do this alone.

Vision’s back, too, and that’s something else… strange. Echo doesn’t really understand how two fully different memories of the same thing can loop over into one so perfectly, but somehow, they have.

Vision came to their barracks the first time right after Echo did. His little brothers were so awkward about introducing her to him, about her living with them, but she clicked in perfectly in the month he was on Kamino, recovering and trying to fit himself into Clone Force 99.

They met Omega briefly before leaving for the sieges.

Then they came back and… Vision was gone. She’d been taken away for some other project elsewhere. Omega hadn’t known where.

It was almost insane how badly losing her had hurt. They hardly knew the kid, but Echo somehow knew she was off somewhere, being treated badly. It turns out it was much worse than that, but at least she’s back. They can give her the life she deserves now.

Hopefully.

Chapter Text

It is still in the middle of the night when Tech wakes, and he would estimate they have been sleeping for over six hours total now. It is almost abnormally long, but he has been abnormally exhausted as of late. It is good to have a long stretch of sleep, but seeing his brothers together the way they always used to has somehow reopened a part of himself that he cannot let go of.

The part that Hemlock took away, that fell with him on Eriadu.

He hurt them all.

Does he really deserve to be here?

After everything he has done?

There are so many voices in this building, years of pain whispering in his mind. Whispering and demanding attention, protesting the years gone by and the time forgotten.

General Skywalker came through here in the Jedi Temple, now Imperial palace, when the Order was given out. Tech was not aware of that until he feels it, and it changes nothing, but it still shakes him a little. It is not something he had anticipated.

He’s out alone in the halls when Ashla finds him, and leans against the wall he’s facing with her arms crossed, a few paces from his side.

“What are you doing out here?” she inquires at last.

When he looks at her, he sees a flickering flash of everything past, of her life from a childhood to a monster and how she was pulled out and remade back into what she is. She came out.

And yet, he is not entirely certain he can.

“Nothing,” Tech answers, “Do you need something?”

“No. Are you okay?”

He blinks at her. He doesn’t know her. It is unusual for someone to ask that. Politeness is a part of his life that has been gone for a long time. Since long before he stepped on Crosshair’s arm and pinned him to the floor to cut off his hand and listened numbly to his sobs.

He knows his little brother well enough to know he would’ve begged if he could’ve.

“I am unharmed.”

She blows out a breath. “Physically, maybe. I’ve seen your future, Tech. I saw your past. I knew what was meant to happen, and I didn’t want any of you to be hurt that way.”

That is almost oddly thoughtful. “Thank you for trying to help us.”

“I wish I hadn’t stabbed Hunter to do it.” She laughs, though it’s a little broken and off. “I hurt you all a lot.”

“Just as I have.”

“Would have, Tech,” she amends, jabbing a finger at him, “There is a difference between what you would have done, and what you did.” She reaches out, her orange hand patting his shoulder.

Tech twitches, eyeing it, almost expecting an attack, but Ashla has never been anything but kind since her change.

“I was going to cut off his hand.”

“You know, Obi-Wan was supposed to be my master in another lifetime. He chopped off all of my brothers’ limbs and left him to burn to death because he was having a bad day.”

Tech blinks at her. “I… do not believe it was so simple.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Basically. Anyway, I did worse than you have or ever could. At least you brought them back. I don’t know if we can remake Raada. I’m not sure it’s worth the risk of breaking reality again. And you don’t deserve to be alone in this, Tech. None of us do. Your brothers want you. Stay with them.”

“There is nowhere else I can go.” That’s a reality. One he doesn’t know how it makes him feel – he is free, but there is only one place in the galaxy he can go. Not that he wants to be away from his brothers, but because he can never stop fearing that he might be a threat to them. His mind had been violated so many times.

Even Ashla had done the same.

He destroyed all of Tantiss, with Vision still held captive on it.

He will never forget the moment his little sister dug herself out of the wreckage after he brought them all back.

“Tech?” Her voice is pitched deeper than he remembers it as, but there is only one person it could be. She’s clothed in gray, similar to what Emerie had worn. Her dark curls fall freely around her face, messy and tangled in the same way they were when she was younger, even if they’ve grown a little past her shoulders now.

She is taller. Equal to Omega in height.

She had been so small when they first met.

“Vision? Emerie told us you were here.”

“I know. She promised me she would.” Her smile is light and uncertain, but she runs to him in a heartbeat, jumping over the jagged, twisted piece of durasteel in front of him. Tech lowers himself to his knee to catch her, so she doesn’t hurt herself by her overexuberant method of greeting. He cannot understand the desire to do that, but he had never had anyone to be protective of him, and neither is he nearly as energetic as their sister.

“The others will be glad to know you are unharmed.”

“Thanks to you,” she promises, tiny arms wrapping around his neck and pressing herself against his chest. Tech has had very few hugs, but he is more than grateful to participate in this one. He had long since given up on any chance of seeing her again.

They had lost that hope with Kamino and the wiping of any files indicating her destination.

“We were not sure if you survived.”

“What’s going on now?”

“We will come back for you later,” Tech tells her, “It is not safe for you where we are right now.”

“That’s okay. I hafta get the other kids out, anyway. I wasn’t the only one locked up on Tantiss.”

Tech watches until she disappears, climbing back down to where she came.

“You don’t need to go anywhere else,” Ashla tells him softly, “You’ve been away from them long enough. You deserve to have some time with your brothers.”

***

Omega’s eyes slowly pull open, and she blinks up at the ceiling, exhaustion dragging at her a little, but she still feels better than she has in a very long time. Her little sister is finally here, and the emptiness in her heart is finally, finally gone.

Vision rolls over beside her, flopping onto her back, curls falling across her face. “I don’t want to comb my hair.”

Omega giggles. They used to fight about this every morning. “At least he gave us combs on Tantiss.”

“They were gray. They looked dumb.”

“Not everything has to be blue, you know.”

“Blue is the only tolerable color.”

“What about green? There’s a lotta green on Pabu.”

“Is there a lot of sleepy, too?”

“You can sleep as long as you want, kid,” Hunter tells her, shifting a little from where he’s still lying beside her.

She throws her arms over her head and wriggles over like a worm. “Can I see the Marauder again?”

“We’ll call it in when we’re ready to leave,” Hunter promises her.

“And we can take you to Pabu,” Omega agrees, grabbing her hand and squeezing. It’s so hard to remember she’s here, even if there’s finally a gentle chaos burning in her mind now. She can feel all of them, and something in the Force is just different. It feels better. Happier, maybe? Like – like something’s finally been set right.

“The war’s over now.” Vision sits up, blinking and looking around at all of them. “What do we do?”

“We get to live. All of us. We get to choose who we want to be.”

Vision looks away, biting her lip.

She’s gonna have a hard time adjusting. Omega did, too, but she wasn’t made to be a soldier the same way her sister was. Viz is…  she always used to want to fight, but it’s been a long time.

“Which is… what?” Omega has to ask.

“Whatever we want, kid.”

She wants to help people. There’s so much pain in the galaxy, but after seeing Pabu, after having her family together for the very first time, how can she not want to just stay on Pabu, either? Like they had planned before – before she was captured? “I don’t know what I want.”

“Then we’ll wait a while until we figure it out.”

She nods to him, looking at her sister again.

It’s strange to be responsible for someone again. She’s forgotten what that was like somehow. It’s been a long, long time.

Years. Years that were taken from them, that they can’t get back, but all they have is each other now, and they can – can figure it out from here. “We can go back to Pabu and think about it, then.”

“Don’t you mean, go there, for the first time?” Vision asks.

Yeah, she does, for her little sister, but Omega would rather not – she doesn’t know how to handle that. They’ve been apart for so long, she suddenly understands very, very deeply the issues Crosshair had with Hunter and Wrecker. She’s having the same thing with Vision.

Being ripped apart from the only person she grew up with, spending lifetimes apart when she got to see the galaxy and Vision got nothing. She didn’t deserve that. she should’ve gotten to be free. They should’ve gotten to do it together, and Omega can’t accept that they haven’t. But there’s no – this isn’t a piece of the past that could be rewritten without destroying the timeline itself, and that’s her best guess as to why Ashla didn’t do that much for her.

But she gave her Viz and that’s all that matters.

“Can you keep training me?” Vision asks finally, “We left off midway.”

Hunter’s smile is as pained as he feels. Omega wonders what it is he thinks about her – if all he sees is his little sister, or if all he can think about is how she represents a piece of his life forever gone, a childhood he should’ve gotten to live out with his brothers and her before the Clone Wars called them away.

And then the Empire took them apart.

“Of course,” Hunter agrees immediately, “If that’s what you want us to do.”

It is. Omega can feel it – a surging desperation to be one of them in every way she always used to want to.

“Please?” she asks, “I really wanna learn all of that. An’ I still want my own knife.”

“I have that sufficiently covered,” Tech informs her flatly.

The bow. Omega had kept that to give back to her, because she knew it’s something Vision would be obsessed with. Vision thought Crosshair’s rifle looked stupid, but a two-handed weapon would be cool. She kept copying him. It was adorable. That’s all Omega had been thinking when she picked it up on Ord Mantell so long ago. It had meant a lot to see it again.

“Do you still think Tech is scary?” Omega has to ask.

Vision’s face scrunches. She looks at their brother, who just stares at her. “Yes.”

Omega laughs. She can’t help it. Tech is many things, but he’s amazing even if he has a definite darker streak in him now.

Everything with her feels so different now. So much lighter. She feels better to think about Vision all the time. To have her here to worry about. Her brothers are younger than her, too. She wishes she could’ve done the same for them. It was just… so easy sometimes, to forget.

“Maybe we should check up with Anakin,” Omega suggests, “We should see what’s happened here.” She’d like to see Ashla again. None of that makes any sense still. She made herself exist, but she wouldn’t if she hadn’t already done it. There’s probably a word for that Tech would know, but Omega’s clueless. She might as well not think about it.

“An’ we can get somethin’ to eat,” Wrecker offers, standing, “I’m starving!”

Crosshair growls.

Vision reaches over Hunter to poke him. “Come on, grouch ball. Before we eat you, too.”

***

“You have to go.” She shrugs one shoulder, dark curls hanging loosely over her shoulder.

“That will mean leaving you.”

“That’s fine.”

Emerie looks up at her, holding her little sister’s eyes.

“It’s fine, Emerie.”

“I have done my best to protect you for as long as I was here.”

“I don’t need protection, Emerie. I’m not the only one who needs help.” She sighs. “Omega needs you. Go with her. All our brothers here need it, and so does Crosshair.”

Guilt flickers up instantly, crushing her chest. Emerie had orders when she oversaw Crosshair’s interrogation, but he is her brother, just like Vision and Omega are her sisters. “I did my best to protect Crosshair, and you.”

“I know you did, but you’re meant to be more than this. You’re not like me. You are strong enough to change this, and they need your help.”

“You will be here alone.”

“I will be fine. It doesn’t matter what happens to me. Get Omega and Crosshair out of here. Find your home, Emerie. That’s where you belong.” Emerie looks away. Every day, she’s come here, to make sure her little sister wasn’t alone, and if she goes, Vision won’t have anyone to look after her – not as though Emerie has been able to give her anything.

“I can’t leave you.”

“Go.” Vision shifts forward, standing. “Leave. I’ll survive. I know they’ll come back for me.”

Emerie sighs. “It will endanger you.”

“Oh, I like danger. You need to go, and I can’t go with you. This is what you were made for. You have to walk away. You have the strength to fight, too. You’re one of us.”

Emerie sighs again. She steps forwards, and Vision wraps her arms around her waist. Emerie’s only been hugged a handful of times, and she still finds it awkward, but she hugs her back gently. “Do not start a prison riot,” she orders, “That will not make your situation easier.”

“Well, I’d say I won’t, but sometimes, I just can’t help it.”

Vision is not alright with this, but she is staying strong. That is what they need. “I’ll be fine, ‘merie. I’ve waited long enough. I can wait a little more. Just get them home.”

If Vision had not told her to leave, Emerie is certain she would have stayed on Tantiss, and she does not what to know what such a reality would be like. She helped cover for Crosshair and Omega when they left, or at least she had tried. Omega had been so angry at him. Emerie suspects it was linked to something of which she had no knowledge, some deep wound they never healed from.

But Emerie had been on a mission, was under orders to keep them safe, and she did as best as she could, even if it was hard.

It had been so awkward to walk down the ramp beside Crosshair and face Hunter and Wrecker, knowing what she had done to them all, and how she had refrained from helping long before when she could have spared them so much. It had been hard to face Echo, to tell him everything she had done, to watch Crosshair fighting with his brothers as they tried to come to terms with something she was not present in.

But all of it was worth it to come right to where she is now, here on Coruscant, with the Empire fallen and with her younger sister again.

“I am glad to see you are safe,” Emerie tells her, hand hovering next to her shoulder.

Vision shrugs. “You too. Are you okay? I know you’ve been through a lot.”

Being forced into the Mother was hard, but Emerie had sensed, to a point, what had transpired beyond her. It was like being frozen in time in a way she cannot quite express. It is not something she imagines any person could understand if she attempted to explain it. But she had been able to save Ashla.

That was worth it.

“I will be fine,” she promises.

“With Hemlock dead, we’re all free now. What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” Emerie confesses, “I imagine I will continue to watch over Omega and you, but I cannot imagine a life without him.” It’s hard to think of him being dead, but she can feel it deep within her heart. His presence is gone, passed on and lost and forgotten.

He won’t be able to hurt anyone again.

He won’t be there to watch out for her.

He won’t be there to tell her what to do.

Her feelings about his death are too complicated for her to understand. Emotions are difficult. She can understand why Hemlock didn’t like them.

“I can’t imagine a life without the Clone Wars, either, but here we are. I can’t imagine living any other way, but I guess we’ll figure it out together.”

Emerie is not alone any longer. It would do her well to remember that, though the concept itself is still difficult to imagine. “I believe I would like that.” She is glad they have their brothers now. They’re bound, linked together through the Force or whatever it was that they told her it was called.

A lot has… changed.

She thinks, for the most part, they are changes she is grateful for, even if adapting to it and dealing with the constant need for chaos that burns inside her now is difficult.

Emerie has always been one for order, not chaos. It’s strange to have the Force, to look at herself and see the sporadic flickers of purple energy the same way they are on Echo, though on her, they feel less charged and more… magic-like, perhaps. Vision has the same thing.

Learning these powers will be difficult, but It’s a part of who they are, and it’s what Emerie wants to be if she can stay.

***

“Are you sure you want to go back to Pabu?” Ahsoka inquires, “I mean, we won’t stop you if you do, but our powers are… tricky, and we’re linked to each other now.”

She doesn’t want them to go, and Wrecker doesn’t really wanna, either, but he really, really wants to give Vision a part of their lives. He really wants to give her that chance. They all do. At least for a little bit, cuz he’s not sure if she’s gonna wanna just stay there. Vision’s always been energetic.

Maybe they can sit out for a little while, at least? He doesn’t really know.

“I’m not sure,” Hunter replies, “But we’ve been fighting for so long, and we’re finally together for the first time. We thought we’d… take a break.”

“You’ve earned it,” Ashla promises, “At least you’re together now. That’s what’s important. The Empire or whatever we are doesn’t need you to clean up. That’s on me. I’m the one who made that mess.”

“We’re glad the Empire is gone,” Hunter replies, “Or at least that the Emperor is.” He side-eyes General Skywalker, who’s standing in the background and watching.

“I think I’ll come,” Echo suggests.

Wrecker freezes. “Ya sure?” He just got his general back, and his twin brother, and Wrecker knows if he were in that place, he’d do anything to get to stay with Crosshair a bit longer.

“I’ve been away from you all for a while. Besides, I never got to know Vision.”

She beams up at him with every bit of the ray of sunshine she used to be before the Empire stole her away from them. Before they – they –

He thought he was never gonna get to see their little sister again, and he didn’t want to believe that, but they were all so afraid for so long. They’d stopped hoping, and it didn’t really happen, because it just happened now apparently, but it still feels like it did.

Wrecker has no idea what that means.

He pats her shoulder instead, and she squeezes his wrist with her tiny little hand.

“Yeah. I’ve been without Fives for a long time. I need to get used to the fact that he’s still here before I…”

Wrecker doesn’t really get that. He got Tech back, and all he cared about was making up for every minute they spent apart. He hates how different his older brother is now. He’s so dark and scared, and Tech isn’t supposed to get scared. But if it’s what Echo wants, and he wants them, Wrecker’s not gonna fight it. He’s so worried about losing Tech again. He doesn’t want to do anything but sit out somewhere he knows they’ll be safe.

“Well,” Ahsoka says finally, “Good luck.”

“You too,” Omega tells her with a small smile. “You can call on us if you need help.”

“Thanks, but, we’ll be good. The Mother’s contained, and I doubt there’s any other galactic catastrophes we’ll need help with.”

“You know what they say,” Anakin warns, “Don’t jinx it.”

“We’re not in a holofilm,” Ahsoka tells him sweetly, “We’re good.”

She extends her arms to Wrecker and Omega, and he scoops her into a tight hug immediately. they don’t really know each other, but she’s so nice and he likes her. They have some sort of weird bond, and it hums with brightness whenever they touch. They’re all glowing.

Omega flicks her hand through the shimmering glow, in an effort to catch some of the sparkles, and Wrecker laughs. Omega giggles, and they pull back from each other, a shimmering white like sparking between them, like contact somehow recharges them.

“Sorry for stabbing you,” Ashla tells Hunter, poking his shoulder and jumping back like she thinks he’ll stab her right back. “I can fix your armor if you want.”

“It’s fine. Tech will take it.”

She nods wordlessly, gnawing on her lip with a visible uncertainty that makes Wrecker feel really bad about not being able to give her anything else. It wasn’t really her fault she became a cloud monster.

He pats her shoulder, because he really doesn’t know what else to say. She smiles at him, though, so he thinks that was a good idea.

The hangar door slides open behind them, and in comes Rex, helmet tucked under his arm. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I thought I would have told you already that there are something things consent is important for.”

“You may have been notified if you had an address to send a notification to.”

Wrecker turns back to look at them, staring in genuine confusion. It sounds funny even if it’s not his business.

“That’s not fair. You can’t try to make the Emperor without my agreement.”

“The Senate voted –”

“What were the options if they chose me?”

“Well –”

“You already did it, didn’t you?”

“Um –”

Ashla laughs. “This is where you run,” she warns, “Okay? Get out before something starts on fire.”

Echo laughs. “I’m inclined to agree. Hunter?”

“Come on.” He nods to where Marauder is sitting on the landing platform, ramp lowered and waiting for them.

They’re up and off a minute later, leaving the disaster on Coruscant behind.

“So, Rex is the Emperor now?” Omega asks.

“Can’t have it much better,” Hunter tells her dryly.

Lula waddles up from the back, and Wrecker bends down to scoop her into a hug. She hugs him back, wrapping her mini-arms around his neck. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be alright,” she whispers.

“We’re okay,” Wrecker promises, squeezing her.

“Lula talks now?” Vision asks, wide-eyed.

“I accidently brought her and Havoc Marauder to life,” Omega tells her proudly, “They’re amazing.”

Vision takes Lula from Wrecker, carefully holding her in her arms. “Hey,” she whispers.

“We’ve missed you,” Lula tells her, patting her cheek.

Vision hugs her tightly. “I’m not gonna let anyone take me from you again.” That’s their choice now, and Wrecker’s gonna make sure she’s fine.

Vision sets Lula down, and Omega tabs her hand. “Let me show you my room,” she requests, “I have a couple things for you.”

Wrecker remembers setting up the gunner’s mount for the kid. It was his perch before then, and he wanted to give her something when they had nothing else that they could give.

Omega climbs up first to turn the lights on. They’re all here together, and it’s so strange to feel them all in his head.

“I used to use this, but Echo made me my crossbow, so I don’t need it anymore.” Omega picks up her energy bow, holding it out to Vision, who takes the weapon from her and balances it in her arm. Studies it, turns it over with a wide-eyed awe that Wrecker still remembers from when she was little. She hits the charge, and the familiar pink energy lights up. It feels like a shard of their past, just like Vision. Something they lost when the kid was taken, but – but it was part of how they came back, right?

It's good.

“Thanks.” Vision looks down at the knife Tech brought back. “Is that for me?”

“I thought you would want it,” Tech replies, “There was no one else who needed it.”

Vision turns off the energy bow and kneels, picking up the vibroblade and turning it over in her hand. “Thanks,” she says, “It’s – it’s amazing.”

“That’s the knife that Tech used when he tried to cut my face in half,” Crosshair grumbles.

“Really? Now I have to keep it.”

Crosshair rolls his eyes. Vision sticks her tongue out at him. Wrecker laughs, and Crosshair scoffs, turning away.

They’re really, really back to normal.

Chapter Text

Her mind is her own again, and Ashla forgot what it meant to be free. She forgot what it meant to love, the blinding, selflessness that she has for them all now. She loves them. All of her… children. Her brothers and sisters. Whichever they are.

And she hurt them. It – it was for – for what? What did she do? How could she have been the one to do that to them?

But their family is together, with a piece of herself. She and Vision are a thing she’ll think through later. She split her soul, light and dark, half as a Jedi and half as a clone, meant to be one and the same, but there is no reality that can sustain a double of them. She knows that. Knew that.

But she’d been so, so desperate.

The loneliness was maddening. There was nothing but the desert, and her need to feel something in the pit of emptiness that ripped her mind apart.

Abeloth deserved better, but she’s gone, and Ashla is here to hold her power in her place.

Her and Emerie and Vision.

She wishes they could’ve been one, but they have each other, and she can’t keep them when she’s done that too much already. Force knows how much she’s hurt them.

So, here she is, watching them from afar the way that she always used to, wondering if there will ever be a chance to soothe the desperation in her heart, begging to be let in and become one with them. Wondering if she’ll ever have the chance to be their sister.

Ahsoka’s grown so much.

She remembers from before – a baby. A little girl she was hardly big enough to hold in her arms, a name she couldn’t remember but someone she loved.

The same as what happened to Omega before her brothers were ripped from her, leaving nothing but shattered dreams.

She wants to see something burn. Doesn’t have a problem with that. Burning the Imperial Palace was amazing. Killing Sidious was – it was awful.

She should be happy, but Anakin had tried to kill her, and he’d been so, so angry.

Anakin, who hasn’t eaten in a long time either, even if not as long as her. She forgot what it was like to eat something other than chaos, to be fueled by something other than the twisted broken shades of the lives she shredded between her tentacles like they were her – pets.

She lost her life to chaos. To the master that left her for dead when Omega pulled her out.

In another world, it was Anakin. It was him who found her there, and brought her home. That was the world she came from. The one she made, and her family here – the one she longed for – is the same.

The one she watches with fond wistfulness and knows she’ll never make right.

“Ash.” Ahsoka grabs her wrist, looking up at her with bright eyes. She doesn’t hold what Ashla did against her, but she’s not the same one that she watched in another reality, the one she saw live and grow with her, the way they fought in the war as Ashla worked herself ground to keep her little sister safe and Ahsoka fought her protectiveness with all she had because she didn’t want to watch it happen. “We still have a life.”

She should have a reply to that, something laced with an energy that she was meant to have, but her energy is gone. Sapped away with an emptiness that’s gutted her out to the bone. “Uh-huh. I think a choice between a traitor and a dead person was a good one.”

Ahsoka wrinkles her nose. “And Jar Jar. Can’t believe you two pulled that off.”

“It was worth it.” They stayed up all night bullying the Senate, and Ashla has no regrets. She hates almost all of them. They feed her chaos. Whisper through the Force, burning into her veins until she wants to shred them all into butterflies because it would be funny.

She thinks she would laugh, even now.

“Maybe you can at least sleep tonight?” Ahsoka demands, “I don’t like you and Anakin staying up every single night all the time. It’s getting ridiculous.”

“How many nights can we stay up without crashing? Now I wanna try.”

“No,” she replies flatly, “We aren’t competing with sleep deprivation. Do you know what Kix will do when he finds out?”

“No. What?”

“He’ll stun you, drag you to the medbay and tie you up. And sit outside with a blaster.”

Ashla wrinkles her nose. “Break the ropes. Mind tricks are a thing.”

“Uh, Kix isn’t very weak minded.”

No kidding. He’s scary.

“Alright. Fine. But we should probably start by rebuilding this nice butchered building into Rex’s home.”

Ahsoka laughs. “He is going to kill us.”

“He’s already basically killed Anakin.”

Yep. “What’s his favorite color?”

“He’ll probably want everything blue.”

“But and white, instead of black and red. Sure. Let’s go get the paint.”

“We’re never gonna be painting the entire thing top to bottom. Not when it’s so badly damaged. Also, the Senate is going to kill us.”

“I am the Senate.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. It sounded like something I should say. I swear I used be better at joking than this. So much better. Practice makes perfect.”

“What were you and Anakin like? He talked about you all the time.”

“I – it’s complicated.” Ashla looks away, rubbing at her forehead. So many realities. Things blur together. “He was always my best friend. We were close. He’d drag me out of trouble all the time. And I tried to help him when I could. I’d – I’d give him food sometimes. Machine pieces that I stole from other junkyards. Things to help him build Threepio.”

“You helped build Threepio?” Ahsoka asks, laughing. “I’m not surprised.”

Ashla smiles at her. “Yep. Who else?”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “I’d say I can’t believe you two, but I actually can.”

“That’s good, cuz you’ll be getting a lot more of us two by the time the day’s over. Come on. Let’s go make sure Rex hasn’t killed anybody important.”

***

It’s good to be back here. Ahsoka can’t shake how overwhelmed she feels. She’s been alone for so, so long. She’s been on her own since she walked away, except the brief moment where she thought she’d get to come back, but that was a fruitless hope. As all.

Ashla’s here, too. It’s so…

Jarring.

Anakin talked about her a lot, after Ahsoka told him she wanted to. Ashla was her sister, who was dead, and it hurt, but she still wanted to be a part of her. Ahsoka never thought she’d get this chance. Not to know her. Not with being back with Anakin again, either, or Rex.

Rex always looked out for her in the war, and Ahsoka had left him. She was doing what she has to – or, she was doing what she wanted to. She was tired of fighting. No matter how many times Anakin told her she’d die if she stopped fighting, Ahsoka wasn’t ready to pick up being a Jedi again. She isn’t Ashla. She doesn’t have the passion and fire that her siblings share.

Ahsoka wanted to rest for a long, long time. The war wasn’t what she trained for. She thought it was fun at first, but then her men started dying and it really, really wasn’t. She’s seen her whole family hurt. Badly. Because of her. Because of Dooku, the war, Sidious – everything. And she’s so tired of it.

It’s strange to be protected again. To not have to worry.

With the Light of the Daughter humming in her veins, Ahsoka feels… safer. More relaxed. She’s connected to Anakin in a way she never has been before, and it feels nice. It’s soothing. She wants to relax into it, sink away and feel nothing but him and her family.

But there’s a real world, and it’s not so hard to pick up and fight when she isn’t alone.

Which, she’s not. Not anymore.

Not since she first dreamed of Omega.

“So, we are – uh, going to terrorize the Senate some more?” Ahsoka quips.

“Yes,” Anakin confirms.

The Jar Jar, Rex, or resurrected zombie choice was a good one. Though there are a lot of other resurrected zombies running around – some clones Tech got from somewhere, and a strange group who just call themselves CX’s. Light or no, they freak her out.

She could heal their minds. Something happened to them. Ahsoka doesn’t know what. Another thing the Empire did to her family.

Another thing she wants to burn the galaxy for. Ashla wasn’t all out of nowhere. She had the right idea. Or at least a not so bad one – sometimes. There are still innocents who don’t deserve what happened to them.

If zombies is the right term – they’re not the green-gray squishy things out of horror. They’re just resurrected clones, since Tech rewrote time on them – or whatever it is that he did. But there’s still a flickering wrongness to them in the Force, a reminder that they shouldn’t be here, even if they are.

“We’ve terrorized Rex even more,” Ashla snips.

“That is the unfortunate truth,” Anakin agrees, “However, he is the Emperor now.”

Rex groans loudly. “I can’t believe you did that. What if my first order is to transfer leadership to you?”

“We would be fighting over it in front of the Senate repeatedly, and it would become highly embarrassing.”

Ahsoka smothers a giggle. In her head, her parallels to Omega and Wrecker are soothed with relaxation. They’re calm. Contented for what she imagines is much the first time. It feels nice.

They have a life ahead of them they should get to enjoy, even if Ahsoka suspects the stillness will start to grate on them fast. It did with her. And she wasn’t a soldier.

“I appreciate that you entrust me with the galaxy, but I cannot imagine myself ruling it,” Rex tells him dryly.

“I believe you would do a significantly better job than I ever could.”

“That’s not true.”

“Are you sure? You have seen what has happened to the galaxy under my control.”

“It was not under your control,” Rex objects, which is the truth, even if it is hard for Ahsoka to imagine. She’s hurt and angry and a bunch of things, but she’s mostly glad to know her master is still alive. She spent years out there, thinking he was gone and she’d never see him again, refusing to believe Maul’s warning about Anakin. She couldn’t fathom what it meant for her master to have embraced the Dark Side.

Not that he was ever very dark even when she saw him. He wasn’t, and she doesn’t really know how he ended up like that. Something about fighting Obi-Wan was all he’d said. No more details. She won’t press – it’s hard for him to think about.

He also can’t stop.

“It was more than you think.”

“You think too highly of yourself,” Ashla objects, patting his arm, “There’s nothing to worry about. We can fix this up, okay? I screwed up the galaxy more than you ever did.”

“It’s not a competition.”

She shrugs. “Sure, it is.”

“I agree with the general here,” Rex interrupts, “We’re not trying to make a bigger mess of the one the galaxy’s already in. We need to start cleaning up, and I don’t know how to do that.”

“We can start here,” Ahsoka suggests flatly, pointing at the giant, stupid statue of the dead Emperor. “Get rid of those stupid things. No one wants to see his ugly face.”

“I’ve got you one better,” Ashla tells her, grinning deviously, “’soka, may I have your lightsabers?”

“Uh, sure. What are you doing with them?”

Ashla was right, Ahsoka decides gleefully. Sidious looks much better with a giant evil grin etched onto his face.

***

The Senate is not taking kindly to Rex’s appointment, not that it is Anakin’s concern. Is he Anakin? Or is he Vader? He doesn’t know, but surrounded by so many from his past feels like it’s throwing him into another life. A third one. Something a cross between his previous two in almost all the right ways.

Almost.

His child is gone. So is Padme. And Palpatine. And – and Mom.

Qui-Gon.

Obi-Wan who tried to kill him and took off again like the coward he is.

Ashla is here again. The first of his dreams and failures. She was lost in a storm that Anakin dreamed of so many times.

He’d cried for weeks when she was gone. His mother held him in her arms but all he wanted was the little warm weight in his bed next to him where Ashla would often sleep after a particularly bad day at her store or a fight with her caregiver – another slave.

“Her time here is gone,” Shmi had told him, “It’s time for you to let it go.”

“She should be here. She deserves to be free.”

“She’ll be free when you are, someday, Ani. Her sprit carries in you.”

But Ashla’s alive again, because of Omega – a child he has never met, and he would like to give his thanks to, but he does not remember how. How long has it been since someone helped him? Since he had to thank another living being? Since their lives felt like they mattered?

Rex. He survived. Anakin suspected he might have, but when he heard the cruiser crashed, he didn’t know what happened. He thought Maul had escaped, but no – Ahsoka unleashed him on the boys who she fought alongside throughout the war to stop them from killing her because Sidious ordered them to.

Nothing will ever justify harming her.

“I would never let anyone hurt you, Ahsoka. Never.”

A promise he made, untainted by the fire or the water that burned him or drowned him.

Ahsoka.

His padawan. His sister. His Snips.

His daughter.

She walked away from him and he loves her.

She could do anything and he would love her.

And now it’s back on him. The need to protect her. Keep her safe.

He is her Father now. The Father. Somehow, the Force chose him for that role, when he’s as far from balanced as it goes.

But the Ones were made to be four, not twelve. Maybe the balance is better pulled into twelve. Three of Light, Dark, and Middle. Four series, one balance, one chaos, and two between. The Force is not meant to be split into abilities like what happened with the Bad Batch. They are the Ones, but not in their purest sense.

They cannot contain the essence of the power.

Anakin is responsible for them, too, but Hunter will do his job to protect them. He always has.

Who bears what in the chaos trio, Anakin has no idea.

Ashla calls him his name. The one his mother gave him. Not what his master did. Is that really what he deserves?

But he will never belong to Sidious. He is not his master’s. He belongs to the one who made him. Who had him.

To his mother.

To the Force.

Jesse and Kix are here again. His men. All of them. The ones he entrusted Ahsoka with. Who tried to kill her.

Who she and Rex left for dead on that moon. And yet, they would have been dead if not for Ashla. Anakin might never have let go of it if they weren’t. If Rex had left them, he would have betrayed everything they stood for. Just like the Jedi. If Rex had betrayed someone, Anakin doesn’t know what he would have done.

Not that he is any better. He has done much worse, but there are still some things that he won’t tolerate.

Rex was in charge of all of those men. If he had left them – but he hadn’t, because they were dead, even if they didn’t remember it. He had felt something there, when he’d found them – a rippling tear in time, some sort of twisted, etched wrongness, and then Hunter had appeared, blood pooling around his fallen form, and they had stopped worrying about it.

Hunter, the broken wreck of a child that he is – ten and trying so hard to be way to old.

It had been nice to save him. Anakin owed him Echo. A debt he was finally able to repay.

What is he now? Who is he?

Rex wouldn’t be giving I’m-going-to-kill-you glares to an evil Sith Lord. Ahsoka definitely wouldn’t be cuddling or laughing with one.

And Ash, well, she’d laugh with anyone who laughed with her. She’s pretty unpredictable like that.

But Ahsoka has morals. So does Rex. They – they wouldn’t – maybe they don’t see what he really is yet?

But Rex is rarely wrong. About anything.

Didn’t Anakin used to trust him with anything? To lead and guide him when he struggled and didn’t know what he was doing?

But he is not Anakin Skywalker.

“What’s wrong, Anakin?” Ashla asks, poking his arm.

“I am not Anakin,” he answers bluntly, “Not anymore.”

“Then who are you?” she snips, “Anakin Skyfaller?”

He blinks.

She frowns.

“What?” he inquires.

“You’re supposed to hit me.”

“Why would I hit you?”

“Because I’m being annoying?”

“I do not hit people who do not pose a threat.”

“You are gonna regret that for the rest of your life.”

“Truly terrifying,” he deadpans.

“Yes, be very afraid.” With Ashla that is probably not a joke.

“You may be disappointed to learn you will be unable to harm me.”

“Don’t be too sure. Everyone has a weakness.”

“How can you determine mine?”

Ashla grins, and he has a split second of warning before she flies at him, fangs and all. They’re scuffling in a seat in front of a full Senate building where everyone can see them and probably thinks someone’s dying.

He was under the impression she was trying to bite him, but Ashla, being the evil little rascal she is, she’s trying to tickle him. And he left his sides completely unprotected from her evil little fingers.

He squeaks embarrassing un-Sith-like-ly and shoves at her. “Get off!”

She bites his shoulder.

Force, he’s forgotten how scuffly she used to be. He thought she’d grow out of it. all time did was make her even more of a menace.

Now Ahsoka’s laughing at them.

Traitor.

“Shh,” she chides, grabbing her sister’s shoulder to pry her off, “We don’t want to ruin Rex’s grand day, do we?”

“Rex’s grand day has already been ruined,” Anakin grumbles, “As it always has been. Only by us. I will be happy to ruin this one, too.”

“Better be careful,” Ahsoka warns, “You don’t wanna make him mad. He’s the Emperor. He’s in charge of you now.”

It should be concerning. In hindsight, it should have been far more concerning than it was right then.

“I name Ahsoka Tano as my heir and successor,” Rex says in the background to the entire Senate that he’s trying and failing to keep from murder.

“What?” Ahsoka screeches, her head whipping around. “No! Hey! That’s outrageous! That’s not fair! How can you make me the heir to the throne without my consent?”

“What?” Anakin asks suspiciously at the amusement the other torguta radiates.

Ashla stretches back in her seat, smiling smugly. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

His eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.”

He’s beginning to agree she can, in fact, terrorize him. Anakin should have taken her more seriously.

***

The galaxy is in its second state of upheaval this century. Or decade. The past few years, actually, and Obi-Wan really, really doesn’t know what to think about this one. He took off right after the fight itself ended. Like he told the clone initially, he has other duties to be attending. He needs to keep Luke safe, no matter what’s happening elsewhere. The rest of the galaxy isn’t his concern, though with the strange, unwanted darkness humming in his veins, it will be very, very hard to let go of.

He's starting to think, actually, that he just doesn’t care. The Light didn’t keep the galaxy. The Light didn’t keep the Jedi.

The Light didn’t keep Anakin.

But that’s the part of him that’s embraced his unwanted role as the Son, not himself.

Who is he, though?

Obi-Wan Kenobi died the same time as Anakin Skywalker. On the shores of Mustafar. Whoever walked away wasn’t him. The Jedi are gone. That’s not what he is anymore, and now the Empire knows of him. They know to find him.

He saw Anakin again.

It looked like him, but it wasn’t him.

“The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader.”

He doesn’t want to think about this.

The screams still haunt him, burned forever into his mind with no way out. No respite. No end –

The what have you done with did you do that was your padawan your brother that was Anakin what did you do to him whisper in his mind, the voices constant and ceaseless until all he can remember or think of is the screams that burned into his mind forever.

The fire

Coruscant was burning.

Obi-Wan hates fire.

Fire is what took his life. Burned his home and heart into ashes until there was nothing left but a vacant skeleton and something he had to somehow pick up and keep moving in.

Ahsoka thought she knew Anakin. She was wrong. She – Obi-Wan didn’t know how to tell her, and he should have, but he didn’t expect to go to Coruscant and see him again, either. He’d been so focused on stopping the Mother that he hadn’t paid nearly as much attention to Obi-Wan as he expected from the moment he sensed him.

None of that was something he’d been ready for.

He – he thought –

Anakin survived and somehow, that’s as terrifying as it is relieving.

He didn’t want to kill Anakin, but it also means his former padawan is going to be hunting him. It means… he can’t… rest.

He can go back to Tatooine and hide, but his padawan is still out there.

Still Dark.

But not nearly as Dark as Obi-Wan remembers him as, as he should be. As he was when they fought on Mustafar, but nothing is the same. It’s only been one and a half years. That’s not long for someone to change so much, and no one can let go of the Dark Side.

Did he?

Did Anakin?

The Force feels like him, tinged over with a familiar flaming presence that used to define every part of Obi-Wan’s life. He doesn’t feel like the black, whirlwinding storm that he used to be anymore.

The Son is a part of him, and Obi-Wan doesn’t know what that will mean for the future of the Jedi. Did their powers change them? He doesn’t want to know, but he should probably find a way to speak with Yoda. Or Qui-Gon, who he still hasn’t managed to contact.

Things are changing in the galaxy, and the news about the Emperor change is all across the galaxy.

Most people think it’s funny.

Well, Obi-Wan might, if he weren’t relatively unhappy about the clones in general. They betrayed him and all the Jedi. Still doesn’t understand why. Not that it matters anymore.

He can’t stop thinking it sounds like another one of Anakin and Ahsoka’s stupid, stupid childish pranks. It feels like a call from the past.

Every day, it gets harder to ignore the voice whispering in his mind that maybe, it is.

He’s not going to leave Luke when this is his duty.

Anakin’s still out there. Still looking. Waiting.

He’s not him. He’s…

He’s not.

(He can’t be, because if he is, that means Obi-Wan tried to kill his padawan for nothing but his own petty vengeance. No wonder Qui-Gon won’t talk to him. He wouldn’t talk to him, either. His master would be so disappointed in him even if he’d never say so.)

He killed Anakin, but it didn’t take him to bring him back.

He’s not the one Anakin needed.

Even if he wanted to be.

“There is still good in him.”

Because Anakin is still out there, no matter how many times he tries to hide from that. He is as surely as the unwanted darkness that now burns inside Obi-Wan’s veins.

Chapter Text

Echo isn’t meditating. He swears he isn’t – he’s just sitting here and waiting for something. For nothing, really.

He’s just sitting by the ocean because it feels nice.

Vision is beside him, hands on her knees in the same way Omega taught them, even if Echo still doesn’t think she really meditates. No idea what it is she does do, but it’s nice to spend time with her again. Even if it’s quiet time.

It’s different to see and feel so much. To have the Force. He was changed again, but it’s not so bad. Not this time. The purple, sparking energy can be hard to control, but he’s trying to show Vision what he knows, and that somehow makes it easier for him, too. He doesn’t get it, but it’s nice.

And with the bright presences burning in his mind, he feels grounded in a way he hasn’t in a long time.

Fives is alive, and that feels good.

“Hey.” Ashla. His general’s best friend. It’s strange to hear voices in his head.

“Yeah?”

“Just checking in. Are you all okay?”

Doesn’t know why it’s her asking, but they do have the strongest connection. He doesn’t really get why that is. Doesn’t think about it too much. It doesn’t really matter. Their powers are wacko, and usually just freak him out. He keeps setting things on fire. Omega laughs and puts it out every time.

At least he does it by accident. Vision does it on purpose.

She is chaos embodied.

“We’re good. Thanks. How – how’s Fives?” He’ll never stop asking. Never stop thinking about his twin brother, but there’s so much happening, and Echo’s mind is still in chaos. He wants to be with him again, but he misses his squad, too, and he’s been away from them for a long time. He knows his general will take care of them. Of everything.

Echo doesn’t need to keep fighting when Anakin is here to do it instead.

“Oh, he’s good. He’ll be fine. We just wanna know if you will be.”

He thinks he likes her. Anakin did, so he does, too, automatically. But Ashla is nice. She’s gentle. She cares about them. So different from what she was.

“You don’t have to keep fighting, Echo. We’re free. The galaxy is free, and so are you.”

Echo feels himself smile. It feels more sincere than it’s been in a very, very long time. “I know,” he tells her, and for the very first time in his life, he does. He believes it. Accepts it.

They won’t stay on Pabu forever, because they won’t stay anywhere forever, but that is their home right now, and he’ll be glad to stay in every moment they do. And when it’s time to leave, it’ll be to join their general again, to where they can finally fight together again.

And when he leaves, Fives will be waiting, and this squad will be with him.

Echo hadn’t fully thought he’d stay permanently, but now… there’s no reason not to. They’re connected, and they’re… meant to be one. Echo finally has a place to belong.

***

“You had your chance to be one of us.”

“You should’ve been more careful with your shooting hand.”

“Then why don’t you act like it?”

Tech sighs. He thought the dreams would stop when he came here, but he was wrong. Even when his entire family is here, he cannot find the same calm he used to have. He is tempted to blame these powers, but that cannot be fully true. Some of it is from himself as well. Crosshair is struggling, but it is not the same way as Tech himself.

The dreams don’t stop. All he can do is keep trying to last through them. It is so hard.

He has always struggled with sleep, but it has grown increasingly worse. He is exhausted, and the lack of sleep is draining on him. He wants to sleep, but the dreams…

All he can see when he closes his eyes is the fall, air whipping and twisting around him, the crashing and tearing of metal and smoke twisting around him. Remembers hitting the ground, metal falling on him and the glass pricking into his face and metal crushing his legs like Serenno but hundreds of times over, the searing pain in his spine when it wouldn’t – when nothing would –

When nothing would stop.

He dreams of Tantiss, of Crosshair’s screams and when Hemlock dragged Tech up to watch and told him he’d take his little brother down for a few more rounds if he resisted. All he’d been able to do was watch him cry and look at him with the broken emptiness that the Empire stamped through on him.

He remembers blowing up his ship. Seeing his home disappearing into broken shards of metal and smoke. Seeing Wrecker being thrown into the water. Remembers firing, shooting Hunter down into the ocean.

He remembers Crosshair struggling, laying on the hangar floor and squirming, shoving against the boot digging into his wrist. He remembers the moment Crosshair started crying. Remembers the sobs wracking his body, a frantic desperation and denial until the blade was cutting into him and the only comfort Tech had is that he’d made it fast. It was a swift, clean cut. He hadn’t dragged it out.

Crosshair doesn’t know what happened. He hopefully never needs to.

There was so much blood. He remembers it like it happened. The red soaking his hands, his boots and pooling on the floor. Drenching Crosshair. Drenching – everything.

He wonders, if his little brother had been more conscious, would he have stopped him. Pushed him off. Begged him to stop.

But the what if’s do not change that it could have happened.

Not that it has.

Crosshair will never know, but the knowledge of what Tech could have done is crushing him. He is supposed to be the one to protect them, but he failed. His brothers have been harmed because of him when all he wanted was to keep them safe. Protected. He had wanted Crosshair saved so badly, had wanted him back enough that he had lost sight of everything else. He sacrificed everything for that. And then he became the one who hurt him. Who destroyed all his dreams and his mind. Tech took his hand. He… How could he have done that?

The sharp, panicky what did you do what have you done what have you become never stops vibrating in his mind, no matter how he knows it was not all his own fault.

It’s been so long since he’s been able to make his own choices. He doesn’t know what to do.

He feels lost. Overwhelmed with the things that he used to do just as a part of living, because they have been absent for long enough his mind has adjusted to not constantly fiddling with something. That he has been able to live without building. Hemlock reshaped him to destroy.

And he has broken so much.

Now, he needs to be fixing the Marauder from where it was damaged, but the ship is not being overly cooperative. Under other circumstances, that would be ludicrous, but considering Omega has a natural affinity for animating inanimate objects, it is not overly surprising.

It is still frustrating, though.

“Stop trying to gut me,” Havoc whines, “Ow. That hurts.”

“Echo is not half as vocal as you, and he is a living being.”

“Okay, that’s insulting,” the ship huffs, “I am too a living being! Be glad I don’t go and dump you in the ocean.”

“If you were to fly into the ocean, all you would successfully drown is yourself.”

It huffs. “Fine. But I’m not letting you cut me open.”

“How, precisely, would you stop me?”

“I’m sure a door to your head would do nicely.”

He could swear the Marauder is now a spaceship form of Vision. Only significantly more aggressive.

“Tech.” Hunter’s voice is gentle. “Is something wrong?”

He stiffens at his brother’s voice. “No,” Tech answers shortly, adjusting his goggles – the new pair he took from his few spares on the Marauder. It is nice to see a gold tint instead of green again. “Everything is fine.”

Hunter sighs, coming in a little close, rounding the ship’s end. The others are out now, and they may not return for a short time. It is just the two of them alone together with the Marauder – at least right now. “You’ve done a lot for all of us. I don’t want you to sacrifice anything else.”

“That is what family does. I have not been a part of that in a long time.”

“That’s not true, Tech. You’ve always been a part of us. Even when you were gone.”

“Was I?”

“It… was you who picked Pabu to be our home. Everything we did was to come here. To get the kid back.” Hunter sighs. “I… your files helped a lot. Everything we did together.” There is more that he cannot say, and Hunter is avoiding his eyes now. Hunter doesn’t avoid eye contact unless he’s struggling with something.

“I was where I needed to be. With Crosshair. Trying to keep him safe. I told him to be strong. That you would come for us. He didn’t believe it, but… he knew he would see you again. He held out.” Crosshair had his own strength to withstand what was being done to them. Tech will not take credit for it, even if he is also fully aware that it was partly due to his encouragement that he was able to handle it.

They would come for Crosshair, not for him, and Tech would take anything for him if it meant his little brother would find his freedom for the first time.

Crosshair did not deserve to be trapped there on Tantiss and ripped apart, regardless of what he had done to them all.

“It paid off,” Hunter admits quietly, “I know it was hard, but he made it out. And so did you.” His hand touches Tech’s shoulder, fingers squeezing him tightly. His touch is warm and grounding. It has been a long time since he felt that. “You’ve been gone for so long, Tech. I just want you to be alright. To be here with us again.”

Emotional conversations are always so difficult to handle, and he does not fully know how to respond to it. “It is good to be with you again.”

That does not stop the memories. The dreams. Doesn’t stop his mind from replaying the image of Wrecker pinned to the ground, an electrospear against his chest, and Tech just stood there and watched until Crosshair dove for his blaster and –

Hunter leans closer, pulling Tech against his chest. He curls himself around his older brother’s smaller frame, relaxing in the soft presence of his warmth. His gentleness makes – it helps.

It always helps.

Tech was going to nearly kill him.

“I saw the future,” he confesses, “When I absorbed these powers. I saw what was going to happen to us.”

Hunter just waits, listening. Watching.

“I would have hurt you all.”

“But you didn’t,” he promises simply, “And even if you had, it would not make you any less one of us.”

Tech exhales, slowly raising his hands to wrap around Hunter’s back. (The hands he would’ve used to hold that kriffin’ sword and the rifle he used when he shot at Crosshair and shot Hunter down from the sky, the one he used to blow up his ship, his home and turn it to nothing but ashes.) “Thank you.”

“You, too,” Hunter swears, “For saving us.” He inhales shakily. Tech is relatively certain he is crying. “We owe you everything. I don’t want you to be hurt again because of us.”

“It was my choice.”

“I sent you out there. Putting you in that position was mine.”

“I had to go get Crosshair. He needed us. I couldn’t ignore him, but I got him hurt far worse than he ever would have been if not for me.”

Hunter’s arms on him tighten. It has been a long time since Tech has been hugged, too. He misses contact. This warmth. He cannot remember the last time that it was so… good. It feels good. He feels safe, and that is something that has become entirely foreign since Tantiss. “At least he wasn’t alone. He got to know you loved him. I didn’t think he ever would.”

“That is the truth. I may have saved Crosshair, but so did you.”

Hunter nods against him, body trembling. He is crying. The situation is overwhelming for all of them. “That was all I’d ever wanted. I wanted him to be safe. I just didn’t know how to make it work. Omega promised me we could do it. I just… didn’t know.”

“You do not know everything.”

“Neither do you. There will always be things you can fail, but… they make us stronger.”

That is hard to believe, but Tech understands, and he accepts it.

“Let me help you. Let us carry your pain with you. Please – you’ve been gone so long. I just want you back.”

“I am here, Hunter. And I am not going anywhere.”

His brother’s presence soothes in his mind, gentle and relaxed. Tech is his, and he trusts Hunter to protect him. All of them, the way that he always has, and he thinks Hunter may need that knowledge, too.

“Speaking of pain,” Marauder says loudly, “I’m still sparking.”

“You would not allow me to fix you.”

“I think this is something you should tell Omega,” Hunter requests, pulling back, “She… might need to hear it.”

Wrecker as well, likely, and Tech nods. There are many things their brothers should know, both about Tantiss, and not. Some, just about Crosshair.

“Helloooo?”

“Maybe you can just let Tech take off that piece of your hull and see what’s wrong?” Hunter suggests, turning to the ship.

“What? No!”

Evidently, this will be a very long process.

***

Omega’s reentering the Marauder with Vision, Wrecker, Lula, and Batcher in tow when she hears the yowling.

“How dare you?” the ship yells, “I am not letting you gut me!” There’s a slam for emphasis, and Omega carefully peaks inside to see all the doors that shouldn’t be moving slamming on repeat.

Hunter is slumped in one of the seats, rubbing his forehead with more exasperated exhaustion than she’s seen on him in a long time.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Wrecker queries.

“Yeah. Tech was just trying to fix him, and he went off.”

“Excuse me!” Havoc yells, “You were trying to gut me! I let you live in my insides, and you want to pull me apart?”

Ouch. Way to make even her feel awful.

Omega pats a seat. “It’s okay. He’ll put you back together.”

“Say that when you miss a limb,” he growls.

“I’m sure I would,” Crosshair snips.

Hunter groans, and Vision giggles.

“Where’s Tech?” Omega inquires, looking up and down the small, dark ship.

“Havoc locked him in the ‘fresher.”

Wow. She’s not asking how he did that. Doesn’t stop her from laughing, though. “Can I talk to him?”

Havoc growls.

She’s going to check up on him, anyway. He was radiating some… not so good feelings earlier. She has to make sure he’s okay.

Omega takes back to the ‘fresher, opening the door with the Force and ducking inside before it can be slammed again. Lucky for her, Tech’s sitting on the floor, thoroughly lost in his datapad, though still a bit annoyed.

“You okay?” she asks.

“I will be fine,” he promises, “Though I cannot say the same about our ship.”

“Hey!” comes from the ceiling.

Omega laughs again. “I just – you felt… upset earlier.”

“There is something I would like to discuss with you,” Tech admits, straightening. “I know you are upset at Crosshair for not telling you about me. I understand that. However, it was me who requested that he not inform you.”

Omega pauses. Her eyes widen as she looks at her once little brother. He’s grown up now – grew up without her and died right by her side yet somehow came back to haunt them all. Here. Here beside her. “You – why? Why would you tell Crosshair to lie to us?” She doesn’t mean to be wounded, but the pain flickers up, and there is no way to avoid feeling it.

“I knew you would be unable to leave if you were aware I was captured as well. If you thought I was alive, that there was a chance at getting me out, it would hinder your ability to break out Crosshair. And I…” He looks away. “I felt him taking my mind apart. I knew there was no way I would be able to resist his conditioning. Not if I wanted to protect Crosshair.”

Omega bites her lip. Tears prick her eyes, and she squats beside him. Tech is not looking at her, though that is normal for him. She feels all she needs to see, anyway. His discomfort at bringing it up, with the knowledge that it is what he has to do, and his overwhelming desire to protect all of them and make it right. Though there is nothing he has to do to make it right – he saved them once. Died for them. There is no need for him to do it again.

“Hemlock threatened to hurt him for you, too?”

Tech sighs. “Yes. He made his intentions clear. He wanted all of us as his operatives, no matter what it took, and he…”

Omega touches his shoulder, desperately willing him to find calm. She doesn’t want him to be hurt. “We had to leave Vision. We would’ve come back for you, too.”

“I did not believe there was a way to revert his alterations. There would not have been if not for our absorbing these powers. I was not willing to risk you attempting to free me and being harmed in the process. I knew I would be sent to kill you, and I asked him to stop me.”

“You asked Crosshair to kill you?”

“I was not me. I made sure he understood that.”

Her mouth tastes like blood. Gross. Her lip hurts from biting it and she suddenly understands Crosshair’s obsession with toothpicks. Wishes she could do the same. It’s… ow. She’s buzzing with tension. Wants to cry. Feels the tightening in her throat. “He already hurt us so much, and you wanted him to do it again?”

“I…”

“You died for us once, and you were just gonna do it again?”

“A soldier’s life requires sacrifice,” Tech answers after a pause. The same way he did by the waterfall so long ago. “To complete the mission. When we left the Empire, we did not have a purpose. You gave us another mission – to protect you, whatever that required of us all.”

“You’d already died for us. How could you do any more?” She would rather it have been her. Omega can see that now. She’s conscious, aware enough to say that much. She would have done anything to have all of her brothers safe, to get to be with them and live through every moment of her life with them at her side.

Her sisters, too. Vision. Viz, who should’ve been there through it all. She would’ve done better.

Maybe, in another lifetime, she did.

Omega is almost certain of that. Her sister… was good. She could’ve figured something out. But that’s for a different life. The one they should’ve lived. Just like what is allegedly true about Ashla. They all deserved better.

Tears are hot on her face. Omega feels childish for crying, but she can’t help it, and she wants – wants family. Him. She wanted him, and all those times she grieved for Tech he was…

Would it have been better if she knew and was trying her best to save him? She’ll probably never know.

Tech’s hand is on her shoulder. Omega sniffs, wiping her eyes. “I am sorry, Omega. I thought I was making the right decision. Crosshair will always do what needs to be done. I believed he would be able to do this as well.”

“Because you told him to?” She sounds more vulnerable than angry, and really, she is. She’s not exactly angry – that’s a front to mask her pain. There is no pain to rival – this. Tech. Her little brother. Seeing him fall and disappear. She thought he was gone forever. Her little brother. Tech.

“I did not discount the possibility. I did not believe we had any other choice. He would be the only one who had the strength to do it if my identity was revealed. I hoped it never would be.”

“And you thought he could do that alone?”

“Being a soldier sometimes means making choices that we… are not completely comfortable with.”

Omega sighs. “We’re a family, too.”

There’s an odd pause. “Yes. Of course. And it would have been for our family. If I lost my mind, it would not have been anything except an empty shell. Crosshair had seen it. He could understand. I could not expect any of you to.”

It makes sense. Still hurts, though.

“It’s okay,” Omega whispers. “I – I understand.” She let him do this and just – benefited. It makes her feel awful. That anything good came from Tech’s death. It shouldn’t have.

“Good,” Havoc interjects, “Then I can finally open the door.”

They blink in unison, jumping and looking up to the now-open door.

“You locked us in here so I could speak with Omega?” Tech inquires disbelievingly.

“Yes. You are welcome. You would not have done it otherwise.”

Well, that’s true.

***

Hunter almost can’t believe Havoc finally let Tech go fix him. Vision and Echo are lingering nearby, joking about something probably at their brother’s expense. They can be, well, snipy like that.

That’s where he is when Omega comes up to him, hands twisting together anxiously, but she reaches up to pat his arm. “I – uh – I wanted to talk to you,” she blurts out uncomfortably. It’s even stranger to see her like this when she’s glowing. Especially when she radiates Light the way she does.

“What is it, kid?” Hunter asks, kneeling in front of her.

“I just think about our past a lot sometimes,” she confesses, “I know I made a lot of mistakes I didn’t see at the time. I know I’ve gotten all of you hurt for me.”

He doesn’t know what upset her – it feels so unexplained. Untriggered. He doesn’t get what’s wrong. “We’ll all do whatever we have to, to keep you safe.”

“That’s what I – I’m afraid of,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around herself. “I don’t want you to keep getting hurt because of me.”

For the first time in a while, Hunter’s mind is just blank. What is he supposed to say to her? How is he supposed to comfort her when there’s literally no way for him to? What does he tell her? They’re all counting on him, and Hunter needs to think of… something. Something to say to his kid.

Daughter.

That’s what she is. She’s his to care for and protect. To help.

And what is – what does he –

“We don’t have to fight anymore,” Hunter promises her, “We don’t have to do… anything anymore. There are always dangers, but we don’t have to face them any longer. That’s not our duty.”

“Not even with these… powers?” she asks quietly, looking at her glowing hands.

“Not if that’s not what we want,” Hunter promises her, “The Ones before us took off and went to live in some isolated world. I’m sure we can do the same.”

“Can we?” Omega asks quietly.

“Is that what you want?” She had said it before, but he has to ask, because a lot has changed since then. There are other people they have elsewhere now. Echo had Fives. They’ll have Anakin and Ahsoka. Rex, too. It’s strange how attached to them Hunter is when he’s never seen them much. They don’t know each other. Something about their bond, probably.

“I – I don’t know. I think so.”

“What about Vision? Have you talked to her?”

Omega’s head bobs in a nod, and she looks away. She’s uncharacteristically nervous. “Yeah. For a little bit, I think. She’s not ready to fight yet, and I think she knows that.”

It would do Vision some good. She can get a chance to be something other than a soldier. Hunter had never questioned anything about their lives until he saw her, and it felt so wrong to be training this little kid to fight and die in a war there is no end to.

So wrong.

Hunter wishes he could find the same calm in himself that he once had. He’s lost all of that, since Eriadu. Calm has eluded him ever since. Now…

He’s so tired. So worn.

It was better when they were with Anakin. Something was different about him. He… helped. Somehow. There was a protection to him that Hunter has never had with anyone else, even if a strange part of his mind is telling him Echo has the same thing now.

Though, Hunter does feel better. Significantly better now that this has all been said and done. “Then we stay,” he tells her. “All of us.” For so long, he’d been afraid of her leaving.

He can finally relax. Let that fear go. The kid’s not going anywhere. She was gone, and she came back.

“If this is where you wanna be, then this is where you’ll stay.”

Chapter Text

Lula’s hopping around in the background as they sit in the now-fixed Marauder.

She’s trying to climb onto one of the seats, but can’t figure out how to boost herself, and she doesn’t have hands. Wrecker can’t figure out if he should give her a boost, or let her learn to climb. She and Batcher seem to be getting along well.

Living on Pabu is nice. Wrecker loves it here. Everything is so calm. He wants to be here forever. Stop worrying about everything.

He keeps dreaming, though. Seeing other worlds. That’s what Ahsoka tells him, anyway. He sees a world where they have Vision. Something where they met Ashla in the Clone Wars.

He sees other things, too. He sees them lose Hunter, and those are bits and pieces, but scare him the worst. How can they live without Hunter? Hunter’s the only one he’s always had. He can’t think about that. Definitely can’t imagine something where they thought he was dead.

The others try to help. Not that anything can.

His brothers are trynna help. So’s Vision.

He still thinks about Crosshair fighting them. Can’t stop remembering when he tried to kill them. He’s one of them now, but sometimes… it still hurts that he left, even if he’s tried to make it right.

A lotta things about these realities are confusing. How is he supposed to not dream? He can’t stop it. He’s afraid of losing someone else again. Anyone.

“You okay?” Crosshair asks, tapping his arm.

Wrecker grunts. “I – I dunno. I just keep havin’ all these weird dreams. I don’t wanna lose you again.”

“I don’t want to leave you, either,” Crosshair promises.

“There is nothing to be concerned of,” Tech assures, “Considering his inhibitor chip has been damaged beyond use, it is unlikely he will willingly leave us again.”

“W – what does that mean?” Wrecker splutters, confused, and looking at Hunter and Echo for help. “I thought ya had it out?”

Crosshair sighs.

“I – I lied to you. I’m sorry.”

“You what?” Hunter hisses, “Crosshair!”

He slumps farther into his seat. “Sorry. Really. I didn’t mean – I – I don’t…”

“Hemlock scanned it in his brain when we were on Tantiss,” Tech explains, “It may have been partly removed, but clearly, the surgery was not complete, if it happened at all.”

“I didn’t really want to think I was being mind-controlled,” Crosshair mutters, drawing his knees up to his chest. He looks so small. Skinny. Breakable. Wrecker wants to hug him, but relieved hurt is bubbling up in his chest.

Crosshair lied to them. That’s – Wrecker doesn’t want to think he chose to leave them, but he’s still kinda mad. They could’ve taken him with them, and they never would’ve had to lose Tech or the kid.

“So, you lied to us so we’d leave you and think you betrayed us?” Echo asks.

“Yes.”

“I fail to see how that was intended to benefit anyone in any shape or form,” Emerie interjects quietly.

“I was nine,” he grumbles, as if that were an excuse.

“Yeah, and you’re ten now. One year’s not very much.”

“Speak for yourself,” Crosshair whines, glaring at Echo.

“I am.”

“If that’s still in, shouldn’t we get it out?” Wrecker asks worriedly.

“It is not enough to be effective, but it is not impossible that it could be a danger,” Tech agrees, “Perhaps you can do something, Wrecker? I would not recommend surgery if avoidable. His brain has been damaged, and we have been altered significantly.”

“Yeah,” Hunter agrees, rubbing at his chest. Wrecker winces.

“I dunno what I’d do.”

“Try to write it out of existence,” Crosshair mutters, “After what I did to you, I think you should get that chance.”

He remembers the burning of the blaster wound through his shoulder. Remembers hitting the hangar floor and seeing Crosshair’s rifle raising, braced to shoot again.

“It happens all the time.”

Yeah, he thinks he does. “O – okay,” Wrecker says, standing and moving to his side, raising his hands and then freezing. “W – what if I mess up?”

“There’s nothing to worry about unless you turn my head inside out. I don’t want to see my own brain.”

“If you have one,” Vision snips, grinning.

“It is impossible for a human to survive without a brain.”

“Crosshair can. And so can I.”

“Doubtful.”

“Come on. There’s gotta be some species that survives without a brain.”

“There are. Several types of fish.”

“That actually is a ray of hope for us,” Crosshair grumbles.

“Why? Because you are a fish?”

“I might like to be.”

“Should – should I try?” Wrecker asks worriedly.

“Go ahead. Just don’t turn me into a butterfly.”

Maybe this isn’t the best idea. Wrecker has no idea – his powers are crazy, though he has had better control of them after Ahsoka absorbed a piece of them. It actually makes sense now. Most of the time. Though he really, really doesn’t wanna turn his twin brother into a butterfly. What if he got stuck? It might be cute, but… well, it would be cute, because his baby brother is cute in any shape or form, but still.

“M - maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Wrecker blurts out in a panicked rush. “Maybe I’ll just make it worse?”

Crosshair rolls his eyes, grabbing his wrist and yanking his hand to his head. “Stars. I was joking. You won’t see me as a bug unless you want to.”

“Uh,” Wrecker says slowly, trying to envision Crosshair with giant, fluttery gray wings and huge antenna. “I think I wanna.”

His eyes go comically wide. “No. You will not.”

“I think it would be cute.”

Vision is laughing. Crosshair glares at her. She sticks her tongue out at him.

“I am not cute.”

Hunter ducks his head to hide his smile. Wrecker’s pretty sure everyone would vote positively to that.

“I just don’t want to get wings like him,” he jabs a finger in Hunter’s direction. “I’m not floaty.” Crosshair grumpily crosses his arms.

“Uh,” says Wrecker, blinking and unable to help picturing his little brother with vibrating antenna and a giant, giant pair of wings. “That’s what I mean.”

He scowls. “Are we doing this or not?”

“What’s a butterfly?” Lula asks.

“Ya don’t know?” Wrecker asks panickily. How can’t everybody know what a butterfly is? Though he supposes he never really used to either.

“No. I haven’t seen anything except running after you and moon-yos. And Batcher’s mouth.”

The hound barks at her name, smiling deviously.

“No, ew. Don’t lick me again! It takes forever to dry off!”

“Wrecker,” Tech interrupts, “It will be fine. You can do it.”

He inhales, reaching for Crosshair again. His hands feel almost unsteady as they linger on either side of his head, trying to feel. He works his mind into his little brother’s, feeling and soaking it in.

“We were brothers once. We can be again.”

The line that haunted him for weeks is what they are now. That’s not a bad thing.

Wrecker thinks he likes it. It’s good to be with his little brother again. They were always supposed to be one.

He touches his mind, trying to work through into Crosshair, feeling the gentle fog even if it’s tinged dark now. He still feels nice. Wrecker feels him, soaking it in and searching for the damage or irregularity in him.

It’s just… a spot. It stands out so much against the rest of his mind. Such a little thing for being so destructive. For being what tore them apart.

Wrecker reaches inwards, feeling the anomaly and unwriting it.

It feels nice for it to be gone. To destroy what destroyed them.

Crosshair looks up at him, blinking a few times and eyes wide. He jerks forwards and wraps his arms around Wrecker’s neck. He gathers him against his chest, clinging and holding him close. “’re you okay?” he asks.

Crosshair nods against his shoulder. “Yeah. It feels – nice. Thank you.”

“Was it still affecting you?” Hunter asks quietly.

Crosshair sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”

“It’s okay,” Wrecker promises, “You’re free now.” He’s kinda angry, but it’s more of a processing acceptance than anything else.

Crosshair’s free, though. He chose to come back to them, and that means everything.

He chose them. Finally, after all this time. Crosshair chose them.

He chose him.

He chose Wrecker.

He sees a flash of something, a wispy mirror faded over where he held Crosshair in his arms in another life, on the Ryloth moon. In a world where he never left, and that’s faded away by his brother’s hands on his face, his touch in Wrecker’s mind with its silver mistiness. Feeling and locking the pain away, shielding off the touching of realities far, far away.

“You could’ve told us it was hurting you,” Crosshair scolds.

“It’s okay,” Wrecker objects, “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Because I fixed it.”

“What’s wrong?” Hunter inquires, stepping forwards and touching Wrecker’s shoulder.

“I just kept seein’ things. Things from other places, I think.”

“Other realities?” Vision pipes up.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Whoa,” she breathes, eyes wide, “I wanna see other worlds.”

“We need to stay here right now,” Hunter tells her.

“We don’t know enough about our own powers or reality right now,” Emerie agrees, “But perhaps, someday.”

Maybe. Wrecker thinks he wants to stay here for a long, long time. He doesn’t wanna see other versions of his family taken apart. Not when his own is finally back together.

***

It’s still hard to see Tech. Crosshair is very, very grateful that he has his Force-senses now. He knows Tech won’t hurt him, that he senses his loyalty now. He’s not going to try to shoot him or stab him or strangle him. He doesn’t mean pain anymore.

But Tech is still struggling with being here. With them. A part of them.

Crosshair’s struggling, too. Emerie’s here, and he only hurt him once, but she still did it. Hunter and Wrecker are so much closer. Vision and Omega are together. And then these… all these voices ringing around in his brain.

Dreams.

Fire. Loss. Pain. He didn’t know so many people on Pabu were war refugees. How many were hurt by droids and clones alike. Crosshair can see it in their minds. All their layers and layers of pain.

They’ve all lost their homes.

He feels so much of his brothers, too. He tried to help Hunter stable out. Tried to help Wrecker understand he won’t leave again. And when Vision comes to him, wordlessly quiet and eyes down, leaning against his thigh, he lets her lay against his lap.

She’s glad to be here, but she mourns the years lost, and so does he, so he just holds her when she cries. Only Crosshair can understand that. They were alone for so long, but they stayed strong when they needed to be, and here they are.

Together again.

And when Tech comes to him, wordless but troubled, Crosshair tries to look at him without any of the gnawing panic in his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Crosshair asks.

“I know what I did to you all,” Tech says, his voice soft. Abnormally quiet. “That I hurt you, and that I would have even more. I don’t know how it would have ended. Hunter says it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t,” Crosshair tells him immediately, “That’s not the life we’re living. We’re together now.”

“I was going to hurt you again.”

No surprise there, though his gut still clenches, unsettled. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I thought you would say that,” Tech tells him, “But I did not tell you what it was that happened.”

Tech is shaken from whatever it was. Crosshair can feel that. Flickers of something. Fire. He’s trying not to think about it. Can’t stop. He can see into the future and past. He controls time somehow. “Did we ever find Tantiss?”

“I would’ve taken Omega again. I brought her back, after going through you all. And then, when you found Tantiss, I fought you again. I let them hurt Wrecker, and… I hurt you.” Tech doesn’t trail off like that. Crosshair twitches, slowly reaching for him.

Tech takes his hand, squeezing it gently.

Crosshair feels a flicker of something. “What was it?”

“I do not know if that is something you want answered.”

“Tell me,” he requests, “I know you want to talk about it.”

Tech looks away. Is quiet for a long moment. “You lost your hand in the fight.”

Crosshair inhales shakily. He suspected something like that. That he would lose it if it didn’t stop shaking. That was something he could never tell the kid. That Tech would probably be the one to do it. He knew, expected, but that’s different than hearing Tech talking about it. But this is for Tech. He needs… to be strong for him. For the brother who’s given him so much. “That was gonna happen anyway.”

Tech stares at him. What did he expect? Crosshair isn’t angry at him. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t wake up one day and decided to be evil.

Tech might be awful.

But he’s not Crosshair.

“You are alright with that?” Tech sounds so incredulous.

“I’ve done worse.”

“No, you haven’t,” his brother argues immediately. “You have never done what I would have done to you. And you did not deserve any of that. Do not tell yourself that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Crosshair, no,” he retaliates fiercely, “It is not. You have convinced yourself of many things that are not true. And that is one of them.”

Harsh. But very Tech.

He tries to focus on the feeling of Tech’s hand in his. A calm, steady reassurance for both of them, and the way their bond flickers at the shared contact, whispering with safety. Tech is meant to protect him. Crosshair doesn’t know how he knows it, but somehow, he does. It’s a dedicated loyalty of the bond they share, and the powers they now have. Not one of their choices, but still one Tech has accepted.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Crosshair tells him dryly, “I could do without it.”

“I am unsurprised you are joking about this,” Tech grumbles, adjusting his goggles, “But I do not believe this to be a good thing in any shape or form.”

“I do. I tried to kill you, too. Maybe I wouldn’t hurt anyone anymore.” A sting of pain shoots through his leg as Vision pinches him. “Ow!” He glowers down at his little sister. “I thought you were sleeping!”

“You’re so mean,” she tells him flatly.

“You’re the one who pinched me.”

“I meant to yourself. If Tech’s mad at himself, it’s because he loves you, and you both screwed up. You’ll both hafta let it go. Can I tell you to hug, or would you bite me?”

“I don’t hug.”

“Don’t lie. I saw you hugging Hunter last night.”

“Did not.”

Vision raises her small hands, some twisted not-Force magic swirling around her hands in an aqua storm. He’s pretty sure she’s trying to make some sort of mini-illusion, but that isn’t something Crosshair is very willing to test. Not if she blows up all of Pabu by accident and Wrecker has to reform the entire world.

“Alright, alright,” he concedes with a huff, “Yes, I did, but how would you know? Why are you stalking me?”

“I’m not stalking you. It was in plain sight.”

“Was not.”

“Was too!”

“Should I leave?” Tech inquires.

Crosshair jerks. “No.” He actually feels better with him here, and it’s so jarring to realize that for the first time. He wants Tech here, not because he finally wants his family back together, but because he wants him. He wants Tech.

Somehow.

After all this time and everything they’ve been through, the essence of what binds them together is unchanged.

“We were brothers once. We can be again.”

He had said that once, fingers dug into Hunter’s shoulder. Even when he was still holding him at blaster point. Even when… everything.

He’s starting to think it’s real this time. For real real.

Their powers bind them together now, fade into each other’s as pieces of themselves. As central of the galaxy’s energy itself.

He doesn’t think anything could take them apart again.

Hopefully that’s not a bad thing to hope.

And he should probably try to find a way to make things right with Emerie, too.

***

It is strange to be in control of chaos. Emerie cannot say she enjoys it, though it is merely a fact of life she needs to become accustomed to. She was made to bring order – or at least that’s what Hemlock had always told her.

She wishes she could do more for everyone she hurt. To the CX’s, who made their minds ripped away. To Crosshair, who she tortured. To Vision, who she left imprisoned for years.

But the past is the past, and there is no true way to make up for what she did.

She knows that.

She still wishes she would feel more as though she belonged.

Her and Vision share their connection to chaos, and unlike the others who have a specific slit between chaos, balance, dark, and light, it feels like they are… swapping. On some days, Emerie is dark and Vision is light. Some days, she is balance and Vision is dark. Ashla, as she can feel in her mind, alternates between light and balance, unlike Vision, who swings from one side to the other.

It is strange to want to use her powers for no reason except that she can use them. On Tantiss, everything was for a reason.

Wrecker comes over to her, and something about his childishness is what makes her let go enough to start talking. “Echo and Tech say I belong here, but I’m not sure what makes me.”

“You’re one of us,” he promises immediately, “You’re our sister.”

“But I hurt you all. I never chose you all the times I should have.”

“Crosshair hurt us, too,” Wrecker objects, “We all did. But we still chose each other, an’ we always will. We don’t have anywhere else to be, and nor do we wanna be anywhere else. I know that’s true for you, too.”

“Yes, it is,” Emerie agrees, “But sometimes, it feels like I should be doing something more.”

“We don’t hafta worry about the galaxy anymore,” Wrecker objects, “There are people out there doin’ that. Anakin will do a good job without us.”

Emerie doesn’t know or trust him the same way they do, but she trusts their judgement, so no matter how hard it is, she does agree. Even if she’s still a bit unsettled at leaving the Empire to someone else. Anyone else. But what else would she do? Take over herself? She’s not made for that job.

Though it is, apparently, one of her brothers running it. In name. She’s not sticking around to find out what was about to happen. If someone died, she would have sensed it. There is nothing to worry about. Rex will not be a danger to the galaxy, though Emerie is still… uncertain.

About everything.

Though that may be connected to her new affiliation with chaos.

“Wrecker’s right, Emerie,” Crosshair tells her hesitantly, arms crossed. She actually hadn’t seen him come, and her new Force-senses are still… tricky. They work naturally, but she struggles to understand what she is feeling. “You are one of us. You’re not like the regs, and that’s always been what makes us different.”

From Crosshair, the one she hurt more than anyone else, that means a lot. It’s the most she can ask for, and even more, from the little brother she tortured. This is forgiveness, so much more than she deserves. Definitely more than she anticipated from Crosshair. “You believe I am meant to be with you?”

“None of us fit anywhere else.”

“I am sorry for what I did to you,” Emerie tells him, “I know I have said it before. I made… a lot of mistakes with you, and with Vision. Omega, too.”

“None of us hold it against you,” Wrecker promises, patting her shoulder heavily. “It’s okay.”

Her life feels so pointless now. Purposeless, and it is difficult to believe this is what she wants. But it is. She wants to be with her family, wherever they want to go and whatever they want to do. “I cannot change the past.” Though she can understand why Ashla had been willing to rewrite all of reality for her family, regardless of the consequences. Emerie would like to rewrite her own past, but that would break their entire timeline. She will not risk trying. “Though if I could, I would.”

Crosshair sighs. “I know. I can feel it.”

She blinks, and then Wrecker is yanking her and Crosshair into a hug. The twins are nice. It makes her feel even worse sometimes. She has done a lot. His screams still haunt her. She wishes she could have gotten Vision back safely.

“Me, too,” Wrecker supplies, “But we’re okay.”

Okay isn’t the term Emerie would use in any shape or form, but she will believe that. Under Hunter’s watch – he is an incomparably better leader than Hemlock – Emerie does accept that.

“It’s nice not being alone.”

And she will never be alone again.

***

Vision is leaning on Batcher, Lula resting in her lap. The stars twinkle above her. An entire galaxy out there, begging to be seen and explored. Pabu is nice, but Vision is a soldier. She wasn’t made for a life of peace, even if her siblings were.

She wants more.

She hates it.

There’s a galaxy beyond, and reality after reality to be seen and sifted through and explored. A power deep within herself, and she doesn’t hafta hurt anything. She can just reach out, give a little poke at the multiverse, just…

Something shifts.

A whistling picks, and Vision gasps, scrambling to her feet.

The ground is shifting into glass beneath her, licking up in purple flames as the Edges of reality itself are ripped open.

It’s the Mother.

The glass breaks, and she falls, catching herself with the energy swirling around her hands and straights, flipping her hair from her face.

“I know you,” Vision says, eyes narrowed as she studies the towering gray figure in front of her. “But you’re not me.” The power feels the same, but it resonates differently. Resonates with a dark emptiness that only means one thing. “You’re from the multiverse. You’re a different version of the Mother.”

“Yes. And I bring you here for the same. Not to be alone. Your reality exists because I made it.”

This is her. The same Mother variant that Ashla created, who in turn created her.

Coming full circle.

Nonono. She needs to get back.

Vision whirls around to where the portal is still behind her. She can’t fight the Mother alone. She needs help, now, and her brain always jumps to the one and only person who will always be there to help her. “Hunter!”

But then the portal closes and she’s falling.

Stars and timelines blurring together around her.

Just – falling.

And there’s nothing here to catch her.

THE END =)