Chapter Text
"It's not your fault. You can't help it."
Crosshair threw whatever tool was closest to him at the wall across from him and found that it didn't soothe his anger at all. He stood up from his bunk and paced around the room. At least his new squad was currently out, so he had the room to himself. He didn't want a new squad. As if to add insult to injury, they weren't even regs but natborns. His comm started beeping as he paced, so he threw that at the wall too.
His squad had left him for a little girl that they didn't even know. Was he worth that little to them? When had they decided to leave him here, where he was sneered at by everyone who surrounded him? They were supposed to be here, with him, in black armor with green visors. They must have been planning to leave him, and as he tried to guess when they had determined him to be worthless, he swept everything off the table in the center of the room, feeling somewhat satisfied when one of the natborns' datapads cracked.
And the little girl. What was she implying when she said it 'wasn't his fault'? Did she think that he was somehow being influenced? He wasn't. He had chosen to follow orders, chosen to attempt to kill the Padawan, and chosen to shoot at his own squad. He was not someone to be pitied. He would make sure that they saw that by the end of this.
Throwing things around wasn't helping enough. He wanted to shoot at something, to feel the comfort that comes from having one simple task to fulfill that doesn't require him to speak to anyone. He wished that he didn't have to speak ever again. Everything would be so much easier if he were a droid or something. Droids didn't have to speak. Sure, some of them did, but there was no requirement for them to. They didn't have to lead personal lives. They were built for one task, and they performed it over and over again until they just stopped working one day. Maybe, if he had been a silent droid, his squad would be here with him, talking amongst themselves while he sat quietly off to the side and basked in their presence. His tongue had always gotten him into trouble.
He reached to take his helmet off before he thought better of it. As long as he had his helmet on, he was a soldier. Sometimes, he wondered if one day he would dissipate into nothingness when he took it off. This helmet was so different from his old one. He had a new face because he was a new man. He had no special equipment or markings around his dominant eye, unless one counted the standard rangefinder. Only his tattoo beneath the helmet remained, and that was nonexistent just like the rest of him as long as his helmet was on.
He punched a wall and felt nothing. That wasn't nearly as satisfying as it looked. Then again, he was not a close-range fighter, and his punches didn't exactly have much power behind them. Hunter had always been the hand-to-hand combatant of the group. He wished that Hunter was here.
He sighed and sat down with his back to the wall, leaning his head back against it. Had he made a mistake? Why had they all made the same decision except for him? Maybe he was being too rash, too convinced of his own opinions. How many times had people pointed out that flaw of his? He thought, for a moment, that he didn't care about who was right and who was wrong. He only cared about being with his brothers.
That thought was cut off when a lancing pain shot through his head with so much intensity that his vision went white. He slumped forward, his helmet clacking against his knee plates as he passed out.
The surface of Bracca consisted almost entirely of junk, scrappers, and scrap rats, and Crosshair was after a pack of the latter. He could practically hear the scuffling of their claws against the metal of the Jedi cruiser, and he knew that they were listening to him as he spoke through his comm. That's the funny thing about rats. They're smart, but they're not half as smart as a man.
Of course, they scurried right into the artillery deck, exactly where he wanted them. It sent a thrill through him that felt vaguely like nausea to see them all again. He was unused to staring down the barrel of Hunter's blaster, and the prickle of discomfort it gave him made him tighten his hold on the pistol grip of his firepuncher.
"Tapping our comms to track our movements?" he asked with an amused lilt to his voice. "So predictable."
Wrecker stepped into view beside Hunter and the girl with a frustrated grunt.
"Nice to see you too, Crosshair," he said with as much sarcasm as someone so painfully good-natured could muster.
What Crosshair wanted was a reaction from Hunter. He hadn't spoken yet, and it felt like an insult. Did he think he was too good to speak to his own brother now? Was he so superior because of his morality and his inability to obey? Crosshair wanted to crush that misplaced sense of ego beneath his heel.
"Look at you all, scavenging like rats. How pathetic," he drawled tauntingly, trying to coax out a response.
"Why come after us?" Hunter asked quickly, tersely.
"You're traitors," Crosshair answered lowly as he motioned for his troops to move into position.
"Crosshair, wake up," Hunter said imploringly, never lowering his blaster. "You're being controlled by an inhibitor chip."
The suggestion that he was being controlled by anything sent a flash of white-hot anger through him, but he didn't even get the chance to process that before the girl chimed in.
"He's telling the truth. The Kaminoans put chips in all the clones. Remember what I told you in the brig? You can't help it." She stepped out from behind Hunter as she spoke, her eyes wide with childlike pity. As soon as she finished speaking, Hunter moved in front of her again.
So this is what they thought of him? That he was some poor sod who need to be saved from a horror within his own mind? He wanted to rip all of them apart one by one. He needed them all to see that he was completely in control of himself, that he was cruel of his own volition. He could be so much crueler.
"Aim for the kid," he ordered, and he enjoyed the way Hunter looked around wildly as he tried to find to best position to defend the girl from.
"Your issue's with me, not her," he said almost desperately.
"I suggest you drop your weapon," Crosshair answered without an ounce of sympathy in his voice. It was thrilling to see Hunter so upset solely because of him.
The blast that followed caught him off guard, and he barely had time to react before the roof of the artillery deck collapsed. Dammit, he should have kept an eye on Tech and Echo. His last thought before he was knocked unconscious by the falling debris was that he shouldn't have allowed himself to get so distracted.
He had decided to forget about his failure in the artillery deck for now in order to focus on the moment. It had been a minor inconvenience to have to call a shuttle to pick him up, but now, he had the scrap rats trapped in an ion engine with one of his men in the bridge. He was tired of playing games, and he wanted them flushed out now. He was confident that they wouldn't die. They were far too creative for that.
Through his scope, he saw Hunter and Tech looking out from the end of the ion engine. He shot directly beside Hunter, making both of them duck out of sight.
"Try again, Hunter!" he yelled smugly. "I told you before, you're surrounded!"
He watched through his scope as he listened to the unmistakable sound of the engines coming online. He'd won.
"Sir, the engines are ready," a voice crackled through his comm.
He lowered his rifle and turned away from the cruiser.
"Engage."
When he heard the expected sound of explosives firing, he looked back. A ring of fire erupted around the cone of the engine, detaching it. He watched as it lowered, the blue light slowly leveling with him. He didn't realize the danger he was in until just before the engine activated.
The force of it knocked him back against the scrapped ship behind him, ripping his helmet off. The pain was unlike anything he had ever experienced, a searing, all-encompassing sensation that made him forget who he was and why he was there for a brief moment. There was only pain. His head was the worst of it. It felt like his brain was melting out of his ears. It was as if some of the heat was internal, like there was a scrap of metal wedged in his brain tissue that conducted heat far better than his body did. He crawled closer to the scrap metal behind him, trying to avoid the worst of the heat.
"Turn the engines off," he choked out into his comm. As soon as it all stopped, he passed out.