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Training Room 071 lay in silence.
Hunter had never hung around after the sims; as soon as the flag was retrieved, the droids were shut down and the door opened, and he left in formation amidst a contingent of fellow clones. He didn't relax his shoulders until the hatch closed behind him.
How eerie it was, then, when the lights were dimmed. The observation decks above and below, usually occupied by Kaminoans, trainers from all corners of the galaxy, and even – on occasion – Jango Fett himself, were back-lit only by pale-blue emergency strips. The pool was deep and dark and still, without the typical flurry of activity in its depths: the flashes of blaster bolts, clones with their breathing packs, and the training droids' glowing eyes. The only sound was the incessant buzz of electromagnetic energy emitted from bulbs and security cams, to which Hunter alone was privy.
At the pool's edge sat Crosshair, all limbs and lean muscle he struggled to gain, chin resting in the palm of his hand. His legs – already longer than any of his brothers', save the still-growing Wrecker – dangled over the lip, the tips of his boots kissing the mirrored surface.
"Tech's got a big mouth."
Hunter bit down on the easy rebuke he found at the tip of his tongue, and said, "He's got a bigger heart."
Crosshair furrowed his brows, and turned his face away.
Quelling a spike of irritation, Hunter made his way around the pool's perimeter, his footsteps a dampened echo in the lonely simulation room. Crosshair didn't look up as he approached.
"Mind if I join you?"
"If I say yes, will you go away?"
Hunter shook his head – he wouldn't, his brother knew it – and sidestepped Crosshair's discarded effects: the helmet, still attached by its breathing tubes to the oxygen pack on his back; the detachable fins that clipped to the tips of his boots; and the DC-12U rifle, equipped with a torch to cut through the gloom of deep water. Hunter ignored the roll of Crosshair's eyes when he took the spot beside him, letting his own legs hang over the edge.
"What happened, Cross?"
Crosshair shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it."
Hunter sighed, and leaned back on his hands; he'd been in the process of peeling off his armour when Tech had found him, and the floor was damp beneath the gloveless skin of his palms.
He let a moment pass between them in silence. When Crosshair didn't immediately depart at the possibility of a talking to, Hunter took heart and said, "I don't like it when they split us up. It's not the same, running through the sims without you and the boys. The regs, they don't always get how we work, or what we need to operate to the best of our abilities. I understand it's ... difficult."
"What the fuck do you know?" Crosshair hissed, turning for the first time to face his brother. For all the animosity in his voice, Hunter was surprised to see Cross' eyes were a little too bright, a little too glassy in the blue light.
He wasn't surprised to see a bruise forming beneath his right socket; the cheekbone red and puffy, fluid gathering beneath the skin until it was stretched and shiny. His eye had almost swollen shut.
"It's not as simple as that, Hunter. Look at yourself. You might not feel like one of them, with all your fancy senses. But you can't deny you look like them."
He couldn't. Uncertain how to respond, Hunter leaned forward and peered down into the water where, far below, he could make out the pale, feeble glow of the second observation deck, its curved viewport like the gaping maw of a drowsing sea creature. On the glass-like surface, he was confronted by his reflection. Apart from his hair, which he liked to keep a little longer than the Kaminoans preferred, and his eyes, which were more grey than brown, Hunter looked much like the rest of his brothers: he possessed the same height and build, the same nose and wider jawline. He couldn't deny that he'd never been a target of the more spiteful regs, seeking a fight in all the wrong places.
He glanced over at Crosshair. Was he looking at his own image, mirrored in the pool below? Was he focusing on his hair, the mess of thick curls already turning grey at the roots? Or was it the angular features and narrow frame that were impossible to conceal? Hunter wondered if he struggled to reconcile this reflection with the man he was expected to be.
"What happened, Cross?" he asked again, then winced; his tone sounded accusatory, even to his own ears. He placed a hand on Crosshair's shoulder, where a hairline fracture had formed in the veneer of his spaulder. "Please, talk to me. I can't help if you keep me in the dark."
He thought Crosshair might shrug him off. Instead, he seemed to fold in on himself, back curved, worrying the inside of his cheek with his teeth.
At last, he spoke. "The objective was to take out as many aqua droids as possible in the allotted time."
"And …"
"And that's what I did. Then I saw Otto had been marked, and if he wasn't careful, he'd be facing a trip to the bottom of the pool, and disqualification. I was trying to help – everyone wanted to beat the other team – so I took out the droid, and he wasn't happy about it. Not my fault he didn't pay attention."
"Why wasn't he happy?"
"Said I took the point from him." He scoffed, and Hunter knew his brother well enough to understand the disdain creeping into his voice was born not out of arrogance, but of a well-oiled mechanism for deflection. "As if it would've made any difference."
"So Otto did this?"
Crosshair shrugged.
Hunter clenched his jaw as a ball of anger flared in his chest – anger for Crosshair, anger towards Crosshair, this churning, familiar eddy of emotion – and grabbed his brother by the arm. Look at me! He wanted to yell it, he wanted to shake him by the shoulders. Talk to me. Aren't we a team?
But Crosshair wouldn't meet his gaze.
"Tech said you didn't fight back. He told me you just stood there, glaring at them. That you didn't even say a word. But he tried to step in, didn't he? And they turned on him. Is that how Otto found himself in the medbay? Why were you prepared to stand up for Tech, but not for yourself?"
"Stop!" Crosshair snapped, his voice fracturing down the middle like the crack in his armour – almost imperceptible, something Hunter couldn't hear so much as feel in his own throat.
"Crosshair—"
"Just drop it, Hunter." And Crosshair pulled away, wrenching himself from Hunter's grasp. Eyes downcast, he gathered up his armour, his discarded weapon, and climbed to his feet. "Nothing you say will change anything. So why bother?"
A pang throbbed in Hunter's chest, an old wound still tender to the touch. Because they were brothers. Because, not so long ago, they'd been close. And because Hunter suspected, not for the first time, that Crosshair was his mirror, reflecting back the parts of himself he struggled to accept, the side he tried to conceal, and the pieces that scared him.
He didn't realise that when Crosshair looked at him, he saw the young man he wanted to be, all that potential, the leader – and he was envious.
Hunter hurried after Crosshair. If he let him leave and return to the barracks where Tech and Wrecker would be waiting, let him ignore everyone and fall into his bunk and turn his back to the rest of the galaxy, then the conversation would be over; Crosshair would wake the next day and beat them all to the mess, pretend the black eye didn't hurt, pretend nothing had ever happened at all.
"Leave me alone," said Crosshair, little more than exhaustion in his voice now, his long legs carrying him to the blast doors.
"It's jealousy, Cross," said Hunter – reaching, searching for anything to convince him that different wasn't bad, anything to say that would keep his brother from drifting away on a tide he couldn't return from. "Our mutations, they give us an advantage: Wrecker's strength is greater than theirs, Tech's intelligence is higher than theirs, your eyesight is better than theirs. We didn't ask for it, but them's the breaks. I'm not saying it's right, or reasonable, but it's jealousy."
Crosshair came to a stop and turned to face him, a sneer contorting his mouth. "We're different, Hunter. In a sea of clones, we stand out like a sore thumb. You don't think it's as simple as that?"
"Maybe that's exactly the point. What if they want to stand out, too? What if they don't want to disappear into the sea? Consider that we don't even have to try. And when we're a team, we're unstoppable. So yes, perhaps it is as simple as that."
Crosshair chewed on his bottom lip, chewed on Hunter's words.
Hunter sighed. "Look, I know it's not easy. I hear what they say. I see what they do. I know they don't try their luck with Wrecker, and I know they got bored with Tech. But I don't want you to be afraid of being yourself. You're worth standing up for, Cross."
Crosshair looked away, his eyes seeming to shimmer in the half-light.
"And one day, it'll be different," Hunter continued. "We'll be out there somewhere, doing what we're best at. And our differences won't seem so strange anymore."
Hunter couldn't know if that was true. But as they fell into silence, as Crosshair fixed on the ground and blinked a little too fast, he hoped for it more desperately than he'd ever hoped for anything else.
"Hunter, I …"
"It's okay, Cross. You don't have to say anything." Hunter stepped closer and placed a hand on each of Crosshair's shoulders. "I just want you to know that you can, if you want to."
Crosshair met his gaze then, and nodded.
Hunter figured that might be good enough for now.
"Good," he said, and ruffled his brother's hair. Crosshair stepped out of his reach and glared at him. "Now, let's get you to the medbay before they catch us in here and put us on latrine duty."
"I don't need to go to the medbay," Crosshair muttered.
"You're going to the medbay."
And Crosshair went, because it was Hunter who said so. But Hunter didn't realise, couldn't realise, that as the blast doors sealed shut behind them, his words of comfort were taking root in his brother like a weed – a weed that would drink of salt water and gorge on fear.