Work Text:
“This is Havoc-4, requesting pick-up, does anyone-” Crosshair sighed, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. If they didn’t hear him, the long-range transmitter was about to be out of battery, and he was dead. “I guess it was a long shot. You’re probably out of range, even with the relay. I don’t know how to boost it more than it already is. I-” Crosshair trailed off once more. “But- I hope you’re okay, wherever you are.” He paused again, gulping back the pain in his voice. “I just wanted to say thank you.” He paused, wondering when he’d lost enough blood to become willing to thank someone, let alone his brothers.
Well, no one was listening anyway. Crosshair sighed once more, rubbing his head tiredly. He’d already said it once. Even if no one was listening, he might as well say it. “Thank you for – for being my brothers.” His voice cracked. “And I’m sorry.” He hurried on before he could change his mind about speaking. “I’m sorry for everything.” His voice broke completely, and he turned away, as the transmitter buzzed and died.
Crosshair limped to the edge of the shelf he was on, and sat there, staring over the empty planet. This was it. He’d die here. Alone and forgotten by everyone. Maybe his brothers would think of him one day, maybe Seed would too, but no one would miss him. He’d made himself too unlovable for that.
The planet he was on was barren and empty, not the sort of place Crosshair wanted for a grave. But it was too late. He’d come here expecting to die in the crash, he hadn’t, and he’d chosen to stay, choosing his death. He’d known that he’d probably die here, but he’d come here anyway. For a second, he wished he had stayed with the empire and not chosen to die here on a deserted planet, but he took the thought back as soon as he’d thought.
He was glad he was away from the Empire, even if he died here. That was a choice he didn’t regret.
But this was never the way he thought he’d go. His whole life, he’d been sure he’d die with his brothers in one of their harebrained plots in war. Probably one of Hunter or Tech’s plans, or maybe Echo’s after he’d joined them, would go wrong, and he’d die there, going down fighting against droids or humans. He’d imagined all sorts of brutal deaths for himself – rarely any clean ones – mostly him getting beaten to death, or alternatively tortured to death. Sometimes they killed him for fun, sometimes they were trying to get him to tell them information, and he refused and they killed him. He’d imagined being decommissioned a few times while he was still a cadet, though thankfully that never happened.
After Order 66, before the chip was removed on Bracca, he’d not thought about where he would die. After the chip was removed, he imagined being taken out on a battlefield, likely the last one standing seeing how incompetent the natborns were. He’d also imagined being executed for treason in the days after Kamino when he was terrified for his life and the Empire finding out that he was lying. Hopefully by firing squad, though he’d never ruled out being beaten or tortured to death, gassed or maybe hung, if he was lucky. The Empire were cruel, he knew that far too well.
Never had he imagined being on a barren wasteland, alone, and having to starve to death or bleed to death.
He wasn’t likely to bleed to death, his wound was clotting under his armor, though it might be infected. He had literally no food and no water, so maybe he’d die of dehydration. Was there any water on this planet? He couldn’t remember.
He looked around, searching with his eyes for any valleys that may contain water, but he saw nothing. He listened too but heard nothing but the wind rushing over the dry, earthy planet. No and little to no rain meant he wouldn’t last very long.
On Kamino, when he’d been left there for he couldn’t remember how long – if felt like forever – until the Empire came, he hadn’t expected to die. He’d expect them to take a day or two, but he’d been certain they’d come for him. Even after the days of waiting lengthened to three days, four days, and then a week. Even after it’d been around two weeks, he still thought they were coming, maybe they couldn’t spare a ship to come for him yet or something. But around the two-week period, dehydration finally began to set in along with the sunburns he’d gotten, and he’d - as far as he could remember, he’d stopped thinking around then. Something to do with the lack of water or food or something, he didn’t know. His brain had already chosen to forget most of Kamino, and afterwards, he was drugged for a considerable period of time as he recovered.
The only way he’d survived on Kamino was drinking rainwater, and if it didn’t rain, he’d die. At least it meant he would die quickly, and not be forced to starve to death. It would take 3-5 days, Tech had once said, he remembered out of nowhere. At least there was shade here.
And he was already thirsty.
He glanced back at the cave, and away again. He couldn’t even remember the name of the planet he was on – his final resting place. Maybe his brothers – and Omega – would see that the transmitter had been used somehow and would find his body. Probably not. Tech might hack into the Empire’s records someday, and they might see he was dead, and maybe they’d be happy. Happy that their former brother was no longer gunning for them, happy that he was no longer a loose link, able to give the Empire information about them. Maybe they’d see the report and be glad that he died a relatively peaceful death – if bleeding to death in the back like Seed had told them was a peaceful death.
There was one thing he knew for sure, and that was they wouldn’t miss him. Why would they miss him, the brother they already could work without, that they’d already replaced with Omega, the useless weight on the team? They may have missed him when he left the first time, because of the chip, but after they so clearly didn’t trust him, they didn’t want him back, no matter what they said. They were lying to make him feel better. They might feel sad that he never got ‘redeemed’ - they always thought they were heroes, when there is no such thing – but even if they did, they wouldn’t feel sad. They had a year to get over him, anyway.
No, they wouldn’t miss him. They might miss his sniping skills, since none of them were a half-decent shot besides maybe Echo.
He didn’t miss them either – no, why was he lying to himself still? There was no point of doing that, not anymore. He did miss them. He didn’t miss Omega, he barely knew the brat’s name, though they seemed to think she was a good kid. He didn’t resent her, either. He just didn’t really care about her. She was probably a better and nicer person than he’d ever be, and they were probably happy to have someone else encouraging around with Tech’s brutal honesty and Echo’s mild pessimism. And they were probably glad to be rid of his constant pessimism, and his paranoia.
If he had to pick his least favorite brother, he didn’t know who he’d choose – actually he did, he really needed to stop lying to himself. His least favorite would be Wrecker, hands down. He was always too tactile for Crosshair, and too insistent on bothering Crosshair when he wanted to be left alone. But he was fun to pick fights with, and insult, and Crosshair’d had far too much fun talking him in circles. Also, he always kept thinking he won their droids game when he lost every time. The only reason that Wrecker ever thought he’d won was because Crosshair lied to him sometimes, so that Wrecker kept playing. He’d never beaten Crosshair.
But Wrecker was still his brother, and he would have died for Wrecker. Now – he wasn’t so sure, seeing how Wrecker threatened to fire on him after saying they’d take him back. He might, not because of Wrecker, but because his other brothers would be distraught to lose Wrecker, and they wouldn’t miss Crosshair anyway. But then, they might replace Wrecker too, so who knew?
Crosshair sighed, lying down on his back, wincing as his wound stretched painfully. It was getting dark, he noticed as he relaxed, considering removing his armor, but he decided not to bother. His legs still hung down over the drop.
If he was playing favorites, Hunter would be his second least favorite, he reckoned. Hunter was his only older brother, and he was still jealous that because of those five minutes, Hunter got to be leader. It wasn’t his fault Nala Se decided to decant Hunter first.
Hunter was a good brother, like Wrecker and like all of them, but – he tended to focus on things, focusing on protecting someone or something like that and get terrible tunnel vision, as he only ever saw that one thing. Honestly, Crosshair wouldn’t be surprised if he did everything with Omega in mind now. He cared for his brothers greatly – not Crosshair anymore – but he tended to be horribly overprotective. Hunter always blamed himself for everything, and his thinking was terribly linear, that’s why Tech made so many of the plans, because he actually was creative and sensible.
Tech was his favorite of all his original brothers. Original, because Echo existed. Tech was sensible, smart, knew when to shut up and not to press any further and reasonable, too. Wrecker said Tech was boring, but Crosshair thought that Tech was the smartest of them all, even without his enhanced brain. He was also the youngest, and the one targeted most by the regs, Crosshair had gotten into far too many fights for Tech. Still, Tech was his favorite, because he understood Crosshair’s boundaries and didn’t push until it was clear intervention was necessary. But he tended to overanalyze everything, and overthink everything, though Crosshair wasn’t sure if that was just a side effect of his brain. He was annoyingly perceptive, and told Hunter far too much also.
But all three of them were his brothers, and he’d grown up with them. He – he cared for them, somehow, irrational feelings still caring for those who had left him.
Feelings were always irrational.
The darkness was enshrouding the earth, the stars now visible, and he stared at them. As expected they were different from any stars he’d ever seen before, since the galaxy was a big place. And he’d been across most of it as a soldier.
When thinking on his life, Crosshair was always filled with mixed feelings. His time on Kamino had him constantly afraid of decommissioning, but he’d never have become the excellent shot (he wasn’t boasting, it was fact) he was without that and the harsh training. He hated the regs, but without their constant bullying, Cody would never have met him and then the rest of the Bad Batch. Without Cody, they might have been confined to janitorial work.
Fighting for the Republic was tiring and dangerous, but it was fighting, and Crosshair loved it, loved the adrenaline-rushes when he was in danger. Those had been the best years of his life, he realized, even after Echo had joined them and there were five of them. It was – fulfilling, for lack of a better word.
Then Order 66, and his chip, he betrayed his brothers not of his own volition, and become an unwilling slave to the Empire. And he’d stayed after his chip was removed, because it was still fighting, and though it wasn’t fulfilling anymore without his brothers, and considerably more boring and lonely, he stayed, even if it was to prove a point.
But he hated the Empire, and he was glad he’d left, even if it was just to die, alone.
He was getting tired – or maybe the thirst was getting to him, he hadn’t drunk in a long time, sometime yesterday, he couldn’t remember. His mind was starting to get fuzzy. Maybe he was tired.
His mind was starting to drift.
Echo – he'd never thought about Echo. Echo was his favorite brother, if he was being honest. He put crossed his arms behind his head.
Echo was like Tech, quiet, sensible and reasonable. But there was a difference between him and his original brothers. Tech, Hunter and Wrecker always looked at Crosshair’s behavior and said, oh, Crosshair’s always like that. But Echo, he understood Crosshair. He understood his closed off behavior was because he didn’t want to hurt his brothers, he understood that he was in a bad mood because he had bad nightmares, he understood that Crosshair’s snarky and sarcastic attitude was to protect himself, and it was a result of his childhood on Kamino. He understood where no one else did.
That was why when Echo raised his gun on Crosshair, he knew that he wasn’t going to come back.
He was getting tired, he realized. His eyes kept wanting to drift closed.
He probably should remove his armor before he slept, but his limbs felt sluggish, and he just couldn’t be bothered. Did his vision normally blur when he fell asleep?
He would miss his brothers, even if they wouldn’t miss him. He did miss them. Ever since his chip had been removed, the glaringly obvious lack of his brothers around him had hurt him. The pain had never left.
The stars looked pretty when they spun in circles. His eyes were closing, opening barely before drifting shut one final time.