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Omega waits until the ship falls almost entirely silent before she tries to sneak out of her new room. She practices the quiet footfalls she learned from following Hunter on Kamino, creeping down the dim hall to where she remembered Wrecker pointing out the med kit during his grand tour of the Marauder. Her knees burn where the fabric of her leggings rubs on the raw skin from where she fell following the Ordo Moon Dragon into its den.
After glancing up at the cockpit where Hunter has first watch, Omega carefully pulls the kit off the shelf and lifts the lid, setting it aside. She frowns as she stares into the messy array of medical supplies. Great. So much for being quiet, she thinks sourly. All she needs is bandages, and maybe some antibiotic ointment to prevent any infection. She begins her search, quickly finding bandages, but struggling to find the antibiotic. She is debating on how necessary the ointment is when a voice says above her, “What are you doing?”
Omega wishes she could deny the pathetic squeak of alarm that escapes her lungs before she clasps both hands over her mouth, dropping the bandages back into the chaos of the kit. Curses!
“Hunter,” she says, looking up at the Sargent. She isn’t sure if he meant to sneak up on her or not, but by the guilty look on his face, she suspects not. Omega scrambles to her feet. “Sorry. I just—sorry. Uhm…”
Hunter looks down at the med kit. “Are you hurt, kid?” he asks.
Omega’s cheeks burn with embarrassment, though she can’t decide if it’s more from being caught sneaking into the med kit or having to admit she’s hurt. Needing bandages for scraped up knees sounds so childish when compared to the injuries her brothers must’ve sustained over their lives as soldiers. “No, I’m fine. Really.”
Hunter gives her a look, and Omega can’t hold his gaze, averting her eyes to the shadows in the corner.
“Omega,” Hunter says gently but firmly, “in this squad, we do not hide injuries.”
“It’s not an injury,” Omega protests, “I just sorta scraped my knees up when I was crawling around in that cave on Ordo Moon. It’s nothing!”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Hunter says, picking up the med kit and nodding toward the cockpit.
Omega frowns, but follows Hunter, climbing into the copilot’s seat. She rolls up her leggings to expose the torn-up skin on her knees. Honestly, it looks and feels worse than it actually is, she knows; however, the expression on Hunter’s face when he kneels down in front of her to examine the damage for himself makes her eyes burn. He looks so…concerned. Over something so minor. Whenever something like this happened in the lab, Nala Se would tell Omega she was more than capable of taking care of herself.
“‘Mega,” he says softly, “You should have told us.”
Omega blinks, surprised by the nickname. She’s never had a nickname before…unless she counted being called kid…
“I didn’t want to be a bother,” Omega says. She sniffs and roughly rubs a fist over her eyes to hide the tears that come.
Hunter smiles at her, a small thing that is barely noticeable, but she sees it. “It’s never a bother to take care of our own, Omega. You don’t know how many bloodied scrapes I’ve cleaned up and bandaged over the years, for all our brothers, and they’ve done the same for me. And you’re one of us now, right?”
Omega nods. She doesn’t trust her voice to come out without wobbling.
“That means,” Hunter continues, starting to rummage through the med kit, “when you get hurt, no matter how small you think it is, you’ll let one of us know, right?”
Omega nods again.
Hunter works with practiced ease, and with a gentleness Omega hadn’t entirely expected from a soldier. When he is finished, Omega rolls her leggings back into place while Hunter puts away the med kit. When he returns, Omega smiles at him. “Thank you, Hunter.”
“Sure thing, kid,” Hunter says, ruffling her hair. “You’d better get back to bed.”
“Yes, sir!” Omega slides out of the seat. She walks back to her gunner’s mount room feeling lighter.
As she curls back up under her blankets, hugging Lula close, she decides that having brothers is even better than she imagined it would be.