Chapter Text
Hunter had remained motionless since Crosshair and his amorphous fellow prisoner had been rescued by their team. They all were.
It had all been very easy for commandos of their level, not even an problem, they were not expected and had fired on the ship to force it to land on a lightly guarded planet and, before the Empire could come to support, they had made their way through the Imperials and exfiltrated their two unconscious targets.
Since then, they had been hiding in a dense forest on an almost empty planet of no interest to anyone, Yavin IV, still trying to decide what to do.
That clone who had tipped them off, or rather who had tipped Rex off, was their hero. They might never be able to thank him in person for what this guy had done when he sent a message to the blonde reg to tell him that a clone had rebelled. They did not even know his name, Rex did not know it either, all they knew was that the reg's chip had never activated and that he had watched in horror as the Empire was born and his brothers were subtly but actively manipulated, and had taken the first opportunity he could find to support actions with rebel tendencies. Just having human feelings could be a betrayal these days.
One person could really make a difference, and what was happening at the moment was proof of that, on several levels.
One reg in the right place at the right time... and maybe not just one.
Crosshair was fine, he was just so drugged when they found him that they had to wait for his body to purge everything that had been injected into him, but the other one was another story. He was a reg, that was clear as day, and for the life of him Hunter could not understand what could have happened that, believing him dead, Crosshair would do something as radical as execute his superior.
Crosshair had always hated the regs with a tenacious passion, and not for nothing, the regs were bastards to them back in Kamino, back in childhood in fact. How many times had Tech received new glasses because the previous pair had been "accidentally" crushed? How many times had people swapped Wrecker's clothes with reg clothes at the showers, leaving him with no options because the clothes waiting for him did not fit? How many times had he been pushed around and insulted for his skinny body? Hunter was a year older than the three of them, but even though he was gen 2 he also had to put up with it, albeit to a lesser extent because his physique remained acceptable in its milder differences, even more so when he was with them and had to be the reasonable person holding them together.
They all had their own avoidance strategies, Tech pretended not to exist on the same plane of existence and immersed himself in his projects, Wrecker took advantage of his size and muscles since adolescence to impress the others and support the group and Crosshair... Crosshair was all cynical outbursts, and it was up to Hunter to play the role of mediator and peacemaker for his little brothers, whom he had grown to love by dint of discovering them when they were put together in a cobbled-together, experimental team that they absolutely had to make work if they even wanted to survive to see a real battlefield.
And there he was, the reg who had achieved more in a few days than any of them could. He had, through what Crosshair had assumed would be his death by hypothermia and other injuries, made their sniper feel enough to get fed up and do something he knew would mean his death in the short term.
They had tried to get him back and convince him to desert so many times, in vain, but this guy had succeeded.
"Good news, he's going to keep his toes and fingers."
"Why are you talking of his toes?" Omega murmured to Tech, curious despite her fatigue and concern for Crosshair.
"When the body is subjected to such cold temperatures, it concentrates first on its vital functions, the extremities are in a way abandoned for the survival of what is more fundamental. He seems to have fainted from his injuries, exhaustion and malnutrition more than from the cold itself, the armour and his blacks have protected him far better than Crosshair probably thought."
"It's lucky for him that they also noticed he was alive and put him on the same transport as Crosshair", Wrecker muttered.
Echo nodded gravely as Hunter felt a shiver run through his body. The guy had narrowly escaped an appalling death, dying of thirst, hunger, fatigue and cold, all at the same time, surrounded by a desolate and depressing landscape, under the relentless assault of a frozen and inhospitable tundra... Hunter would not wish this on anyone, not even his worst enemies.
Crosshair could do it, though.
"Wrecker, you stay with them, Tech will come and relieve you. We'll think about what to do next", he finally announced.
They were not doing anyone any good by standing there staring at someone familiar but potentially more of a stranger now and an unknown reg shrouded in mystery.
They had Crosshair back, and that was good news, wonderful even, but now they had to make sure they were going to keep him safe.