Chapter Text
Crosshair wakes with his name on his lips.
Mayday.
On some days it is the only thing he says. He whispers it in the delusional state trapped between pain and desperation.
Mayday.
The doctors think he’s calling for help.
He isn’t.
Omega thinks he’s going insane.
Maybe he is.
His everyday life has become a blur. Indescribable pain and suffering. Short stretches of rest in the cell he now shares with Omega. It is strange and awkward to be trapped here with her.
He has no idea why she asked for this. To be fair, he has no idea how they even allowed it, but she had just shrugged and said if she got her way, Nala Se got her way. And if Nala Se got her way, she would do what Hemlock asked.
Crosshair tries not to think about Hemlock when he is in his cell, though. He tries to think about nothing really. Oftentimes he is so tired that he doesn’t even have to try.
In the beginning he tried to think of something pleasant so that he could at least get a little bit of rest. It was hard to fall asleep when both his body and his mind were in turmoil. But there is nothing pleasant left in his life that he can think about. Fond memories have turned to ash.
His brothers are gone and he is going to die here, with the child they abandoned him for.
Thinking about his brothers hurts in a way far more intimate and harrowing than any injection ever could. He thought he left it all behind, let them go. Looking back, he has always known he was lying to himself. The warning he sent them was the final confirmation.
Every memory of his brothers that Crosshair hadn’t already poisoned himself, Hemlock has used against him.
One time Crosshair had dreamed of sitting next to Hunter on the Marauder, his brother's hand on his arm, warm and reassuring. He had tried to grab it, squeeze the armour just above his knife sheath, but before his fingers could touch him he woke up to the bright lights of the cell blinding him. He must have said Hunter’s name in his confused state because Hemlock teased and tormented him with it for weeks.
As if the dream alone didn’t hurt enough already.
He had never talked about them again after their betrayal. Not to anyone, not even Cody.
Not until Mayday.
Crosshair sits up on the uncomfortable cot. It hurts his back and the room is always ice cold but Crosshair is thankful for the little rest he gets. He has lost any sense of time but sometimes they leave him alone for slightly longer. He gets to go back to his cell instead of lying there on the experimentation table.
He knows he has said Mayday’s name during the torture sessions as well. The dreams of him have grown more frequent for some reason.
At least once Crosshair has heard Mayday’s voice calling for him from somewhere in the distance. He woke up confused and disoriented and Mayday was gone again.
“Who is Mayday?” Omega asked the second or third time he had woken up in his cell calling his dead brother’s name. She is the only one to realise that it’s a name, a person, and not a constant plea for a rescue that will never come.
But Crosshair knows that the cell is being surveilled and so he lied to her and said: “It’s just force of habit.”
She never brought it up again but Crosshair sees the furtive glances, the curiosity on her face. Despite everything she still has that childlike wonder in her eyes. It awakens something strange in Crosshair, something he hasn’t felt since he and Hunter, Wrecker and Tech were still cadets on Kamino.
It’s almost something protective. Something brotherly.
He watches her out of the corner of his eye sometimes.
The way she curls up on her cot, her arms slung around her knees, makes him think of Tech when he was young, always the smallest of the four of them, huddled up on his bunk late at night. Though, Tech has always been a soldier. A child soldier, but a soldier nonetheless. Omega is just a child.
Occasionally, when he’s tired and hurting and out of it, Crosshair catches himself wanting to sling his arms around her shoulders and warm her up when she’s shivering against the cold walls. He never does. She is not his responsibility, he reminds himself. And he'd be too weak to get up anyway.
A voice that sounds suspiciously like Echo’s tells him he’s secretly a big softy. Sometimes the voice shifts into Hunter’s and there’s a bit of a scolding in it. He shakes it off and tells them to go kriff themselves.
This isn't Kamino and he isn't a cadet anymore sneaking into one of his brother's bunks to warm up after an exhausting day of training out in the rain. She isn't his sister. And even if she was-
He doesn’t want to huddle together in the cold with another sibling only to find them ripped from his arms the next morning.
When he rises on this particular morning his joints ache and his mouth is dry. He can once again see Omega looking at him from her side of the cell. He knows she wants to ask.
But Crosshair would rather die than share this with her, with anyone, really. No one has a right to know. They wouldn’t understand anyway, what Mayday was, what he meant to Crosshair.
His entire life had revolved around his unit. They were his brothers and they were a family and that was all that had ever mattered to Crosshair.
He even remembers a time where he used to think they mattered above anything else - including his orders.
The thought alone hurts his head now and makes hot guilt and shame crawl down his neck.
It’s so much easier to think about Mayday instead.
Crosshair never cared much for the regs.
Mayday taught him better. He freed him.
And now Mayday is dead.
He is dead and there is no one left to remember him. All of Mayday’s brothers are gone, the entire unit wiped out on that forsaken rock of ice. Crosshair hadn’t even been able to take anything with him to remember him by when they transported him off of Barton IV.
Crosshair heaves his shaking legs over the edge of the cot and stares at Omega. She hasn't looked away from him once ever since he’s woken up. It makes him uneasy and he tries his best to ignore her. I need some water, he thinks desperately but he doesn’t get water outside of Hemlock’s sessions. Or any other food that is. His throat burns. The cell is so quiet that Crosshair can hear his own heartbeat thumping in his ears. Omega is still staring at him.
“What?” he croaks. She winces and turns her head away as if she was caught doing something bad. “Nothing,” she mumbles and hugs her knees a little tighter. The strange feeling washes over Crosshair again. Why does he want to protect her? He spent months trying to hunt her and the others down. Now that they're both prisoners and the anger he felt for his old unit has faded, she shouldn't matter to him at all anymore. They have nothing to do with each other.
Crosshair quietly nods to himself. Yeah.
They might as well be strangers.
But something settles in his chest and pushes against his rib cage so much that he can’t help but ask again: “What is it?”
Omega looks up from her place on the floor. He barely talks these days and has never once initiated a conversation between them. Her eyebrows rise in surprise and make her face look even rounder, even younger. Her innocence looks wrong in Hemlock’s cage and Crosshair briefly considers breaking out again, if only to give her an opening-
What?
He doesn’t have any more time to get confused by his own thoughts because she interrupts them with a quiet “Why do you keep saying Mayday?”
Crosshair doesn’t miss the way she’s phrasing her question this time. He doesn't doubt that she still believes - knows - that Mayday must be the name of another Clone. But most likely she too has realised that none of their conversations will stay private and so she’s giving Crosshair an opening to evade the question if he wants to.
Does he want to?
Inexplicably, he suddenly feels the urge to tell Omega about Mayday, to share these few, precious memories with someone else, so that there will be another human being out there in the galaxy who’ll know about the reg - the brother - that saved Crosshair in more ways than he could ever thank him for.
But he can’t.
Because the second he admits it, Hemlock will know. He will get his hands on the very last, good, untainted thing that Crosshair still has, the one thing he hasn’t ruined.
Mayday is dead and Crosshair misses him more each day, but in a way his death has given him strength as much as it broke him. Because he has something to hold onto. Mayday exists only in his memory now. Crosshair can’t die, because Mayday would die with him.
A second time. A final time.
He can't let that happen.
Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum.
Crosshair repeats the Mando’a phrase of remembrance in his head and takes a deep breath, meeting Omega’s eyes again.
I am still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.
The words are engraved into every Clone’s head. There are no graves for their fallen. The only family to mourn are their brothers. The only monuments that will ever be built are the ones in the memories of the surviving.
Crosshair wants Mayday to have more than him. He wants him to live on. He is horrified when he notices that he has already opened his mouth to speak and quickly closes it again. He can’t risk it. Hemlock and his herd of asshole doctors don’t deserve Mayday’s memory. Instead he says: “It’s something that a soldier says when they’re in trouble.”
He knows that she knows he’s lying. But still, there is some kind of silent understanding between them because the corners of Omega’s mouth lift ever so slightly. He can’t even try to stop himself before he mirrors her expression. Later, he thinks. I’ll tell her later some day. Maybe.