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Your heart nearly stops when you see that helmet rightfully placed on his head again.
The batch had already lost so much, from Omega getting captured by the Empire to Tech disappearing into the fog; Crosshair was just another one of those losses that added to the group’s misery. Though, calling any of the events just one of many feels like you’re undermining their importance.
The tight band of brothers you so abruptly became a part of during the Clone Wars turned into a fractured group of obsolete, defective soldiers drifting through the galaxy, their inherent purpose wasted away like the fading remnants of the Republic. And you’re forced to watch, equally aimless and discouraged, and see Hunter’s once determined stature be chipped away, loss after loss. You see Echo’s connection to the group being severed and fading with every setback; Wrecker’s optimistic disposition becoming grimmer and grimmer. Their key characters remain, yet they feel so out of reach, cocooned into their bodies out of self-preservation.
When the cavalry arrives and the batch reunites, you’re not sure how to feel.
Everyone’s relieved, no doubt. Wrecker envelopes Crosshair and Tech into a loving, suffocating embrace; Echo and Hunter converse and exchange vital information to help benefit their hopes to save more of their brothers. And Omega, little Omega’s eyes regain all their color when she sees all of you again, giving each a long, savoring hug to say all she wants but is too overwhelmed to express.
Suddenly, everything is back to normal. Back to before .
Yet the first time you see Crosshair’s face as he slides his bucket off his head, you realize that still, so many things have changed since the end of the war. His hair is gone, leaving a nasty scar on the side of his head that could compete with Wrecker’s spider web of damage. Wrinkles are etched into his face, any sense of youth gone from his complexion, eyebags you could trace with your finger and a droop in his mouth and eyes garnered from months of misery and torture in solitude and confinement.
The sight upsets you. It makes your skin crawl and tears swell up in your eyes because you think about the last time you truly got to talk to Crosshair. Not on Kamino after he’d chosen the Empire, when the air was tainted with the drive to escape alive; but on the Marauder on their way to Kaller to assist Master Billaba and Caleb.
It had been the first time you got him to smile your way. Genuinely, and not one of those smug or sly ones he likes to give regs when he emerges superior.
The two of you had been… close. Somewhat. When you first joined the batch as their medic you got along easily with the rest of the crew, making friendships and memories as time went on. But Crosshair always remained that pesky lump in the carpet you couldn’t seem to flatten.
Eventually, or so you believe, he warmed up to you; and began to actually talk on the nights you both found yourselves restless sitting beside each other in the cockpit or the barracks. He’d offer you little slimmers of guidance as you patched up his injuries, telling you what hurt and what didn’t, guiding your hands when you shook and struggled to stitch up a cut.
You two became familiar with your unfamiliarity.
Now, he’s eerily silent– not the cold, stern silence he typically used to wear– deafening, stomach-twisting silence. You can’t keep your eyes off of him, scanning his little behavior patterns and actions, searching for anomalies or changes, trying to prove to yourself that’s still the same man you once knew; just tainted with something else.
When Crosshair catches you staring, he huffs and puffs out his chest.
“Something wrong?” He asks, snide as ever, and the familiarity makes you grin.
“Nothing,” you respond, leaning back on the side seat in the cockpit, but not once severing the eye contact. “Just taking you in.”
He tilts his head.
“What do you mean?”
You shrug. Each of your voices are soft, save for the occasional slither of Crosshair’s voice curling over a word. You speak lowly in the dead of the night, still awake when everyone has fallen asleep. It had always been this way even before the war; the two of you would find yourselves late at night with wide eyes and lively minds and would sit beside each other in the cockpit to just talk. For a moment, nothing has changed.
“I’m taking in that you’re really here. In front of me,” You continue, running your tongue over your bottom lip. Not once does Crosshair look away from you. You’re unsure if he’s even blinking. “You’ve– you’ve been gone for so long that I almost got used to it.”
“Hm,” He gruffs, and his chin dips up and down in the barest slimmer of a nod. Silence falls over the space between you before he talks again. “I understand what you mean. I think the same thing happened to me.”
Your jaw slacks, lips parting dumbly. You wish you had more to say.
“Yeah?” you mutter.
He nods again, more stiff and clear. You take a deep breath through your mouth, then exhale. You breathe again, then exhale. There’s so much you want to say, and also nothing at all. Do you let the moment rest? Do you let him process just as you should? Or do you speak? Confess all your past fears and worries and grievances and all the kriffing guilt you’ve carried this past year?
You inadvertently choose the former. Silence sweeps through the two of you again.
Eventually, Crosshair decides to say something, much to your surprise. He clears his throat and finally drifts his stare away from you.
“The empire…” He begins, and immediately you sigh and shake your head, reaching a hand out to rest over his.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” you say, taking a deep breath again as you compose yourself. “I know it must be a lot to talk about.”
“I want to tell you about it,” He rebukes, stare as piercing as his crosshair. You still. He doesn’t move until you give him a response.
So you straighten your back and nod, gulping shallowly.
“OK.”
Crosshair sighs.
“You know as well as any other clone what we’ve been taught our whole life.” His voice curls into something lurchingly sharp, and defensive. “And… because I was never good, we were never good, just a ‘bad batch’... All I wanted was to be good at something I could feasibly be. A good soldier.”
He takes a pause that weighs heavy on his tongue.
“And good soldiers follow orders .”
Everything in you wants to reach out and hold him. Suddenly the few inches of space between you becomes miles upon miles, and all you need is to wrap your arms around his shoulders and bring him to your chest, so you can squeeze him tight and make sure he’s there, so he knows that it’s okay and that you’re here for him, always. But you let him make space for himself. You’d feel selfish otherwise.
“That chip , it changed how I thought,” he continues, voice cracking slightly at the word chip . “And they told me they took it out. That it was just my inherent nature to follow them. They made me think their thoughts were mine .” He becomes more strained with each second he talks, and you almost feel guilty letting him keep talking. But then you remember he wanted to tell you.
Your stomach twists.
He wants you to know.
He wants you to listen.
He wants you to understand .
“The chip fought against my body. It made me sick. I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t see straight. Could barely shoot a kriffing target. I felt– I felt mad ,” He exhales darkly and sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes scrunched and head heavy. He brings it up again to finish. “And they tried to fix it on Tantiss. Tried to make me a good soldier again.”
You keen further as he does, your heads so close it only would take the slightest movement until your foreheads were pressed together.
“But by then, I found Omega. We found Tech. They got the chip out of me. We came here. And... Now everything’s clear again. I can see, hear, understand better. I can think freely. Can hear, talk freely. I’m… finally something not attached to another.”
He finishes his words and for good this time. It takes a moment for it all to process, and once it does, you still take the time to rethink and reprocess them again. Every single word you meticulously file into your cognitive wheels that turn and click together while you try to come up with a feasible response just as eloquent or thoughtful. But not enough comes to mind. You’re afraid to just let it sit, but there’s no conclusion otherwise.
So you do. You let it sit. You keep his eyes on his and let his words travel from his mouth to your ears and into your brain. The tears that began to swell up in your eyes are now dry and your breath is steady again, and the stability is comforting in just the way you’d hoped it to be.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk for that long,” you finally, finally let out, a breathy chuckle escaping your open mouth. Crosshair chuckles dryly, lips still downturned.
“Me neither,” He agrees.
For a moment, the two of you just laugh; it’s a nice sedative, a buffer between the tense air and postures just to enjoy each other’s company again. Crosshair doesn’t laugh often. It’s hard to make him genuinely chuckle with actual joy or excitement. Seeing this sight makes your heart erupt in overwhelming warmth, and strangely enough, relief.
“ Kriff , I missed you.”
You don’t expect it to come out.
Crosshair blinks, tilting his head to the left. You slack your jaw, lips parting slightly and your eyes widen in your own surprise.
You wish there was more for you to do or fix. But there isn’t. What’s said is said. All you can do is wait for his response.
He methodically darts out his tongue and kicks his bottom lip, sucking it in to bite it harshly, not once looking away, stare still pensive and almost impossible to read. At least that hasn’t changed.
“…I should have figured,” he says.
You huff and bite the inside of your cheek.
“I’m just so empathetic?” You ask sarcastically. Crosshair frowns playfully.
“Sounds about right.”
A bubbling giggle leaves you as he exhales darkly and his gaze softens; there’s something new in his eyes, something peculiar and hard to place. Yet you can tell just from it that he feels comfortable in your presence. That the tense air comes from your circumstance, not his reluctance. You sigh pleasantly and offer a helplessly wistful smile.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Cross,” you confess. He raises an eyebrow. You string your lips tight and run an arm up and down your thigh, up and down, containing the urge to reach out and touch him.
“Likewise,” he answers, voice curling into his chin as he finishes.
There’s nothing else you can say. Frankly, there’s nothing else you want to say. Crosshair’s eyes drift elsewhere, but you watch his hand slowly inch closer and closer to yours in your peripheral vision. You meet him in the middle, and clumsily, you take hold of each other’s hand. His skin is much more coarse and rough and cold, but they’re just as pleasant to grasp as you imagined. He deliberately flexes each finger, letting them trace your skin and elicit gentle, held-in exhales. Crosshair looks up. You follow suit. And there does the wordless exchange speak louder than anything else.