Work Text:
It’s a feeling every soldier knows instinctively: the unique prickle of the hairs on the back of the neck, the slight stiffening of the spine, the body’s realization coming a split second before the mind’s. Crosshair curses to himself. There’s eyes on him, and right now it doesn’t matter that they belong to Hunter and Omega. In this, their gaze is as unwelcome as any enemy’s.
He pulls his hand closer to his side. It spasms against his leg, tremors arcing through palm and fingers.
Not good enough. Stop it.
But no matter how he tries to still his hand, it fights him with every breath.
Crosshair stares out into the distant horizon, the late afternoon sun on the sea piercingly bright. He brings a cup of caf to his lips, blowing across the surface to cool it off. He holds it, carefully, in his left hand.
Batcher snores at his feet. Damn hound wouldn’t leave him alone all day after Wrecker and Hunter left. He glances down at her. The rumble of her snores is oddly pleasant.
He wonders how Wrecker and Hunter are getting on. Once it would have rankled, being told to stay behind and out of the fray. But Hunter had said it, and Crosshair had followed without complaint. It was the only thing that made sense. What good would he have been against a bounty hunter like this? He’d nearly drowned just a few days ago, getting pulled into hand-to-hand combat instead of being able to take out the threat from a safe distance. He shakes his head irritably, pulling himself out of the memory.
The prickle on the back of his neck sears again. He turns, sighing. “You’re persistent.”
“‘Course I am,” says Omega cheerily. She settles onto the bench beside him, swinging her feet. She’s tall enough now that her feet easily reach the ground -- a far cry from the small girl on Kamino -- but she’s still young enough to prefer to kick her heels. “Persistence is one of my specialties.”
“Mhm.” She’s got him there. Kid’s stubborn as anything. He raises an eyebrow. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“You have that look. You’re planning something,” Crosshair says. To be fair, the kid is always planning something. But the look on her face suggests it’s got to do with him, and he resigns himself to it, whatever it might be. I owe her that much.
Omega chuckles. She looks past him, watching a pair of seabirds wheeling overhead. “Can’t pull one over on you, can I?” She hesitates, but when she speaks it sounds practiced. Rehearsed. “It’s time, Crosshair. Your hand hasn’t gotten any better, and Hunter’s worried too. You’ve got to have AZI look at it. For your own sake.”
Crosshair takes another sip of caf, swallowing hard. His right hand jitters against his leg, and he shifts on the bench, pinning his hand beneath his thigh.
He knows what he wants to say. I’m working on it. It’s none of your business, or his. Go bother somebody else. It’d be easy; it’d be expected. But he’s as surprised as Omega is by his own response.
“All right, fine,” he says, and finishes his steaming caf with a gulp. It burns all the way down.
He doesn’t know why he says yes. Maybe it’s just the hopeful look in Omega’s eyes, the grin of relief spreading across her face. It’s a nice sight.
“We’ll figure this out, Crosshair. Come on, Batcher, let’s go find AZI!” the girl says, and the hound leaps up with a happy snuff. Crosshair gets to his feet, bringing up the rear, his mouth twisting.
Why did I agree to this? He knows the droid won’t find anything.
Hemlock hadn’t found anything, either.
His hand trembles, knuckles locking, fingers fluttering in random bursts. He rubs the back of it, willing it to stop. The droid’s failed, just like everything he’s tried, just like everything they’d tried.
Omega’s crestfallen expression hurts more than he thought it would.
His chest feels tight. I knew better. Shouldn’t have bothered. Crosshair stares down at his hand. Blood rushes in his ears, a roaring throb.
Through the noise he faintly realizes the kid’s indignant on his behalf, turning to the droid with desperation in her voice. “There’s nothing else you can do?”
The droid does its best to sound apologetic, for all the good it does. The soothing tones grate on him. “I have exhausted all medical treatment options. Perhaps the issue is not something physical?”
Crosshair’s head jerks up, and he fixes the droid with a hard stare, his heart pounding. “You think it’s in my head?” he bites out, his voice dangerous.
“If you were to elaborate more on the experimentation you were subjected to, I could determine the cause --”
Experimentation.
Experimentation --
The word ricochets within his brain. It careens into a black howling void, flares white-hot like a burst glow-lamp, claws at the gates of something terrible --
He’s on his feet with a snarl before he knows what he’s doing, shoving the droid aside. “Forget it,” he hisses, and strides off with his skin crawling.
“Crosshair?” Omega cries, but he doesn’t turn back. All he knows is he has to get away from the all-too-sympathetic droid and its fixation on what he carries in his head.
Better not to look, better not to remember, better not to think about --
His feet carry him clattering down twisting paths and endless stairs beneath the setting sun, his boots slapping against the stone. Seabirds cry in the distance. His breath forces itself out between his lips in sharp staccato bursts.
The sounds draw him back to himself, at least partially, and the world muddles into hazy focus once again.
Crosshair grabs his rifle on the way down to the beach, though he knows perfectly well this is a pointless exercise. Sniping is an art of control: balance, breathing, heartbeat, composure, all of it calibrated perfectly to time the shot. Even if his hand was normal again, he’d be useless in a state like this. He feels it in his bones.
But he doesn’t know what else to do. What else is there? No Republic, no Empire, no loyalty, no enhancements -- hell, he’s shooting like a reg cadet now. If he can’t do this… This is what he was made for.
Isn’t it?
The beach stretches out before him, evening sunlight glinting off the shimmering sands. His armor is temperature-controlled, and a cool breeze blows against his bare head, but he’s still sweating. He strips off the top layer of his armor and leans it against a rock. The 99s emblazoned on the pauldrons stare back at him accusingly. Crosshair turns away, shoulders heaving.
He sinks into the sand, hefts the rifle. The sight wavers, the sunset dancing on the waves.
Do it right.
But shot after shot goes wide, and the blood still rushes in his ears.
The stars spark across the blue-black sky, spangled silver-gold. He’s seen the night skies of dozens of worlds, an endless scroll of starfields; but Pabu’s is pretty hard to beat, he has to admit. The sea laps against the sand, waves rolling in and out, bits of bioluminescent plankton glimmering in the water’s edge. Crosshair shifts, suddenly realizing his knees ache. He’s not used to sitting cross-legged.
“Hey,” he mutters, stretching. “When did it get so late?”
He glances over at Omega, expecting to see her grinning ear-to-ear at him. Instead she’s curled up against Batcher’s side, the two of them fast asleep.
He blinks, disappointed, and works on unfolding himself from the cross-legged position. He winds up sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, hands supporting himself in the sand as he leans backward.
So that was meditation. Now that he thinks about it, he remembers glimpsing Jedi doing something similar on those times their paths intersected. He’d always wondered what they were getting out of it. He still isn’t sure what the point was.
Omega had thought this meditation thing might fix him. His hand twitches in the sand at the thought, the grains working themselves into the webbing between his fingers. He snorts faintly. If she’d expected him to cure himself just by thinking about his breathing and losing track of time -- a lot of time, apparently -- well, she was still a kid. He could forgive her that.
His attention drifts back to the stars. Here there are no passing ships to mar the view. It’s a free unsullied sky, full of strange constellations he could never hope to name.
Tech could have learned them in a heartbeat.
His breath hitches in his throat, and he closes his eyes. Plan 99, executed. I should have been there. It could’ve been me. But instead he’d been trapped on Tantiss. Trapped and useless -- just another subject to be --
Experimentation --
Omega’s hand on his arm is warm and solid.
“Are you all right?” she asks, peering up at him. “Sorry I fell asleep. Gungi warned me that might happen, if I got very relaxed. He said he used to fall asleep in the Jedi temple all the time, before… well, you know.” She tilts her head. “How about you? I looked over at you a few times, and you seemed like you were getting on all right.”
“I don’t know what I was supposed to think about,” Crosshair says warily. “I tried doing what you said. Thinking about breathing. Focusing. Then I looked up, and it was night.” He holds out his hand, fingers quivering with the effort. “It didn’t do anything.”
Omega nods, looking serious. “I don’t think it’s something you just get over like that, Crosshair. I think it’ll take time. And practice.” She scratches Batcher on the cheek, and the hound leans into her touch. “But how do you feel? Right now?”
“Stiff. It’s a strange way to sit,” he complains, his legs twinging.
She laughs with an edge of exasperation, something he’s used to hearing from other people. With her there’s still a warmth beneath it. It keeps surprising him. “No, I mean, mentally? Emotionally? You know, on the inside.”
He opens his mouth to say something sarcastic, and closes it again. He feels….
There’s no blood roaring in his ears.
No creeping prickle on the back of his neck. No tightness in the rise and fall of his chest.
He thinks of Tech sitting under the starlight of Pabu, and it hurts in a way he doesn’t really mind.
He takes a deep breath. There’s still Tantiss waiting coiled in the back of his memory, black void, white-hot flash, a box he won’t -- can’t -- open. But he feels different. He fumbles with the words.
“I feel… quiet,” he says. His mouth thins, quirks to one side. “Is that right?”
“I think it is,” says Omega. She smiles, her young face so kind he can hardly stand it.
He looks down at his lap. His hand shakes, fingers collapsing in on themselves.
He could hide it. Shove it into the sand, bury it in the water, curl it around the grip of his rifle, try yet another round of failed target practice. He swallows.
He could.
Crosshair reaches out, hesitating, then pats Omega clumsily on the shoulder. She leans against him. The kid beams at him beneath the starlight, the sound of the waves soft on the shore, and his hand goes still, for a little while.