Chapter Text
The rebel base on Yavin IV was bustling with people and Omega loved it.
She had been welcomed by a Verpine who had introduced themselves as a friend of Hera’s and shown Omega around. We’re really grateful you’re here, they had said as they walked Omega to the main hangar. We are in desperate need of pilots, now more than ever.
That’s why I’m here, Omega had answered with a smile.
“Any other training than flying?” the woman currently evaluating Omega asked.
“I’ve had military training since I was a little girl,” Omega quickly replied. “Basic data en- and decryption, tactics and strategy, close combat.”
The woman nodded appreciatively and tapped something into her datapad.
“Oh, also medical,” Omega added.
“That’s quite the record,” the woman smiled. “May I ask where you were trained?”
“ Of course! I guess you could say it runs in the family.”
The woman laughed. “All of this?”
A warm pride filled Omega. “It’s a big family.” She threw the woman a charming grin. “Lots of fretting big brothers if you know what I mean.”
The woman nodded and attached a sphygmomanometer to Omega’s arm. “I do.”
Taking her vitals to clear her for combat took a while, so Omega passed the time by looking out of the small window in the tent flaps.
Pabu was colourful and diverse and beautiful, but the island had always had a certain amount of serenity to it that Omega liked, but ultimately couldn’t imagine spending her entire life in. She was too Clone for that.
Too much her brothers’ sister.
Yavin IV was filled with all kinds of people and species and Omega felt a giddy happiness rise up in her at the sight of all the vivid bustle.
This was the life she wanted.
Outside of places like Pabu, far out in the Outer Rim you didn’t really see this kind of crowd anymore. The Empire had made sure of that. Non-humans had it rough on Imperial worlds these days.
Omega thought about the endless sea of stormtroopers marching through the streets of innocent worlds, each of them exactly the same: human, clad in white armour, male in most cases.
Her gaze wandered over Yavin IV’s base and the contrast was astonishing.
It wasn’t just the different types of species. It was all the different colours and hairstyles, the warm familiarity with which the people here treated each other.
Just as the blood pressure monitor tightened around her arm something suddenly caught Omega’s eye.
She had been watching a large Lasat walking across the clearing, left arm casually thrown over a human’s shoulder, their heads turned towards each other, only shifting slightly to get out of another man’s way as they strolled on.
But Omega’s eyes got stuck on the man they’d made space for.
His head was bowed and he walked with his nose buried in a datapad. It was obvious he was on the older side but that wasn’t unusual for the rebellion per se.
Omega felt her eyebrows draw together.
It shouldn’t matter to her. He was just a stranger she had never met before.
But there was something itching beneath her skin.
Something very, very strange, like a déjà vu, or a feeling of recognition.
The man kept walking, unaware of Omega’s eyes on him and was just about to disappear from Omega’s limited view out of the tent, when her muscles woke up and suddenly moved on her own.
She jumped down from the wobbly plastoid table she’d been sitting on, ripping the cuff off her upper arm, ignoring the shocked yelp the rebel woman next to her let out.
The man was almost out of sight and Omega dashed to the tent entrance, not even stopping when the woman yelled a confused: “Hey!” after her.
Don’t let him get out of sight, something in her demanded.
What was it?
It was something, that much was certain, but Omega just couldn’t put her finger on what.
There he was!
Almost disappearing behind a crowd of younger pilots making their way to their fighters Omega could get a bit of a closer look at him now:
He was slightly hunched over, whether from age or years of poor posture was impossible to tell, his neck was crooked so he could stare at his datapad.
His brown hair had silver streaks on the sides but other than that the short curls were gelled back and lay tidily on the top of his head.
He was limping a bit, dragging his right leg behind and even from a distance Omega was pretty sure his left arm was a prosthetic, but other than that there was nothing remarkable about him.
And yet-
Omega’s blood froze and she slithered to a halt to avoid bumping into anyone.
The man reached up with one hand, finger stretched, and pushed his glasses further up his nose.
Oh…
It had been years.
Decades.
Long enough for her brothers’ bodies to forget the war, for Omega to grow from a girl into a woman and for the broken pair of goggles sitting on her ship’s control panels to gather a bit of dust. The colour of the leather had lightened in some places, bleached by Pabu’s sun.
On most days Omega was fine.
It had been so long and they had fought so hard. She thought of him everyday, but it had stopped hurting so intensely a long time ago. Time and a peaceful life of happiness and safety had turned the grief into a dull afterthought that was covered by a soft, warm blanket of love and fond memories.
But every once in a while it would catch up with her anyway.
And on those days it was impossible to be happy about anything because the fear of losing it became unbearable and the sadness and anger about it all clutched her heart too tightly. Omega couldn’t eat on those days, or sleep at night.
I am his legacy, she’d tell herself as she stared into the mirror, trying to take pride in the fact that she looked more like him everyday, instead of falling apart over it.
She looked at her reflection and Tech looked back; The same high cheekbones and fine lips, the same brown eyes, a tad lighter than their brothers’. She looked like her brother and in a way that would be and stay Omega’s greatest achievement for the rest of her life.
It was a bitter thought and also one she held most dearly to her heart.
He was with her when she wasn’t grieving too of course. Every time she felt the familiar pull of her ship defying a planet’s gravity, he was there in a way.
Omega loved flying. But on those days it was hard to enjoy it knowing that her brother had taught her and he’d never get to see this.
Omega tried to swallow the big lump in her throat.
It was rare that the feeling was so intense. The last time she had felt that way was when Hunter found an old holo of the original four Bad Batchers that none of them had known had been salvaged before the Marauder blew up.
Seeing him again had been hard and Omega had lost her appetite for nearly three days after that.
She had been 24 by that point but that night she had climbed back into Hunter’s bed and just let herself be held by him as the grief threatened to drown her.
She knew he hadn’t been faring any better.
Omega felt her lip wobble and took a deep breath so she wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of her fellow rebels on the very first day.
That was stupid, she thought. They don’t even look that familiar.
But didn't they?
One of the worst things time had taken from her was Tech’s face. That was why the holo had hurt so much.
Omega knew what he looked like of course. But the details - of his face, his voice, even his personality, cruelly - more and more of those slipped through her fingers the older she got.
It was a horrible, sickening thing and the fact that she just confused a complete stranger for him hurt all the more.
“Hey!” someone panted behind her and Omega turned around, forcing a smile onto her face.
Her family could have told it was fake from a mile away, but no one here was her family. At least not yet.
“I’m sorry, I thought I saw someone.”
The woman nodded, still trying to catch her breath. “Someone you know?”
“Someone I knew,” Omega corrected before walking back to the tent.