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At first, wearing natborn clothes long-term had felt strange. Before, whenever Hunter switched his armor and undersuit out for loose tunics and trousers, it was for short bursts, meant to obscure or hide that he was a clone. He was highly aware of the swish and drape of fabrics just as he was aware of any potentially keen eyes lingering on his face or where he obscured his sidearm.
Now, only a few days in, he was starting to get acclimated to it. Even better, he enjoyed it, especially now, when he was down in the undercaverns of Pabu, the hollow space where the villagers kept a sophisticated hydroponics system.
The air was humid as he trailed behind Hoja Dureen, a Pantoran woman whom Shep had introduced as ‘Head Engineer,’ though she’d rolled her pale eyes like the title was some sort of joke. Accessed via the Archium, a sturdy open-sided lift had brought them down first to view a carefully maintained upside-down range of fruit trees, root balls all encased in cylindrical containers strung down from a careful net of durasteel girders and piping for water.
Down a level below that, the air was even more dense, practically hot—Hunter couldn’t tell where his sweat ended and the humidity began. Thankfully, where an undersuit and armor would just turn his joints into swamps, flooded beyond wicking, his borrowed (gifted? Hunter suspected he wasn’t meant to give it back) tunic flapped slightly in the circulating air, cooling him.
“And… here.” Hoja stopped walking, and indicated a large rectangular barge, floating atop the internal distilled lake that was the real heart of the agricultural caverns on the island. “This is yours!”
“Thank you,” Hunter thought to say, watching in mild interest as she took her datapad and started entering in some information into the small control panel close by where the barge was connected to the floating walkway. As she finished, some indicator lights glowed, and if he wasn’t wrong, the thin layer of powdery dirt on the surface of the barge started to darken as the system siphoned water up out of the lake.
“Of course, you also get a share of the seaweed beds off the east shore, and the fruit grove upstairs.”
“Thank you,” Hunter said again, this time uncomfortably prickling, and not from the heat. Hoja’s rambling explanations began to bead off of him like sweat, as some part of Hunter recognized, suddenly and desperately, that Tech would have loved this.
Not that he would have used a word like that—he would have primly adjusted his glasses and corrected, “I am simply very interested in the process,” rather than admit that something had sparked his interest, beyond utility, beyond mere curiosity. Tech liked well-planned and well-executed things, and this whole system—water distillery, steam turbines, hydroponics, aquaculture—seemed the kind of thing that would fill his hours with bright eyes, a slight smile on his mouth as he made sure their future garden was as perfect as could be.
But Tech wasn’t here. Hunter was.
Keenly, he felt himself the poorest of substitutes.
“I’ll have all the information sent to your datapad,” Hoja said. “But you should be good to go for planting. Light gets scheduled here on the podium, and I’m sure you can find a spare droid to do your minding, once you get close to harvest.”
Well, that would get AZI out of their hair, for a little bit, at least. Once more—feeling like he ought to find something else to say, or a different way to say it, he thanked her.
Luckily, that seemed all, and Hoja led him back up out of the underground and into the light of day, fading a bit towards evening. Hunter paused and mopped some sweat off of his brow. Unfortunately, wearing his gifted clothes left him feeling chilled, clammy even, though he couldn’t attribute that all to the shift from humidity to the open ocean breeze.
In the days since deciding to settle long-term on Pabu, rather than follow Echo and the other clones to Pantora, Hunter had felt a feeling come creeping up around him, a kind of strange, muted fuzzing, some unsensed pressure that gathered in the roots of his teeth, in the base of each fingernail. The feeling, he could admit, had been hanging around in the periphery for a long time, but now, out of the sturdy confines of his armor, any stray thought of Tech made it come rushing in at full, unignorable force.
Clones were bred to be soldiers. Trained to be strong, in body and mind. Loss was not meant—was not allowed to be—a limiting factor. They could press on—were supposed to press on. Carry their memory, but not their grief.
Carrying Tech’s memory brought Hunter nothing but this harrowing, crawling grief these past few days, but he supposed he was defective in more ways than one.
“Hunter!”
Lifting his head, he spotted Omega, happily making her way towards him at a good clip, practically skipping. Crosshair and Wrecker trailed behind her at a more sedate pace, though Wrecker’s grin was just as big, and even Crosshair had a faint, fond look on his face.
All three of them were loaded down with big cloth bags, vegetables visibly poking out of the top, riotous greens and vibrant reds and mauves. The plan had been for Hunter to get oriented on their new garden plot while the rest of them took the time to get any and all things they could from the raw goods market, hosted a few streets down from the Archium’s main courtyard, which only really ever sold pre-prepared foods or other fabricated goods.
The idea was that before they picked what they wanted to grow, they really ought to learn what the kriffing things tasted like—all of them had existed pretty well on a cobbled together mix of prepared foods and rations of some stripe or another. Very rarely did they eat things with fresh fruit or veg, which Hunter had never considered a deficit since vitamins were easy to procure along with rations.
No longer; Hunter’s arms rained hot-and-cold washes from shoulder to elbow, and up his neck, at the memory of Shep trying to school his face when Hunter admitted he had no idea what they wanted to grow, not because there were too many choices, but because they had no idea what any of them liked on the list of potential options.
By the looks of it, they’d gotten two or three of everything possible to grow on Pabu. They definitely didn’t have the room to grow everything, but whatever they didn’t end up growing, if they liked it, they could trade their surplus for someone else’s at the raw good market, or even start selling some of the preservable foods to get sent on to the space port.
Again—something Tech would have loved. Planning what was best for them to grow, what was best to trade, what was a good use of their labor to sell on. His mind, here, now, would have had so many new avenues to explore, to use and show his skill and intelligence.
Omega was distracted and chattering with happiness, explaining all that they got, and then something extra. She happily waved a real flimsi book, bound in a hard cover with a few rings, loose and floppy. “A guidebook on how to cook!”
Now there was a perfect solution to their problem, but instead of sharing in Omega’s bright grin, Hunter just felt his chest clench, all too horribly. In his mind’s eye, he could see Tech pouring over that thing, eyes narrow as he sped-read through and took occasional notes on his datapad—how hard it would be to drag his attention away from it—
Evidently, he didn’t hide it well enough, because Omega faltered, momentarily, but Wrecker stepped up. “C’mon, let’s get some of that rice soup, like Mr. Ven said, it’ll go good with the shoots…”
His hand on her shoulder was firm, and the look Omega craned over her shoulder at Hunter told him she knew she was being purposefully herded away. He’d be fine, just a few minutes and he’d scratch some kind of wall together, he wouldn’t ruin her night…
Crosshair silently shucked the bag hanging over his shoulder and added it to Wrecker’s collection; the big man took it without complaint, ushering Omega towards some of the prepared food carts.
Wordlessly, Crosshair came to stand beside him, and Hunter gave up on hiding whatever haggard expression must be lurking on his face. He turned and went over to a quiet stretch of the free-standing veranda that edged the Archium courtyard, close to where just weeks earlier he, Crosshair, and Wrecker had stood to keep an eye on Omega and Ventress.
Where once, even further back, he had stood beside Tech and looked out over the water.
He sensed as Crosshair trailed after him, close enough to feel but far enough to not crowd. With a sigh, Hunter eased himself down to sitting, elbows propped on his knees. Crosshair followed his lead, then spoke.
“What is it,” he said. Just like Crosshair to make what would be a gentle question with anyone else a demand for information.
With deliberation, Hunter took in and released a breath. “Just… thinking about Tech.”
By his side, he felt more than he heard Crosshair’s inhalation.
“About how much he would have liked… all of this.” Listlessly, Hunter waved over his shoulder, indicating all of Pabu. The small markets, the houses, the Archium, the docks and the underground and the whole texture of this. Of living.
After a despondent second, Crosshair made a little scoffing noise.
“You don’t think it would annoy him?”
That surprised a laugh out of him.
“Probably,” he admitted. “Some of it.” He’d probably hate natborn clothes. Even in his new dressdown civvies, he modeled the snug fit and thick material of the typical GAR undersuit and casual dress greys. Not that they ever wore them, when they were still in the GAR. But still.
“When we were here before, he always seemed ready to leave,” Hunter continued, recognizing the truth in Crosshair’s question. Tech chafed at so many staring eyes, was bored after he’d seen all there was inside the Archium. “But this is different. Before, we didn’t have any reason to… invest.” Hunter spread his hands. “Getting the garden plot feels pretty permanent.”
Another contemplative moment of silence.
“Thinking of running?”
Hunter’s answer was immediate. “No,” he said, voice rough as he shook his head. “Not at all. I just wish… Tech could be here with us. He earned this. Same as the rest of us.”
The buzzing feeling rushed up his forearms, and stabbed into his eye sockets from his jaw. Squeezing his eyes shut, Hunter rubbed his hands against his face, elbows propped on his knees. The cool ocean breeze caught his skin where the tunic pulled away from neck and bicep, and the shudder that rocked his body was only half from the cold.
He felt the air shift as Crosshair raised his arm, then the crackle of hesitation as he didn’t follow through and make contact. For a second, Hunter’s belly just churned deeper, bruised and pulsing—after all this, he’d managed to push Crosshair away enough that offering comfort was something he didn’t want to do or felt like giving—
And then, Crosshair did make contact, a touch on the back of Hunter’s shoulder, and—
And Hunter had forgotten, however briefly, about Crosshair’s hand.
He was sitting on Hunter’s left, so the easiest gesture to make was to touch the stump of his right arm where once his hand would pat and rest to offer comfort. How things changed.
Clumsily, Hunter dropped his left hand on Crosshair’s knee and squeezed.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Hunter let himself say in a rush, before he could think better of it. Better to let it go unsaid, than make a mess of it. Better to hope that Crosshair understood his silence for what it was, because at least then they had a semblance of their past familiarity between them once more, rebuilt with more fragile stuff.
Crosshair, because he was still Crosshair at his core, chuckled darkly.
“If Tech were here,” he said, voice a grinning drawl, “He would tell me I knew you were going to come back until it drove me crazy.” He dropped his arm back to his side.
“Yeah,” Hunter agreed, cracking a grin. He was instantly capable of seeing the smug little righteous smile Tech would have worn ceaselessly, those first few weeks Crosshair was back with them. Of course Tech, who knew Crosshair so well, would know that with the Empire’s trajectory, Crosshair’s leavetaking was inevitable. None of them ever did like following orders, though Crosshair had his reasons for staying and trying to learn how to like it, for his own sake.
Oddly enough, talking about Tech with Crosshair was making the weight in his chest lift. Hunter took his hand back, straightened his back, and rolled his neck until it cracked.
“On… Tantiss,” Crosshair spoke up, surprising Hunter. “Before Omega came. It was… a small comfort, to think that wherever you were, at least whatever happened wouldn’t be my fault.”
A terrible, instinctual bit of cruelty flashed in Hunter. Not for lack of trying, he managed not to say. Crosshair still hadn’t answered the question: when did he have his chip removed? When were his attempted headshots coming from the chip in his head, and when were they coming from him, trying as hard as he could to make himself useful, to corner them until they broke and joined him, no matter the cost?
But that was a conversation that could wait for another day. No point in having it now, after all: Crosshair was home. Home and here to stay.
Home. Thinking of Pabu as home was still fresh enough to clear all the darkness from Hunter’s system. His anger was gone as soon as it arrived and he returned to the sound of Crosshair’s voice, watching him subtly in his periphery.
“When she did tell me… about Tech,” Crosshair continued, voice dragging the ground, “I was sorry. That I had chosen wrong, all those months ago. And couldn’t be there…” If there was any end to that sentence, it was lost, his voice going too rough to force out further; his arm was shaking, the same tremble that had haunted his hand still shooting up to the elbow. As Hunter watched, Crosshair reached over, reflexively, to cover it with his remaining hand, only to snatch his hand back as it met a trembling stump, not a shaking hand. His hand hung there, over his arm, fingers arched and impotent, and Hunter swallowed.
Carefully, he laid his hand over Crosshair’s forearm, just over where the seam of the medpatch had covered the cauterized circle of flesh. He squeezed, and felt the tremoring falter and fade.
“If Tech were here now,” Hunter heard himself say, voice faint on the wind, “he’d tell you that we can’t change the past.”
Under his hand, he felt as the lines of Crosshair’s tensed muscle relaxed still further. The sun was setting—a familiar sight, now.
Crosshair made a little noise, half a laugh, and shrugged Hunter off, standing.
“He’d also tell us to keep Wrecker and Omega from ruining their dinner eating sushi,” he said, and Hunter turned to look up at him. The smallest smile tucked into one corner of his mouth, along with a toothpick, but Hunter saw a tightness around his eyes that looked very much like what he felt himself.
They were clones. Soldiers. They were made to carry their memories, not their grief.
They weren’t soldiers anymore. For all the Kaminoans’ intention and training, here they were, carrying their memories and their share of grief.
But at least they didn’t have to carry them alone.
Hunter reached up, took Crosshair’s hand, and let him pull him up to his feet.
Side by side, they headed into the marketplace, each step more steady than the last.