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They head back to Pabu. All of them.
The shuttle is already overcrowded with rescued clones when Hunter, Crosshair, and Omega reach it. Echo and Wrecker are waiting for them, to Hunter’s relief.
As soon as she sees him, Omega drops her grip on Hunter’s hand and launches herself at Wrecker and despite his injuries, he doesn’t hesitate a second before he gathers her up in a tight hug. A shaky breath escapes Hunter and he sways a little into Crosshair’s space as Wrecker tucks the girl under his chin, murmuring reassurances that could be for either of them.
When Omega steps back from Wrecker’s embrace, her face is streaked with tears but she’s smiling. Echo kneels beside her and then it’s his turn for a hug.
It doesn’t feel real. It’s only Tech’s absence that tells Hunter this isn’t just a dream.
Echo squeezes Omega gently one more time before he releases her and disappears into the cockpit to give instructions to whichever rescued clone is acting as their pilot. Hunter is immeasurably grateful to him for taking point on what’s left of this mission; all he really wants to do is find a quiet corner and collapse, preferably with his squad tucked around him.
That will have to wait. One of the nearby regs is a field medic. Hunter gets his attention and points him at Omega, who rolls her eyes. The clone checks her over for signs of injury as another corners Crosshair to inspect his amputated wrist.
“You seem alright to me,” the medic examining Omega says to her. He raises his eyes to meet Hunter’s before continuing, “Wouldn’t hurt to get a more thorough check when we land, just to be sure.” Hunter nods, his attention split between listening to the words and watching Crosshair shrug off his medic and slink toward the back of the ship. “At the moment, I’m more concerned about you, though.”
“What?” Hunter asks, dragging his attention back as Crosshair slips through the door out of the compartment.
“All due respect, sir, you don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” Hunter says. It’s a lie. Whatever Hemlock did to him, his blood feels like it’s on fire. He’s probably concussed after being knocked out by the shadows in the hangar and he’s not at all sure his legs aren’t about to give out under his own weight.
“No, he’s not,” Omega pipes up, fixing Hunter with a stern glare. Despite himself, his heart swells with pride. This kid broke herself out of Tantiss – twice. She could command armies. She’ll never have to, not if Hunter has anything to say about it. Still, he’d appreciate it if she didn’t throw him under the speeder right now. “He was in Hemlock’s training room.”
The medic seems to understand exactly what that means. Hunter sighs and lets himself be bullied down to a bench where he’s subjected to a cursory examination while the other medic – the one who was with Crosshair a moment ago – begins removing Wrecker’s armor to get a better look at his injuries.
Omega tells the medic what she knows of the training room – too much, more than a kid her age should ever know about a place like that – and Hunter leans against the bulkhead behind him and lets the sound of her voice soothe him. Wrecker catches his eye and flashes a hand signal.
Mission accomplished.
The medics pronounce Hunter and Wrecker stable enough for the trip around the same time Hunter feels the shift in the engines that signal their jump to hyperspace, but they’re both ordered to present themselves for a full examination as soon as better equipment is available than the shuttle’s standard-issue emergency medkit. Judging by the look on Omega’s face, neither one of them is getting out of that. Hunter nods his agreement anyway.
And then he’s torn.
Crosshair hasn’t returned since he left the main compartment. The medics didn’t seem too concerned about his condition but Hunter knows Crosshair – or at least he hopes he still does. He shouldn’t be alone right now.
Omega seems to sense Hunter’s conflict and she turns to Wrecker. “Echo’s shoulder was bleeding,” she tells him, matter of fact. “We should ask someone to look at that.”
Wrecker’s eyes go wide with understanding.
“Yeah,” he agrees, shooting Hunter a meaningful look, devoid of subtlety. “Good idea.”
Hunter isn’t sure how much Omega knows about his relationship with Crosshair. He never told her and he doesn’t think the others did. He wonders if Crosshair might have said something, back when they were trapped in the mountain together. Doubtful.
Either way, she clearly knows more than he realized.
“I could go with you,” he offers, reluctant to let her out of his sight so soon.
“It’s okay,” Omega tells him, shaking her head, “Wrecker and I can handle it.”
Echo’s only in the cockpit. They’re in hyperspace, safe. The shuttle is full of clones who owe Omega their freedom. She can handle herself. Wrecker will be with her the whole time. Hunter won’t even be far. And yet, he still hesitates.
“I’ve got her,” Wrecker says softly.
His resolve is weakening. Omega sees it.
“Go,” she tells him, gentle but firm, tipping her head towards the door Crosshair disappeared through. “He’s been brooding long enough.”
Hunter bends down to drop a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he says, voice thick with emotion.
Omega wraps her arms around his midsection in a hug. She’s gotten taller again since she was taken, he’s sure of it. It won’t be long until she’s able to look him the eye. She’s growing up too fast for his liking, faster than she should have to.
Wrecker gives him a slightly watery smile as Omega releases Hunter from her hug and then the two of them are off to the cockpit with one of the rescued medics in tow. Hunter watches until Omega disappears from sight, and tries to remind his racing heart that she’s safe now.
The adrenaline is wearing off. Hunter’s ears are ringing and the painkiller the medic gave him hasn’t kicked in yet – or at least, Hunter hopes it hasn’t kicked in yet.
Around him, the rescued prisoners look about as terrible as Hunter feels. These are good men. They only ever did their duty and when the Empire was done with them, they were tossed aside, left to rot, subjected to horrors in that mountain that Hunter is slowly realizing he never fully understood before.
That could have been all of them – his whole squad – but for a tiny piece of faulty bioengineering.
It was Crosshair.
Hunter feels sick.
The medic who was with Crosshair and Wrecker appears at Hunter’s side, interrupting his thoughts, and holds out a small package with a red medical label on it.
“See if you can get him to take this. Just an analgesic for his arm,” the man says by way of explanation, “and, well – everything.” Hunter raises an eyebrow and the medic shrugs. “He didn’t want it when I offered but maybe you’ll have more luck.”
Yeah. That sounds like Crosshair. Hunter suppresses a grimace. He never liked painkillers. They joked once, during the war, that Crosshair could have a limb torn off and still turn down everything but a single bacta patch. Even Crosshair had laughed at it.
It doesn’t seem so funny anymore.
“Thanks,” Hunter says, taking the hypo and fighting down a wave of nausea.
The medic nods and then someone else is calling for his attention. Hunter watches him disappear into the sea of rescued men to work on someone on the far side of the shuttle that Hunter can’t see from here.
Suddenly the crowded shuttle is too much. Hunter pushes his way through the clones until he finds the door Crosshair exited through.
It doesn’t take long before Hunter finds Crosshair in the shuttle’s cargo hold, wedged behind a large crate bearing the label of the company that supplied the GAR with its food rations. Dimly, bitterly, he wonders if they’ll be replaced like the clones or if they’re still good enough for the Empire.
“Budge over,” Hunter grunts. Crosshair obliges without a word.
Hunter claims the spot between Crosshair and the open space of the cargo hold. It’s a tight fit in their armor and Hunter thinks Crosshair must be uncomfortable with the way his longer legs are folded up against his chest. Hunter has holed up in worse places though and Crosshair seems to relax a little as he’s squeezed between the solid metal of the bulkhead on his left and Hunter on his now-weakened right.
It’s hard not to stare at the empty space where Crosshair’s hand should be. It’s impossible to forget but somehow Hunter still expects to see those long, slender fingers laid flat against his thigh, or perhaps clenched into a frustrated fist to fight the tremor.
Hunter feels Crosshair’s eyes on him and wrenches his gaze away from the stump of his arm before Crosshair can complain. “Here,” he says and offers the hypo.
“Don’t want it,” Crosshair mutters, crossing his arms carefully – too carefully – and tucking his wrist under his left arm.
“Cross - “
“I don’t want it.”
The words are ground out through gritted teeth. His pain is obvious. Even if it weren’t, he was subjected to the same torture Hunter was in the training room and Hunter knows exactly how that feels.
It’s what I deserve.
His heart aches at the memory of the words and the desperate helplessness that crept over him like ice as Crosshair laid out his plan to infiltrate the base alone.
Later, when they’re not so exhausted and when Hunter’s a little more sure Crosshair is solid and not about to disappear like a mirage, he’s going to be furious with him for that, for giving up on his promise and trying to leave Hunter alone again.
“You don’t have to punish yourself,” Hunter tries instead.
“Who says that’s what I’m doing?”
“Are you really going to try to tell me you’re not?” Hunter deadpans. He won’t force him – he can’t, not after everything that’s been forced on him already – but Hunter isn’t in the mood for this game.
Crosshair glares at him, scathing and brittle around the edges.
It’s all wrong. They’re alive. They have Omega. They’re safe and the Empire is finally behind them and it’s supposed to be easy now. Crosshair isn’t supposed to have to pay for their victory with his own flesh and he shouldn’t have to feel every ounce of pain that comes with it like he can trade his suffering for the balancing of some cosmic ledger.
Hunter just wants to stop fighting. They’ve earned peace by now, haven’t they?
He’s too tired to keep it from showing on his face. Maybe that’s why Crosshair relents, or maybe the pain finally becomes too much.
“Fine,” he says. Hunter blinks, surprised, as Crosshair reaches up to release the fastenings of his pauldron and rerebrace.
His hands shake a little when he breaks the seal on the hypo’s packaging and perhaps there’s some irony in that. Crosshair doesn’t comment but wary eyes track Hunter’s movements. He smoothes one hand over Crosshair’s shoulder, trying to impart some comfort or reassurance, however inadequate.
Crosshair grimaces but doesn’t make a sound when the needle punctures skin. Hunter replaces the hypo in its package and tosses it aside, not caring where it lands. When he looks back, Crosshair is struggling to secure his rerebrace.
“Let me,” Hunter says, catching Crosshair’s good wrist and drawing it down. The expected protest doesn’t come. Hunter takes that as permission.
It’s both strange and familiar to click the pieces of Crosshair’s armor back into place. He knows these plates as well as he knows his own, has stripped them from Crosshair’s body more times than he can count and helped him dress almost as often.
Until Kaller. He hasn’t done it since.
It occurs to him faintly that he may never do it again now. He doesn’t know how to feel about that.
He lingers just a bit too long. Crosshair doesn’t say anything but Hunter knows it hasn’t escaped his notice. He wants to believe he isn’t imagining the way Crosshair’s eyes flicker in disappointment when Hunter finally lets his hands drop back to his own lap.
A moment passes, silent. Hunter worries his lip between teeth. The meds are making his head fuzzy and there are so many things he needs to say, he doesn’t know where to begin.
What eventually comes out is, “Knew you could make that shot.”
Crosshair huffs.
“That makes one of us,” he says dismissively.
Hunter’s chest tightens. Crosshair used to be so sure of himself. No one would have accused him of being modest but it was hard to call him arrogant when he could always deliver. He was the best – still is, Hunter is sure, even without his shooting hand – and he’d known it.
It hurts to see Crosshair like this, doubting himself. He’d hoped that their triumph over Tantiss would banish some of Crosshair’s demons.
Maybe it still will. Maybe he’s just expecting too much before they’ve even slept.
Hunter takes a chance and leans a little closer, pressing his shoulder to Crosshair’s and taking care not to jostle his wounded wrist. He wishes they weren’t wearing armor so he could feel the warmth of Crosshair against him but Crosshair doesn’t pull away and he can hear his quiet, steady breathing and that’s enough to settle something in his chest.
“Thank you,” he blurts out.
“For what?”
Everything, he almost says, but stops himself. It doesn’t begin to cover the depth of what he means, too easy for Crosshair to hear only part of what Hunter wants to say.
“You’re alive,” he says instead.
Hunter knows he shouldn’t have asked – begged, really – Crosshair to promise he’d survive the mission.
It wasn’t fair. They don’t do that to each other. But Hunter is tired of playing fair when the rest of the galaxy never does.
He lost Crosshair once. He lost Tech. He knows what he can survive and he knows that if he’d lost Crosshair again in that mountain, he would have kept on breathing for Omega, and for Wrecker. He also knows that it would have killed the part of him that makes life worth anything.
“Not exactly in one piece,” Crosshair comments idly, raising his wrist a little as if it weren’t obvious what he meant. Hunter feels cold. Crosshair catches his stricken expression and sighs. “Relax, just a joke,” he mutters.
It isn’t funny.
Hunter was too far away and barely coming back from being knocked unconscious. He didn’t see it when the shadows maimed him but he heard – the cruel, taunting voice, followed by a sickening noise as the blade came down and a gut-wrenching cry of pain. He’s never heard Crosshair sound like that before. He wonders if he’ll ever stop hearing it echo through his mind now.
“Cross,” Hunter starts, not sure what to say when this isn’t something he can fix. “I’m sorry. I should have - “
“Stop,” Crosshair interrupts, voice sharp against the near silence of the cargo hold. “It’s not your fault.”
It’s mine, goes unsaid. Hunter hears it anyway.
“Crosshair,” Hunter tries.
“Can we - “Crosshair cuts him off again with a pinched expression. “Just – not now?”
Not ever is probably what Crosshair means but the truth is Hunter is too drained to argue that point now. He nods, numb, and promises himself that he’ll pin Crosshair down later. They do have to talk about it, just like they’ll have to talk about the things Crosshair said in the jungle.
There’s a lot they need to talk about.
Me too, Crosshair had said.
This isn’t the time for that conversation either. They’re both bone-tired, physically and emotionally wrung out from the mission, filthy and stinking of blood and sweat and something acrid that Hunter can only describe as the too-familiar scent of an adrenaline crash.
None of that stops Hunter from turning his face into the crook of Crosshair’s neck and reaching up to hold him close. Crosshair stiffens on reflex before he melts into the touch.
It’s far from perfect but it’s the closest they’ve been since before the war ended. Hunter bites his lip, knowing if he opens his mouth, too much will slip out.
But then Crosshair twists to brush his lips against his hair and Hunter breaks.
“Love you,” he breathes.
Crosshair’s breath stutters and from where he’s pressed against Crosshair’s pulse, Hunter thinks he might even feel his heart skip a beat.
They’ve never said it before. He shouldn’t be saying it now, not when their relationship is still this shaky, undefined thing. Not when there are so many more important things vying for their attention.
He won’t take it back. He’s loved Crosshair since before he knew what that meant.
The silence hangs, fragile, for a long moment, until –
“Love you too, Hunter.”
The words are quiet, barely audible even as close as they are. No one else is around to overhear but it doesn’t matter. This is just for them.
And even though he knows it’s not anything on its own, it feels like a weight lifts off Hunter when he hears the words.
A new wave of exhaustion rises up to take its place. Hunter yawns.
He feels, rather than hears, Crosshair’s soft laugh.
“Sleep,” he orders, voice soothing. He reaches his good hand up to stroke gently over Hunter’s matted hair. “I have the watch.”
For once, Hunter doesn’t argue – he just shifts a bit until he can lean more comfortably against Crosshair and smiles when Crosshair tilts to rest his head against Hunter’s.
He drifts off, content for the first time in longer than he can remember.