Chapter 3 - Or You A Thief

Author's Note: Things are changing. ;)

~ Amina Gila

Crosshair waits until Hunter's back is turned to gesture to Echo and Wrecker, though he doesn't speak verbally. It's hard to communicate without Hunter overhearing them, given how good his enhanced senses are, so hand gestures it is. He doesn't say anything aloud until Hunter has disappeared into the cockpit, settling down in the co-pilot's seat to help Tech with the take-off. Only once the Marauder's engines have fired up, does Crosshair speak.

"Hunter is hiding things," he says, his normal drawl just barely above a whisper.

Echo glances to the cockpit before looking back at him and nodding. "Something is weighing heavily on him," he contributes. "I think we've all noticed it."

"Kind of hard not to," Crosshair answers sarcastically, thinking back to Hunter's seemingly unprompted breakdown. It's been years since Hunter has cried in front of them – or at all, if Crosshair had to guess, and it makes him worry. Hunter is their leader. He's always been the calm, unshakable one, level-headed where the rest of them are impulsive or irrational. It's… disconcerting, to say the least, to see him so shaken.

They've always been close, and when one of them hurts, they all do. This is no exception, and Crosshair doesn't understand why Hunter is choosing to keep them in the dark instead of offering any explanations. Even his current choice to help Tech pilot – that's become Echo's job, now that he can scomp in so well to things – is a diversion tactic.

Ever since Hunter woke up, Crosshair has been watching him, trying to read him and get an idea of what's wrong. One of the primary things he's been able to tell, thus far, is that Hunter is struggling. Badly. He's wrestling with something huge, something that's leaving the rest of them stumped, because what could it be, if they don't know about it? A dream? Please. They've all had their fair share of nightmares, some worse than others – it was the worst after Wrecker was so badly injured. Crosshair couldn't sleep alone for days after that, but Hunter never said anything when Crosshair crawled into his bunk at night, just to feel him close.

He'd been close enough to the cockpit to overhear the end of Hunter's exchange with Tech.

"You speak as though it was more than a dream, Hunter."

"It was. It was… so much more."

Hunter hadn't noticed him until later, but it was long enough for him to pick up on something. He just doesn't know how to explain it.

"He reacted to Tech and me when we were on the way here," Crosshair murmurs. Hunter had flinched when Tech spoke, explaining their mission to Kaller, and he's willing to bet that it wasn't because of the words so much as because of Tech's voice. But why? And why is he so… tense around him? Hunter might be pretending well, but Crosshair has still noticed, the small sidelong looks, the tenseness in his shoulders when Crosshair is close. Why? He's more confused than he is hurt because he has no idea what could suddenly have changed. Everything was fine only one rotation ago.

"I noticed," Echo answers, and Wrecker nods, unusually solemn.

"What'll we do?" Wrecker queries, his voice a little louder than theirs, probably enough for Hunter to pick up, and Crosshair shifts, throwing a look towards the cockpit, trying to catch a glimpse of their leader. He can just make out the back of Hunter's head – the rest of him is being blocked by his seat, so Crosshair can't really tell how he reacted to those words, if at all.

"I'll try talking to him," Echo decides, "See if he'll tell me anything. When… He responded best to me earlier."

"There's also the mystery of this… 'Omega'," Crosshair adds, sticking a toothpick in his mouth and nibbling on the end. Whoever it is, it's obvious that they're someone important to Hunter.

Echo hums. "I'll let you know what I find out."

**w**

Hunter knows that his brothers are talking about him, but he can't be too bothered by it, not when he's internally panicking over going back to Kamino. He hasn't been there since its destruction, and he knows that the memories which will be evoked when they arrive will be far from pleasant. For all that Kamino was their home, it was also the place where they lost Crosshair, and Hunter won't be able to see it without remembering the pain and loss.

Once they make the jump to hyperspace, he leans back in the seat, staring at the white and blue swirls outside the viewport, recalling the awe in Omega's eyes when she saw it for the first time. He can't avoid the others forever, and it won't be long before they come and start asking questions. Best to just get it over with.

He feels caught in the spotlight as all eyes follow him as he drops onto his rack, leaning back against the wall and pointedly avoiding their gazes. He doesn't even know how to start, much less where to start. How much can he safely tell them without endangering Omega or Rex or… themselves, even?

None of them seem certain how to broach the subject either, so they just sit there in a silence that feels oppressive, while Hunter sneaks glances at them, eyes lingering on Crosshair the most. It was Crosshair who they lost, Crosshair who chose to walk away. Even if they ended up on opposite sides, Hunter still looks at him and yearns. Maybe he doesn't understand what went wrong and when, but that doesn't make him miss Crosshair any less.

"I haven't disappeared since the last thirteen times you've looked at me," Crosshair drawls finally, and Hunter freezes, eyes instantly darting away. He knew Crosshair noticed the lingering glances; he just hadn't expected to be called out on it so unexpectedly.

Wrecker shifts and sits forward, worried gaze on Hunter, and somehow, that seems to break the stillness that's settled, as if they've suddenly been given permission to speak up and voice what's been on all of their minds.

"Are you – uh… okay, Sarge?" Wrecker questions. It's tentative, uncertain, and Hunter doesn't have the heart to snap at him, like he would have if someone else had asked. I lost Omega. I failed you. All of you. I got Tech killed. Of course, I'm not okay.

"Coping," he answers, waving a hand. Coping was all the three of them did in the days after… after. It's strange to look at this past Wrecker and see how different he is, how much younger and more immature. But he's freer, too, lighter, less burdened by responsibilities and loss. Without Wrecker, Hunter doesn't know what he would have done. Wrecker has never been afraid to speak his mind or show emotion – he doesn't have the shame or self-consciousness that the rest of them had trained into them.

"Care to elaborate what's going on?" asks Echo. He's sitting on the edge of one of Tech's crates, one shoulder pressed against the wall.

"I… I can't tell you everything," Hunter says, his eyes flicking to Crosshair without even meaning to.

Crosshair twitches, flicking the toothpick around in his mouth. "You don't trust me." The words are incredulous, the faintest undertone of hurt in them, and Hunter flinches back. It's true. He doesn't. He can't, and he hates that. He doesn't even know if he could get himself to sleep right now, while Crosshair is in the room.

Maybe, he realizes suddenly, feeling nauseous, that's what woke him up in the first place. Crosshair's voice. He heard his brother, and his brain registered a threat, urging him to wake up. Kriff. This is such a mess, and he has no idea how to begin going about fixing it.

He wants to deny Crosshair's words, but how? He can't explain everything without risking everyone. But he has to say something. "It wasn't a dream," he blurts out, shaking his head. "It – I can't explain it. I…" We broke, he wants to say, We fell apart. I wasn't strong enough to keep us all together and safe.

Crosshair's eyes narrow, assessing, thoughtful – Hunter can see it out of his peripheral vision, just as he can hear the sniper's slightly elevated heartrate, a telltale sign that he's mildly distressed, or more accurately, hurt. Wrecker frowns, confused. Echo leans forward, crossing his scomp arm over his chest. Tech studies him with a calculating gaze.

It's Crosshair, though, who breaks the stillness again. "You mentioned someone named Omega."

His breath catches in his lungs, and he swallows hard. Of all the questions Crosshair, or any of them, could have asked, this was not one Hunter had even remotely expected. He should have, though, but he didn't, so it catches him off guard. Majorly.

He doesn't answer. He doesn't know how, doesn't know if it's even possible for him to explain how much Omega came to mean to all of them, how much it gutted them when they lost her. After failing to protect her so many times, one would think that they would have learned how to succeed. Apparently not.

Tears burn at his eyes, but he doesn't let them fall through sheer willpower, forcing them away, hoping desperately that Crosshair won't notice – what a futile wish; Crosshair notices everything.

"If it was not a dream, what was it?" Tech prompts with a strange amount of gentleness as he adjusts his goggles. "There are records of Jedi having had visions, but you are no Jedi, and nor are you Force sensitive."

Can he really tell them? But at the same time, does it matter if he doesn't? He can't explain details without shattering again, but… at least he can offer them this much. "I… don't think it was a vision," he replies quietly, flexing his hands and lowering his head, staring fixedly at the floor. He can't look at them right now, these shadows of the past, his brothers who haven't been through half the loss and grief he has – and hopefully, who never will. "It… I lived it," he says, a little desperately, "I lived it. It was real to me. I – I can't –" do this. He chokes on the words, pushing off the bunk and going to the gunner's mount, climbing the ladder, and settling on the floor, staring out the viewport at the passing blur of hyperspace.

This was Omega's room. It – it is her room, even if it doesn't look like it did in his memories. It's somehow soothing to be here, surrounded by nothing but durasteel walls and memories that are more bittersweet than they are anything else. "I'll save you this time, Omega," he whispers, so quietly that he doesn't even hear himself. "I'll protect you. I promise." In the back of his mind, a voice laughs at him, reminding him not to make promises that he can't keep.

He knows the others are conferring about him, that they're worrying, but right now, he just needs time to himself, to pull himself back together and keep moving. He's never needed it before, not like he does now. Normally, he surrounds himself with his brothers when it happens, needing to feel their solid, steady presences at his side. It's always been Crosshair – and later, Echo – who went off alone when struggling. He never understood that need until now.

They don't come after him, probably thanks to Echo, he imagines, since Tech undoubtedly wants nothing more than to ask him questions. If he tries, though, Hunter will probably cry. He can't talk to Tech right now, without seeing vividly in his mind's eye what happened.

It must be at least an hour before Hunter hears footsteps approaching the gunner's mount. He doesn't need to look to know it's Echo – he can tell from the slightly heavier thumps of his metal feet against the floor. Echo leans against the ladder, just standing there, and Hunter finally turns his head away from the viewport, suddenly acutely aware of how he's sitting on the floor, back pressed against the wall, knees pulled up slightly. It was an unconscious position of self-preservation, not one he sits in often. The last time he sat like this was – it was when he was captured after Daro. The fear then had been choking him, and all he could think on the way was will Crosshair really torture me.

He's afraid now, too, though he's loath to admit it, but for totally different reasons.

"What happened?" Echo asks quietly. There is no judgment in his brown eyes, and Hunter knows that he just wants to understand. And this is Echo.

After everything began to come undone, he'd found himself looking to Echo more and more. He'd become so uncertain of himself and of his own leadership, that it helped him to look at his ori'vod for some sort of approval. And Echo is also an ARC trooper. He received intensive training, and he's fought in the war so much longer than they did.

Hunter trusts Echo with anything, everything, maybe even this, no matter how small of an explanation it will have to be.

"We lost," he answers dully, closing his eyes and sighing heavily. His hair falls forward when he lowers his head, and he instinctively presses back against the wall harder. He's trying to hide here – he is hiding here, and there's no use denying it.

Echo's brow furrows. "Lost… what?" he queries cautiously, almost as if he dreads the answer.

Half of us, the answer comes unbidden, but Hunter holds it back. We lost the most important parts of ourselves. "What didn't we lose?" he mutters bitterly, a broken half-laugh, half-sob escaping from him. Nothing can rival the gutted feeling of raw emptiness that they'd all felt after losing Omega. When he looked at Echo and Wrecker, afterwards, he'd seen how empty and dead their eyes were, and he knew how his own reflected it. They lost, all of them.

"That bad?" Echo probes lightly.

"More than you know," Hunter murmurs. He's exhausted, drained, but he doesn't think he can sleep. His body is too tense, and he's far too wound up for that.

Echo hums, reaching up to touch Hunter's thigh – probably he would have gone for shoulder if he could have reached that high. "You can talk to us," he says again, repeating the offer from earlier, and then, "What can we do now?"

"I… haven't thought about it," he admits, laying his hand over Echo's, desperate for the contact, for how it grounds him in the here and now. "We…" need to get Omega and get out. That's it. That's all he's thought about, in a loop, since this all began. Get Omega. Get out. Keep everyone together. Probably, he should try to clear his thoughts enough to come up with a viable plan or ten for the hows. … Probably, he should talk to Tech about the chips, see if they can find a way to get them out on Kamino.

Or not.

Thinking back, he doesn't remember them having been on Kamino for long, and certainly not long enough to undergo such a major operation on all of them. Bracca then? Not ideal, not with the memories searing the edges of his mind, but they can make it work if they must.

"The galaxy as we – you knew it is gone," Hunter continues, eyes flickering away from Echo's to stare at the wall in front of him. "All we can do is… survive." Hide. Escape. Settle down. That's what they need to do. It's his job to protect his squad, no matter what, and that's what he'll do, even if they make it very hard.

Hunter catches something flicker through Echo's gaze when he looks back at him. Uncertainty. Disbelief. Anger. Always anger. Sometimes, he wonders what Echo used to be like before… the Citadel, before his injuries. Now, he's so angry all the time, a violent whirling rage vibrating under his skin, just waiting for the right chance to be unleashed.

"What about the war? The Republic? What happened to it all?" Echo demands. For him, it's always been about something bigger.

I understand why you're doing this… but when will it be enough? Hunter had asked Echo when he came to Pabu to ask for their help.

Echo always had to fight. He could never seem to stop fighting, and Hunter doesn't know where it came from, if it's from his feelings of responsibility over being used against the Republic, if it was something that was always there, if it was something that he learned when he was with the regs, if it's because of how much he lost, because of Fives. Echo doesn't talk about Fives much, but they know a little, and they know enough to know that a part of Echo died when he learned that his batchmate – twin? – was gone. Rex confided, once, briefly, that Echo and Fives were inseparable. Losing Fives changed him.

… Losing Crosshair changed them. And now, Hunter thinks he can understand that bone-deep anger that Echo feels, because while he is not nearly as prone to violent displays of emotion like the others, save Tech, he still feels it, that white-hot, helpless rage burning through his blood, demanding some sort of recompense for the agony of losing Crosshair and Tech. Of losing Omega. He promised her they'd keep her safe, and look how that turned out?

"The war ended," Hunter answers, trying and failing to shake away his thoughts, "The Republic… became an empire. We ran, tried to run. It went well… until it didn't. We were… trying to piece something back together, and then…" He shrugs, "I ended up here."

"Empire?" Echo splutters, his hand tightening on Hunter's leg. He can feel Echo's fingers flexing under his own. "How did that happen? Why did we run?"

"We were sent on a mission, ordered to gun down civilians," Hunter answers. "We weren't exactly thrilled with it." Well, most of them hadn't been.

He can still remember his own horrified, "What's wrong with you?" when Crosshair had insisted that they go through with it, and the scathing, "Me? I'm following orders." as if that was the most important thing to them now, more important than doing the right thing.

"We were – what?" Echo exclaims, aghast, and with a sinking dread, Hunter begins to realize what he'll have to do. "Why?"

It sounds so unreal, that they could be sent to do something so horrible, but it happened. It happened, and it will happen again. Hunter will have to let it happen again. He won't be able to take Omega and run with his squad as soon as they arrive. If they don't go to Onderon, the others won't see what the Empire is capable of, what it stands for. That would change too much, and possibly for the worse.

There's only one solution: they need to go to Onderon. From there, they can flee.

"You'll understand soon enough," Hunter offers grimly, patting Echo's hand. This is the only option he sees. He can only hope that he won't regret it dearly.

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