Chapter 2 - 'Cause Now That They're Gone

He's awoken by distant yelling.

Hunter blinks at the wall, trying to force his mind back into consciousness – he can't remember the last time he slept so deeply. It's ridiculous. He's in prison. He should be alert. He'd blame having bit Crosshair, but then he remembers the rawness on his gums and never mind. They still hurt.

"Let me go!" a voice is yelling in the hall, and he rolls over, sitting up. "My master is going to find me, and when he does, he'll burn this entire place and gut you like a Rokaria'n dirt fish! You have no right to do this. I'm more Imperial than you are, sleemo!" Hunter knows that word – Echo uses it all the time. He picked it up from his general, apparently. It's a Tatooinian word.

There's a thump and a crash, but the ray shield comes down and two regs throw someone inside.

She's a Togruta, a foot shorter than him, and probably half his width. Her skin is a familiar orange. She jolts upright, whipping around with a furious snarl-growl in her throat, bearing her fangs. They look longer than Hunter's own were. Sharper.

She slams a red-gloved hand on the ray shield. It ripples, holding strong and repelling her. She kicks the floor, stamping her boot on the duracrete.

She's feral.

Hunter has seen that before. Everyone has. There's nothing more terrifying than a feral vampire. They're something out of nightmares. He doesn't know what causes it, but their eyes go a terrifying, unnatural gold, and they lose all sense of reasoning. They're, well, feral, and they lose their minds completely. The only way to stop them is to put them down, and it happened with a number of regs on Kamino.

She hisses at the shield, turning back.

Hunter backs away a little, heart pounding. They locked him up in here with a feral vampire? Why? What do they want?

Her eyes glitter gold when she looks up at him, the blood vessels in her eyes sort of just... bright. Dilated or whatever word Tech would use.

Her montrals are striped white and blue. There's two diamond-shaped white marks on her forehead, another shaping something vaguely diamond-shaped in the center, and... some twisted markings on her cheeks. But Hunter knows those marks. He's seen her before. He would recognize her anywhere. Any clone would.

Ahsoka Tano.

All the clones know about her and her general. She's close with them. Cares about them. Is one of the only people who does.

She was Echo's commander.

And she's feral.

Hunter takes a half-step back from her, heartbeat skyrocketing.

Breathe. Focus. In. Out.

He does this all the time.

He's also never had a feral vampire unleashed on him before. They're basically the same as animals, just more vicious and dangerous, and he doesn't have a way to defend himself.

She shudders, shaking her head and licking her lips, eyes bright and sharp. That's the same look Crosshair had yesterday before he bit Hunter. "You're a clone," she says.

He didn't know feral vampires could talk. "Commander?" he asks, and he sounds unreasonably faint. He's seen holos of her. He knows her face. The markings are unmistakable.

"You're right about that," she gripes, hand on her hip, "I was an Imperial commander. Before they demoted me." She scowls at his – their? – bunk.

"I thought the Jedi were all dead."

She glares, snarling and bearing her fangs. "Don't call me a Jedi!"

Okay. Yeah. Don't make her angry, not that Hunter even knows what he did to antagonize her. She was a Jedi, so... what? This makes no more sense than Crosshair randomly turning on and trynna kill them. He doesn't want to think about Crosshair at all.

Primary objective: escape.

Start: don't get mauled by an angry vampire.

The togruta glowers at him a moment before stomping to the bunk and throwing herself onto the edge with a huff. "My master is gonna burn this place to the ground," she announces.

He needs information. To know if he can trust her, or if he's in this alone. "If you're Imperial, why are you here?" he moves slowly to sit nearby her, but he doesn't know if it's a good idea.

She scowls, crossing her arms. "Palpatine wants my master for something. Can't have me in the way."

But why was she Imperial? He thought all the Jedi were dead, and why would she, of all people, side with the ones who killed them? None of this makes sense.

"Anakin's gonna find us, but I'm not sitting around waiting for him to show up," she says, straightening – her silka bead string swings as she looks up at him. There's a red and gold beads at the bottom, that look of some sort of significance, but it's not like Hunter knows anything about Jedi.

"You're planning on breaking out?" Hunter asks, looking at her.

She scoffs. "Of course. Call me Ahsoka. What's your name?"

She doesn't sound so bad, even if she's feral. The gold in her eyes has dimmed the slightest bit, though there's still a sharp hunger in it. Hunter shifts back a little uncomfortably. She's a nat-born, and a Jedi, and she's – she's his superior. He doesn't know if he's supposed to call her Commander still or not. She'd probably take it as an insult right now though.

"Hunter," he answers.

"So, what're you in here for?"

He sighs. The air is too tense, and it's eating at him. He keeps expecting her to try to strangle him or something equally violent. "Desertion."

For disobeying orders, he wants to say. For doing the only thing that makes me special.

"Ohhhhh," she says, like that explains everything. He expects her to lash out, to – something, but she doesn't. "What do we have to work with? You got anything?"

"I didn't see much on the way in," he confesses. His jaw still aches. He remembers Crosshair touching him. He misses his warmth, and he hates that. He shouldn't miss Crosshair. He just wishes he'd said something else to him before he walked out. There's nothing he has to offer Crosshair, though.

He needs to get back to his squad. Echo. Tech. Wrecker. The kid.

She growls softly, low in the back of her throat, but it's still enough to make him half certain he's about to get pounced. "Okay, fine. Let's see what we have in here." She looks from the ray shield to the semi-fresher thing and gasps. "Oh, look! They're so nice! They actually gave us a 'fresher!"

Hunter is gonna just assume that was completely sarcastic.

Ahsoka rolls her shoulders, standing and prowling over the ray shield.

"Can you deactivate it from the inside?" Hunter asks – his first guess on escape is definitely Jedi nonsense.

She huffs. "Nope. The controls are blocked with silver. I can't touch 'em."

Jedi are affected by that, too? Hunter didn't know that. "That complicates things. But even if we make it out of the cell, how do we know where the hangar is?"

"I'm sure we can figure it out. What rank were you?" She turns back to look up at him, skinny arms crossed over her chest. She looks sullen, maybe scared, and he feels like he should maybe do something to make her relax, which is ridiculous when she's his superior and she's older than him, but he still feels bad.

"Sergeant," he answers slowly, "We're commandos, but our squad's different."

She blinks at him, then her face lights up. "You're the 99's? I heard of you from my sister."

"What'd she say?" Hunter asks., mildly uncomfortable by her elation, but still curious.

"You're the best idiots she's ever known."

"What does that mean?"

Ahsoka spreads her hands in an I-am-so-lost gesture, which is fair enough.

Hunter doesn't want to think about that mission at all though. Three days. It was three rotations, and –

No. Not now.

For a few minutes, they sit in silence, and a bit of Hunter's tension fades away. He doesn't trust her, not by any means, but he knows who she was. Maybe the regs massively exaggerated her skills, or her kindness, but they always take whatever they can get. Nat-borns aren't just nice to them. Not even Jedi.

"We gotta get the – the shield," the Commander mutters, shifting and squirming, eyes jumping to Hunter every two seconds. "Ugh."

"Something wrong?" Hunter queries.

"I want to eat you," she says seriously, "You smell amazing." She licks her lips again, groaning and shifting back against the wall like shoving herself up against the duracrete is going to help something. She looks so uncomfortable.

That did nothing to ease his mind. He doesn't want to get bitten again.

Hunter can't think of anything, if he's being honest. There's no real way out of here. Not right now, anyway. Getting out of their cells would be ideal, yeah, but Hunter doesn't know any way out of the facility, anyway. He doesn't know where they are. They're in a forest, which could be either very good, or very bad. There's no filtration, so the atmosphere isn't toxic at least. Doesn't say for animals or plants, though.

"Heard that before," Hunter supplies finally, trying not to think about Crosshair's face on his neck, or the forceful warmth of his touch.

Ahsoka blows out a frustrated breath. "All we have is a 'fresher –" Which he is not using when she's around, mind her, and that will be a Very Long Wait, assuming she doesn't rip his throat out first. At least not when she keeps staring at him. Ugh. " – and a cot."

"We'd have to get to the controls," Hunter points out. "Hotwire them." Tech could do it. Wrecker could break through to it. If his brothers were here, it wouldn't be hard, and this would make sense.

"Oh, yeah, and how'd we get to them? I can't fit my hand through a ray shield. I'm not Anakin."

"If the wall wasn't too hard, Wrecker could make a hole for us," Hunter muses, "But he's not here." It's no use talking about. He doesn't even know why it slips out. "We'll have to wait until they take it down for meals."

Ahsoka scoffs. "You're my meal. They're not bringing us anything."

Ah, great. They're trying to keep her feral? Why? There's so much more going on. It... it'd be a guess, but Hunter's first thought is some sort of twisted experimentation. It's not like he knows, though. It'd be a guess.

How long are they going to be in here?

"What are they doing with us?" Hunter inquires.

"We're lab rats. Basically." Ahsoka's tapping in rhythm on her knee, legs crossed. "I have the wall hole covered. I'll need your blood, though."

Hunter's gut flips violently. She's asking to bite him, and that she's asking his permission is definitely a good thing, but he doesn't know her. It's not allowed, and he doesn't... like the proximity. Maybe the closeness is fine, this is a nat-born. She's a Jedi – uh, former Jedi. And ex-Imperial, too, apparently. He doesn't understand. Doesn't really matter. Just – right after Crosshair, he doesn't want to say yes.

"It gives us an energy boost," Ahsoka explains with a shrug, "It boosts our strength. Speed, too. Our Force-abilities get higher."

"I didn't know anyone did that," Hunter confesses.

"If you didn't, you'd be more feral than I am right now." She crosses her arms again, looking sullen.

He doesn't follow the connection. There's no relation to their annoying attraction for blood and going feral, is there? Yeah, he's heard the regs who go feral try to bite everyone they contact, but that doesn't mean they're strictly related. It doesn't really sound like there's another choice, though. He doesn't have any other ideas, though.

"Alright," Hunter sighs, clenching his hands. His heart is pounding. He doesn't want to agree, but he – they don't have a choice. He doesn't have a choice, and he has to get back home.

Her gold eyes light up and she's on him in a millisecond. Literally – she's sitting on one of his legs, her foot smashed against his hip in what's a guarantee to make her own sore for hours – why do people always sit so weirdly when they bite each other?

He's expecting her to go for his neck, but she reaches for his hand instead, pulling his glove off. "It's no different than when I've done this with all of my brothers," she mutters, digging one of her fangs into his wrist. The pain that sparks through it is sharp, and air catches in his lungs.

It's not the same as with Crosshair. It doesn't have the same instant calming. It doesn't feel of the same overwhelming rightness. She twists a little sideways, legs wrapping around his waist and curling against his chest. She's so small. A little heavier than he thought, but still light. She's twisted sideways, left lekku pressing against his chest and drawing his arm closer. It's not the most comfortable, but she's small and warm and it's... She's adorable.

"You've done this before?" Hunter asks. He sounds breathless. Doesn't know why.

Ahsoka tilts her head back slightly, purring faintly. "All the time. You all taste good."

Her right shoulder and arm are pressed against his chest now, curling herself around his arm as she keeps relentlessly stubbornly adorably sucking blood out of him. He's going to hope he hasn't lost too much over the past few days, because he's admittedly worried about it. There are reasons they're not supposed to do this. He should be fine, but...

He might not be. If he could ask Tech, that would be ideal. He can worry about that after he gets out.

Trying to do this alone is hard, or... maybe he's not so alone.

Hunter wraps his left arm over her shoulder, pressing her tighter and opting to try ignoring the way his mind is screaming in protest over snuggling with a commander nat-born whatever. She's so small though, not that he underestimates her abilities from that.

Feral vampires are dangerous no matter what size they are.

Ahsoka purrs at him again. The sound melts him entirely unfairly, and somehow his face ends up pressed against her montrals. They're fuzzy.

Ahsoka's feeding is a bit... more forceful than Crosshair's. Crosshair was more all snuggles and just waiting for the blood to flow. Ahsoka's is more persistent. She doesn't wait. She doesn't know him, though, so Hunter understands. Dragging it out would be weird. This is convenience, and it doesn't mean anything.

She lowers his hand from her face when she's done, still holding on and just resting in his arm. She seems comfortable.

"Thank you," she says finally, definitely more contented and less wild than earlier. "Hole time?"

She's also significantly less messy. Crosshair always gets it smeared all over his face somehow, and Ahsoka is unnaturally clean.

"Whenever you're ready." She's fuzzy and shaped all weird. Non-humans are weird. It's nice to be able to hold someone who's smaller than him for once in his life. His brothers have always been the same size until they were bigger. Well, Crosshair and Tech were half an inch shorter than him for about a month, but then they outgrew him by far, and Wrecker was always twice the size of a normal person.

"Mhm." Ahsoka climbs back off his lap, hands slowly sliding off his like she wouldn't let go faster even if her life depended on it.

Hunter has to pull away, though he misses the warmth instantly – the cell is freezing. Prisons are meant to be cold. His bodyglove does well at shielding him from that, but not everything.

Ahsoka glares at the shield again before punching the wall with an angry snarl.

...never mind that about being less angry?

It actually dents under her knuckles, no matter how tiny they are. Seems to be working, though. It takes a few more nicely placed punches before Ahsoka makes a nicely shaped hole through to the panel. "Can't make it deeper," she grumbles, "Or get to the other side. It's sufficiently Jedi-proofed. We'll need something else."

**w**

And that's how Ahsoka gets the brilliant idea of ripping half the pipes in the 'fresher out to drown the ray shield. How they're supposed to survive in a slowly flooding cell with electrified water is something they hardly considered on time. Basically, Ahsoka sticks herself to the wall and tries and fails to keep them both over the waterline.

It is not easy. Or ideal. By any means.

Hunter didn't quite expect to get stuck on the ceiling half the time, and being suspended mid-air is very disconcerting – thanks, Ahsoka – but at least it works?

Except the energy field beneath him is bright, and it's grating. It's like a bright light being shined in his eyes, and it hurts. He can get used to it like everybody does all senses, but that doesn't mean it feels nice. Well, at least it's constant, though he could certainly do without the steam flooding the room – the water's getting fried into gas, and he can't see the scratchy-scribbles Ahsoka made over the wall corner as she tried to calculate how fast their cell would flood, and if they'd have time before the next guard passed by.

It's cutting it tight, but they should make it. Hopefully.

If all goes well, they should be right on time, but be real.

Is still trying to get Ahsoka's "so all your brothers are good at math and you're not" out of his head from when they were discussing the calculation. It requires some physics nonsense that Hunter is very Not Good at. That's Tech's thing. He's the one who always does their calculations, and Hunter never had to learn those.

Crosshair's good at anything geometric, and whatever all he needs to be a sniper.

Wrecker all for explosives.

Hunter's good at many things, but not this. Not calculations. His calculatingness is about risks, not math. They're not numbers. It's never been what he needed, and having that so casually thrown in his face stings. Not that he wants to be better than his brothers, or even tries to be – they're a team. A unit.

Now one inseparably fractured and broken.

Crosshair's gone.

He can't afford to get distracted, though not thinking about it is getting harder and harder.

"Still not sure this is a good idea," Hunter grumbles, floating mid-air – this is very, very unpleasant, by the way. Ugh.

"Got a better idea?" Ahsoka grumbles, somehow stick-bracing herself half on the wall and half on the ceiling – he doesn't get the Jedi thing, but it's really not his concern as long as it gets him out. He has to get back home. The cell is rapidly flooding, but the steamed water is so strong. It's steamed over and hot and getting rapidly harder to breathe.

Basically, if it doesn't work, they're gonna have a very big problem. "There's no way out right now," Hunter points out. "Not that I know of." He needs to go, but he knows they have to wait. He's afraid to wait, but an attempted and failed escape guarantees making everything – worse. They learned that in training. It's strategy, and he knows not to try something he doesn't know will work.

Easy to say.

Hard to do when it's about going home.

Ahsoka hums. "So, stop complaining."

Yeah, he's doing all the whining for Wrecker when he's not even the one scared of heights. It's pathetic. Just – something's wrong and this is stupid and it's getting harder and harder to breathe.

He's just worried.

He could ask about her master, but he won't. He's just – worried about how long this Force-boost Ahsoka mentioned will work. Temporary isn't forever, and nor does he know anything about it.

Well, at least if it doesn't work, he's the only one here to be hurt. Except that Crosshair's here to hurt him, and that's a totally different thing he's not getting into.

The water is twisting and rolling with an electrified current, sparking and shifting and fluxing though Hunter knows he's the only one who can feel it. It's too strong and at least he's not in it.

The ray shield sparking into nonexistence is relatively explosive, and Hunter can't help thinking Wrecker would've liked to see it. He'd do anything to get back to them.

Ahsoka drops them both into the water before he can yell a warning at her to wait.

So, basically, they're spilled into the hall, and land very, very unceremoniously in the middle.

Water carries electric charges a lot better than he wishes it did, and the zap is enough to take his breath away, but it's fast. He's still dripping wet when he stands, no thanks to Ahsoka, who's picking herself up with a grumpy groan.

"Come on," she grumbles.

His head is throbbing from the stimuli onslaught. The shock wasn't too bad, but it still hurt. Hunter shakes it off though, like he always does, and they bolt.

**w**

The escape goes as escape-able as Hunter anticipated. Meaning, they fail. Or, Hunter fails. They make it all the way out, to the hangar, but only Ahsoka makes it aboard.

Hunter's recaptured and taken back inside, not before he watches the ship with his only hopes of escape disappearing into the clouds.

Ahsoka promised she'd get him out, but... she didn't. She lied. She left him.

He shouldn't feel nearly as betrayed as he does, but the sheer hopelessness is starting to grate on him. It feels like it sinks in for the first time in his life. For the first time in Hunter's life, he's a prisoner and he has no way or hopes of getting out. His brothers will come, but they don't know where to look, and the risk of them being captured is too high. He has to get home, and there's no way out.

He – he'll make it, because he has to, but the chances and hopes of it are low.

He's alone. Exactly where and what he's feared for so long and promised his brothers he would never let happen again. They got ripped apart, and that was because of him.

A strange sort of empty numbness settles over him, and Hunter's mind shuts down altogether.

He has to get back home.

Final Notes: Reviews are always appreciated! ^-^

Come hang out on Discord (delete spaces), discord . gg / nqSxuz2 or find us on tumblr at fanfictasia (our more serious blog which does have controversial posts on it; I won't be offended if you choose to block it, promise), and disastertriowriting (which is our fun blog with crack posts or incorrect SW quotes)

We've got a YT channel for tributes! (delete the spaces) youtube channel / UC_g1M5rSCxJUzQCRS29B6pA

ALSO: We have SW gift request forms for General, Anakin-Clones-centric, and Bad Batch fics. :D (delete spaces) bit . ly / CourtesyTrefflinFicRequests