Work Text:
There's a certain detachment behind the scope of a sniper rifle. Crosshair is both intimate with, and hundreds of meters away from his targets. He usually likes the paradoxical nature of this.
Usually.
The members of Clone Force 99 have been on the receiving end of his scope many times over the past few months. Tracking is easier when he knows the habits and playbook of every single one of them. Crosshair can accurately predict what decisions they'll make, the places they go, and what they'll do in confrontations. Unfortunately, his brothers know him just as well, which is the only reason they have managed to evade him on numerous occasions.
For the first time, Crosshair is almost positive he's gained the upper hand. He stares through his scope and tracks Tech as he walks through the Ord Mantell marketplace with the kid they replaced him with.
His sneer deepens. His finger is not touching the sensitive trigger of his 773 Firepuncher, but it twitches against the safety anyway. This is not meant to be an execution, just a stakeout. He leans away from the scope, squeezing his eyes shut and letting out a deep breath in hopes it will alleviate the promise of a headache pulsing in his temple. It's been a long day of scouring the city, but he's closer than he's ever been now. All he needs is to wait for Tech to lead him back to the others, and then he can make his—
Sudden, quick movement catches Crosshair's eye, and he readjusts the scope just in time to see a blur of red, gray, and white, and then the scientist crumbles to the ground. Crosshair blinks in surprise— he hadn't looked away more than a moment or so, but suddenly he's lost visual of both Tech and the kid.
"Kriffing hell," he mutters under his breath, snapping up the stand of his rifle and jumping to his feet. The sniper moves from his hole on the top floor of an abandoned factory building to the roof. His position is compromised, but his entire op will quickly crumble if he lets Tech and the other traitors get away.
From this angle, he finds Tech in his scope again. Lying still— very still— in the gutter of a quiet street. The kid is gone—and so is whoever ruined my operation.
Anger seethes through him. All this time— all the dead ends he hit— all the close-but-close-isn't-good enough calls he had to report to his commander boil to the surface. They turned against orders, betrayed the very institution that took care of them, and now when the time has come for me to have my retribution, someone else has ruined my weeks of planning.
Crosshair stews on this the entire way out of the building and into the streets. His legs carry him at a fervent pace he attributes to the intense level of pissed off he is right now.
A dead traitor is a good traitor, his mind chimes.
Yet when he reaches the street he'd been looking at through his scope, Crosshair misses the distance he once had. Nobody seems to have come across the writhing, groaning body. Or if they have, they ignored his pained gasps and desperate grabbing for the commlink that lies just out of Tech's reach.
From this proximity, Crosshair can see a dark splotch slowly seeping through the genius' blacks. The edges of his armor on the right side of his abdomen now sport a crimson red outline atop the scorch mark from a blaster.
Blasters don't usually cause this much blood, he observes passively, his gait growing slower and shorter the closer he gets. Vibroblades do, though. Sure enough, the blaster mark seems to have been entirely absorbed into Tech's armor. It will cause a bruise at worst. It's the deep slash where his chest plate ends that is the origin of the puddle of blood. Evidently, whoever attacked them decided to finish him off at close quarters.
Another surge of anger. This one... a little different. This one is a pinprick deep within the depths of his mind that continues to intensify. A dead traitor is a— wounded traitor. Where are the rest of them? Why haven't they come yet?
His headache flares. Crosshair blinks through the pain.
There's still time to interrogate the traitor before he bleeds out.
The sniper approaches the scientist and steps around him to kick the commlink away from his reach.
"You can call your squad once you answer my questions," he says as he turns on his heel. His gaze falls to the face of the traitor he used to call his brother, and Crosshair's headache explodes.
His vision blurs and he staggers backward a little in surprise. Every time he looks at the goggled scientist, the pain intensifies. Get information—
He's pale... so pale—
He's a traitor—
He's hurt! Tech is—
A criminal! An enemy of the Empire that needs to be—
—cared for. Tech is my—
—traitor—
—batchmate—
—dying—
—brother—
Crosshair grinds his teeth together as the headache makes his vision go white.
And then he looks at Tech. How he's staring up at Crosshair, his eyes already fluttering shut from the blood loss, but fighting. Tech was always a fighter, but even he can't argue his way out of biology. His usually-expressive eyes aren't wide and inquisitive as he remembers, and that makes his stomach drop to his feet.
Crosshair's anger remains, still focused on the same person who ruined his op, but in a different way. His furious annoyance is now a carnal instinct to protect, and Crosshair drops to his knee beside Tech, voice low and severe as his eyes scan the horizon.
"Who did this to you?"
Tech's eyes are barely able to focus on him, but he manages to lock gazes with the sniper. To Crosshair's surprise, Tech reaches his blood-stained hand out to him.
"Cross..." he rasps. His voice has a distinct gurgling sound to it that makes Crosshair's already racing heart skip. Before he can think about what he's doing he grabs the first aid kit from his belt.
"It's going to be okay, Tech," he whispers, applying the bacta before stretching a pressure bandage across the gash in his side. The wound is deep but miraculously didn't hit any vital organs. So long as the bleeding stops...
"B'nty... hunt'r," Tech manages through his shallow breaths. His body has relaxed in Crosshair's presence, and he can't understand why. He was literally sitting atop the building a few blocks over watching Tech through the lines of his scope. He's been hunting them for weeks now, and... Tech trusts him?
How insipid of him to trust me--
--Tech isn't stupid he's--
--naïve. The reason him and the others will get caught if he keeps up this--
--hope. Tech is hoping for the best because that's what he sees in me.
The sniper grimaces, focusing on wrapping the bandage the way Tech taught him.
I don't deserve his trust, Crosshair thinks, making his headache surge. He ignores it.
"A bounty hunter did this?"
Tech confirms with a slight nod to his head. Crosshair frowns, and pulls the one hypo he has on him, and injects his brother in the neck with the pain reliever. Tech sighs in relief upon the immediate effects of the medicine, his eyes finally going wide again.
"Cross? You— you—"
"They're after the kid, aren't they?" Crosshair cuts Tech off before his brother can say anything he'll regret. He stands back up and puts distance between them.
Tech stares at him incredulously, only able to prop himself up on his elbow.
"I fought him. She ran... Do not know... I do not know if..." Tech's face is already screwing up with pain. That hypo isn't going to work for long. Crosshair shifts from foot to foot nervously until his heel hits something hard.
The commlink.
He swoops down to pick it up, glancing between it and Tech's pale figure. He's already collapsed back down to lying flat on his back, the pressure bandage only slowing the injury. Not hitting any vital organs means nothing if he bleeds out first. He needs help. Probably a med center at this point...
Pain prickles up his spine and curls around the base of his neck as Crosshair inputs Tech's passcode and enters the emergency ping. There's an immediate confirmation from Hunter, and Wrecker's voice is suddenly crackling through the receiver.
"Tech? Tech what's going on?" the brawler sounds breathless. "Omega said you were attacked-- we're coming, buddy."
So the brat did get away. He's not sure if he's satisfied by that information because it means his competition failed or because a child wasn't kidnapped for some petty bounty.
The sniper walks back to Tech and places the commlink next to his face. Tech stares at him, lifting his hand again. Crosshair realizes he's not reaching for him, but weakly performing a hand signal.
Stay.
For the first time in months, Crosshair's mind feels clear. He looks at Tech and sees him as his brother and batch mate and best friend. Though the betrayal of his squad still lingers in his mind, it isn't at the forefront for once. Crosshair has so many questions, so many conflicting thoughts— he wants to stay, but...
They left you. Replaced you with the kid. Haven't tried once to get you back.
Crosshair shakes his head. He can't stay. He won't come crawling back to them. He serves the Empire now. Had his brothers not deserted and thrown away everything they had, maybe they could still be just that-- a family.
He would have liked that.
"Typical of you all to chose a hellhole like Ord Mantell," Crosshair rolls his eyes, and it is the last thing he says to Tech before walking away from him with long strides.
He should go back to his ship and flee before the others find him, but Crosshair has business to attend to first. He picks a building with a vantage point where he can watch the arrival of his brothers to carefully carry Tech away. Then he turns back to the safety of his scope and begins searching for the damned bounty hunter that got in his way.