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When Crosshair digs himself out of the snow, colder than he’s ever been – colder than 32 nights shivering on Kamino’s stormy, wrecked surface with almost no shelter, colder even than the mission to Kijimi during the war that iced over his scope and nearly took a few of Hunter’s fingers and did crack Tech’s lenses when he dinged the frames – the thrumming in his chest is frantic, but it isn’t about his own survival. Which is a novel feeling, these days.
Crosshair is severe and unyielding. Tech is an analyst by nature: he’s almost never wrong, and after thirteen cycles as a squad, he’s hardly wrong about this. It should have meant the chip didn’t work on Crosshair. Instead, it made it work better than it could have on any of his brothers, made all the worse when they put him under the enhancers. Crosshair is severe and unyielding, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, and that’s the weakness, that’s the chink in the stars-damned armor, because Crosshair remembers, through gritted teeth and a pounding migraine some days, that he used to be severe and unyielding in a way that was a two-fingered salute to their natborn superior officers, requisitioning things like toothpicks, things that didn’t matter, mouthing off and getting away with it because Crosshair could use a tenth of the ammunition a reg did to get twice the work done. They took his chip out after the disaster on Bracca, warped beyond use by the burn of the ion engine and hidden by the resulting scar tissue gnarled against his skull, but it didn’t change anything.
Crosshair cares. He cares deeply, like a blistering knife wound dragged crosswise through the small intestines. Even before Order 66, he was accustomed to rage, deep and seething and acrid in the back of his throat – after, made room in his belly for the sharp, lingering sting of betrayal. Crosshair isn’t unyielding out of apathy. He is not severe and biting because he feels neutrally about anything. Crosshair has always burned with feeling, and he never had to pick the fight to prove himself, because the regs and the Kaminoans and their trainers and the Separatists would always pick the fight for him. The chip flattened him out, cramping that rage into a small, vicious pellet and locking the targeting system in one direction only. And now without it…
It's not really that Crosshair feels neutrally or passionately about the Empire, in comparison to the Republic or otherwise. But Crosshair is severe and unyielding, and full of rage and flat inside. Empty. Order 66 pointed Crosshair in a direction, Tarkin locked it, and it doesn’t matter that the chip is gone now, has been for months. He is a tool, a weapon, and there’s no point dragging himself kicking and screaming out of that rut. He’s a 99, and Empire, Republic, natborn, reg, it doesn’t matter. He’s been scorned by the lot of them, and it didn’t matter because Crosshair was useful, efficient, cost-effective, a good soldier. Useful is all Crosshair has needed to be to prove himself superior: useful and full of simmering, blank-faced rage just waiting to be unleashed.
Useful, it seems, is not going to save them this time.
The avalanche has buried everything. Crosshair doesn’t feel the least bit guilty for bringing it down on the raider’s camp, even on accident, smothering any potential survivors. It’s buried the crates of cargo for the TK troopers too, their replacements, the best of which in Crosshair’s experience barely scrape an average trooper’s capabilities but are somehow still the more cost-effective choice, because like idiots they’re lining up to die, no brainwashing required. It’s buried Crosshair effectively too, awash in an ironic sea of white, gasping as he hauls himself to the surface in churning, frantic strokes. Suffocation is just as high a risk after an avalanche as any injuries from blunt force trauma, and he’s not frantic about his own life, but he’s not going to let the weight press into his lungs until they’re as flat inside as the rest of him.
Crosshair’s shoulder smarts where insulated plastoid collided with his. Mayday is nowhere to be seen.
This isn’t the first time Crosshair’s had his skin saved by a reg. Clone Force 99 hadn’t worked with other squads often – they didn’t play well with others back then, and in his own way, Crosshair supposes he still doesn’t, though it looks very different now, under a guise of perfect, icy obedience – but every once in a while they’d get a mission that put them under a Marshal Commander, and Crosshair is petty, but he’s not so petty as to pretend Commanders Bly or Cody never sniped a droid out from under him that might have gotten a lucky shot in while he was otherwise preoccupied. This is different. He can feel in his whole body not just the crushing weight of being hit by a wall of frozen water at speed, but hands shoving him out of the way so that wall didn’t knock Crosshair into the boulders in its path, a shoulder checking hard into his own. Crosshair isn’t used to anyone outside his squad taking hits for him. It’s not usually relevant even with them; it’s not Crosshair’s job to be in the fray. The fact that Mayday hadn’t even had to think about it…Crosshair isn’t capable of feeling neutrally about anything. The chip might have leveled him, scouring into a clean slate of ice, but ice can burn just as hot as fire, when applied to bare skin, and Crosshair’s been thawing anyway, these last few months, slowly and painfully and with a series of worsening migraines. This is…something else.
And whatever that something is, it makes his movements more than a little frantic as he struggles through the resettled snow, deep and thick and stinging unbearably in the gaps between his armor plates. His blacks are thermoregulating to a degree, but his plastoid isn’t tundra gear. Freezing to death is a very real possibility. It’s not how Crosshair intends to go. And if the Commander is still alive, it’s not how Crosshair intends to let him go either. Mayday made it a year at this kriffing outpost, even after it killed his entire squad. Crosshair is not letting a little snow be the man’s cause of death.
Especially not snow that Crosshair brought down on them. Not after Mayday saved him once already.
He starts digging when he finds the cluster of boulders, allowing himself to be carried by the rote of mission objective, the same sharp-eyed focus that allowed him to kill his entire Elite Squad in spite of their shared allegiance to the Empire, when the mission in his eyes was bring the superior soldiers – his brothers – back home at any cost. He has to rely on muscle memory, on rigid script, because if he thinks about it he’ll panic, and Crosshair doesn’t do panic. Fear is weakness, is the sign of a mind that hasn’t worked out a better angle. The clutching in his chest is absolutely not fear.
Crosshair is no field medic. That was one of Tech’s roles, alongside pilot, slicer, and insufferable know-it-all, and mother hen Hunter usually took the role if Tech was otherwise occupied. Crosshair can dress a blaster burn, even splint a bone if he has to, but if Mayday has any brain trauma from colliding with the stone, there’s nothing Crosshair can do. Even if he hauled Mayday’s deadweight back to base, odds are low he’d survive. And after a year of no resupply drops, who knows if they’d even have the medical equipment there to save him. Who knows if the natborn officers would even try to help.
When Crosshair doesn’t uncover Mayday dashed against the rocks, the only thing stronger than his flint-sharp relief is the fierce determination to find him.
It takes several agonizing minutes. Crosshair fans out at his best guess on angle of trajectory, moving as swiftly as the heavy snowdrifts and his numb fingers will allow. Suffocation will take minutes, hypothermia less than half an hour to set in at these temperatures. All this will be pointless if he doesn’t find Mayday fast. He has to find him. Crosshair doesn’t do debts any more than he does fear. He can’t owe a dead man. He can’t-
When his frantically digging hands hit solid plastoid, his first instinct is that carefully coiled fury, preset and directionless with the cracks in the ice. The helmet is unfamiliar, and rage lances through Crosshair’s thundering ribcage, white-hot in his skull, flashing to the assumption that it’s one of those awful new TK helmets – the new visor design is a mess, completely vision-impairing, bound to mess up their aim at best and get them killed half-blind at worst. Then Crosshair’s vision catches up against the rage and the snow blindness, and he recognizes the design, the old style of Phase II snow trooper gear, ragged with use and supplemented with improvised wrapping to fix the wear and tear. There’s a stir, a sound under the roaring wind like a wheeze, and Crosshair nearly hurls the helmet in his haste to drop it, scrambling to reveal Mayday’s pained face, hurriedly scraping pounds of snow off his chest and only breathing himself when he sees Mayday inhale sharply, sucking in lungfuls of oxygen and coughing out frozen puffs of air into the dark night. Crosshair is silent, save for his own exerted panting, face set and hard as he switches to digging out equally weighed-down limbs. Mayday is a little louder, groaning as he shifts with the newfound freedom of movement. He slurs out, “Crosshair?”
“Shut up,” Crosshair mumbles. His chest isn’t empty for the first time in a long time, but the gut-churning feeling makes him nauseated, worse than what he had to tear out and tamp down for 32 rotations on Kamino, when he was sure someone would come for him and shredding himself over not-wishing who it might be. He grits out, “Don’t waste your breath.”
Mayday sits up – too fast, Crosshair thinks, judging by the way he goes cross-eyed briefly, face screwing up in pain. Still with eyes squinted shut, he shakes himself, and Crosshair rocks back on his heels enough to let the Commander knock the remainder of the snow from his arms before his voice goes a little clipped. “Report.”
Crosshair snorts, but then, Mayday does outrank him, and he doesn’t say it snottily, like the natborns Crosshair’s been answering to these last few months. He says it like a clone, like it means, “Tell me what happened, because I’ve taken a knock to the head and you’re the one who actually knows.” And, well. Crosshair has recently become very good at following orders.
“You were stupid,” he says bluntly. “You calculated wrong.”
“Oh?” Mayday squints at him, blurry in the low light, but visible enough to make out the smirk barely ticking into his mouth. Crosshair’s getting real familiar with that expression, and he hates it, just a little. “How’d you come to that conclusion?” Mayday asks. Is he still slurring his words? Maybe there is a concussion. Crosshair should check his pupils, to be safe. The conclusion should be obvious, and that could mean head wound, could mean impairment.
Crosshair is a rank-and-file commando 99. Mayday is a Commander. Regs and 99s don’t do each other favors, and they’re probably worth about the same amount to the Empire, even if neither command experience nor efficiency seems to count for all that much these days. Crosshair brought the avalanche down on them, the aftershock of an explosion he caused, and he probably wouldn’t have put his own body on the line to get Mayday out of the way, if their positions had been reversed. His gut twists – guilt, maybe? Another novel feeling for today. He swallows it down, and lets his face pull automatically towards a disapproving scowl. It’s an easy expression to wear, even before he was scraped clean and angry.
“You pushed me out of the way,” he says, like that says it all. “You’re lucky you missed the rocks yourself, or you really would be deadweight.”
Mayday huffs a breathless laugh. “Lucky you, you mean.”
He’s moving easily, his chest rising and falling in panting heaves, but without making any more concerning wheezing sounds, so there’s probably no internal bleeding. He doesn’t say anything about fault or blame, just keeps grinning that small, slightly crooked, sharing kind of smile that makes Crosshair’s skin itch with that something he’s not prepared to analyze while they’re stuck here. Maybe not ever. Mayday doesn’t seem to move his face much, only twitches and crooks of the mouth, of the eyebrows, but the breadth of emotion he can convey with those micro-expressions might as well have him shouting, and looking at him head-on only reminds Crosshair of how it used to be, sharing flashes of a glance across a battlefield, having whole conversations with only the set of one’s shoulders or the tilt of a helmeted head. Crosshair ignores him instead, surveying for their equipment.
His helmet is nowhere to be seen. Pity. His rangefinder is a lot handier than just having his scope, especially without more than a couple of glowrods in this darkness, the white snow and black mountains washing everything into shades of muted grey. His Firepuncher is at hand, though, still strapped to his pack, which has managed to stay magnetized to his armor in spite of the beating. He takes the rifle off to knock the snow from it, glancing through the scope. He supposes, if they really wanted to, they could go digging through the mess to try and recover some of the gear lost to the avalanche. It’s probably spread pretty far from sheer velocity of impact, but that was the mission, the order.
For the first time in over a year, Crosshair thinks, to hell with orders. It feels like coming home.
“It’s a few hours walk to base,” he tries out, curling his fingers around his rifle barrel, barely able to feel the digits. He can’t feel much of his physical body anymore, numb from the cold and edging into an uncomfortable prickling, blotted out by the emotional sensation instead. He lowers the Firepuncher from his gaze, staring out at the horizon contemplatively. The sensation in his chest is like a needle skipping in and out of a groove; he can feel the familiar path his body wants him to take, conditioned and directed, and he can feel where the lock has broken, where the anger is settling in nicely at the idiotic lieutenant who sent them on this doomed mission in the first place. Wasteful. Bound to fail, more likely to lose more of what he considered equipment than to recover anything at all. “That’s in good condition,” he adds, with half a glance at Mayday. “In your state, even if we walked all night, I’d say twice that, at least.” There doesn’t seem to be any internal bleeding, but it’s clear the Commander still had his bell rung. Crosshair would give him good odds of surviving, but he’s still bound to wind up carrying Mayday if they have to traverse any long distances. A walk back to base qualifies.
He ignores the fact that in his own armor, woefully unprepared for the cold, carrying Mayday might save the Commander at Crosshair’s expense. A slower pace raises odds of freezing to death. Doesn’t matter. They’re not walking tonight. Not far, anyway.
Mayday nods, like he’s agreeing with the tactical assessment. “Then we should get moving,” he says. He braces himself on one knee, hauling himself to unsteady feet. Crosshair’s fingers clench tighter around his rifle, against the urge to lunge and help.
“No,” he says. The word tastes like ice, like acid. Feels unfamiliar, for all he’s technically said it many times even since his chip activated, just over a cycle ago. His insides are churning, his limbs heavy, and Crosshair can’t tell if he’s flushed with heat or just shivering too hard to tell the difference.
Mayday pauses, upright but still wavering. “No?” he repeats. His eyebrow ticks up incredulously. It reminds Crosshair of Commander Cody, except for all the ways that Mayday is a lot more visually appealing than the straight-laced, ‘uniform regs exist for a reason’ Marshal Commander of the Third Systems Army. He’d bet Mayday is even packing a tattoo or two, somewhere under that armor.
He wants to smack himself with the butt of the Firepuncher the moment he thinks it, gritting his teeth. Mayday may have grown out the hair and beard, disguising the overly familiar shape of his face, but he’s still a reg. He doesn’t matter beyond that, shouldn’t matter to the fragmenting inside Crosshair’s empty chest, pulsing and pushing and demanding attention after being neglected so long. There are more pressing matters to deal with than whatever crisis of faith and sense he’s obviously having. Maybe he hit his head a little too hard in the fall.
Through his teeth, Crosshair repeats, “No.” He forces himself to reorient his position, standing too, slinging his rifle back onto his pack as he adjusts his posture towards ‘addressing a superior officer,’ though he can’t quite get there, not with Mayday’s steadily raising eyebrow, moving from micro- to full expression at an alarming rate. He gives up, and grits out, “We should find shelter. We’ll freeze to death walking, and you’re obviously not about to keel over. We’re better off waiting. We can go at first light.”
“That’s how it’s going to be, is it?” Mayday asks mildly. His eyebrow has reached its apex, and Crosshair feels the urge to clamp something between his teeth. He’d probably snap a toothpick between the molars, if he had one to work on. “You know, I might have taken a knock to the head, but I do remember outranking you, trooper.”
Crosshair squares his shoulders, letting his disapproval drop into a full sneer. Mayday doesn’t say it like a reprimand, more like another inside joke, but the wryness in his voice, the shared humor, just makes Crosshair’s gut heavier, makes him want to slam his fists against Mayday’s chest, or tear something from his own. He lifts his chin defiantly. “You have different orders, sir?” He lays the sarcasm on just as thick, and Mayday grins. That should not feel like a gods-damned victory, should not feel like connection-
Like squad.
“You’re a real shabuir, you know that?” Mayday says, cocking back on one hip. “I can see why you and the Leuitenant are so cozy.”
“The Leuitenant can kriff off,” Crosshair retorts, and that feels good too. Almost like himself again. It’s nothing he hadn’t thought about Rampart and the others, out from under the chip, but he’d still known better than to say it out loud. “Are you going to keep being di’kutla,” he adds, “or are we following my plan?” The Mando’a feels awkward on his tongue. The regs use it plenty, but it never really caught on with Crosshair and his brothers. Just another way they’d been different. It makes Mayday’s smile widen, though, until it actually dares to be called one, and not just a curl of amusement in the corner of his mouth. His eyes glint, and Crosshair swallows hard, stubbornly, throat thick and stomach a black pit. This isn’t rage. He doesn’t know what this is.
It feels a little like squad. But even if it was…it couldn’t be.
And just like that, Mayday isn’t looking at him anymore, scanning the tundra around them as he turns on the spot. He digs into the snow with a sturdier boot than Crosshair’s, lips pursing as he says, “It’s a good plan. Suppose we should dig out the crates first, though. Mission and all.” He casts a side-eye at Crosshair, barely visible in the dark. Like he’s testing something.
“The longer we stay…” Crosshair says.
Mayday’s shoulders fall out of regulation, into ease. “Yeah,” he agrees, and that warmth crooks back into his mouth. “Stupid mission, anyway.” And really, doesn’t that just say it all? Mayday heaves out a breath, reaching for his bucket and surveying the terrain. “That way, you think?” He points towards the mountains, roughly the way they came.
“Wonderful,” Crosshair says dryly, squinting after his hand. The cave systems will shelter them from the wind, at least, and the worst of the snow and the temperature dropping. There’s an ache in his bones that tells him it’s only going to get colder, even if he’s mostly gone numb to its effects. “Let’s hope for fewer pressure mines this time,” he mutters. “I’d hate to die after all your efforts.” He owes Mayday. Dying without paying him back is only slightly more tolerable than Mayday dying on him first.
Mayday snorts, and Crosshair thinks he looks almost fond. Ugh. At least his voice is rough and teasing when he says, “I didn’t realize you commando types needed this much rescuing.” He smacks Crosshair on the back, and Crosshair nearly jolts out of his skin at the unexpected pressure. “How about you watch where you’re putting your feet this time, eh? Not that I don’t enjoy playing heroic rescuer, but there’s better ways of getting my attention.”
He starts off before Crosshair can find his tongue enough to retort, and Crosshair’s body follows automatically, obeying the commanding officer without question. Or maybe just obeying Mayday. There’s a difference there, maybe. Too subtle to tell, while the stuck needle in Crosshair’s brain keeps jumping back to the broad width of Mayday’s palm, flat and firm against his back, the words better ways of getting my attention drawled like a tease. He doesn’t want Mayday’s attention – doesn’t not want it either, just…shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t matter; they’re clones, they’ve both been assigned this mission, will probably never see each other again after it’s over. Mayday is a reg, for kriff’s sake. Crosshair shouldn’t care.
The not-rage burns in his gut, and makes a passable shot of feeling like anger anyway. He’ll take it. He follows.
Even without a concussion – at least, not an impairing one, for either of them – or any other internal injuries, it still takes longer than Crosshair would like for them to reach the cave system. Their eyes have long since adjusted to the dark night, squinting against the biting wind, and it’s almost a shock to the system, the way the temperature jumps several degrees once they’re surrounded by jagged rock formations, low and arching and with only a faint dusting of snow beneath their feet. It's enough to make Crosshair’s numb fingers tingle with warmth, though, if he remembers his survival training, that may not actually be a good sign. It’s still oppressively cold, and Crosshair’s armor is a series of icy plates against his bodyglove. He can’t even tell if it’s damp anymore, with snow or with sweat; he’s lost most feeling beyond that faint prickling in his skin.
Their glowrods, a pinprick of nothing against the broad, open tundra, illuminate the entire space within the cramped caverns, throwing jagged shadows but putting Mayday’s face into sharp relief as he removes his bucket again, frowning at Crosshair. Crosshair resists the urge to glare back, keeping his face neutral only out of sheer practice at the expression.
“You’re shivering,” Mayday says, and his voice is flat and worried. Is he flat inside, Crosshair wonders for the first time, under the flash of rage the not-accusation triggers in him. He’d have a chip, certainly. Probably hasn’t even removed it – wouldn’t know to, wouldn’t think. Did it empty Mayday out, like it emptied him? He certainly had no problem mouthing off at Lieutenant Nolan – neutral or deferring words, but the tone anything but – but how much of that was clawed back, scraps poured carefully into the empty place burned clean by the Order, by command? Is Crosshair speaking to Mayday, or is he speaking to a shell of what the Commander might have been, back during the war?
The thought makes the rage burn brighter. “It’s cold,” he bites back. He wants to pull out a toothpick, to fall back on the comfort of worrying it between his teeth. But his fingers won’t cooperate, stiff and trembling when he reaches reflexively for the pouch where he keeps them. He clutches his hands into fists instead. Shaking hands are unforgivable in a marksman. Crosshair can’t show signs of weakness. He can’t outlive his use.
He startles as Mayday steps into his space, the Commander dropping his helmet onto the point of a stalagmite before grasping one of Crosshair’s gloved hands between both of his own. Crosshair freezes, and his neutral expression drops automatically into a defensive glower. “What are you doing?” he demands. There’s an urge to snatch the hand back, hiding the obvious tremor. It’s not as strong an impulse as it ought to be.
Mayday doesn’t even glance towards his face. It makes his touch clinical, a little less unforgivably intimate, though Crosshair’s gut swoops at the implication that Mayday might look him in the face, holding his shaking hand like that. Instead, Mayday studies Crosshair’s fingers, curled slightly in the stiffness of his glove. “It doesn’t look like you’re a frostbite risk yet,” he pronounces, though his lips are turned down. “But I wouldn’t say it confidently. They really shouldn’t have sent you here without the right gear.”
Crosshair snorts. Worse than the palm on his back, over the armor, Mayday’s hands burn, the layers of snow and plastiweave gloves no match for the shock of touch after so long with so little. The Batch touched each other, as much as any squad of clones, familiar in their comradery. This feels different; even Hunter wouldn’t have touched Crosshair to point out a weakness. None of them would lay hands on him like this. He gives Mayday an unimpressed look, hiding his hitching heartbeat. “They haven’t reequipped you in a year,” he says. “Do you really think the rest of us are faring any better?” Everything Crosshair has is because he’s efficient. Everything he has is because he’s a good soldier.
Budget-friendly, part of his mind supplies, and he wants to sneer harder.
“I’d hoped it was just us,” Mayday says. “Barton isn’t exactly middle of nowhere, but we’re out of the way. Thought maybe the rest of the army was at least doing okay, cleaning up the Separatist’s mess.” His tone tells Crosshair it had been less a hope, more a hopeless fantasy. The kind of thing Mayday told himself – told his men – to get them through the freezing nights. Now all his men are dead.
He lets go of Crosshair’s hand with one of his own – he leaves the other, and Crosshair has to fight to keep his face from doing anything, to keep his body from betraying him – and then bites off his glove, pulling it free with stark white teeth. It’s distracting, enough to catch Crosshair off guard, as Mayday spits the glove towards his helmet, his bare hand returning to cradle Crosshair’s. He hrms, making a face.
“Wish we had better kit,” he says. “Here, let me-“
Crosshair finally – finally – snatches his hand back, recognizing the pressure as Mayday goes to unlatch Crosshair’s handguards. His heart is pounding in his chest, and he wants to bite out something – an accusation, a question, a curse – but he doesn’t dare, his breath short and confused and confusing. This is new, and Crosshair can’t afford to be weakened.
The look Mayday fixes him with is patently unimpressed.
“Your gear’s wet,” he says, like Crosshair has taken a rock to the head, and needs simple things spelled out to him in clear-cut Basic. Like he’s a recalcitrant cadet in need of a dressing down. “It’s not graded for this climate. It’s only going to make you colder until it dries, and then you really are a frostbite risk, maybe hypothermia.” He pulls back, raising his hands low to his sides in a clearly mocking surrender. “Unless, of course, you want to lose a couple fingers. I thought a sharpshooter might care more about that, but I’ve been wrong before.”
The sardonic tone is heavy, dripping from his lips. Crosshair is struck with the absurd urge to bite them, like that could stop the words in their tracks. He shakes his head sharply, teeth gritting. The set of a glare on his face is so familiar, it’s a muscle memory even the blank, empty compliance couldn’t wipe away.
“I’m not stripping in the middle of the tundra,” he snaps back defensively, and his jaw clicks harder at the jump of Mayday’s eyebrow again. He’s not overreacting, and he’s not taking his kriffing armor off, frostbite risk or otherwise. He’ll be fine. He suggested this path to keep Mayday from dying on his watch; he can survive one night of cold discomfort.
Mayday’s eyes go tight, and his shoulders square up, and the defensiveness in the pit of Crosshair’s stomach grows deeper. Snow has melted in the corners of Mayday’s eyelashes and beard, making them glisten in the glowrod’s light, giving him an almost predatory quality. Not frightening, not really, but it quells the rage and resistance, replacing it with that unnamable something. With alarm, an inkling dawns on Crosshair of what that something might be, and that absolutely can’t be possible.
Slowly, Mayday crosses his arms, and his face is perfectly, infuriatingly placid, but his voice goes low, not quite a growl, not quite a command, but something, deep and pinging in Crosshair’s hindbrain as Mayday articulates, “This is the best shelter we’re going to get for the night. It’s not going to get any warmer. I might not know much about the 99s, but I know you were all commando units, which means you’d damn well better have aced your survival training. I’m not sure if you’re technically under my command or not, but I’m not in the habit of letting troopers make stupid decisions when their lives are at stake, and I have lost every man actually under my command on this stars-forsaken rock, which means it’s just me and you. So do me a favor and take your kriffing gloves off before you lose that trigger finger, or I’ll be taking them off for you.”
It’s delivered flat, non-negotiable, the way Hunter’s voice would get when he interceded between any inter-squad fighting – Crosshair needling at Wrecker until he snapped and shouted, Echo and Tech sniping pettily… It’s a leader’s voice, with a dose of ‘done with your shit,’ and it should make Crosshair want to dig in his heels and fight harder, especially coming from a reg. He barely tolerated it coming from Hunter, only backed down because Hunter led the squad.
The voice sounds better on Mayday.
Reluctantly, hating himself a bit – these are just orders, he’s just following orders – Crosshair starts pulling off his gloves. The not-rage simmering in his belly is identifiable now, something Crosshair’s only felt a time or two, and rarely in a position to do anything about it. Definitely not since the chip was switched on, and definitely never for a reg. He doesn’t follow orders, not like this, doesn’t want this, from anyone. It’s humiliating. It’s infuriating. It’s the most he’s felt since 32 nights on Kamino, emptying out whatever there had been left of him, anything that might have refilled at the sight of his squad.
At the compliance, Mayday relaxes back out of fighting pose, arms still crossed but looser now, nodding in satisfaction. “Kit too,” he says, and Crosshair’s cheeks go blood hot against the biting cold.
“Absolutely not,” he says, even as his gloves hit the ground, sending up puffs of snowy powder at his feet. He’ll take off the gloves, but he’s not stripping in the tundra, not stripping in front of Mayday-
“Survival 101, trooper,” Mayday says, sounding almost cheerful now, though still with a sharp, threatening edge of do it, or I’ll do it for you that burns in Crosshair’s gut, fighting the urge to snap back make me. He’s not looking at Crosshair anymore, instead rummaging through the satchels hung from his utility belt, smaller than Crosshair’s pack but no doubt more adequately packed for this weather. “It’s not just your gloves that aren’t graded for these temperatures,” he says. “Your plastoid’s going to be a heat sink, which means it needs to come off, and if your gloves aren’t insulating you, the bodyglove isn’t either. So it all comes off.” He makes a soft sound of triumph, coming up with what Crosshair recognizes vaguely as a foiled thermal blanket, packed into a deceptively tiny square. Mayday proffers it at Crosshair like a threat. Like a weapon. “You’re the one who suggested camping out for the night, instead of heading back to base. There’s no point waiting it out if you’re going to be half-frozen at the end of it. Or worse.”
Deadweight. Crosshair stares at the ground, furious, not sure in the moment if he’s hating himself or Mayday more. He’d suggested camping out, but he hadn’t suggested this, stripping in the freezing air, which will no doubt lead to touching after. He had aced every survival course, and he remembers the process. The humiliating feeling in his gut intensifies, his skin somehow both numb and clamoring as Mayday begins unfolding the blanket, apparently oblivious to the livid whirring of Crosshair’s brain. He could follow the order. It would be so simple. It doesn’t mean anything. And it isn’t like Crosshair has never had to strip in front of other clones before. He’s done it plenty, in front of techs, in front of his squad, even in front of other soldiers. In war, you can hardly be precious about nudity, and it wasn’t like any of the clones really owned their bodies anyway. Crosshair knows automatically that he’ll look different from Mayday – hates that he can picture it, imagining Mayday, regulation standard, like any other clone in the army – not just because he’s a 99 but because the recovery from Bracca, from Kamino, took their toll, even months later. It still shouldn’t matter. It does. Twenty minutes ago, Crosshair hadn’t known why.
Now he knows. Now, he’d rather tear open his own gut than let Mayday do it for him. He’s filling up slowly with warmth, chasing away the empty, and he hates every kriffing second of it.
Slowly, he unlatches his handguards, then his vambraces. Mayday is still busy; he’s moved from arranging the foil blanket in a tucked-away corner, with visible sightlines to every entrance to this cavern, and has started setting their glowrods into bases, turning them into illuminated lanterns so they won’t have to keep holding them for light. Crosshair keeps his narrowed eyes on Mayday, jaw clenched, daring him to look, and then sharply changes his mind, dropping his gaze back to the ground moments later. If Mayday looks, Crosshair doesn’t want to know. Regs and 99s don’t fraternize. Crosshair looks different. He doesn’t need to see surprise, or disgust, or whatever it is that goes through a reg’s mind when they get confirmation of just how different Crosshair is, above and below the armor, flashing in micro-expressions on Mayday’s face.
He goes through the motions of stacking each armor plate, working up his arms first, so that he’s shivering a little more by the time his numb fingers unlatch his chestplate. Crosshair can grit his teeth against admitting it all he wants, but Mayday hadn’t been wrong; each piece of plastoid is a slab of ice in his bare hands, and when he pulls them away from the bodyglove, he can feel the moment of frigid suction where snow found its way into the gaps and melted there, trying and failing to refreeze. Crosshair is wiry; he’s almost pure muscle, and even before 32 days on Kamino stole a lot of his bodyweight, he’s never had much luck putting on mass. It means he sheds heat rather than keeping it in. It means he runs colder than most of the clones, in more ways than one.
He freezes again when he hears a click that doesn’t come from his own plastoid, working now on peeling his cuisses from his thighs. His head jerks up against his will, throat tight, and watches as Mayday slings off his wrapped spaulders, then peels off his own chestplate. This isn’t a surprise, but Crosshair’s tongue, numb in his mouth, asks anyway, “What are you doing?” If he sounds dumbfounded, at least it’s better than sounding nervous. Nerves are fear’s idiotic cousin, and Crosshair refuses to give in.
“We don’t have heating compresses,” Mayday says, unbothered by Crosshair’s ire, still stacking his armor methodically next to the pile of Crosshair’s. Black next to white, different and the same. He adds, “I’m the next best thing.”
Regs run hot. Not as hot as Wrecker, but about as hot as Hunter, who is probably the closest of them to ‘army standard,’ in body at least. Echo has perpetually bad circulation from his mods; Tech has the same build as Crosshair, more or less. Crosshair knows how hot each of them runs from missions like Kijimi, missions that stuck them in tight quarters. It hadn’t mattered then. They were his squad, his brothers, and he’d have given his life for them. He’d have given everything for them, and they left him. Staying the first time was rote, anger locked in one direction only, severe and unyielding, unable to break free. Staying the second time was petty, was a needle stuck in a groove, was needing to be right because if he wasn’t right he was wrong, and then he’d have to contend with the rage in his gut turning inward. There’s too much hatred for that. He wouldn’t have survived the process.
He'd still expected – half-wishing, half-hating – that they might turn around and come back for him.
They hadn’t.
He bends down to start working on the plates at his shins. “I suppose you want me naked?” he bites out, and it’s too real, too vulnerable. He can hear the wound in his own voice, and bites back a curse, praying Mayday doesn’t hear it too.
“Yes,” Mayday says bluntly, and Crosshair freezes again, eyes jolting to stare. Mayday just gives him another side-eye, not so much unimpressed this time as searching, like Crosshair’s given something away. “I told you,” he says patiently, though his voice has taken on a note, like Crosshair is an animal he’s trying not to spook. “The bodyglove is going to make things worse, and I doubt you want me carrying you back to base with hypothermia tomorrow.” Crosshair grits his teeth, and Mayday adds, his voice a little lighter, “Relax, soldier. I’ll keep mine on, if it offends your delicate sensibilities.”
Crosshair has never been called delicate a day in his life, even by Wrecker, who likes to mock the rest of them for being as breakable as untreated transparisteel compared to his oafish frame. Mayday says it like he’s questioning how Crosshair even made in it the army, another one of his jokes that cuts a little too neatly to Crosshair’s unprotected belly. He probably assumes it’s a 99 thing. He wouldn’t really be wrong.
Crosshair finishes removing his armor, until it’s just the heavy plating on top of his boots – he’s not taking those off, not until he’s actually under the blanket. He has no interest in standing in the snow in bare feet. He swallows hard, fingers twitching. He can’t make them go to the clasps on his blacks. The plastiweave is cold, wicking moisture and prickling his skin, in as much as he can feel it against the tingling, soft-heated numbness that is no doubt a warning sign of losing feeling altogether. Mayday, damn him, is right about hypothermia. Probably about frostbite too.
“Come on,” Mayday’s voice goes just a little bit gentle, and Crosshair looks up to see he’s down to his blacks too, though he fills them out far more than Crosshair’s wiry frame. His plastiweave is clearly dry, preserved by his gear, and he’s kicked off his boots neatly, standing half-settled into the blanket, one hand holding open. He meets Crosshair’s gaze, and for all he’s teasing, the softness in his voice is kind as he asks, “You need me to not look?”
If there’s one thing Crosshair has always reacted badly to, it’s kindness. He doesn’t care for pity, and he’s never been very good at identifying the difference. “Screw you,” he spits, forcing himself through the motion, peeling himself out of his bodyglove so fast that his skin stings at the abrupt removal of cold, damp plasti. He leaves on his briefs – they’re dry enough, and he’s preserving a single shred of his dignity if nothing else – and kicks off his own boots, ducking fast under the blanket and yanking it so Mayday has to let it go or allow it to be closed, cocooning around them. He’s folded it so there’s a layer between them and the ground, and the thermal foil feels strange on Crosshair’s prickling bare skin.
It doesn’t feel as strange as when Mayday slides in behind him, tucking the blanket firmly closed against the rock wall propping them up. Crosshair doesn’t have time to react before he’s being clasped against Mayday’s broad chest with one strong arm, the vicious protest dying on his tongue as his entire body goes limp with the shock of heat and almost-skin contact. Mayday is much broader than Crosshair, like all the regs, so that Crosshair’s shoulders fit almost neatly against the planes of Mayday’s chest. He’s a few inches shorter, though – height being a boon that most of the ‘defectives’ shared, assuming their spines didn’t warp like 99’s had as part of the mutation process – and that puts his chin right at Crosshair’s shoulder in this position. Even trying not to look, Crosshair had seen that without the armor, Mayday had the same generic frame as all the regs Crosshair’s ever noticed – not that he’d ever really noticed the regs – the kind of broad build that ought to be a layer of fat over strong muscle, and had since been carved and whittled down by relentless rationing. Hunger isn’t new to any of them, but Crosshair wonders if it’s worse for Mayday now, after the war. They hadn’t been getting equipment resupply out here in the not-quite-middle of nowhere. How long ago had the rations run out?
Crosshair is not a caretaker by nature. He doesn’t tell Mayday about the handful of days’ worth of rations in his pack. It occurs to him, briefly, that he hadn’t caught sight of any tattoos on Mayday’s exposed neck and wrist either. Then he hates himself for thinking that at all. It isn’t relevant.
Mayday’s beard brushes sharp and scratchy and contradictorily soft at its perfect height against the back of Crosshair’s neck. Crosshair scowls, resisting the defensive urge to cross his arms, which would only put them uncomfortably close to the iron band of Mayday’s bicep against his chest. The only good thing about the humiliation of this position is that it means even in the low light, Mayday can’t see the red blistering in Crosshair’s cheeks.
The tension must say it all anyway, because Mayday’s voice is low, an almost mocking rumble as he murmurs, “Not used to being the little spoon, are you?” Crosshair can almost feel the smirk against the side of his throat, and he tightens his hands into fists.
“Not used to spooning with regs,” he shoots back, letting the intimate word drip with as much derision as the taunt about their difference, turning the whole sentence into a weapon volleyed back. Crosshair can’t say he’s spooned with anybody, not really. His skin is tingling where it’s pressed into Mayday’s blacks, the Commander’s thighs bracketing his. Regs have never really touched Crosshair, except in the middle of a fist-fight or training spar: knuckles against the face, hands unyielding in a submission pin against unforgiving mats. The very, very occasional hand on his shoulder from a Commander like Cody, who seemed to forget, every once in a while, that Crosshair wasn’t one of his men. Natborns don’t touch Crosshair at all, edging around him like he’s a timebomb preparing to go off. Not entirely an incorrect assumption; he had murdered his assigned team on Kamino, after all. He still doesn’t feel the guilt. They weren’t worthy soldiers, worthy brothers, which made them expendable to the mission. It’s been over a year since he was dragged into a vodpile, he realizes, Echo craving touch after a nightmare or Wrecker sitting on him until he relented to a demand or Hunter deciding that they all needed a moment to just breathe, to feel each other still living in heartbeat against skin. Crosshair had needed to be dragged into it, every time. He hadn’t realized how viciously he’s missed it, until this moment.
The anger that bites into his gut again is tinged with something self-pitying, and that makes his lip curl in response. He’d jerk against Mayday’s hold if he could. His body won’t let him, shivering harder into the offered warmth. It’s unforgivably like waking up, when Crosshair would rather stay sleeping.
“Hmm,” Mayday says, and the tone has dropped out of mocking, teasing, into something even worse. It’s not pity; it’s bonding, and Crosshair braces for the worst. “You know,” Mayday says, conversationally, his voice low in the echoing cavern and perfectly pitched behind Crosshair’s left ear, “I didn’t meet any 99s during the war. I knew you all were around, of course, but we never really crossed paths that I knew of. The way brothers talked, I always got the sense you thought you were better than us. Superior soldiers, and all that.”
There’s a slight tension to his frame, Crosshair realizes. It’s hard to pick out against Crosshair’s own unyielding, but it’s there. Not totally familiar, then. Not totally at ease. Unfamiliar territory.
That makes two of them, at least. The cavern feels smaller than it actually is, intimate in its shelter. “Not…better,” Crosshair says slowly, trying the words out on his newly freed tongue. Trying out understanding. “Just…different.” Up until recently, he’d thought that was the same thing. They were different, not standard issue, and that meant something, meant being useful in a way that wasn’t rinse and replace. That was the definition of superior, wasn’t it? Tech had always vehemently disagreed, and Hunter had always told them to give it a rest with their bickering, that it didn’t matter either way. Now, Crosshair doesn’t know. He’s kriffing tired, he realizes, and Hunter was right. It doesn’t matter, does it? To the natborns, like Lieutenant Nolan, they’re all just disposable clones. Experience doesn’t matter, efficiency doesn’t matter, sniper or command training or years of field combat doesn’t make a single lick of a difference. They’re all just used equipment, better off discarded for something shiny and new.
Well, they’ll burn through their new TK troopers quickly enough. Their armor will always be shiny and new. Voluntary graves for the volunteers inside it. An army of ghosts in the making.
Mayday hums softly. “Yeah, I figured,” he says. “You might have rolled up with an attitude, but it didn’t feel directed at me. Or at my men.”
During the war, it might have been. Crosshair has never had to pick the fight, but he’s always been ready for one. “Well,” he says, staring at the far wall, barely visible in the low blue light. “We had a common enemy.” For a second, he entertains a fantasy. Something he couldn’t have done under the chip, something the rigid groove of his conditioned mind wouldn’t have let him consider even a few months ago. For a second, he entertains the thought of putting a blaster bolt right in Lieutenant Nolan’s forehead. Let him learn the true meaning of the word expendable, the hard way.
It is a bloodthirsty, vicious, angry and vindictive fantasy. It feels incredible. Crosshair has been scraped clean, his anger directed one way, and it could never be to a superior officer. Not under the Empire’s conditioning. But if there’s one thing Crosshair can’t stand, has never been able to stand for, it’s a prissy natborn pulling rank, whether they outranked him or not. He’d expected to hate Kenobi, the two or three times they’d worked with Commander Cody’s battalion, on that principle alone. He’d heard all about the so-called Negotiator’s reputation. Crosshair had been almost as infuriated to learn that while Kenobi was undoubtedly a little bit prissy on the surface, he was also every bit the battle-hardened soldier underneath. No wonder Cody had had a bit of a thing for him, whether he’d acted on it or not.
The thought converges with fantasy – Execute Order 66 – and Crosshair blinks. General Kenobi is a traitor, by official decree. A dead traitor, in all probability. Crosshair has served with Cody a time or two, and Commander Cody was the pride of the GAR. Commander Cody doesn’t miss.
Neither does Commander Bly, and he’d almost definitely been kriffing his Jedi. Clearly the CC batch had been made broken, soft, getting involved with their generals like that. Is Mayday a CC? The thought turns into a snarl in Crosshair’s stomach, a fire that burns into a scowl on his face. Cody had hesitated with that Separatist resistor on Desix. Had he hesitated with his Jedi? Probably not, given all his talk about living with it he’d been on about when Crosshair had last seen him, months ago now. And then he’d gone AWOL, had left, just like everyone else. Leaving Crosshair alone. What had he even been waiting for?
Did he ever miss him? Kenobi? Or was Kenobi still a traitor in Cody’s eyes? Did it even matter either way?
You can love a traitor. Crosshair is unfortunately experienced with that feeling. He doesn’t feel neutrally about anything. He didn’t stop loving his brothers, just because they turned their backs on everything. It only made it hurt more.
“Did you have a Jedi, during the war?” he hears himself asking. The words come out all barbs, so thorny Crosshair is surprised they don’t cut his tongue, leaving hot blood behind. It doesn’t matter, he hisses internally. The Jedi are traitors. They’re dead. It doesn’t matter if Mayday had one or not, if Mayday is a CC or not, if Mayday-
Mayday tenses behind him, and the band of his arm becomes compression, stealing the air in Crosshair’s lungs. There is no moment of panic, only white noise as Crosshair goes very still, his body heating all over. It’s just the foil blanket, doing its work.
Eventually, Mayday releases.
“Yeah,” he says. “Served under General Unna, of the 62nd. You?” Why does it matter? he doesn’t say.
“No.” Crosshair swallows hard, throat dry. He wants Mayday’s arm to tighten again. Hates that he wants it, even if only to blot out the noise of his own mind. “We were a little too special ops for them. I doubt they could keep up.” There’d been talk of putting them with a Shadow, early on, but one mission with a General Vos had cured whoever they answered to of that idea. Crosshair stares straight ahead, trying to focus on anything that isn’t the splay of Mayday’s fingers on his hip. It doesn’t work very well.
A beat later, he asks, “Did you kill them?”
The pause is longer this time, like Mayday is having a different conversation than Crosshair is. Maybe he thinks Crosshair is testing him too. Maybe he thinks they’re just swapping war stories, passing the time. Maybe…maybe he’s a gods-damned CC, wondering why he didn’t miss, and Crosshair is digging his own grave. Figuratively speaking.
He’s going to survive this night, like he survived 32 rotations on Kamino. Unfortunately.
“Yeah,” Mayday says again, at long last. He doesn’t sound angry, at Crosshair or the Empire or the Order or the Jedi. He just sounds tired. Scraped clean. There’s another beat, heavy, and then Mayday’s breath exhales, hot by Crosshair’s ear. It makes goosebumps prickle on Crosshair’s neck, in a way even the freezing cold hadn’t. “Good as, anyway.”
“Oh?” Maybe this is cruel, to Crosshair himself if not to Mayday. A dagger twisting in both their stomachs. Easy, in this position. Crosshair has never been accused of kindness either. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He can feel the shrug against his shoulders; it moves his whole body with it, a rise and fall that feels like plummeting, stomach swooping with the motion. “He was young,” Mayday says. He still doesn’t sound angry. “Our bio age, maybe a little less. Barely had his braid cut, when the war started.” Mayday’s breath tilts away from Crosshair’s ear, like he’s tipped his head back against the wall, looking towards the ceiling. “He was training for the Archival program,” he says softly, and for the first time, Crosshair hears a hint of something in his voice. Not the way Cody talked about Kenobi. Not the way Bly waxed kriffing poetic about General Secura. Something that isn’t he was a traitor, but isn’t…something, either. Crosshair’s stomach squirms.
“He wasn’t much of a soldier,” Mayday continues, oblivious. Or maybe he knows too well. “We were in active combat, taking heavy fire when the Order came in. We didn’t even have to use our blasters. Just stopped covering his six. Stood back, and let the Seppies do the work for us.” He exhales, a puff of breath that’s probably visible in the frigid air. Would ruffle Crosshair’s hair, if it wasn’t shaved to the skull. “Poetic, isn’t it?”
Crosshair isn’t one for poetry. “What?” he tests, not sure what a passing answer would be. “The enemy, executing a traitor?” He isn’t sure it matters to him, anymore, who is a traitor to the Empire. It would be hypocritical, he supposes, if he did.
He flexes in that feeling, lets it sink all the way into his toes. He’s a traitor, or considering it, at least. The pulsing fragments of himself, cracked open, more demanding than they’ve been since the Order was received. It’s not quite the warm bath that is Mayday’s body heat, radiating under the blanket, but it’s a very close second.
Mayday hmms. “Traitor,” he says. “Yeah.” It’s not quite humoring Crosshair, but it’s hardly censuring. It sounds an awful lot like the way he’d addressed Nolan as Lieutenant. “Could have had worse generals, I guess. He did stay off the front lines, let us take the heat instead, but I never got the sense he was doing it because we were just cannon fodder to him. Like I said, he wasn’t much of a soldier. Thought it was a waste of our resources, trying to cover him, since he was better off coordinating troop movements. Had an okay head for that sort of thing. Let me do what needed to be done. Didn’t let the natborn officers talk down to me, either,” he adds, and Crosshair feels a flash of good, surprising and vicious all the same. Mayday shrugs again, but his voice is a little too careful as he says, “If there was a Jedi conspiracy, I’m not sure if he was in on it. But he never felt much like the enemy.”
Crosshair doesn’t miss the ‘if’ in that statement. He tests that in his mind, the hypothetical that there was no Jedi conspiracy, no rhyme or reason to Order 66. He doesn’t much care about the Jedi. He does care about the Order. The Order broke him. The Order wiped him clean. “Do you regret it?” he asks. Crosshair has never had a problem killing. He was fully prepared to kill the Jedi padawan on Kaller, and he still doesn’t feel guilty for it. Like his Elite Squad, it was just part of the mission. Guilt is for the people who point his weapon, if they’re still human enough to feel it.
Mayday is quiet a long time. Crosshair doesn’t apologize. Finally, Mayday bows his head, the heat of his brow just shy of the base of Crosshair’s skull. “We followed orders,” he says. “Don’t know if I regret it. Haven’t felt right since.”
That’d be the chip, then. Hollowing Mayday out, making him a clean slate. He must have been truly something, when he was whole. There’s another urge, one Crosshair kills in his gut, to turn in Mayday’s arms, to push his tongue into his mouth. To fill Mayday up that way, if no other. “The inhibitor chips do that,” he says instead. “Make you empty inside. A good soldier.”
He feels Mayday frown. Oh. He wouldn’t know, would he? It’s not common knowledge amongst the regs, why they did what they did. But Mayday doesn’t ask questions. What he says is an echo of his words when they found the gear lost in the snow, the shiny new crates for their shiny new replacements, while his men were dying to protect it. “We were good soldiers,” Mayday repeats. “We followed orders. Doesn’t seem fair, after everything, that the Empire’s decided it doesn’t mean anything after all.”
“War isn’t fair,” Crosshair allows.
“No, it isn’t,” Mayday agrees. “I accepted that a long time ago.”
Crosshair hums noncommittally. Acceptance isn’t apathy. There’s heat pooling in his stomach, not full, but not empty either. Outside, the wind howls, as if to remind them there is still an outside world, inhospitable and icy. Mayday sounds just as in-between. He is not an empty shell. He’s been here a year, losing faith on this rocky, abandoned outpost. That’s plenty of time to break.
Or un-break. However Mayday feels it, the needle of control. The grooves are flexing in Crosshair’s mind, unable to keep that needle from skipping any longer.
“Were you kriffing him?” he asks. “Your Jedi?” For all the words are idle, they’re poison underneath.
Mayday chokes, and his disbelieving laugh is hot against the scarring on Crosshair’s scalp. Crosshair wants to make him do it again. “Did you hit your head when I wasn’t looking?” Mayday asks incredulously.
Crosshair ignores it. He doesn’t have a better explanation. “Well?” he challenges. “Were you?”
Mayday’s hand tightens fractionally – almost possessively – on Crosshair’s hip. “You know,” he rumbles, and Crosshair represses the urge to shiver. He’s not cold anymore. “Not all Commanders were thinking with their decees, where the Jedi were concerned. Some of us knew a thing or two about professionalism.”
“Not in my experience.” Maybe in the army at large, but between Bly and Cody, Crosshair’s sample size for ‘officers kriffing their Jedi superiors’ was a resounding 100%. Well. Cody might not have been kriffing Kenobi. But he’d wanted to. Obviously.
Fingers tap his hip again. Mayday’s voice is careful, like he’s getting his own inkling. Like he’s read the tactical situation, and come to a conclusion. “I can see why they never assigned a CC to you lot. You don’t do things halfway, do you?”
“Never.”
Mayday snorts, but his voice is obviously smiling. “Was the rest of your squad as mouthy as you?”
Not really, unless Tech’s inability to shut up counted. And they took to chain of command about as well. Funny, but during the war, Crosshair had always considered himself the one least likely to accept orders. He could take them from Hunter, could even take them from Cody or Bly in a pinch, but he’d never been happy about it. He’d just been hungry, a sharp exterior waiting to prove himself. “No,” he says aloud. “They weren’t.” They’re gone. He’d said it earlier, a wound that won’t heal. A crack in the armor, caring.
A quiet settles between them, less charged this time, before Mayday’s voice softens. “I’m sorry,” he says. “How’d you lose them?” The weight in his voice is a commander without his squad. A commander who tried, and still couldn’t keep any of them alive.
“They’re not dead,” Crosshair says without thinking. Not last he checked, anyway. That was months ago, that was them leaving. For all he knows, their shuttle blew up in Kamino’s atmosphere. Maybe that’s why they never came back.
“More traitors to the Empire?” Mayday says it without a hint of condemnation. Like it’s another inside joke, the wryness more careful this time, probing. He follows it up, even more damningly, with, “Can’t say I blame them.”
“They left me.” The hurt in his voice is humiliating. The rage burns, makes his scars itch. They’d picked saving the kid over saving him, a stranger over their squad. And she’d replaced him, and she’d…
She’d wanted to help him. Crosshair doesn’t take well to kindness. Or pity. It’s hard to tell the difference, when people dress up the latter under the former’s guise. Crosshair’s stomach turns, vicious and aching. His digs bony shoulder blades into Mayday’s chest, pretending it’s not about craving more skin.
“Well,” Mayday says. “I suppose I can blame them for that.” It sounds like it’s supposed to be a joke, but there’s not much mirth in his voice. It’s not flat either, not empty, but edged with a sharpness, a hint of protectiveness, that makes Crosshair’s chest seize, especially when Mayday’s arm goes a little tighter, in response to Crosshair’s unsubtle burrowing. Mayday’s heartbeat is steady and rhythmic against Crosshair’s back, even through the one layer between them. Crosshair wants to tear it out of Mayday’s chest, to make a home for it in his own ribcage. To try and keep it safe.
“I’m sorry,” he says, the words tasting unfamiliar, less hateful than he’d thought they’d be. “About your squad.” He hadn’t spoken two words to Hex or Veetch, doesn’t even know the others’ names. But anything that can make Mayday sound that heavy…Crosshair isn’t a caretaker, and he won’t take that load. But he’ll let Mayday put it at his feet, at least.
Mayday hums softly, a rumble that vibrates through Crosshair’s body. “They were good men,” he says. “They didn’t deserve this.”
Crosshair can’t say none of us did. He’s not sure he believes it, not sure it matters. They were useful. They were used. Deserving hadn’t factored into it. Like the shabuir- like the asshole Mayday says he is, Crosshair mumbles, “Don’t suppose you were kriffing any of them, either.”
Mayday stills, the sound in his throat half choked laugh, half incredulous snort. “No,” he says firmly. “I wasn’t. They were my men. I wouldn’t do that. Not with them.”
Crosshair considers that. The natborns might see the clones as interchangeable, but they’re not, not really. Crosshair doesn’t talk with regs, but he hears regs talk. Hears the way they talk with each other. It’s not uncommon, in the army, but everyone has an opinion on which brothers are off-limits. It’s rarely down to chain of command like Mayday is implying – even aside from Jedi-kriffing, Crosshair knows plenty of officers who shacked up with each other. For some, it’s that squads feel vaguely incestuous. Others disagree, but feel that way about their batches. Crosshair’s squad and batch are the same thing, and they were raised far more akin to what natborn mean by brothers than the way the regs use the word.
As 99s, they practically aren’t clones to the regs. But they aren’t natborn either. They’re nothing.
“You asked,” Crosshair says slowly, and feels Mayday’s head tilt in confusion at what sounds like a subject shift. It’s not, not to Crosshair, and he presses on, “You didn’t know I was a 99, a defective. You had to ask.”
“You sound surprised,” Mayday says. He doesn’t sound like he’s picking a fight. He hasn’t sounded, even once, like he’s picking a fight. Not with Crosshair. Not even if Crosshair wanted him to. “Just ‘cause they gussied you up in commando armor doesn’t mean I know what unit you ran with,” he adds, and sounds like he’s smiling again.
Crosshair closes his eyes. The churning in his stomach is full nausea now, intolerable, intimate. He swallows hard, gritting his teeth. “You’d seen my face,” he says. “I don’t exactly look like a reg.”
Mayday is quiet. The wind whistles. The ice creaks. The rocks could come crashing down around them, and Crosshair doesn’t think even that would break the tension of this moment. Finally, Mayday says, “I’ve run with brothers who looked more like you than they looked like me. Sounded like you, even. Smoke – he was one of my old batchmates. He got caught in a firefight. Trapped for hours. Voice never recovered. And I’ve seen torture and starvation give brothers sharper cheekbones than yours.” He huffs a laugh, the kind of humor that has to be, because horror is the alternative. Crosshair’s face twitches. Wonders if he imagines Mayday’s thumb doing the same on his hip, like it wants to slide along Crosshair’s cheekbones, wants to see if he’ll cut himself on the sharpness of his face. “War takes its toll on all of us,” Mayday says, “and I’ve never put much stock in a vod’s face. Always been more interested in what’s on the inside.”
Inside, Crosshair is a million broken pieces. He’s just as much a mess inside as out. Maybe more. His shoulders press back harder, dulling the impulse to lay his head back on Mayday’s shoulder. He’s the right height for it. “What’s on the inside,” he repeats. “Besides you, you mean.”
It’s crass, accusing. Mayday doesn’t laugh. He hooks his knee over Crosshair’s, pinning it towards the ground. Holding him open, exposed, even cocooned in the thermal blanket, concealing everything. “Something you want to ask me?” he says, low and dangerous.
“No,” Crosshair says. That isn’t lying. He’d let his tongue be pried out first.
“Really,” Mayday says. It isn’t a question. His fingertips dig bruises into five sharp points on Crosshair’s hip. Crosshair drops his head back against Mayday’s shoulder with a punched exhale of shock. It feels aggressively like it belongs there. “Casual interest, then, in where I’m sticking my decee?” Mayday drawls. “Hell of a way to pass the time.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re the one who wants to know. Shouldn’t ask, if you didn’t want an answer.” The fingers gentle, just fractionally. Not enough to be soft, just enough that the sharp sting of pressure becomes a dull, insistent ache. “Are you-“
“No.” Crosshair’s cheeks are burning hot. He wants to tear off the blanket. He wants to duck his head underneath it, to swallow himself in the dark. He wants to march back into the ice and the cold, throw himself down into a snowdrift, and let it numb and empty him out again, because the only thing worse than being empty is being full. Hating every word, he hears himself say, “99s don’t get involved with regs.”
Mayday hmms, unrelenting. “Your squad, then?” he suggests.
“No,” Crosshair insists again, screwing up his face in disgust. He can’t even fathom it. “Not a chance.” Echo was the only one of them who had those predilections, and he definitely would have shacked up with a reg, if that had been an option, before he’d tried anything with them.
“A natborn, then,” Mayday says. “Not a Jedi, obviously, but-“
Crosshair scoffs. “Don’t be absurd.” He yanks the thermal blanket up to his chin, shivering with tension. His whole body is a live wire, coiled, a needle digging in and refusing to let go. Unyielding. Crosshair has always, always, been severe and unyielding.
And where by now, any reasonable person would have turned away, given up, Mayday’s heels dig in. No, not dig in. Crosshair does that, Crosshair needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into anything halfway good for him. Mayday plants his feet like a soldier, and holds his ground. His voice quiets, but it’s not gentle, no less edged as he says, “Just not interested?”
Crosshair spits out, “Are you?” It’s meant to be a sneer, a vicious challenge. It drips acid, burns in the air between them. Mayday doesn’t wither.
“Once or twice,” he says, and Crosshair’s stomach drops. He can feel a growing smirk again, pressed high into his temple, where Mayday’s cheek rests against his skull, his head still on Mayday’s broad, hot shoulder. “I don’t like breaking chain of command regulations, and CCs have slimmer pickings, in that sense. But at 79s, yeah, a few times. Other regs. Never had much time for natborn, and like you said…”
99s don’t get involved with regs. They rarely even get friendly, as a rule. Regs can be cruel, picking the fights Crosshair is always itching for, ready and eager to finish. Cody and Bly had been kind, and Wrecker had been palatable for the Alphas and ARCs, had gotten chummy with Rex when the captain had worked with them the once, but Crosshair and Tech have never meshed. By disposition, they’re just too different. Even Echo, who was a reg once, hadn’t had much in common with his so-called brothers after Skako Minor. Hadn’t fit in totally with the Batch, though, either, which just went to prove the rule. Probably, if he hasn’t run off to join the AWOL regs yet, it’s only a matter of time.
If he’s still alive. If any of them are still alive.
“Always thought it was shame,” Mayday says quietly, and Crosshair is glad his own eyes are closed, the soft contemplation too much to bear. “We get enough of the us versus them out there, from the natborns. No sense fighting with ourselves, just because some of us were a made little different. We’re all a little different now. They just gave you a head start.”
“Different’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Crosshair surprises himself by saying. Mayday laughs softly, and warmth floods Crosshair’s chest, his veins. He scowls, but it’s halfhearted. Different used to mean something. Now, different means he’s alone.
“I’m not one of your men,” he says. It’s the closest he can get to an admission. He’s not interested. It would be awful if he was.
“I know,” Mayday says. Simple, where Crosshair has three different barrier between the words and the meaning. “Are you asking?”
“No.” He can’t be. Pride is a curse, but it’s all Crosshair has left.
Mayday gives another soft hmm, and tilts his head back against the cave wall. His hair and beard are soft against Crosshair’s skin, the length weighting them down out of the springy curls they’d be, if they were regulation. “Go to sleep,” Mayday says at last. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us. I promise I won’t get too friendly. Even if you’re not one of my men.”
To Crosshair’s internal horror, that thought has him sinking harder into Mayday’s hold, not elbowing him to get away. Make me, he’d wanted to say. I’m used to being used. He doesn’t even have his chip to blame. It’s been gone for months. It shouldn’t still be affecting him, shouldn’t make him think it wouldn’t be so bad, to be held down, to be made into something. Carved out, emptied, and filled back up again. Maybe it’s like flash training: if you stick enough of someone else’s thoughts in your head, you’ll start to think you’re them. Crosshair has months of memories that were influenced, making him a good, obedient soldier. He knows it rewired him, setting him into the rut, the needle into the groove. He hadn’t felt like this before, but then, he hadn’t wanted anyone before that he could recognize beneath the anger.
It could be that this has been rewired too. Or, worse, it could be that this has been inside him, all along. Maybe Crosshair has always wanted someone to step up to him, to cut through the acid barbs of his vicious tongue, to hold his face down into the dirt and say do it or I’ll make you. Maybe Crosshair has always picked a fight because deep down, there were some fights that he wanted to lose.
Crosshair doesn’t say make me or use me or, stars forbid, I think I might like you. What he does say is, “You should wake me in a few hours. I’m not carrying you if you pass out halfway back to base.”
“I’ll consider it,” Mayday says, in a noncommittal tone that tells Crosshair he already has, and he won’t. It’s comforting, in its own way. Hunter used to say it like that too, and Crosshair had felt protected, cared for. It’s a little like squad. Crosshair’s batch has always been his squad, until they weren’t. They still are, and they aren’t, and the anger is burning, until there’s nothing left but ash inside.
“And what if,” he says slowly, feeling out the words, “I said I wasn’t going back to base?” Traitor, his mind says, but it says it like Mayday. Not a censure. A simple fact. A word, which technically means something. He’s useful, but useful doesn’t matter anymore. Expendable doesn’t mean fine if it’s used. Expendable now means use it up, so we don’t have to see it again. That was what Commander Cody had been saying. What his batchmates were saying, and he couldn’t, then wouldn’t, listen. It will eat him alive inside, being wrong. That’s fine. There’s nothing left there to burn.
Mayday stills, his arm still an iron band around Crosshair’s body, tightening again. It doesn’t cut off Crosshair’s air. He wishes it would. Carefully, Mayday says, “Then I’d tell you that you’re an idiot. There’s nothing else around here for miles.” Before Crosshair can say anything else, he adds practically, “There will be ships, coming in and out of base. The cargo pickup’s tomorrow. I don’t make a habit of it, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to liberate transport.”
“Oh, really?” Crosshair says, and packs every ounce of inflection he can into the question. He believes Mayday knows how to hijack a ship. He knows how to hijack a ship. It’s not a half-bad idea. But Mayday has a chip, maybe working, maybe broken, and Crosshair doesn’t like the idea of being turned over for desertion. Especially before he gets the chance to actually desert. He doesn’t trust easily. He’s trusted before, and look where it got him.
“Mmhm,” Mayday hums. He taps his fingers once, softly, against Crosshair’s hip. “The mission was a failure, and I don’t get the sense our Lieutenant is the forgiving type, especially for failures of his own making. Best case, he send us out again, to get the crates. I don’t know about you, but if I start walking…might just start walking away.”
“Nothing left to stay for,” Crosshair agrees carefully.
“Exactly. Let the lieutenant go digging for his crates. And after the year I’ve had,” Mayday huffs a laugh, tilting his head just enough that it might be a mistake that his nose nudges into Crosshair’s ear, or might be a gesture of…not affection. Not acceptable. Comradery. “I’d say the Empire owes me a ship, at least.”
“At least,” Crosshair agrees. He wonders what he would have done, if Mayday hadn’t agreed. Crosshair rarely does things the easy way. Kidnapping a reg would be unusual for him, but he’s done stranger things. I might like you, he thinks, trying it on for size. Mayday is likable, for a reg. “If that’s the case,” he says, “you really should wake me up. Take a few hours to sleep. I’m not getting caught because you’re dead on your feet.”
“You’d carry me anyway,” Mayday says confidently, and Crosshair’s stomach jolts. “Go to sleep,” he continues, voice firm and confident and commanding. A Commander’s voice. It is much better than Hunter’s. Then he adds, low and sharp like a needle, “And tomorrow, you’re going to tell me about this inhibitor chip thing. Agreed?”
Crosshair’s gut clenches again, and he swallows hard, offering half a nod. “Agreed.” Mayday isn’t empty. He’s overflowing. Crosshair is a cracked shell of himself, but he supposes there are worse things to be. There’s no chip in him, wiping him clean. Crosshair has been a good soldier for a long time, even when he wasn’t; he’s a sniper, an asshole, hard and unyielding. He’s angry, viciously angry, spilling out of every crack of himself, at the Bad Batch and the Empire and the Jedi and the Republic – angry at everyone, and everything, because Crosshair has always, always been angry, and if he can’t be full again, at least he can have this.
At least in this one way, he can be free.