Someone Please Give This Man A Mission. Hes Getting Desperate.

Someone please give this man a mission. He’s getting desperate.

(Tell me you recognize Obi-Wan pose)

Whumptober 2024

No. 1: RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK

Search Party | Panic Attack | "If only we could hold on.” (Icysami x Renegaderr, Strangers.)

A/N: work for prompt No. 1 is out, guys! Since most of y'all voted for tcw/tbb in the first hour that the poll was out, that's what I whipped up! Also, this has not been edited at all and has SPOILERS FOR S3 EP 11 of The Bad Batch. Read at your own discretion.

Okay, those are all my disclaimers. I'll be posting this, and anything else I write for Whumptober on my AO3 and FFN accounts, so you can check them out there if that's more your style. They're linked in my bio!

tw: panic attack

You failed.  She’s gone.  It’s all your fault.

Those were the three things that kept spinning rapidly through Crosshair’s mind like some sick mantra. 

You failed.  She’s gone and it’s all your fault.  Your fault.

Tag the shuttle.  That was all he had to do.  The search parties were after them, and she had known as well as he did that they would tear the island apart until they found what they were looking for.  So, they would give them what they were looking for.  That was the plan.  It was the easiest route, by a tactical standpoint.  By far, the most logical.  Fewer casualties, for the greater good.

That thinking was exactly what had gotten Tech killed.

Crosshair’s grip tightened on his rifle, until he realized one thing. 

His hands were steady.

Somehow, of all the things that had occurred in the last hour, from the destruction of their ship to the sight of the imperial shuttle disappearing into the cosmos, that was his breaking point.  The final crack in the glass before it shattered.  The straw that broke the bantha’s back.

His hands were steady.

Crosshair’s rifle dropped to the ground.  He didn’t register the harsh clatter as it collided with the cobbled path.  The safe space that had been his helmet for as far back as he could remember felt hot, suffocating suddenly.  Even as he ripped it off and it struck the ground several steps away, he couldn’t seem to escape the sensation of dread that was rapidly taking hold of his body, the crushing, squeezing pain that gripped his whole chest.

You failed.  Omega is gone, and it’s your fault.  You weren’t there when it mattered most.  Just like Mayday, just like Cody.

Just like Tech.

And just like that, they were on Kamino.  He knew they were, because of the familiar curve of the circular room, visible to him even in the pitch darkness.  It always was, no matter how dark his brothers kept it for him and Hunter.

He could hear their steady breathing now.  Wrecker’s intermittent snores, Hunter’s steady presence, and Tech—

He was gasping, choking on air.  He couldn’t breathe— he couldn’t kriffing breathe—

The pain was excruciating.  It set every nerve in his body aflame; the restraints on his wrists and ankles felt like they seared his skin with the barest touch.  And yet, to speak would be ever more unbearable.  To break now would be to admit the pointlessness of his existence.  If his secrets died with him, so be it.  He had betrayed his brothers before, he refused to betray them again.

Let them hurt him all they wanted.  He would die before he yielded to the Empire again.

—and he was on the ground.  The stones were icy cold, but his skin was coated in a sheen of sweat—

You failed.  He’s gone.  You weren’t fast enough, and now he’s gone, a life wasted like a pawn in the game you’ve been playing along with like a good soldier.  Whatever happens next, it doesn’t matter.  Nothing matters except revenge, as cold and heartless as the predators that will devour your worthless carcass when you die

A shadowy form slid across the ground within his line of sight.  He would be next—

“Crosshair—?”

They had him now, but something had changed.  When they had stopped asking questions, he didn’t even know.  All that he knew was that there was something different in way they looked at him, with those cold, calculating eyes.  He wished they would go back to asking him their questions. 

At least then he would know there was something – someone – still out there to look for—

“Crosshair!”

A hand gripped his shoulder, sent shooting pain through his nerves everywhere it touched.

“No—” he croaked; the single word stuck like shards of glass in his throat.

“Where is Omega?”

She’s gone.  I failed.

“Crosshair, where is she?”

His pulse hammered in his ears, a frantic pounding, as though it were a crazed animal trying to break out of a cage.  He felt the hand release him, curled in one himself.  His body was shaking—shaking and it wouldn’t stop, the crushing, squeezing, wrenching— it wouldn’t stop.

He felt a gentle pressure on his clammy forehead.

At first, it amounted to nothing next to the thoughts and sensations that ran rampant in his mind, the violent trembling that wracked his frame.  Until a voice seemed to call to him from far away, like a whisper carried on a strong wind.  Almost impossible to make out, so quiet you question whether you heard anything at all.

“Breathe, vod…”

That single word caused a flicker of recognition in the very back recesses of Crosshair’s mind.  Something he hadn’t encountered in a very, very long time.

They were trapped underground.  They cave system Republic intelligence had informed them about did exist, and it had gotten them into and out of the Separatist outpost quickly and quietly.  But what they hadn’t considered was how very weak it was, and that the blast from their detonation charges wouldn’t just destroy the outpost, but their means of escape, as well.  “Intelligence,” indeed.

Hunter was hurt.  Badly.

Wrecker and Tech both seemed a little shell-shocked.  It was the first time their sergeant, their ori’vod, had been incapacitated so completely during a mission.  Wrecker got quiet.  Disturbingly quiet.  Tech had fallen back on his old friend, logic, to calculate himself a web of positive probabilities and outcomes.  He was also utterly silent.  And Crosshair?  Ironically, he had nothing to say, not even some dry comment about the uselessness of the reg’s so called “intel.”

The only sound that hung in the stuffy, oxygen-scarce air was Hunter’s labored breathing as the life slowly seeped from his unconscious form.

That is, until he gasped awake, a ragged, panicked sound that caused all three of them to jump.

“Hunter!” Wrecker exclaimed, and Crosshair shot him a warning glare.

“Wreck—?”

Unsuccessfully, Hunter struggled to sit up, arms trembling from the mere effort.  Crosshair placed a restraining hand on Hunter’s chest as Tech hurried over to run another scan.  They already suspected he had one hell of a concussion, and internal damage to boot.  But Hunter’s confusion and alarm only seemed to increase with Crosshair’s attempt to keep him from harming himself further.

“Where—? Let me go!” He croaked, only to trigger a coughing fit. “Let me—cough—let me go—!”

Moving closer, Crosshair kept his hand on Hunter’s chest and squeezed his shoulder tightly with the other.

“Hunter, look at me,” he snapped, hovering directly in his brother’s line of sight.

Whether or not Hunter registered the command was irrelevant.  He simply took another gasping breath, eyes uncomprehending and wild.

“It’s me, vod, you’re safe,” Crosshair continued.  “It’s alright.  Just breathe.”

Gradually, the panic drained from Hunter’s face, and his whole body seemed to relax slightly.  “Crosshair…?”

“Yeah,” Crosshair said, loosening his grip on Hunter’s shoulder as he watched the last of the tension dissipate.  “Now take it easy.  Tech’s going to take another look at you.”

Already, fatigue seemed to be creeping back into his brother; just keeping his eyelids open was obviously getting more and more difficult for him.  Crosshair’s gaze moved back up to Tech, who was tapping away at his datapad.  To anyone else, interpreting his expressions and mannerisms could prove challenging, but Crosshair read them with ease.  Tech didn’t need to tell them that they were running out of time – and air – fast.

If only the search party would come for them sooner.  If only we could hold on, just a little longer… Crosshair thought, as Hunter succumbed to another fit of coughs.

“Breathe.”

Crosshair blinked.  He was back.  He tasted the acrid smell of discharged blasters at the back of his throat, heard the steady whisper of the ocean.  He felt the cool stones under his palms and the steady pressure of his brother’s forehead against his own.

He breathed.

The seconds stretched on – an eternity and no time at all, until he heard the rustle of movement.  When nothing happened, no shouting, no curses, Crosshair looked up.  Hunter was standing now, eyebrows drawn together, gaze distant.  Crosshair waited several more seconds, expecting something – anything – from him.  And got nothing.  Nothing except for a single question, heavy with dread.

“Crosshair… where is Omega?”

At what point did you realize this isn't a phase?

Thinking about the song "Ship in Port" by Radical Face and clones

Thinking about the line "Farewell to the chains we were born into" and what that can mean for the clones

Thinking about how "But I have always stayed in place/Under that old illusion that it's safe" could equally describe Hunter, Echo, and (s1+2) Crosshair's complete opposite approaches to the Empire and post-war life.

The way Crosshair clings to his identity as a soldier of the Empire

And Echo as a soldier of the Republic

But Hunter puts his identity as a soldier behind him

Crosshair fights for the Empire to gain purpose

Echo fights against the Empire to save his brothers

And Hunter decides the Empire is too strong to even try to oppose

"A ship in port is a safer one"

"but it's not the reason it was made"

"So forgive me if I wander off"

"And forgive me more if I just stay"

Thinking about what The Bad Batch could have been if it had more fully explored the differences between those ideologies

(Thinking about what The Bad Batch could have been if it had dedicated more screen time to the 'reg' clones within the Empire and the underground network's fight to free them , instead of just sidelining Echo and Rex for a hypothetical clone rebellion show we might never get)

Oh poor baby imperial crosshair

Happy Halloween, here's my favorite spoopy time movie