Archive of Our Own ^beta

He thinks about calling after Cody goes AWOL. 

He imagines typing out the comm code, imagines what he’d say. 

Worse, he imagines how they’d respond.

After everything he’s said and done and believed. 

He remembers that flicker of disappointment in Cody’s eyes before their mission, the words he’d spoken after. “...you know what makes us different from battle droids? We make our own decisions. Our own choices. And we have to live with them too.” 

He made his decision. He made his choice. And now he has to live with it. Without them. 

Crosshair puts the comm away. 

**

The comm trembles in his shaking hand, his teeth clattering together so hard they ache. 

Mayday is heavy against him, unconscious or dead - please, don’t be dead - Crosshair isn’t sure which. 

He doesn’t even know what his brothers will do, if they’d make it to Barton IV in time, how they’d make it past the Empire’s perimeter undetected…if they’d even try. 

But that’s what Clone Force 99 is known for: success with impossible odds. 

They will come for him. They won’t let him die. 

They might not want him or let him stay. 

…our decisions…our choices…we have to live with them…

He can live with his decisions. 

Mayday can’t. 

He enters the comm code, brings the device to his ear, listens for the connection to be made over the howl of sleet strewn wind. 

He imagines what he’ll say. 

He imagines how they’ll respond. 

We don’t leave our own behind , Hunter had said. He never mentioned the caveat: we will never make them stay. 

The comm is silent, the invisible beacon reaching with tendril fingers somewhere beyond Crosshair’s grasp.  

“Please,” Crosshair breathes. 

But the transmission falls short, a sharp intonation signifying an incomplete call. 

Crosshair wonders what they would have said. 

**

He doesn’t remember leaving Barton IV the first time. He thought he hadn’t until he woke up strapped to a medical cot, being treated for exposure and arrested for treason. 

Leaving Barton IV a second time, Crosshair does not watch the ice planet as the Remora pulls away from its atmosphere. Doesn’t wonder where the Empire put Mayday’s body, or if they left him where he fell…or maybe he does. 

Hunter comes to sit next to him. “Crosshair, can I ask you something?” 

“Mmm,” Crosshair hums noncommittally. 

“Those helmets in the base. You knew who they belonged to.” 

Crosshair grits his teeth and rasps out, “That’s not a question.” 

 Predictably, Hunter breathes an exasperated sigh. “Cross…” he groans, like he used to, before everything. 

It almost makes Crosshair smile, knowing he can still get on Hunter’s last nerve. The decomposing carcass of what used to be camaraderie between them. Almost. “I met three of them. Hexx and Veetch were killed during an attack on the base soon after I arrived. Mayday and I were sent to retrieve the crates that were stolen by the raiders.”

“What happened to him?” 

“Dead,” Crosshair bites out. “Like his brothers, he never made it off that maker-forsaken planet.” 

“I’m sorry,” Hunter says, and he has the audacity to sound like he means it. 

Crosshair stiffens. “For what? What could you have done?” 

He’s being unfair, but Hunter doesn’t retaliate. Not like he might have only hours ago. Instead, his brother doesn’t say anything at all. 

“Let me ask you a question,” Crosshair says. 

Out his peripheral, he sees Hunter hesitate then nod. 

“If I had contacted you, before I was arrested by the Empire, would you have come for me?” 

The unanswered question, all these months. Imagining answers with no proof. 

“I might’ve wondered if it was a trap,” Hunter says, all honesty. 

Crosshair closes his eyes, if only to banish the prickling burn that comes.  

Hunter continues, “But we would have found a way. We always do.” 

“I tried,” Crosshair mutters, “on Barton IV, after Mayday was injured. The signal didn’t go through.” 

“I wish it had. We would have come.” 

And he doesn’t have to imagine anymore.