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notfivefives · 1 year

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Prompt fill #6 for my @badthingshappenbingo card, requested by @sharkluv. Thank you so much for the ask! This is not the story I was expecting to write (like, at all), but I really enjoyed working on it. I hope you enjoy reading it! Also tagging @rain-on-kamino!

Prompt Filled: Manhandling

Fandom: Star Wars: The Bad Batch

Title: Salvage

Characters: Crosshair, Hunter, Wrecker, and Tech

Word Count: 2,033

Summary: Crosshair’s chip doesn’t trigger during Order 66, but the rest of The Batch’s do. Crosshair disobeys an order.

Chapter: 1/1

Warnings: Non-canonical character deaths, forced ( but nondescript) medical treatment

My BTHB Card

Read below the cut or on AO3

The walk from the Marauder to their quarters is like a funeral procession. Crosshair trails his three brothers - They are still his brothers, aren't they? - and after they enter their quarters, the door slides shut with a finality Crosshair can’t recall ever noticing before.

He crosses the distance to his bunk just like he has after countless other missions, but Wrecker isn’t boisterously recounting the high notes of the mission and he hasn’t carved a hash mark on the wall to commemorate their victory.

And it is a victory, Crosshair decides; he's just unsure why.

He neatly stows his equipment and sets his rifle on the common table, relieved when the heft of it no longer puts demands on his wounded shoulder. He will see to that later, once the others are asleep or absent. For now, he’ll clean his weapon because that’s what he always does. And he will keep Hunter, Tech, and Wrecker in his periphery and he will try not to think too much about why Echo isn’t with them. When he turns to get his cleaning kit, Hunter approaches him. Crosshair straightens and studies Hunter as intently as he is studying him.

“You should let me take a look at that,” Hunter says as he inclines his head toward the singed plastoid at the intersection of Crosshair’s chest plate and right pauldron.

“Nothing to look at.”

Where there might usually have been a dubious smile on Hunter’s face, there isn’t now. There is a tightness around his eyes and something sharp and unyielding there instead.

“I’m fine.” Crosshair’s words come out icily, and they would be convincing if Hunter wasn’t the one listening. But Hunter’s privy to every electromagnetic pulse and vibration, scent, and every other type of sensory input that slips beneath the notice of most. Crosshair has never envied Hunter the intensity of his senses, never wished to know the reek of a battlefield the way Hunter must. But that doesn’t stop Crosshair from cursing Hunter in the privacy of his own mind and loathing him just a little bit for not shutting things out, for not shutting it off. For just knowing.

“Is that why your heart rate just jumped, and why I can smell the stink of infection?”

Damn.

“Leave it alone.”

Crosshair narrows his eyes and focuses on the deep, ceaseless pain, wills it to temper his resolve. He itches to be anywhere but under Hunter’s scrutiny. He traces the tip of his tongue along the backs of his teeth, quelling the urge to reach for a toothpick.

“I need you functional,” Hunter presses as he takes a step closer to Crosshair and reaches toward him.

Crosshair takes a clipped but still-graceful step away from Hunter and scoffs. The derisive noise is louder than he intends and he can feel Tech and Wrecker’s eyes on him. They’re not listening to an argument with interest or waiting to throw their opinions into it. They’re just watching, waiting. The instinctive thing Crosshair has been feeling since Koller lurches into clarity.

He is outnumbered.

“I said leave it alone, Hunter.”

Crosshair can see a minuscule twitch in Hunter’s jawline, and his expression grows harder. Just like it had on Koller before-

Crosshair shakes off the memory and sidesteps Hunter and avoids the temptation to punctuate his disdain by checking Hunter’s shoulder with his own. No use in causing himself more pain.

He wants out of this room, and he wants away from his batch. Hunter grasps Crosshair’s forearm and Crosshair wrenches away. That ignites fresh agony in his shoulder and he sucks in air through his teeth. He reaches for the wound, but stops short and puts his arm back down at his side, straightens, and looks from Hunter to Tech to Wrecker, then back at Hunter, trying to gauge how much weakness he just displayed.

“Don’t touch me,” he says. The threat in his voice grows jagged and brittle with each syllable.

He walks toward the door and the blood rushing in his ears and the hair pricking at the nape of his neck tell him the same cold, clear truth.

You should be running.

Crosshair makes it two steps before he hears Hunter say Wrecker’s name.

“Right,” Wrecker says. There’s eagerness in his tone that’s familiar but wrong and for once Crosshair wishes Wrecker was as slow as some people - idiots mostly - thought he was.

Crosshair makes it another two and a half steps before Wrecker is between him and the door. Silently, Hunter falls into place behind him, and Crosshair can feel him there, the trigger in a trap that is ready to slam shut.

Tech hasn’t moved; he’s watching proceedings, assessing them from behind the yellow lenses of his goggles. Crosshair doesn’t doubt Tech can tell him the precise likelihood he’ll make it out of their quarters, but he doesn’t have to. Crosshair knows it’s laughably slim.

“Get out of my way, Wrecker.”

Wrecker moves his head back and forth and raises his hands, palms outward, ready to catch Crosshair or fight him if it comes to that. Crosshair bends at the knees and flexes his fingers, and he realizes it will come to that.

And he doesn’t know why.

“Enough,” Hunter warns. “Remove your kit. Let us treat the wound. Now. That’s an order.”

An order.

This isn’t a professional disagreement or a fraternal spat. Hunter’s words are absolute and Crosshair feels as though he’s being tracked through the scope of someone else’s rifle. He glances back at Hunter without looking away from Wrecker completely. Hunter’s expression is hard and direct. Expectant. Hunter’s esteem for his own rank is inconvenient at best and unnerving at worst.

Crosshair followed orders every day of his life. He followed them to complete missions, to win. He followed them because it was in his very marrow to do so. Freedom from choice has always been a mercy - though the rest of The Batch would never admit it, not even Tech - but before today, that mercy has never felt like slow suffocation.

When Hunter reaches for his arm again, Crosshair disobeys.

He swings back at Hunter’s head with his elbow. He knows it's a bad move.

Hunter catches his arm easily and twists it behind him. The countermeasure hurts, but it’s not hard enough to be cruel. Maybe Hunter is still in there somewhere after all. Crosshair wants to believe that. He suddenly, desperately needs to believe that, but he contorts in Hunter’s grip and viciously curses as Hunter’s hold tightens.

“What are you doing?” He tries his best to bury his pain and the spike of fear with indignation as he tries to pull away. “Don’t touch me.”

Then Wrecker is there and Hunter hands him off as casually as he would an ammo cartridge.

“We’re going to help you, Crosshair.” It’s the closest thing to patronization Crosshair has ever heard in Wrecker’s voice and he hates it. Lula is lying discarded on the floor, half buried under an old panel that Tech had likely been using for one project or another between missions. The tooka, with her red eyes and forlorn lip lipline, is the only thing in the room that feels familiar.

Crosshair turns away from the doll and futilely tests the constraints of Wrecker’s arms.

“I can help myse-”

“Bring him to the table,” Hunter orders. He’s crouched next to Echo’s bunk searching out the med kit Echo keeps there.

Wrecker nudges Crosshair in that direction, letting him know compliance is a good idea. He digs his heels into the durasteel beneath him and pushes back hard. He may as well be trying to move a wall.

"No," Crosshair says. He can hear the ragged edge of desperation wearing at his own voice as he lunges back toward the door. Wrecker holds him tight.

He tries to crush Wrecker’s instep, but he only catches armor and there’s no indication Wrecker even noticed. He’s only managed to send new pain screaming through his shoulder, but he bites back on the agony and struggles.

It makes no difference.

Crosshair cries out in surprise when Wrecker tugs backward, using his own weight against him. Wrecker keeps him from falling flat on his ass, but panic lances through him when he can’t get his feet beneath him again. His boots stutter pathetically on the floor, but that ceases when Wrecker hauls him up and toward the table.

“No!” He’s struggling now, writhing without regard for how frantic and ineffectual it is. “Let me fucking go!”

With dizzying speed, Wrecker lifts him and hefts him onto the tabletop. The back of Crosshair’s head hits the table. It’s enough force to stun, but not enough to do any harm, and in the fleet seconds it takes Crosshair’s mind to catch up to what’s happened, Wrecker has both of his wrists in one massive hand, pinning them over his sternum. Wrecker’s other hand forces his left leg down by the thigh.

“This outburst is unnecessary,” Tech says as he takes his place on the side opposite Wrecker. There’s something like commiseration in Tech’s words, but there’s callous interest in his eyes.

Crosshair drives his unrestrained knee up toward Tech, but Tech anticipates the attack and catches his leg with quick hands.

“You should cooperate,” Tech grunts. He shoves Crosshair’s leg back down and Crosshair takes petty satisfaction in the disapproval on Tech’s face.

“You should let me go.” Crosshair says, breathless and caustic. Wrecker laughs at that. It’s not booming or jovial. It’s the distant rumble of a storm.

Crosshair bucks beneath their hands, all lean muscle, obscenities and fear. He thrashes harder when Hunter sets the medkit by his head. He looks down at Crosshair, dour but thoughtful.

“Where are you going to go, Crosshair?” he asks as he begins to remove Crosshair’s armor.

Crosshair shouts. Neither the harsh sound nor the rage behind it makes his brothers flinch; it doesn’t make them do anything at all. They all know the answer. By the time Hunter is satisfied with the amount of armor he’s taken away, Crosshair is panting and his limbs are trembling from the strain.

Hunter draws his vibroknife from its sheath and Crosshair’s eyes go wide. He stills and groans involuntarily when he sees the honed, glinting blade in Hunter’s skilled hand.

It’s been cleaned since its last use.

General Bilaba’s padawan had been fast. So fast, Crosshair’s first shot following Hunter’s order had gone wide, and his second one had struck him after it had been deflected back at him by the padawan’s lightsaber. He’d lifted the butt of his blaster rifle to his left shoulder instead of his right and found Hunter in his scope, advancing on Dume. One elegantly efficient move put a burst of crimson on Koller’s snow-covered ground. The roar of the falls had been the only sound.

Crosshair shakes his head and jerks helplessly.

“Shh,” Hunter says without sympathy or warmth. Crosshair is frozen while Hunter cuts away the dark gray underlayer. The blade separates the fabric with awful ease, then Hunter sheaths it without any flourish.

A hypo comes after that. Crosshair tries to flinch away, but it still finds its way into his shoulder, and as the pain abates, Hunter works slowly and methodically, cleaning and dressing and bandaging until he seems satisfied that Crosshair would still be of use to him. To this nascent Empire.

Crosshair’s mind feels slow and his chest feels tight. He doesn’t even have the energy to move after Tech releases his hold on his leg. Tech scans him and shows Hunter with an unconcerned shrug. If Crosshair is on trial, perhaps this small jury has already come to its judgment.

The pressure Wrecker’s been putting on him lets up. When breathing comes more easily, he rolls his head to the side and looks at Echo’s empty bunk.

“Where’s Echo?” He rasps. “Where’s the reg?”

“CT-1409 was in violation of Order 66,” Tech says, as though it explains everything. “But perhaps, with some re-education, you can be salvaged.”

Hunter nods as he packs away Echo’s medkit.

Crosshair doesn’t fight as Wrecker helps him into his bunk.

He curls on his side and drifts.

#bad things happen bingo #Star Wars: The Bad Batch #manhandling #sharkluv #rain-on-kamino #bthb #crosshair #hunter #wrecker #tech #order 66 #with my sincerest apologies to Echo and Caleb #tried this one in the present tense #this was not the story i expected to write

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