Leap of Faith

Chapter 1 - Escape

Author's Note: This is the second fic I wrote with the Bad Batch. This idea just occurred to me, and really, how could I possible resist the desire to write soft, fluffy bonding with Crosshair and Omega? Lol. 

This is canon compliant (probably) until a couple months after season 1 when things diverge. Enjoy! :)

Ngl, writing Omega is pretty easy, but I had such a hard time with Crosshair. Lol. He's a very complicated character. I'm not sure if I believe his inhibitor chip was really removed or not, but for the sake of this story, it was. I think it would be interesting to explore his reasons for wanting to stay with the Empire even with his chip truly gone, and while this fic doesn't get into that too much, I'm thinking about dealing with that in later installments in this probably-going-to-be-a-series. Lol.

This is a gift fic for ameliasstories on ao3 for the SW Sibling Appreciation Gift Exchange! :D There are six chapters, and I'll be posting weekly on Thursday (including this week. :)

~ Amina Gila

Omega pants weakly, leaning against the wall and pressing a hand to her right thigh as if that will be enough to stop the throbbing. She's covered with an assortment of still unhealed bruises from her latest escape attempt, not to mention the myriad of cuts and incisions, most of which were never properly bandaged. By some miracle, she'd managed to befriend a medical droid and convinced it to find out where Crosshair is – because for some inexplicable reason, she had a feeling that he's here on this Star Destroyer, though she had been captured and brought here by a bounty hunter.

The droid complied with her requests, and finally directed her to the quarters where she's hoping Crosshair is staying. If he doesn't help her, it will all be over.

It's been a couple weeks, at least, since she was captured, and she's been subjected to more medical tests than she cares to remember. At some point, she's become used to the pain, learned to tune it out and shut it down when it becomes too much for her. The Empire didn't care that she was a child, didn't care that she was in pain. All they wanted was answers to the "secrets" she supposedly possesses within her.

Because she is... lucky. Apparently. She is the first – and only – Force-sensitive clone to be created, and the Empire wants to find a way to replicate that. But now, they're done with her, and if Crosshair doesn't help her, it will all be over.

It's been a few months since she last saw him on Kamino, when he chose to stay behind with the Empire instead of leaving with them. It hurt. It hurt because they thought he was under the control of his chip. He wasn't. He said he wasn't, and Omega doesn't know what that will mean. She doesn't know if he'll even care about her enough to help. But she has to try. She has to trust that he'll help her when she needs him.

Her feelings towards him are... mixed, to say the least.

"I wanted to believe it was the inhibitor chip that made you like this... But I was wrong."

Crosshair was nothing like she thought he would be. He was... bitter, argumentative, even cruel, when she saw him on Kamino. Hunter and the others said that he could be difficult, but it was nothing like that. She had thought that his attitude was just because of the chip, and she just – she doesn't know how she feels about him. She's never really known him, not like the others, but she still cares about him. She still stubbornly clings to the hope that he'll come back to them someday, a hope that none of the others seem willing to hold.

In the end, nothing really changed at all, after Kamino, but it feels like everything did. Hunter is quieter, more withdrawn, more hesitant, more... depressed. Tech still disappears, sometimes for hours, when the topic of Crosshair comes up. Wrecker alternates between being miserable and being angry, though it's usually the former. Echo is struggling with a deep guilt, a firm, unwavering conviction that it's their fault Crosshair is gone, that they should have done more to help him. He buries it well with an anger that he's never unleashed against them, but they all know it's there.