A Passion for Wonder (A Star Wars: The Bad Batch fanfiction)

Epilogue

Phee sighed in relief as Hunter finally flickered before her on the holocall. "Hunter! We haven't heard from any of you in days, did something happen? You haven't been responding to calls or transmissions."

She watched Hunter, shaky in the blue light, sigh with his entire body.

Fear began to make its way into her lungs.

Hunter sank into a chair and took off his helmet, and Phee flinched at the grief and anger painted on his face, harsh lines on his skeleton tattoo. He didn't apologize.

"We went on a mission and failed, then went back to Ord Mantell to recuperate as best we could. We needed Azi to fix up Omega, she was hit hard."

Phee gripped hard at the wood table on which Hunter's image rested.

Hunter continued. "Cid's a backstabbing aruetti and called the Imperials, and Omega's karking gone now."

Phee stared at him, her heart racing. For Omega, that kid. For what Hunter wasn't saying.

"You aren't coming back to Pabu, I assume?" Phee's voice was faint in her ears.

Hunter shook his head. "We're going to search for Omega, and we aren't going to stop until we find her."

Phee nodded, tears gathering at her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Hunter."

Hunter shrugged, angrily rubbing at the tears gathering in his eyes. So full of rage.

"Can I talk to Tech?"

Hunter froze, then looked up at Phee. The anger in his face faded away, until it was fragments, and his face twisted into the scars of misery carved into his being.

Terror gripped Phee in the throat and did not let go. Her heart beat loud in her head, drumming and piercing and refusing to go away.

Hunter opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't speak, couldn't force out the words that were trying so hard to escape through the tears in his eyes, the nails that scratched their way into his palms.

"He's gone."

Phee sucked in air and could not make herself breath it out. Her nails were digging into the wood table, trying to claw the marks she could feel being engraved in her heart. Hunter continued, his voice shaky, breaking every second.

"We couldn't get out, and so he—"

Hunter choked and reached up to clutch his head. The migraine forming there was sharp and agonizing. It did not drown out how empty he felt, that his brother was dead. He made himself continue talking. For Phee. For Tech.

"He had to sacrifice himself."

Phee did not know if Hunter continued talking to her after that. She did not know that he just hung up, sick in grief.

The palm of her hands dug into her eyes, catching tears. A roaring rose in her ears and drowned everything out except,

Tech is dead.