The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

Payback

Author's Note: Yes, I know this is an Imperial AU and should probably be very angsty but it's genuinely one of the crackist things I have ever written. Also. I made it to cope with an awful Imperial AU I saw (I can detail but it's not really important), hence the insanity level. Sometimes things hafta be dark for families to stay together. <3

~ Rivana Rita

PS. This is for the square "friendly competition" on the Bad Batch bingo. :) We've finished our first bingo card! :D

~ Amina Gila

Hunter thought staying with the Empire would give them some sort of stability. Instead, it just made them ten times as chaotic. And gave them a very strange Sith dad.

Hunter would have thought working for the Empire would have guaranteed them some sort of... safety or something, but he was wrong.

Maybe it's just the Jedi-hunting thing.

Or something.

Can't take time or energy to regret much of that now, though. He has a burn hole in his gut somewhere that he isn't about to look at. Tech tried to treat it, but there's not a lot he can do until they get some place he can be treated properly. There's not a lot Tech can do, other than cutting the pain, which isn't much.

It still hurts.

He should just be grateful he's still alive.

It's not much different than a blaster shot, just minus the heat, the force of impact, but it's bigger, so they mostly cancel out.

Echo's hand is in his, and he tries not to hold it too tightly, but everything hurts, and he's exhausted enough to sleep for a week straight, if he were able to sleep at all. He can't. It hurts, and he can't do anything short of breathing in strangled gasps. Doesn't quite know if the blade went all the way through or not, and he doesn't want to know.

Crosshair is also, unfortunately, a bit high.

A bit.

He was hurt, too, and he and Wrecker are attempting to distract Omega, because she does not need to sit here through this, too.

He's only half aware of what they're saying, and it doesn't really matter. All he does know is that it's very distracting. His head is throbbing, and he really wants to sleep.

Wrecker and Crosshair are squabbling, something about drawing of all things in the galaxy.

"Tell me we don't have paint on board," Hunter grumbles, because he Does Not Want to wake up to the absolute chaos the kids will be getting into in his absence.

"Actually, we do," Tech informs him, altogether too cheerfully for the circumstances. He's not the one with a hole in him, though. If he did, no one would be so flippant about it, either. Hunter can take it – will take it, for his brothers if he has to – but they – he couldn't let them get hurt.

Crosshair was hurt anyway, though.

It could've been worse. One of them could've died – they were being sent after an alleged Jedi Council Member, after all.

They're piled on one of the racks together, and Hunter's scooted over to against the wall, so they have enough room to sit on the edge beside him. It's – relaxing to at least not be here alone.

"Where should Lula go?" Omega asks distantly, and that's the first thing Hunter actually registers. Maybe the pain meds are really kicking in right about now – he's actually semi-capable of rational thought. Meaning, he feels marginally less like curling up in a miserable ball in the corner.