The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

The Silence In Between

Author's Note: Enjoy this one-shot exploring more of the dynamic between Wrecker and Crosshair. :D This is for the square "secrets" on the Bad Batch Bingo. :)

~ Amina Gila

In a universe where Wrecker and Crosshair are born twins, their closeness results in a telepathic connection only they share. It isn't always a good thing. It also isn't always bad. Either way, it makes confronting each other, and everything they did to each other, simultaneously more difficult and easier.

Wrecker didn't think they'd ever come back to Kamino again. It's as dark and stormy as ever, and it's the same, but there's a sort of oppressive gloom hanging in the air, though that could just as much be their worry about Hunter.

He's their leader. He's the one who makes all their choices, who gets them out of trouble time and again, and it feels so wrong to be going to rescue him.

Is he still gonna be okay when they get there?

Tech is still here, and he's the only brother that Wrecker's had through everything now.

He can't think about losing him, too.

They already lost Crosshair, and Wrecker is terrified of losing anyone else.

Omega is – is something, she's everything, and Wrecker doesn't want to let her out of sight. It doesn't matter if she knows this part of Kamino better than they do. (She reminds him of Crosshair when they were little, and he'd do anything to protect her, to keep her safe. Anything. She's so small and breakable and he's every bit as protective of her as he once was of Crosshair.)

The room Omega led them to lights up, and he looks around. "That looks like every other Kaminoan lab to me," Wrecker says, confused. They've been in enough to know. And he doesn't like them, either.

"Not exactly," Omega answers quietly. She's upset about being here, and Wrecker doesn't even know what to say to her about it. "Most in Tipoca City don't know about it."

Omega didn't want to come back here, and frankly, Wrecker doesn't, either. The last time he was here, Crosshair shot him. That's the one thing looping through Wrecker's brain on repeat, and it's so hard to think about anything else.

He knows how to focus, no matter what he's dealing with, but it's hard. Crosshair was always here with them when they were on Kamino before. Now? He's – he's just gone. It's not his fault.

Doesn't change what he did, though.

It doesn't mean he can stop dreaming about Crosshair shooting him, trying to kill them. And that was Crosshair. They don't hurt each other.

At first, Wrecker thought it was just some moral disagreement with Hunter. He didn't expect Crosshair to actually turn on them. None of them did.

They're family, a squad, and they're all each other has ever had. Wrecker knows it's not Crosshair's fault, but that doesn't stop the – the – everything.

He slept by Omega every night since they left Kamino, half to make sure she wouldn't disappear the same way his little brother did.

All of them are special in their own way. Always have been, but Crosshair's the only younger sibling Wrecker's ever had until Omega.

Echo and Tech move out, trying to locate Hunter.

"I don't get it," Wrecker tells the kid finally, because he doesn't see anything abnormal about this. Why's it so secret? "What's so special about this lab?"