Call It Freedom

Chapter 7 - Torn from the Story I'm Building

Author's Note: The Batch get to Onderon. :')

~ Amina Gila

Crosshair waits until, when he looks, he can see Hunter dozing off against the wall in the gunner's mount before slinking back to the cockpit. The only one there right now is Echo – Tech is sitting next to Hunter while Wrecker is showing Omega around the ship. He slips into the co-pilot's seat and twists away from Echo, staring at the white-blue swirls of hyperspace, absently playing with the toothpick in his mouth.

They sit in silence for many long minutes before Echo finally speaks up. "Something troubling you?"

He clenches his jaw, glaring harder at the viewport with narrowed eyes. "No." It's obviously a lie – his clipped, sharp tone is more than enough of an indication of that, and he's far too coiled up and tense for Echo to buy it.

Echo hums. "Clearly." A pause, and then, "what happened?" There's a gentleness to the question, as well as an undertone that lets Crosshair know he might have an idea or two already. Probably, he does. It's not as if it could have been anyone other than Crosshair who was the 'he' Hunter referred to.

"Evidently, I'm dangerous," he sneers.

"Hunter said that to you?" Echo sounds shocked, and more than a little angry, and Crosshair gets the feeling that if he doesn't actively engage in the conversation that he has no desire to be a part of, Echo will go storming back to the main hold to chew Hunter out. He gets like that – very, very overprotective of his brothers. It's one of the qualities Crosshair admires most about him. None of the other regs are like that, that he's seen. It's what's made him fit in so well with them.

Crosshair slumps down in the chair, glaring even harder. An annoying voice that sounds suspiciously like Hunter tells him that if he glares any harder, he'll melt a hole through the viewport, and they'll all be sucked into space. He tells that mental voice to kriff off. "No," he grumbles finally, "But it's obvious."

Echo turns the pilot's chair towards him, but Crosshair pointedly ignores the ARC trooper's gaze, continuing to stare dead ahead. "Crosshair, whatever happened in Hunter's memories is not on you. We know about the chips now, and we'll deal with them as soon as possible."

He grunts, unconvinced. "Easy for you to say. Tech doesn't even think you can be affected by them."

He doesn't need to look to know that Echo's expression right now is very unimpressed. He ignores that too, sliding even lower in the chair, finally leaning back and kicking his feet up on the dashboard. "What if he's wrong about the chip?" he asks finally, biting down on the toothpick, hard enough to nearly splinter it. "What if... what I did was of my own?"

"He tried to stab me."

"He was going to kill me."

Crosshair wants to say that it's a ridiculous thought – nothing in the galaxy could make him turn on his brothers... right? He thought he knew that, but now, he isn't so certain anymore. What if he is capable of going after them on his own, trying to kill them... because?

He can feel Echo gaping at him. "Why would you think that? You would never do something like that, Crosshair, not of your own. You're loyal."

His expression twists, remembering – "We left him behind, and we never went back for him." He doesn't understand that, either. It's something they've always lived by, the promise that they don't leave their own behind. Hunter wouldn't have left him, unless he really saw no other choice. Unless, whispers a dark voice in the back of his mind, he thought you were doing it of your own.