Call It Freedom

Chapter 15 - It All Fell Down

Author's Note: I think the chapter title says it all. :):):)

~ Amina Gila

Hunter doesn't wake up until they're already on Ord Mantell, landed in one of the dozens of hangar bays scattered throughout the city. When he wakes up, it's to see Crosshair leaning on his rack, watching him. Wrecker is asleep, too, and he can hear movement from the cockpit. Echo, obviously. Omega is in the gunner's mount, awake but resting, her heart beating faster than normal, a telltale sign as to her anxiety.

He drops his head back with a sigh, feeling the headache still pulsing dully. He might not be physically tired anymore, but he is emotionally wrung out, and he can't muster up the strength to get up and make a plan for what they need to do next. He's just – he's tired of it all, of the fight, of the constant struggle to keep his squad safe while they run from one mission to the next. He wants to stop.

But they have to get Tech back first, somehow, and it's with that thought in mind that he pushes himself upright, scrubbing his face, and roughly combing a hand through his hair.

"What happened?" Crosshair asks, pulling Hunter from his disjointed thoughts. "You reacted to hearing plan 99."

He owes them the truth, and he's tired of being the only one who knows. This is not how he planned to tell them, but... he doesn't much care if it's how they find out. Not anymore. He just misses Tech. "Get Wrecker up," he says dully as Echo comes into the room, standing in the doorway for a moment before coming in and sitting on the edge of a crate. Omega scrambles down the ladder of the gunner's mount, dropping onto Hunter's rack next to him, almost touching him, as Crosshair kicks Wrecker in the shin to wake him up.

All at once, Hemlock's words come back to him. "To lose one of your own, it must weigh heavily on you as their leader." It did then, and it does now, too. Hemlock had used that against him, and the Empire will use Tech against them now, unless they can get him back.

Wrecker doesn't complain, surprisingly – or not, actually – about being so abruptly awoken, and in under a minute, they're all looking at Hunter expectantly, waiting for him to speak. Suddenly, he feels afraid. He doesn't know how to tell them, but he owes them an explanation. Pushing them away and telling them he'll tell them later will only upset them, Crosshair especially, and they need to be united in this for it to work out.

Besides, he's so, so tired of feeling alone, of carrying this burden all by himself.

"We... used plan 99 once," he says quietly, looking down at the floor so he doesn't need to see their eyes on him. "We'd gone to – well, we were trying to get Crosshair back, because he was in trouble. We... We didn't have any intel on his location, and I – I didn't... weigh the risks properly. We – we went, and it... went badly." He breathes out slowly, trying to push back the pain that's too deep for tears as he crosses his arms. So much happened, and he doesn't know how to explain it all to them without going into the details, so they understand it.

"The – we... tried to escape on a rail line, got stuck mid-way, thousands of feet above the ground. The Empire was closing in, and one of the cars got detached. Tech was – he'd gone to restart the system so we could get out, and there – there was..." His voice trails off, wavering, as he tries to put it into words. "We couldn't get him back on." He sounds dead even to his own ears, and glancing up, he can see the horror and dread on their faces as it sinks in. "He said plan 99, shot out the connection when Wrecker wouldn't. And... he fell. There was – no one could have survived that, not when there was nothing to break the fall."

He'd only survived on Daro because he'd been tumbling down a mountain. "Hemlock came after us, took Omega, and that was – that was it."

A strained, numb, horrified silence settles over them, and it seems as though none of them are willing, or able, to break that. A single tear escapes, and Hunter brushes it away roughly, swallowing. His emotions are too jumbled and chaotic for him to even begin to sort out.