What If All of This Could Make You Braver

Echo

This took place between the series finale and the epilogue.

CT-9904, just a silver haired boy in a training room, firing at targets for practice. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen targets down in a minute. He lined his rifle up for the next one when he gasped.

The next target was Omega's head.

No. No. No.

Crosshair, now in Imperial armour, held his head as he let his rifle clatter. No way will he raise a rifle to her.

"Good soldiers follow orders," the voice that had chanted all those months in his head repeated, sending waves of pain in his whole body.

As he fell from the pain, he found himself on the ground of an unknown planet, with Omega standing at his head.

"Crosshair wouldn't do that, would he?" she whispers to no one in particular, until her brown eyes found his. "Remember what I told you in the brig? You can't help it." Then her voice hardened. "I wanted to believe it was your inhibitor chip that made you like this, but I was wrong."

She turned into Wrecker.

"You didn't even try to come back! We would have still taken you in..."

Wrecker was replaced by Hunter.

"Why would we trust you? You really thought we'd take you in, and not ask questions? Betrayed them, like you did us?"

Echo morphed into existence. He just looked at him with every single ounce of hatred in him. Slowly, he walked towards him and slashed his face with his scomp link. While Crosshair covered his bleeding face against the onslaught of slashes, Echo's mouth opened, but Tech's voice came through.

"Crosshair has always been severe and unyielding. You cannot change that. He cannot change that. Understanding you doesn't mean I agree with you." Then Echo's face wore Tech's goggles, and Crosshair would have given anything to remove that look of regret and pain from Tech's face as he bent down and whispered, "why did I give up my life, Crosshair, when it all had to end in you destroying everything? You aren't worth my sacrifice."

Crosshair saw the Bad Batch leaving him in chains and bleeding to his death on the waters of Kamino as the Marauder took to the skies. He began pleading, screaming for anyone to come, as the water swirled around him, blood mingled in it, threatening to take his life as the reminders of him being a disappointment and pain rang again...

"No!" He sat up and gasped, drenched in sweat. He felt his face for blood, and his eyes tried searching for Kaminoan water, but all he could feel was the rough, gaunt lines of his face, and the interior of the Marauder with everyone peacefully sleeping. Evidently, he had not screamed this time because Hunter hadn't come running this time. Or maybe he doesn't care anymore. But Crosshair shook that idea away. He does. Hunter absolutely does. He hugged him on that bridge on Tantiss, didn't he? And ever since that, they had seemed to grow closer...

He stood up, shakily, sleep now far away from his eyes as he walked outside of the house down to the coast of Pabu. He found a rock to sit on, and he let his breaths even out as he tried to absorb it in. It wasn't real, they don't hate you anymore, it was just a nightmare...

"Ah, so you're the one I saw slip out."

Crosshair jumped as if burned and turned to see the cyborg reg lean against one of the many caverns lining Pabu's coast.

"Oh. It's you." Crosshair settled and made room for Echo to sit. "What are you doing here? Why were you awake at that time?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Echo raised an eyebrow.