Archive of Our Own ^beta

The departure from Wayland is a blur of chaos and haste lost to Hunter’s subconscious as the adrenaline that’s been keeping him alive for the last six months finally begins to fade into the slow assurance of realizing that the war is well and truly over.

Truth be told, he cannot remember most of HOW he makes it back to the hangar bay by the time he’s actually boarded the shuttle. He sort of, almost registers being drenched, - all of them must be - but that is the least of his problems now. Omega attaches herself to his arm with a grip that betrays the perceived strength of such little hands, pulling him along on her right and Crosshair on her left. They trek through empty corridors at a pace set by the urgency of time, dumb to how many troopers may still be alive and kicking around the base, and just as unwilling to find out when none of the three of them are in any fighting shape. Hunter struggles on a limp, still, but he doesn’t care to give it the attention it so desperately needs until he knows he can afford to let it hurt.

Hemlock is dead. Omega is unharmed. His brothers are alive.

And that’s all that Hunter is able to process. Nothing else matters. Nothing else ever need matter for as long as he still draws breath.

Somewhere in between fleeing the overhang and finding the shuttle, a reg trooper with cropped hair and a gash through his eyebrow intercepts as if he were sent to look for them; maybe he was. Hunter has the brief presence of mind to remember that he introduces himself as Vik. Through the growing fog of exhaustion he hears that ‘the others’ have already made it to the ship, and something about Echo having grown more worried for them. Omega does all of the talking, none of which he manages to process properly, and Hunter feels horrible for it, because he is the parent, and she was a captive, IS a CHILD, and none of this should be her concern anymore, but he cannot form words on his tongue to take over. He thinks - though he can’t really be sure - that he does open his mouth to TRY.

Awareness only begins to dawn on him again when Echo greets them at the bottom of the ramp and a chorus of voices alerts him to the fact that they are the LAST ones out of Tantiss; everyone else is already waiting. Hunter can guess, if the look on Echo’s face dripping with concern and disturbance is any real indication, that they look just as worse for the wear as they feel. Vik disappears into the belly of the shuttle, a sea of clones crowded together elbow to elbow in the hull that makes Hunter’s head ache. He scans the heads in the horde for Wrecker as Echo gently begins to nudge them forward onto the ship, hears himself asking about his little brother, too, a momentary panic gripping at his lungs-

‘He took a real beating,’ Echo replies slowly, flesh hand pressing into Hunter’s back in between his shoulder blades. ‘But he’ll be alright. We salvaged as much from the medbay as we could carry or use. One of the field medics is having a look at him now, says he expects him to make a full recovery.’

Omega whimpers with relief, squeezing Hunter’s wrist harder still and bowing her head. He breathes a little easier.

Echo takes them up to the front of the shuttle below the cockpit, practically shoving Hunter and Crosshair into the forward crash seats. Only then does Omega release him, allowing him to sit. The weight off of his leg is a blessing, but there is less of a solace in being able to relax than he had expected. All at once, the absence of her hand on his arm has his heart beating a little faster. He forces his vision to focus out, if only to stare into her wide brown eyes, cheeks streaked with dirt and tears, and remind himself that she is here, alive, safe. He opens his mouth to say something. Nothing comes out. Omega stands before him and stares back, face slack, brows knitted together. She looks as though she’s about to cry again. She doesn’t. Instead she smiles, forced and weak and watery, but THERE. The sergeant smiles back. He imagines it looks much the same.

‘I’m going to go check on Wrecker,’ she tells him, wringing her hands in front of her chest.

Uncertain as to whether or not he gives an affirmative, Omega turns and wades into the crowd. He watches her go for as long as he can still see her, loath to let her out of his sight, even more so to stop her from finding her brother when she so obviously needs the comfort of knowing, with her own eyes, that he’s alright.

Crosshair doesn’t say anything about anything, either. Hunter spares a glance in his peripheral, consciously avoiding looking down at his hand - where his hand used to be. Crosshair glances back, and he is surprised, somewhat, to find a firm and almost agreeable resolve on his face. His features are drawn up into something that Hunter has only seen on his face a few times for as long as they’ve been alive; acceptance. And Crosshair nods, because somehow, miraculously, at the end of this all, Crosshair… is okay. Hunter can see it written in his eyes, his posture, the uncharacteristic calm carved into the thin line of his lips. Crosshair is okay. They are okay. They will be okay.

It’s over. They’re alive. And Crosshair is here with them.

A sigh that he never knew he was holding huffs out his nose, harsh and demanding. Hunter leans his head back against the headrest of the chair and allows his eyes to fall closed. Just until the dull ache in his skull subsides and the pressure in his leg fades, he tells himself. Just for a moment…

-until he’s awoken next by the jostling of the ship and a sudden awareness that time has passed.

The sergeant sits up with a jolt, eyes blown wide, and a real clarity in his gut for the first time since Bora Vio. His heart stutters in his chest, shoulders straight, chin up. He’s wet. Not drenched, not anymore, but wet. He brings his hands up to his face to scrub at his cheeks like a tired child, pushing unruly bangs out of his face and back into his bandana. Overlapping voices, whispers, scattered laughter, floats in through one ear and out the other. He takes in his surroundings, the clones still huddled together, the bright interior lights of the shuttle beating down above them, Crosshair breathing deeply beside him, asleep, and he realizes that he must have only just been asleep, too.

Of course, Hunter hadn’t MEANT to fall asleep, and it couldn’t have been for very long, because if the ship is still shuttering and they’ve already taken off than they’ve not yet stabilized in hyperspace. Not too long at all. But he shouldn’t have fallen asleep to begin with. Not now, when only an hour and some earlier he’d still been on Tantiss, and there is so much to do, so much he has to attend to, brothers who need his help, and Omega-

Where is Omega?

“Omega?” he says aloud, voice hoarse with disuse and fatigue. He blinks to clear his head once, twice, then moves to stand up, pressing his feet to the floor and bracing himself for the harsh pain of what he thinks is a clean break to stab back into his muscles-

It doesn’t.

He looks down, belatedly, to find his thigh armor gone. In its place, a fresh bandage and the coolness of bacta soaking into his leg, all the way around and down to his ankle, the leg of his trousers rolled up around his calf and pinned back out of the way.

Huh.

“Hey Sarge,” someone - Echo - laughs, reaching out after him from afar.

Hunter looks up to meet him, mouth agape and mind entirely… blank. “Echo,” he pauses, either waiting for his brother to approach or looking for the words, he doesn’t know. “What-“

“One of the boys fixed you up while you were napping,” Echo explains, cutting him off before his reeling lack of thought is able to overwhelm him. “Mousy, one of the medics.” Hunter absentmindedly files that name away for later to thank him. “I’m glad to see you’re still with us,” he says, almost as though he’s teasing. “Other than a sprained leg and a few nasty bruises, you’re actually alright. I was worried when you got back looking like you’d been killed, and by the way you practically passed out before we cleared the airfield.” He smiles, and, not unkindly, shoves Hunter lightly in the shoulder. “But Mousy says you’re about as fine as any of us can be. Just tired.”

“I feel tired,” Hunter admits without really thinking about it. ‘Tired’ is an understatement, but he doesn’t have the energy for more than that.

Echo offers a sympathetic look. By all means, he UNDERSTANDS. “You were only out for twenty minutes, but… well, if it’s any consolation, you look a little better already.”

Okay. So he’s getting… somewhere.

He can’t exactly be bothered with himself, either way. Looking over Echo’s shoulder, scanning the completely empty floor between them and the rest of the ship, he waits for a shock of blonde hair to stand out in a sea of gray and black. Some fifty, maybe sixty clones have taken up post around the hull. The commotion from take-off has died down considerably, only a few of the boys - the medics, he assumes - up and about, the rest sitting or laying on their arms, against the walls, close together, murmuring amongst themselves. Many of them have fallen asleep. Most are wrapped in some manner of bandages and bacta. The shuttle isn’t exactly large, per se, but they managed to fit everyone inside with some room to spare. There’s certainly space to breathe. Yet nothing among them that stands out.

So where has Omega gone off to? Usually, his little girl would be all over him by now, clinging to his side, if she hadn’t already made herself comfortable waiting for him to wake up. She hates to be left alone as much as she hates not knowing what’s going on. He has to crane his neck some, but he can make out Wrecker’s bulk lying on the opposite side of the room even from here, propped up against… something. Nobody is fussing over him, and Hunter takes that as a good sign, but usually, Omega WOULD be. Crosshair does not so much as twitch in the crash chair, chin tucked down, arms crossed loosely over his chest. If she’s not with any of them, nor is she trailing behind Echo, and he can’t SEE her-

“What about Omega?” he asks then, not bothering to try and hide the anxiety clinging to his every word. Not like he’s able to get much out. “Where did- is she-“

“She’s okay, Hunter,” Echo’s voice softens, thick with understanding. “I had Mousy look her over, too. Just a few scrapes and bruises herself. She followed him around and insisted on helping with your check-up, too,” because of course she did, and Hunter gives in to a fond smile. “Last I saw, she was sitting with Wrecker. She was exhausted, but she won’t admit that.” Naturally. “I know it’ll help to see you up and awake.”

Hunter spares a second glance. Still, he cannot see her next to Wrecker. For the sake of legitimacy, and his nerves, maybe she’s out of view, hidden behind one of the other clones, curled up into his side the way she likes. Hells, it’s not like she could have GONE anywhere.

“I’ll go find her,” he replies, belatedly. “Thanks, Echo.”

“Take it easy, Sarge,” Echo grins, tapping his arm with his scomp before waving him off. “We won. Don’t forget that.”

Stiff tension crawling up Hunter’s back releases. His shoulders sag.

Yeah. Yeah, they did.

A man on a mission, Hunter picks his head up and wanders cautiously towards the aft. He practically sticks to the wall, careful to step around the pile of soldiers so as not to have to worry them with ‘sorrys’ and ‘excuse me’s’. For all of the time that Hunter never spent with regs, adverse, standoffish, uncomfortable, it feels so… normal, to be around them, here and now. Back then, during the war, he may have scoffed at them, kept his distance, and Maker knows they wouldn’t have gotten along alright. The war is long since over. The clone army is, for all intents and purposes, gone. There’s no place for infighting, nor isolation. They’re united now, under the same banner. The clones. Their culture. Their traumas. Their brotherhood.

War and genocide and Imperial tyranny have turned his Galaxy - their Galaxy - completely on its head. Nothing is certain, anymore. Nothing is predictable. In some ways, maybe, it never was. Three years ago, when he was young and reckless and lofty and stupid, he would have mocked the idea of where he is today, brushed it off as a weird, twisted sort of joke. But then again, three years ago, - two, even - he wouldn’t have ever imagined himself a father to a daughter, either.

Absentmindedly rolling out his neck, Hunter treads careful ground around Wrecker’s makeshift recovery cot. He’s out cold, chest heaving a steady rise and fall. A handful of gray regulation army blankets are laid out underneath him, a damp rag over his eyes and a folded scrap of cloth propping his head up from off the floor. His armor’s been stripped, his chest likewise coated in bandages and bacta patches, left ankle wrapped up tight.

Wrecker has been accident prone for his entire life. He’s always taken the brunt of the hand-to-hand violence. Hunter was there right after the side of Wrecker’s head got blown. He’s seen his brother worse than he is now; has been for the last rotation. Wrecker took a right beating. The creature in the forest - and Rampart’s incompetence, wherever he’s run off to now - hadn’t helped. But he’s alive. Clearly, he’s able to rest alright without his injuries keeping him up. The sergeant breathes ever easier with the evidence staring him in the face.

Except, somehow, and horribly, Omega ISN’T curled up with him, or even keeping a vigil, waiting for something to change. His stomach drops. WHERE-

There.

Sudden movement out of the corner of his eye draws Hunter’s fragile attention away from his brother and over to another. The shock of blonde.

Just like that, Hunter finally finds her… in the very last place he ever would have expected her to be. Packed into the back corner of the ship’s hull past the crash chairs and the consoles and the commotion of the clones still getting comfortable, Omega nearly melts into the wall; arms wrapped tight around her legs pulled up to her chest, forehead pressed into her knees, hair falling out of the loose tie in the back, sprawled around her face. If not for the fact that he can hear her heart beating from a mile away, it would be hard to tell if she were even breathing. She looks so… tiny. Even tinier than she already is, as if she’s purposefully trying to make herself as small and unassuming as the Galaxy will physically allow.

And, sadly, he suspects, that is exactly what she’s trying to do.

“Omega,” he calls quietly, taking a few steps forward, worried that he might startle her. “Kid?”

Omega picks her head up just enough to look around, eyes wide and most definitely out of it, but aware all the same. She finds him at once, sitting up a little straighter. Something that Hunter cannot interpret passes over her face. Sadness, exhaustion, frustration, relief. None. All. Everything at once.

His heart breaks, a piece of himself chipped away by the guilt eating him on the inside. She is thoroughly and utterly DRAINED, worn down to a fine thread threatening to snap, as if she’s fought a second war all on her own since leaving Tantiss. And still so damn young. Fighting for every second of her life. His little girl.

“Hunter.”

Omega scrambles to her feet, pushing hair out of her face, tripping over her own two feet. He closes the gap between them nearly at a slide, dropping hard to his knees on the durasteel floor, hands outstretched and shaking.

She all but throws herself into his waiting open arms, a choked back sob crawling up out of her throat. Hunter captures her in a tight hug, crushes her to his chest, and static fills his ears.

“It’s okay,” he whispers as she trembles beneath his palms, clothes still damp from the rain, pressing her face into the crook of his neck to make herself impossibly smaller still. He buries his nose in her hair, kissing the top of her head with an almost unfamiliar urgency. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re safe.” For the first time since… anything, really, he finds that he may actually believe that, himself. Safe. Alive. For good. “I’m here, kid. It’s over.” He swallows around a lump in his throat. “We’re going home.”

“I k-know,” she gasps, muffled in the fabric of his undershirt. “I just- I’m-“

Relieved. Overwhelmed. Unconvinced.

“I know, ‘Mega,” he soothes, rocking slowly, side to side. “It’s okay.”

Whether she laughs or sobs then, he can’t really tell. She grips the back of his shirt with both fists, heaving a large cry that comes out again all at once. He wraps one arm around his shoulders while the other rubs quick, careful circles against her spine. When he presses another kiss to her temple, - for her sake or his own - she melts into his chest, cycles of stress bleeding from her shoulders like an open wound, and Hunter feels whole again, like a cavity inside of his soul worn away by the madness of wondering which breath might be his last or hers, has been filled. He hasn’t really SEEN her since… since Pabu, since the Empire came to take her back. A week, maybe less. He’s lost count. And yet, just as empty and sorrowful as five months had been, alone. Lethargic.

Omega. His kid. His daughter. The shining star at the center of his Galaxy, and Hemlock had tried, in no uncertain terms, to snuff it out. Hunter had never felt such an impounding misery until she had been taken from him at Ord Mantell, just as he had never know such irrepressible joy before she had climbed her way into his heart and made herself at home. Never had he imagined, as a cadet, a younger man marching off to war, that his service would end with a child of his own, a purpose so far beyond the battlefield that he could no longer see it behind him. No savagery of war, lakes of blood and gore and brother’s corpses paving the way for a future that would never arrive, could possibly compare to the horror of a gun to her head.

She has kept up such a brave face, for such a LONG time. Hunter knows deep down that she is already stronger now than he will ever be for as long as he lives. So young, and so fragile, and yet so READY; ready to give everything if it meant saving the worlds, saving HIM. It terrifies him, and yet he is so incredibly PROUD. She deserves everything he has to give and everything he does not. So he holds he closer still, allows her the space to cry until she has nothing left to give; if they’ve made a fuss, if the other soldiers have noticed, he doesn’t care. His vision blurs around the edges and he cannot be bothered to blink past it. Never in his entire life has he felt so… emotional. And he is not ashamed.

A part of him could be quite content to remain like this until they find their way back to Pabu, but Omega squirms suddenly against his hold, albeit gentle, and he lets himself adjust as she pulls back enough to look up at him. Staring into his face, her expression turns serious, eyes sparkling with yet unshed tears that carve clear tracks through the dirt smudged across her cheeks, dripping down her chin.

Hunter has half a mind to ask her what’s wrong all over again, as if he can’t already harbor one-thousand different guesses. But Omega is that much quicker, sucking in a hiccup and averting her gaze as a world’s worth of words seem to come to her all at once.

“I’m so sorry for everything that he did to you and everything you went through for me, and I’m sorry that I couldn’t get more clones out the first time so you might have had reinforcements and you wouldn’t have gotten hurt-“ A stab of shock blows Hunter’s eyes wide, now, and Omega isn’t looking at him to notice. “And I tried to get out sooner but it was so hard to get away from Doctor Scalder and we needed a distraction and I couldn’t leave the other kids behind, and I tried to find you but when I found Echo it was already too late-“

“Omega-“ Hunter hastens to cut her off through the surprise and the anxiety roiling in his gut as she presses on, her voice rattled with a guilt that he hates so much he thinks it’s might kill him.

But she isn’t listening, either. “And I’m sorry about what happened to Pabu, all of this was because of me and Hemlock and if I knew what he was after I could have told you and I wouldn’t have put everyone in danger and now you’re all beat up and it’s all my fault-“

“Omega!” Hunter says again, louder, riddled with anxiety. THAT gets her attention.

She snaps her head around meet the ferocity of his gaze with her own. Still shaking, still crying, but plagued by a determination to see this upside-down-and-twisted apology through to the end. Hunter will not let her.

It breaks his heart to think that she blames herself for ANY of this. Omega has always been this way, on a permanent mission to make everyone else’s lives easier, to save those who could not save themselves, to take care of her brothers even when it has never been her responsibility to see to their safety. She is so impossibly sweet like this, with a heart so full and so ready that it defies her greatest hardships. She loves so fully and so freely despite the worst, and it is so incredibly endearing to know that she WANTS to look out for him; because she cares. But it also frightens him, especially in times such as this, because it is HUNTER’S job to see to HER safety, to protect her first, to shoulder the worries so that she may continue to love. If anyone has ever failed at THAT, it’s him, by a very, very long, long shot, and he knows better than to wallow in his own regret

Hunter waded through wallowing for five months, and it only held him back. With Hemlock dead, his little girl home again, and a life ahead of them, he sure as hell isn’t going to wallow now, when there’s nothing that he can do to change the past.

Maker’s sake, he’s almost certain he couldn’t have changed the past while it was still the present. As if anyone ever could have predicted how the Empire would ensnare the entire Galaxy overnight. As if anyone could have guessed that some washed up, rejected, recluse Republic doctor would rise from the ashes to poke and prod at clone ‘subjects’ because the sweet old Chancellor Palpatine told him to. As if Hunter ever would have known that of all of the billions upon billions of sentient beings in this galaxy, HIS de facto-defective clone daughter would have happened to be at the core of Hemlock’s interest. As if Omega could have prepared herself to fight this solar-system-sized atrocity alone, or at all; as if his kid ever should have had to deal with ANY of this in the first place.

A part of Hunter will always be angry at himself for losing her at Ord Mantell, but in the end, she is the one still standing, while Hemlock’s corpse rots in the mountains’ underbrush, alone, forgotten. So he will not let it control him, and he sure as hell won’t let it control HER.

“None of this is your fault,” Hunter tells her, simply. He can tell by the instant unimpressed look on her face that she doesn’t really believe him. “I mean it, Omega. You might not think so, but it’s the truth.” She quirks an eyebrow at him through another harsh sniffling in her nose. “You’re not responsible for what Hemlock did, to you, or to any of us. He was too… prepared,” he admits, shaking his head. “He was a step ahead. And he took advantage of you. The Empire is the only one at fault. Not us. Not you.”

Evidently ready to pout at him, Omega wiggles so that he’s forced to let her out of his arms and move his hands to support her at her shoulders as she leans back just far enough to fall over if he lets her go. “You got hurt because you had to come after me-“

“You got taken because I wasn’t able to rout an escape on time,” Hunter argues, blunt, but not without the softness that his voice possesses only for her. He already knows what she’s going to say-

“That wasn’t your fault!” she scoffs, immediately, seemingly, genuinely, angry that he would even suggest-

Hunter gives her a pointed look, and Omega’s mouth hangs agape for a moment.

Then she closes it again, brows knitted together. “I don’t blame you,” she tells him, quieter this time. “Never. Never ever have I- you never gave up on me-“ she hurries as if to reassure him, and it sends a pang of warmth through his chest. “You did everything- it’s Hemlock-“

“I know,” he smiles, tight and watery, fighting away more tears of his own. He DOES know, but it’s nice to HEAR it.

Omega sighs, slouching forward ever so slightly.

“But the same goes for you, Kid. What Hemlock did to you, it’s not YOUR fault. I would have come after you if it killed me,” he says, without missing a beat. “Always. I will always be here for you, no matter what that means of me.”

“But that’s what I’m scared of!”

Hunter’s jaw shuts with an audible click.

A sob wracks Omega’s body, her face contorted with a renewed sadness that slaughters all of the resolve he’s ever thought he had. “Y-you got hurt to s-save m-me,” she murmurs, hanging her head like a prisoner on a death march. “Again.” Any other day, any other time, Hunter might have found that notion something dreary. “I-I don’t want y-you to- to d-die. I-I need you, d-dad.”

The break in Hunter’s heart splinters in an even split down the center.

And just when he thinks she must be terribly out of breath, she lifts her shoulders as if in contention with herself. “Crosshair lost his hand and you were captured and now Wrecker is unconscious…” She scrubs at her face with the heel of her hand. “And when we left I thought you were gonna fall over and disappear because you weren’t saying anything and Vik had to help you walk too…” Hunter blinks, because he decidedly does not remember that, and NOW he worries for what else might have happened that he can’t recall- “I was s-scared you wouldn’t be o-okay.”

It’s a feeling that Hunter knows all too well, and he loathes that she’s been made to feel the same; wondering if he is okay, if he is going to MAKE IT, when every day of his life since they took her in has been pestered by anxieties, watching over her every move, scrutinizing their every environment, tripping over his own two feet to catch her by the arm before she hits the ground, toppling around the galaxy, upside down and backward, to find his way back when she’s been swept away out from underneath him.

Part of being a parent, a father, Cut had told him once during the war, long before Omega was but a twinkle in his eye, is worrying, every day of your life and forever because the Galaxy will never strive to protect ‘them’ the way that ‘you’ will. Anything can change, in the blink of an eye, and you can lose it; them, and with them, yourself, your joy, your heart, your purpose. At the time, Hunter hasn’t understood him; since Kamino, he’s become more familiar with his nerves than he ever has been. Fennec Shand, Cad Bane, Doctor Hemlock. One after the next, vying for his little girl, the stark reality of how quickly HIS world can change, how immediately and unexpectedly Hunter can lose everything.

Restless nights woken in a cold sweat, bruised ribs and sprained ankles that she will never know about. Tearing his mind through migraines, icing his head at the end of the evening once she’s finally fallen asleep in the gunner’s mount, out of sight and alone on watch, if only to keep her safe. Staring at the dim lights of her bulbs hanging from the wall, listening to her heart beat a steady rhythm in her chest, Lula tucked between her arms, knowing that every break and scrape is worth it. Exhausted and worn down to a fine point, Hunter wouldn’t trade it for the entire Galaxy.

To think, that she has been running herself ragged, troubled over all of the same things for HIM, is as distressing as it is good-hearted.

Hunter shifts to loop one arm up around her shoulders while his other hand cups her cheek, touch feather-light, tilting her chin up. Warm tears roll down the palm of his hand as presses the side of her face closer. “I know how horrible it’s all been, Omega,” he murmurs, only for her. “But it’s over now. Hemlock is dead. We’re going home… And I’m right here. I’m okay. Wrecker and Crosshair will be, too.” His thumb catches a fresh track as it rolls down her temple. “And I’ll always be right here for you, every step of the way. I promise.” She sniffles, a ghost of a smile quirking at the corner of her lip. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re my kid. That’s never going to change.”

“You could get hurt again,” she huffs, though her heart isn’t really in it.

“Our fight is over,” he replies, offering a gentle smile of his own. “Besides. You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

Omega hums noncommittally, leaning forward until her forehead is pressed against his collarbone. He pulls her into another hug, taking her into his lap at the same time, and she lets him, light, messy curls tickling the tip of his nose.

Hunter lays his head back against the wall, running one hand up her spine, and giving her the room to breathe. If she wants to speak, she may, and if she doesn’t, he won’t make her.

Maker how he’s missed this.

The relative bustle of the shuttle’s hull seems to ignore them just as much as they have ignore it. He spares a glance at Wrecker, who has yet to stir, but seems content to stay asleep for the time being. The other clones still move about, tending to this and that; he suspects they had never stopped. He becomes aware of the noise all over again, and yet it does not bother him. A medic with curly cropped hair tends to an older trooper with a broken arm. A pair of younger boys tell an animated story of militaristic heroics to a brother with a bandage around one eye. He catches a glimpse of Echo, talking lowly with Vik across the space, a look of satisfaction on his brother’s face that Hunter finds particularly comforting.

They’re ALL going home.

Omega sucks a deep breath through her nose and curls up until her ear is flush over his heart, head still on his shoulder. Hunter finds himself looking down the top of her head. “Thank you for always rescuing me,” she mutters then. “I’m sorry it’s never easy.”

He wonders if she can hear it stutter inside of his ribcage; maybe it will take some convincing still for Omega to believe where the blame lies. Hunter is prepared to remind her every day for the rest of her life, if that’s what it will take. “I’ve never wished for ‘easier’, kid,” he whispers into her hair, hoping that ever bit of his sincerity, all of the care that he holds in his heart, can be heard to her as it is to him. “I only ever wanted you. And you’ve been nothing short of perfect.”

A wet sort of giggle bubbles up out of her throat. “Love you,” she tells him, gripping at his arm.

Even now, his breath catches, overwhelmed with affection. “Love you, too,” he promises, laying one more kiss to the top of her head, for good measure.

They’re going home.

And they’re going to be okay.