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Hunter tried not to look like he was staring too closely as Crosshair twisted awkwardly, cursing under his breath as he tried to press the bandages to the wound in his side. It took more effort than it should have- the smell of blood was making him anxious, the rasp of both of their breathing echoing too loudly off of the walls in their small space. He could get only faint input from outside- enough to know that they would probably be safe for a while, they weren’t in imminent danger of running out of oxygen, but not enough for any actual concrete information.
The only thing he could do was wait, and worry.
He could have helped, of course- Crosshair’s injury was in an awkward spot, difficult to reach without a second pair of hands- but he was pretty sure that trying would get him punched, or worse. They would be stuck together for longer than either of them wanted already; he didn’t need to make it worse.
If Crosshair needed help, he could swallow his pride and ask.
Not, Hunter thought grimly, that he ever would.
Not now. Not Hunter.
“I’m not going to try to kill you, you know,” Crosshair snapped abruptly. “You can stand down.”
Hunter realized belatedly that he was running his fingers absently over the grip of his knife and snatched his hand away like he’d been burned. “I know that.”
Crosshair shot him a dark, disbelieving look, and went back to ignoring him.
Hunter flinched minutely as he heard the tiny, unconcealable breath of pain, and the dripping of blood onto the metal. It wasn’t a lot of blood, not yet, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous, and Crosshair, for all his skill, couldn’t see the wound well enough to make sure it was bandaged correctly, and his lanky figure had never left him with all that much extra blood to lose. Hunter longed to just reach over and bat his hands away, do it himself the way he would’ve six months ago, back when Crosshair’s acidic protests were still more for show. Now…
Crosshair had made his choice, Hunter reminded himself. They’d given him a chance to come back, and he hadn’t taken it. He’d been adamant that he no longer wanted anything to do with them, and Hunter had to respect that.
“Why are you looking at me like that,” Crosshair said flatly.
Hunter blinked, instinctively trying to school his expression. He’d forgotten, somehow, that Crosshair was still able to see him just fine in this lighting. “Like what?”
“Like a kicked puppy,” Crosshair muttered. “If you've got something to say, just say it.”
Hunter took a breath. “Can I help you with that?”
Crosshair huffed. “No thanks.”
“You can't reach it,” Hunter pointed out. “Or see it.”
“I'll manage,” Crosshair drawled. “I'm not helpless, Hunter.”
Hunter frowned. “I never said you were. It'd just be easier if I helped. You don't need to handle it yourself.”
“Of course I do,” Crosshair muttered bitterly. “It's not like you'd be any help.”
Hunter couldn't help the sudden tension in his spine at that. “What's that supposed to mean?”
Crosshair scoffed. “Between the two of us, which one's a medic?”
“I'm perfectly capable of handling something like that and you know it,” Hunter retorted. “What is this really about?”
Crosshair sent him a venomous look. “Take a wild fucking guess.”
“Well, you didn't exactly make yourself easy to be helped,” Hunter snapped, old frustration rising. For how little they'd seen Crosshair since he'd left, they'd already had this argument too many times.
“Well, you didn't exactly even fucking try,” Crosshair spat.
“What was I supposed to do?” Hunter demanded. “Let you kill us all? That wouldn't solve anything. Join the Empire? Even if it wasn't evil, we'd get ourselves decommissioned inside a month and you know it. Kidnap you? Get us all killed trying to break into Imperial military facilities to get you? What did you want us to do?”
“I wanted you to actually care,” Crosshair hissed, abandoning the bandage entirely. “I just thought that maybe you wouldn't completely abandon your own fucking brother!”
“You left us,” Hunter reminded him. “We asked you to come, after Kamino. Even before that, if you had come to us, we would've let-”
“You let anyone with a pulse and a sob story come with you,” Crosshair spat, with a roll of his eyes. “It's not exactly a glowing review.”
Hunter stilled, fury stirring in his chest. “Don't make this about Omega, Crosshair,” he said, low. “Don't go there.”
“I'm not the one who brought her into this,” Crosshair muttered.
“She's one of us, Crosshair,” Hunter snapped. “She-”
“Is she?” Crosshair interrupted. “She wasn't. She wasn't the one watching your six or handling your migraines or keeping you steady. No, she just made sad eyes at you and you folded like wet flimsi.”
“Are you jealous?” Hunter asked incredulously.
Crosshair scoffed. “I'm just pointing out that you threw me away for someone who never even fucking earned it.”
“That's not fair,” Hunter said, low and flat.
“Life's not fair,” Crosshair spat. “Get used to it.”
“Let me make one thing abundantly fucking clear, then,” Hunter said, barely resisting the urge to bare his teeth. “Your problem is with me. Not Omega, me. You wanna be pissed at someone? Fine. You wanna fight me? Shoot me, turn me in, drag me back to your handlers? Do it. But leave her the fuck out of this. It's not about her.”
“Of course it's about her,” Crosshair retorted. “You made it about her the minute you chose her over me.”
“I didn't fucking-”
“Don't lie to me,” Crosshair said, not loudly but every word venomous and sharp enough to cut. “I know how attached you are to her. I know that you'd cross the fucking galaxy for her if she asked. If she was captured, you'd be on Rampart's doorstep tomorrow. But when it's me, I'm just a lost cause, right?”
Hunter gaped at him, too shocked and too angry to speak. He hadn't heard Crosshair so upset in… maybe ever.
“Would you have even bothered saving me on Kamino if Omega wasn't about to drown too?” Crosshair asked quietly.
“Of course we would,” Hunter protested.
Crosshair scoffed, and shook his head.
“Right,” Crosshair muttered. “Sure.”
Hunter ground his teeth, frustration and despair warring in his chest.
“Look,” he said. “Yes, I do care about Omega. You're right about that. There's no universe where I would walk off of Kamino without her. But I care about you, too.”
“Not enough,” Crosshair said flatly. “Not enough to make me a priority.”
“I tried,” Hunter said. “I just- There wasn't a way to get both of you off of Kamino, and I knew that you at least could… you could take care of yourself for a little while. Omega's not a soldier, but you are. And then everything was so much worse than we anticipated, and we didn't have the resources to come after you, and there were people after Omega and after us and it just- we couldn't. We tried, we all did, Tech was keeping an eye on your records to see if we could get to you anywhere, but then Kamino happened and you made it pretty clear that you didn't want an extraction anyway.”
“Was I supposed to go with you after I saved your precious tagalong and got held at gunpoint for it?” Crosshair muttered. “Too little, too late, Hunter.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Hunter said, letting his head thunk back against the wall of the container. “I’m sorry, okay? Is that what you want? Because I am.”
“I want you to stop pretending like you didn’t do anything wrong,” Crosshair said harshly. “You say you care about me? You left me behind and never came back. Even after you knew about the chips, you left me there. The kid was safe, you were barely on the Empire’s radar, you could have figured something out if you bothered to try, but you never came back.”
Hunter didn’t reply.
“When did you stop bothering to give a shit?” Crosshair asked, in the faux-calm tone that meant he’d found something to dig his teeth into. “When I was forced to fire on you against my will? When the Kaminoans went digging around in my brain? Before that? When we were children?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hunter whispered, his throat tight.
“Don’t I?” Crosshair asked, nastily. “You never were good at keeping promises.”
“I never stopped caring,” Hunter said, willing Crosshair to understand the intensity in his voice. “I-”
“If you cared you wouldn’t have fucking abandoned me,” Crosshair hissed.
“I never came back because I cared too much!” Hunter shouted, fist banging against the floor of the container, his voice far too loud for the small space. “You think I don't know I failed you? You think I haven't spent every fucking day wanting to do whatever it took to bring you home?”
“Then why didn't you?” Crosshair demanded.
“Because I never would've fucking stopped!”
Hunter realized belatedly that his breathing was ragged, and he knocked his head back against the metal, just hard enough to hurt.
Crosshair was silent.
“If I had let myself come after you,” Hunter rasped. “If I had given myself even the choice to throw everything away I would've kept going until I burned the Empire to the fucking ground and I would've just gotten myself killed. Probably the rest of the batch, too. Probably you. Our siblings needed me alive, so I couldn't- I couldn't let myself consider it.”
Hunter heard Crosshair swallow, his gaze flicking uncertainly back and forth. It was the expression he had when he'd dug a little farther than he'd meant to.
Hunter didn't have the energy to figure out what he was thinking.
“You think I don't know I fucked up?” he muttered. “I've been screwing up all the fucking time. I don't blame you for hating me, stars know I do just as much.”
Crosshair shifted. Hunter heard him clench and unclench his jaw.
“You're right, okay,” Hunter said to the ceiling. “You're right. I owed you so much better. Everything was just happening so fast and I didn't know what to do and they needed me and-”
Hunter only realized he was starting to tear up when his voice broke, and he bit down on the back of his wrist instinctively to muffle the sound beginning to bubble up in his throat.
He hadn't cried over Crosshair leaving. Not once. He'd soothed the others, heard them stifling their grief late at night, had held Omega through her sobs after Kamino, but he hadn't allowed himself to break down over it. He'd barely let himself miss him.
Now, with Crosshair sitting close enough that their boots nearly knocked together but feeling parsecs away, he couldn't help it.
A half-choked sob forced its way from his chest, and he pressed his wrist harder against his mouth, biting down again, only faintly registering the taste of blood.
Crosshair didn't say anything. Hunter struggled to quiet himself, but all of the pain of the last months that he’d tucked away was returning all at once, and he couldn’t force it back down again.
His head thunked against the wall again, and then there was a tap against his boot. “Stop it.”
He went still, and choked back the next pathetic noise only by cutting off his breath.
“Idiot,” Crosshair muttered, and grabbed his elbow, yanking his hand away from his mouth. Hunter shuddered, and only realized how badly he’d bitten himself when blood dripped down his chin.
“S- sorry,” Hunter gasped. “I’m sorry.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Crosshair said, sharply. “Just- shut up.”
Hunter shut up.
He leaned his head back against the wall and tried to steady his breathing. Occasionally, it was still broken by half-voiced gasps and sobs, but finally he managed to settle into a fragile equilibrium.
Something came flying at his face, and he caught it with his good hand instinctively. It was a roll of bandages, and Hunter looked down at it, frowning.
“You’re dripping,” Crosshair said flatly.
Hunter looked down at his wrist. “Oh.”
Crosshair snorted. “‘Oh,’ he says.”
“I’m fine,” Hunter said, holding the bandages back out to Crosshair. He didn’t take them.
“Don’t be stupid,” Crosshair said.
“You still haven’t dealt with your stab wound,” Hunter protested. “You should save it.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Crosshair said, pulling out another bandage and shaking it at him. “I have more. Just take it.”
Reluctantly, Hunter tipped his head, and he wound the bandage around the half-ring on his wrist. There was nothing to be done for the smears of blood across his skin and clothes, really, but he tore off a scrap and wiped his mouth, suddenly despising the taste, though no amount of spitting would clear it.
Crosshair was toying with the other bandage, not seeming inclined to actually use it. Hunter watched him, wondering if he should risk it or not.
“What,” Crosshair said.
Hunter ran his fingers over a miniscule scratch in the floor and said, “Will you let me help?”
Crosshair scowled at him. Then, eventually, he said, “Fine.”
Hunter shifted to his knees and moved to his side, not at all confident that Crosshair wouldn't change his mind, but he allowed Hunter to peel away a section of his torn blacks and gently smear bacta over the injury before he pressed the bandage in place, murmuring an apology under his breath when Crosshair hissed through his teeth.
The familiar motions calmed him, and Hunter took as long as he dared, surreptitiously checking Crosshair over for any other injuries. This close, he could hear the rush of blood under his skin, could sense the shifting of muscles and joints, could almost feel his neurons firing if he tried hard enough. It was a comfort that he didn’t realize how desperately he’d been missing.
“I don’t need your pity,” Crosshair said suddenly.
Hunter blinked. It took him a moment to translate the vibrations and sounds into actual words, and a few seconds late he said, “I’m not pitying you.”
Crosshair scoffed, though there was less jagged anger to it, this time. “Of course you are. You're pitying everyone all the time. You think that you can solve everyone else's problems and then you pity them when they don't let you.”
“I don't do that,” Hunter said, feeling thoroughly wrongfooted. Crosshair didn't even say it like a condemnation or an insult- he said it like a fact, like it was just something he'd always known.
“Don't you?” Crosshair asked, finally looking him in the eye again, piercing. “You smother people, Hunter. You fuss and coddle and hover because it makes you feel better about yourself, not because anyone wants you to, and if they don't let you then you get angry.”
“I don't- it’s my job to make sure everyone in the squad is safe,” Hunter said, half baffled and half hurt. “It's not like that.”
“Tell yourself whatever you want,” Crosshair said flatly. “But it doesn’t change the facts.”
“What facts?” Hunter asked, and then winced at the same time as Crosshair’s expression slid back towards murderous. “I don’t- that came out wrong. Just… we keep talking past each other, and I know communication’s never been our forte, but maybe we should try?”
Crosshair snorted. “I think the time for mushy conversations is past, Hunter.”
“Humor me?” Hunter asked.
Crosshair was silent for so long that Hunter figured he was just ignoring him entirely until he suddenly said, “Fine. You want to know what I think? We spent ten years as brothers, us against the world. I would’ve died for any of you. I thought that we knew that we’d get everyone out or die trying. Only you didn’t. I was stuck in the Empire, alone, while the rest of you were free and together and apparently doing just fine. You didn’t care whether I lived or died, and I’m the bad guy?”
Hunter took a shallow breath as he collected his words.
“We didn’t leave because we didn’t care about you,” Hunter said, hoping- probably pointlessly- that he wasn’t about to say the wrong thing again. “We didn’t know about the chips at first, or how bad the Empire was. It looked like you had joined them voluntarily, and we never really knew whether or not you had. But if we had known, or even if you asked for help now- we’d come for you in a heartbeat, Cross. You’re our brother. That doesn’t change.”
Crosshair huffed. “You’d come if I called? Really? Straight into the hands of the Empire?”
“I don’t believe you would do that,” Hunter said. “You’re our brother. You’re not going to lead us into a trap like that.”
“That’s naive,” Crosshair muttered.
“Well,” Hunter said. “I’m going to believe it anyway.”
Crosshair looked away.
“I love you,” Hunter said. “You’ll always be my brother. And I’m sorry if I ever made you think otherwise.”
Crosshair said nothing, but Hunter heard the tiny, uneven catch of his breath in his throat.
Hunter didn’t comment. The silence stretched, but he thought it might be just a bit less tense than before.
Crosshair sighed, eventually, and the exhale left him slumped just slightly. Just enough that his shoulder brushed against Hunter’s, the rush of blood under his skin steady and warm.
Hunter didn’t dare to smile, but he pressed back a tiny bit.
Crosshair didn’t pull away.