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Patching Up

After the events of The Return, Crosshair realizes Batcher's in need of patching up. It turns out she's not the only one.

Spoilers for 3x05 The Return and 2x12 The Outpost, Crosshair, Batcher, and Hunter, angst and family feels. <3 2770 words.

It was well before sunrise when the Remora arrived back to Pabu. Crosshair shook off the nap he’d settled into and got to his feet for landing, tucking his helmet beneath his arm. On the bunk across the way, Omega and Batcher lay snoring, curled up together. He smiled faintly at the sight.

“Come on, kid,” Wrecker said softly, scooping Omega into his arms. She yawned, wrapping her arms around his neck, but still kept her eyes firmly squeezed shut. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Crosshair watched them go. He had the sense that this was something that had happened many times before; Omega small and sleepy, Wrecker there to carry her to bed. It had looked like such a familiar action for them both. Something in him panged at the thought.

There was a small boof noise beside him. He glanced down in time to see Batcher nudge his hand with her muzzle, wagging her tiny tail as she eased into a vast stretch. He patted her nose obligingly. It was the least he could do.

He passed Hunter and Echo, deep in conversation still in the cockpit, and made his way back out into the predawn air beneath the glinting stars and swinging moon. He took a deep breath of the fresh ocean breeze. He was still getting used to it, the taste and smell of the clean sea air so different from Tantiss’ stale recycled scent. His hand flinched, and he jammed his hand against his leg, willing it to still.

He clicked under his tongue for Batcher, but she didn’t attend. He turned around. She was sitting on the ground several feet away in an awkward pose, chewing aggressively at one of her front paws. He clicked his tongue again, and she came this time, clearly limping.

“What have you gotten into?” Crosshair asked, concerned. She sat down beside him, then immediately turned to lick at her other front paw. “Uh-uh,” he said firmly, and she stopped to give him a guilty look.

He sighed under his breath, then made up his mind. “Stay here.” He headed back into the ship, interrupting Echo and Hunter and their poring over the data retrieved from the datapad. “I need a medpac. I think the hound is wounded. Nothing serious, but I can check her over.”

Echo nodded. “Of course. Back near the bunks, third crate.”

“AZI might be able to take a look at her, too,” said Hunter. “You could ask him --”

“The medpac will do,” said Crosshair shortly. I’m sure AZI could look at your hand for you… No. He didn’t need the droid for this.

Crosshair followed Echo’s instructions, collecting a kit with basic supplies. He left out the diagnostic scanner -- he doubted it had been calibrated to lurca hounds -- but took the bandage materials, hyposprays and splints, wondering if he would need to make a human wrist splint work for the hound’s blocky leg.

He headed back outside… and the damn hound was gone.

Of course. Try to help the creature, and it had taken off. He scanned the mesa for movement beneath the stars and the solar lamps, eyes flicking across the landscape, but came up short; only a few moon-yos scampered across the ground, their dark shadows clear in the dim light. He put his helmet on, toggling on thermal vision. Ah. A chunky heat signature was nudging open the gate at the little house they’d been taking meals at. She was nothing if not predictable.

He caught up with her in a few minutes, closing the gate quietly behind him. Batcher was laying down, curled up defensively, chewing at her feet again with an appalling licking sound. He set down his helmet on the table and slowly approached.

“Stop that,” said Crosshair evenly. “You’ll only make it worse.” He knelt beside her with the medical supplies and she hunkered into herself, giving him a wary expression. He gave her a skeptical look, then averted his gaze until she relaxed again. “Don’t bite me.”

She licked his face instead, and he scrubbed off the saliva vigorously with his gloved hand. “No.” She sat there panting, looking perfectly pleased with herself. He reached for the closest paw, tugging it out from beneath her. She tensed, but let him turn her paw over.

Even in the starlight and lamplight, it was easy to see the issue; while her paws didn’t seem to be swollen and nothing felt broken, her pads were scraped raw, swollen and dotted with specks of beading blood. Carefully he checked them all. The front left was the worst, with a thick slice of skin hanging torn from the edge of the pad, but all were affected in some way. The sight pained him.

“The ice,” he murmured. “You weren’t made for it.” She whined, laying down and pulling her paw away from him. Of course a beast meant to survive the jungles around Tantiss wouldn’t have the protection against the cold needed for Barton IV.

He and Mayday hadn’t, either.

The bitter wind shearing his exposed face, fingers locked and frozen around the Firepuncher, desperately dragging Mayday closer to keep him warm --

Crosshair shook the memory off and took a packet of numbing gel out of the medpac, rubbing it cautiously on the paw with the lacerated pad. She tolerated it surprisingly well. He wasn’t sure how she’d take the next step, though.

He pulled out the sterilization spray canister and affixed it to the hypospray, but hesitated before using it. He knew from experience in the field that it stung like a wyyyschokk’s bite, even if it was effective. He had reluctantly accepted that Batcher liked him -- he couldn’t fathom why -- but he was skeptical of her ability to not bite him while using it.

He sighed. Omega talked to the hound constantly, and she did seem to understand much of what Omega said to her. Perhaps it was worth a try. Might distract the beast, anyway.

“Hold still. This’ll sting, but it helps.” Batcher let him take her paw in his hands, but jerked it away as the mist settled onto the torn surface of the pad. Crosshair rolled his eyes. “What did I just say? The wounds need cleaning. I know it stings, but it’s temporary.” He tried to take her paw again, and she let him do it, though her beady eyes stared warily at him.

“There,” he said, spraying the paw. This time she let him hold it under the full duration of the spray, though she anxiously licked his face several times. He blinked, but kept going until he had treated all four paws, the saliva drying sticky on his face. “Good.” She wagged her tail.

He reached for the bandages, but frowned. They were all pre-cut, in shapes that wouldn’t fit the irregularities of Batcher’s huge paws. He rummaged around in the medpac, coming out with a sealant spray instead.

“We should have checked your feet after the mission,” Crosshair muttered to the hound, taking up one of her back paws and applying a thin layer of sealant. She trembled but let him do it.

He thought of the time Hunter had hidden a poisonous bite on some backwater world in the midst of one of their first field missions, and had nearly passed out in a field of battle droids before Tech had been able to render emergency first aid. They’d yelled at him for ten minutes solid after the battle, furious and scared both. His mouth quirked to one side at the memory, the squabbling, the relief.

“Feeling better?”

She looked up at him, whimpering.

“Not yet? Hm.” He reached for her next paw, shaking his head. “That ice… It’s brutal.”

She woofed softly, almost in agreement, as he worked on her foot. “At least it wasn’t a blizzard,” he said. He went very still except for his hand, which trembled against her paw. “Mayday never had a chance.”

Batcher rumbled, rolling away from him onto her back, scratching herself on the patio floor. She rolled back up to her side and sniffed the air, looking alert and attentive, before nudging his arm with the great crest on her head.

“He saved my life, you know.” He finished with the second back paw, moving to the less severely affected front paw. The words dripped out of him, slow and difficult to speak but just as difficult to stop, now that he’d started. “I stepped on a pressure mine. I’d have been killed. He could have gone on without me.” He paused. It was suddenly hard to breathe, despite the clean ocean air surrounding them. He scanned the sky above him, making out the lightening of the coming dawn.

What unit were you with? A simple question. One he’d heard regs ask each other a thousand times. It was the first time one had ever asked him.

It doesn’t matter. (Except it did. It always had.)

Humor me. I could use the distraction.

Clone Force 99. He’d been frozen, not with the cold, not even with the threat of certain death. Answering the question had been somehow more difficult than standing perfectly still.

What happened to them?

They’re… gone. It had felt like a lie even as he said it. Were they gone?

Was he?

Crosshair shivered, coming back to himself. “It never occurred to him to leave a man behind. Even though I told him I’d leave him in a heartbeat.” He reached out, scratching Batcher on the spot on her neck she liked. She leaned into it, tail wagging furiously. Short spiky blue-gray hair clung to his glove, poking uncomfortably in spots through the fabric, but he only scratched harder.

He finished the third paw. “Almost done. Worst for last.” She wiggled away, panting, but he fixed her with a sharp look. “Give it.” He took the last paw, the one with the deep tear, and hoped the numbing gel had done its work. He pulled out a vial of tissue glue. Batcher sniffed it and growled. “It’s this or a bandage. Trust me, you’ll prefer this.”

He carefully daubed the glue at the edges of the torn pad, hoping it would take. She’d be less irritated if the torn pad could cover the wound, and there was a chance it could reattach and heal more quickly that way. He wished they’d found it earlier; the edges of the pad were extra dry, and he wasn’t sure if they were still vital or not.

Well, he’d have to keep checking it. This would do for now.

Batcher sat quietly, only fidgeting a little. Around them, the sky continued lightening, hints of color -- gold and orange -- starting up on the horizon. Birds began to stir. Focused on the wound, Crosshair found himself talking again.

“We were trapped in an avalanche,” he murmured. “Mayday shoved me out of the way… saved me again. I tried to save him.”

He’d tried. Oh, how he’d tried. For a moment the gentle cool air of Pabu was a raging blizzard, the gold-edged sky a flare of blue-white mist. The chill sank into his bones, and he shivered again, trying to hold her paw steady. Even now he could only half-remember the terrible journey back to the outpost, the day and night of vicious, unending cold, Mayday heavy and wounded against him. His breath came too fast, his chest searing.

“I couldn’t,” he whispered. “I didn’t.” He hung his head, dropping the hound’s patched-up paw, and rested his hand on her shoulder.

His neck prickled. It’s about knowing when you’ve got eyes on you. His shoulders slumped, and without turning around, he raised his voice. “How long have you been there?”

Hunter’s voice, expected, familiar. Of course. “... a few minutes.”

“Still spying on me?” Crosshair asked, but without any real venom. He didn’t have it in him, not after the fight with the ice wyrm, not after their talk earlier. He heard the gate open behind him, and Hunter’s quiet footsteps approached closer until his brother sat down beside him.

“Not intentionally,” said Hunter, shrugging. “Echo will be heading out soon. Figured I’d come back here to get some sleep.” He nodded to the hound, stretching out his hand. “Everything all right?” Batcher sniffed his hand, then licked it enthusiastically. Hunter scratched her chin.

“The hound should be fine,” Crosshair said. “Hurt her paws on the ice.”

“Omega will be glad you fixed her up,” Hunter said. “You and Tech were always handiest with the medpacs.”

Crosshair sniffed. “Except Tech actually knew what he was doing.” They both fell quiet. Tech always knew what he was doing. Until --

He only knew the barest details of what happened. He still wasn’t sure he would ever be able to ask for more, not when every mention of his brother still made his gut clench. The birdsong swelled around them as the sky blushed gold, and he and Hunter sat with the silence, with the missing space.

The quiet stretched, weighing on both of them. Crosshair knew he could say nothing. Could pretend Hunter hadn’t snuck up on him, could assume he hadn’t heard a thing about what he’d muttered to the hound, could get up and go inside and grab some sleep. But he had to know.

“What did you hear?” Crosshair asked quietly, looking down at his hands, at the tremor starting. He slid his right hand behind him, where Hunter couldn’t see.

Hunter looked away. He hadn’t seen. Had he? “Back at the outpost, I saw you with those helmets. I wondered. This Mayday… was he one of them?”

“Commander Mayday,” Crosshair said automatically. It was important to say it.

“You lost him.” It wasn’t a question. Crosshair braced for it, the look of judgment, the disapproval. But Hunter turned his gaze back to him, his dark eyes merely thoughtful.

“It didn’t have to be that way.” It was too painful to explain the cruelty of it all to Hunter, the guarded crates, the men’s patched armor, their loyalty discarded like another broken piece of equipment, the hiss of “clone.” He didn’t try. He just reached out and petted Batcher again, his hand shaking against her fur. He hoped Hunter wouldn’t notice. “He was a good soldier. I tried to --” He let out a long breath, ducking his head. “I did everything I could. The lieutenant could have helped him. But he wasn’t worth the resources.” Hatred burned the back of his throat with the word.

Hunter nodded, reaching up to clasp his shoulder. Crosshair closed his eyes, the weight of his brother’s hand on his shoulder both utterly alien, and yet as natural as breathing. He leaned into it, and Hunter’s hand was steady, solid, trusting.

For a moment, it felt like the old days.

He looked back at Hunter, and his brother’s face softened, a flicker of sadness shifting through his eyes like a passing shadow. “I know this isn’t easy. Talking’s not --”

“My strong suit?” Crosshair cracked, managing a short huff of a laugh. “Mhm.” It had come easier than he’d thought it would, though. Something in his chest seemed to have loosened, like he could breathe more freely.

Hunter chuckled. “Right. Not always mine, either. But hey. We managed not to kill each other out there.”

“True.”

He dropped his hand from Crosshair’s shoulder, reaching out and petting Batcher, who had curled up and falling asleep. She kicked her foot contentedly as he scratched. His voice was rough. “I wish things had been different. For Commander Mayday. For all of us.”

Crosshair nodded slowly. There were too many things to count -- Tantiss, Tech, Barton IV. Further back, Desix, Kamino, Bracca, Kaller. He could take none of it back.

The only path remaining was forward.

Crosshair clambered to his feet, reaching down and giving Hunter a hand. Hunter took it without a beat, letting himself be helped up.

“Come on,” Crosshair said, squinting into the dawn. “It’s late.”

“Early.”

“Whatever.”

Hunter laughed. “All right then. Coming?” he asked the hound. Batcher rolled up to her feet, frisking around them, no sign now of a limp. “Looks like you did good work.”

Crosshair watched her prance, painless and happy. “Just doing my part,” he said. She nuzzled his hand, then bounded toward the building, sitting patiently by the door. He crossed the yard to join her, passing Hunter.

“Crosshair?”

“Yes?”

“It’s good to have you back.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, but more warmly than usual. The door opened for him, and Crosshair stepped inside, a half-smile tugging at his face.

It was good to be back.

#the bad batch fanfiction #the bad batch #tbb fanfiction #crosshair tbb #crosshair the bad batch #the bad batch crosshair #tbb crosshair #tbb hunter #the bad batch hunter #hunter the bad batch #I suppose I could link this here since there’s a doodle

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