There’s a passed-out pile of sergeant in the corner of the room Rex’d set aside for the Batch. Echo’s not sure why, but Hunter’s stripped his bunk of blankets and pillows and retreated to this little storage corner, built up a nest, and buried himself so thoroughly in bedding and what looks like Wrecker’s hoodie that Echo can only see half a hand and a tuft of frizzy hair. Good. Poor kid fucking needs it.
Hunter’s been running himself into the ground since Kamino, frantic to fit Crosshair back into the group and mend bridges and make money and find Rex and scrape together some sort of stability for Omega and it’s like he’s trying to fix the galaxy or pay penance. Maybe both.
A blonde head pops up from within the blanket pile and Echo is so genuinely startled he nearly shouts. “Omega,” he laughs as quietly as he can. “Force, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” she whispers. “We’re napping.”
“I see that.” Echo steps closer. “Do you need anything?”
Omega makes a considering face, then points over Echo’s shoulder at Wrecker’s bunk. “Lula.”
“Of course.” Echo retrieves Lula and hands her over to Omega, who tucks her carefully into a space between Hunter’s arm and the wall. Then, as smoothly as she’d emerged, she sinks back down into the nest of blankets, pressed against Hunter’s stomach and almost completely hidden from view. “Sleep well, kid.”
Echo and Hunter are both prone to bad days. It’s unavoidable, a consequence of having been blown up or of having super-senses. At first, Tech was worried about what they would do if both were to have a bad day at once. Turns out, he needn’t have.
He goes to the bedroom at 0900 looking for the morning’s no-shows, and finds them in Echo’s rack, curled up under at least three blankets and what Tech assumes is the heating pad he’d rigged up for Echo a few weeks back. At first, Tech can hardly even see Hunter, buried as he is under Echo and the blankets. Echo’s prostheses are piled up next to the rack and Echo himself is fast asleep pressed up against Hunter’s side, head on his shoulder. Hunter isn’t sleeping, but his eyes are closed and his face is that sort of forced-relaxed he gets when his migraines are bad. They’re both down for the count, then.
“How bad?” Tech murmurs, padding towards their bunk.
Echo five me seven, Hunter signs clumsily, cracking an eye open just enough to watch Tech crouch down next to them and rearrange Echo’s prostheses.
Tech winces. Seven is just shy of sitting on the ‘fresher floor waiting to vomit again. Seven is persistent auras and a spinning feeling so strong Hunter can’t stand. For Echo, five isn’t much better. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Anything I can do?”
No.
“Alright.” Tech straightens, tugging the blankets higher up on their shoulders. Hunter closes his eyes again.
Intrasystem File
User: ET-012 [<pdes=”Hunter”><system=”cf99intersys”>]
File Name: Personal Log
Day 4 Word Association
D
I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to be getting out of this. Isn’t half the point of therapy that you can’t do it to yourself? It only worked for Cut because he had Suu. It’s not like I’m going to ask Tech or Wrecker to go rooting around in my head.
I was the first to survive to seven. They called it the “platinum year.” After seven, almost no one died or got killed. We stabilized, somehow. Stopped deteriorating. That’s what they called it when the death spiral would start. Deterioration. When Alyro and 22 got sick.
I’m done for the day.
Day 4 ctd
You can never be at complete odds with another person’s wants, no matter how much you hate what they stand for. We all eat, sleep, drink, breathe.
I don’t fucking know.
FILE FAILED TO SAVE
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The closer they get to the ship, the more unnerved Omega gets. I’ve got a bad feeling about this, she thinks, picking her way through angular, dust-grey rubble and doing her best not to jump at every little sound coming in from the dark. They must be turning away from the sun, because Hunter’s flashlight has become less a guiding help and more a bubble of light in the darkness, the only thing keeping them from being swallowed by the moon.
Hunter’s hiding something from her, trying to seem less hurt than he really is. Thinking about it makes her think of him choking on the moon’s atmosphere, though, and passing out and turning grey like the rocks, and those thoughts make her chest hurt and her eyes burn, so she tries to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Off in the dark, something scrapes across something else. It sounds metallic. And alive. Omega’s been learning to tell the difference between sentient-alive, not-sentient-alive, and not-alive noises over the past few days. It’s hard, nothing like Kamino, where noise was a danger or a sibling or a machine with little to no exception. She’s getting the hang of it, though.
“Hunter?” she asks, looking over her shoulder. He’s letting her scout ahead, he said, but his voice is all quiet and he’s coughing and Omega’s starting to feel cold where her chest was tight. “Hunter, are we almost there?”
“Almost, kid,” he says. “We should be coming up on the ship right about now, actually.”
It’s like the dark hears him. The ship looms up out of the night and into the range of the flashlight just as Hunter finishes talking. They’re on the right side, even, walking up facing the ramp. Hunter punches the code in and waits next to her as it lowers, breathing all rattly and wet and pretending like he’s not leaning against the ship.
Tech’s waiting at the top for them when the ramp finishes lowering. “Did you find it?”
“Yeah, Omega did,” Hunter says, gesturing for her to head up the ramp first. “Followed the bastards right into their hidey-hole.”
Tech raises his eyebrows. “Really? Impressive.”