Hunter first becomes aware of it at seven years old, when the Batch is allowed down to the nursery levels where the firsties learn to toddle and hold blasters. Honestly, he’d thought they’d bred it out of him, taken it away with the rest when they made him who they made him. He thought that him being… that way would negate the motherly instincts he’d been told were present in all female mammals.
Here, though, holding a tiny cadet and rocking on the balls of his feet as the Little tries to grab his hair, he realizes that he’s once again mistaken. Something in him aches, something that rears its head when he settles CT-84-2039 on his hip and walks across the room to help a kid who’s gone and dropped his pacifier behind one of the cribs.
Hunter wants this, wants this deeper and truer and more painfully than he’s ever wanted anything. He wants it more than he thought he had the capacity to. Like the realization that he’d been born different from his brothers, the realization that he only liked girls, the realization that he was at once a girl and not, something in between for being with another woman, this one clicks into place so easily he’s not sure how he ever lived without it.
The baby in his arms gurgles, wraps chubby fingers around Hunter’s thumb.
“Yeah?” Hunter responds, wiggling his hand and bouncing the kid on his hip. “You don’t say. I think you’ll have to explain to me again.”
The kid smiles, exposing little baby teeth and pink gums, and Hunter grins back. “You’re just the sweetest, aren’t you?”
Hunter wants this, but it’s time to return to the training room.
There’s a girl watching him from the cafe on the other side of the road. She’s been watching him since they sat down at this bench. She’s got long blonde hair and a set of earrings striped with pinks and oranges. Hunter shifts for the third time in a minute, tucking his hair behind his ear and spreading his booted feet wider.
“So you’re actually not a lesbian?”
“No, I—what? No. I’m a lesbian. That’s the whole point.”
“Really? Because you look like a guy to me.”
Hunter swings the girl back between his legs, shifting his grip on her arms before throwing her forward, up into the air in front of him. Her little pigtails flop from side to side and she grins, backlit by the sun as she screeches and giggles. “Higher! Higher!”
“Alright, I’ll show you higher!” Hunter tosses her up over his head, catching her and swinging her in a circle before flipping her upside down and tossing her over his shoulder. “You asked for it!”
“Amalya!”
Hunter sets the kid down.
“Amalya, what did I tell you about playing with the clones? Come here.”
Hunter stands at parade rest.
“Stay away from my daughter, Sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Hey, kid, I get it. You know how hard it is explaining to your squad that you’re a sister, not a brother? You’ll figure it out.”
“When?”
“Look, Cross, I’m not saying that I think I’ll have kids one day, or that I think it’s a good idea, I’m just saying that–”
“No, no, I hear what you’re saying,” Crosshair snipes, leaning across the table towards Hunter. “And what you’re saying is delusional banthashit. You want to hold onto some soft-ass daydream about a fucking wife and kids and the whole kit and fucking aliit, and it’s not going to fucking happen! That’s not what we’re for and you know it.”
Hunter scoffs and it’s almost a growl. Tech cringes. Next to him, Wrecker shifts uneasily and takes another sip of his beer.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that voicing the idea of having a child was so offensive to you.” Hunter throws back the remnants of his own shot with a grimace and looks Crosshair dead in the eye. “I’m just making conversation, but if the mere idea of having a personal connection offends you, then maybe you should be thinking about–”
“Enough,” Wrecker says, throwing an arm in front of Crosshair as he lunges. “That’s enough.”
Hunter freezes, looking from Cross to Wrecker to Tech and back down to his drink. His eyes shine in the low light. “You’re right, Wrecker,” he concedes. “I’m going to bed. Crosshair, you’ve had enough to drink.”
With that, he stands and leaves.
Hunter sighs, dropping into his seat and throwing an arm over his eyes. She’s still there between blinks, her and the kid and the way they’d both smiled at him when he said he could stay the night. The look on her face when she’d let him into her bed. The way her lips felt against his.
The way the kid had cried when the team had come to pick him up.
Fucking hell.
“Alright, watch carefully. This part is important, because the recoil will getcha if you’re not ready for it.” Hunter places his hands over Omega’s on the blaster, nudging her shoulder with his until she settles into a good position on the rock. “Good. Now, look through the sight, relax, keep breathing normally. When you feel ready, go ahead and fire.”
She’s a bundle of nerves next to him, suddenly gunshy now that she’s out of the heat of the moment. “Hunter, I’m not sure…”
“It’s alright,” he assures her. “It’s just a stun round and there’s nothing downrange of you here. Even if something goes catastrophically wrong, the worst that can happen is someone gets knocked out.” He would never give her live rounds, not for training. Certainly not in an unfamiliar area with Cut’s kids around and Wrecker and Tech out doing Force only knows what. “Just breathe. If you’re too tense, even your heartbeat can throw your aim off.”
“Really?”
“Swear it on my life. You can ask Cross–”
“Hunter?” Omega looks up at him with those huge eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’, kid. Like I said, swear it on my life. You can ask Tech, he’ll tell you.”
She giggles, but the way she holds his gaze tells him she knows what he wanted to say. “I believe you.”
“You’d better. Now focus on that target. If you can hit it, I’ll go out to the waterfall with you later.”
“You would anyway!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut up and start shooting, kiddo.”