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Grand Days and Small Gestures

Pairing: Hunter x Reader

Word Count: 9152

Warnings: Language, canon-typical violence.

Prompt: “Why can’t you just be normal?”

Summary: You didn’t expect to end up in Separatist prison cell. You definitely didn’t expect to be accidentally rescued by a squad of clones.

A/N: This fic is a gift for @ladyanidala, who gave me SUCH a fun prompt!! I’m gonna be honest with you, this got rather out of hand…I’m not used to writing romance, and then this pesky little thing called plot got involved. It’s not the most traditional reader-insert fic, but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! It was my first foray into a second-person POV, and it was so fun that it inspired me to start dreaming up a (possibly fluffier?) sequel. Thank you so much to @cloneficgiftexchange for creating this event!

Today isn’t the worst day of your life.

Granted, the bar is pretty low; the worst day of your life was probably that time you were undercover in a sect of fascist insurrectionists on Brentaal IV, and you discovered that your encrypted comm was irreparably fried. You were stuck in that hellhole for nine weeks before somebody back in the Corellian intelligence HQ thought, “You know, maybe she didn’t suddenly go dark on purpose.” By the time they came to rescue your ass, you had finally decided to quit this job and go become a baker or something. Then you got back to Corellia and…didn’t quit. Didn’t even draft your resignation letter. Nothing in the galaxy makes you feel quite as alive as espionage does—what else could you do?

So now you sit on the concrete floor of a detention cell, your tailbone aching and your fingers stiff from the chill, and you remind yourself, today isn’t the worst day of your life. The idea spins itself into a sort of mantra: It could be worse. It could be worse. It could be worse.

Your stomach growls in dissent.

Hours have passed since the battle droids caught you, and you don’t know why it’s taking so long for a real Separatist officer to arrive for an interrogation. Clearly there are no living beings in the compound, which means clearly your intel was wrong. The datapad you’re after is too valuable to leave in the clumsy, three-fingered hands of droids. The B2s guarding your cell left about twenty minutes ago, and you’ve spent the past ten minutes trying to pry open a panel on the wall with your little transparisteel knife, the only weapon of yours that wasn’t found by the droids and their metal detector.

The panel finally pops off, and you almost groan in dismay. The only things visible in the wall are a thick bundle of electrical wires and some pipes. The pipes look too sturdy to be damaged by you and your little knife, and anyway, flooding your cell probably wouldn’t do anything except electrocute you. Cutting the wires might cut off electricity to your cell door, but that’s just as likely to leave the door locked as it is to open it, and it also might electrocute you. You’re no technician. It isn’t worth the risk.

It could be worse.

The passing of time is almost visceral now, like the ticking of an analog clock in your ribcage. You shove the panel back on the wall. Time for the ceiling. The cell’s metal bench—you can’t even call it a cot—is just tall enough that you can reach up to pry around the edges of the ceiling tiles. You start on the one in the corner, hoping that there’s a ventilation shaft above it. The left edge is just starting to come loose when—

Click.

Darkness.

That definitely wasn’t your doing.

Half a second passes, and then a loud pneumatic hiss heralds the miraculous opening of your cell door, and the adrenaline really kicks in. Has someone finally come to collect you? But why…

You listen. No footsteps.

You hop down from the bench to peek out the cell door. Nothing to see, either.

Another hiss startles you, and you dart into the hall just as the door suddenly closes again, deafening in the eerie silence. The overhead lights are still off, and only the weak blue emergency lights lining the corridor offer you any sense of direction.

You’re free, and nobody is around.

Well, this just got interesting.

~~~

As you make your way through the base, you quickly realize that something very strange is going on. That something strange is probably best exemplified by the droids lying in scrap heaps all over the place, most of them burned through with blasters, but some of them dismantled in a way that you can’t even identify. Whoever or whatever is in this base with you, you do not want to meet them.

So, of course, you meet them less than ten minutes after escaping your cell.

You’ve picked up a blaster from a fallen B1, and are carefully scouting out the control rooms, looking for anything that can help you find your confiscated ship. Unfortunately for you, the walls and blast doors of the compound are so thick that they’re effectively sound-proofed, making it difficult to tell what lies behind each door before you open it. Despite the fact that you haven’t yet run into any functional droid or living being, you feel a spike of adrenaline every time you enter a new room or hallway.

The next one, you think, opens into the hallway where the main control center is housed. If you were paying enough attention while the droids frog-marched you through the base.

When it opens, you don’t find droids.

You find clones.

There are four. Their armor looks different from the clones you’re used to seeing on the major core planets: all of it is painted a dark grey, their helmets heavily customized. Two of them immediately turn to look at you. One is holding a pistol. The other is holding the scariest sniper rifle you’ve ever had pointed at your face. (And you’ve had quite a few sniper rifles pointed at your face.)

Nope, you think. Not happening.

Immediately, you dart around the corner and slam the button to close the door. Shouts ring through the hallway. You shoot the access panel for good measure. Corellia may be a member of the Republic, but that doesn’t mean you want anybody working for the Senate to know what you’re doing here, least of all soldiers.

Time has suddenly become far more pressing.

You abandon some of your previous caution and take off at full speed through the compound. A few active battle droids wander the halls, their tiny electronic brains seeming utterly flabbergasted by whatever turn of events lead to a group of at least four clones carving through an entire Separatist base. You pick them off with ease. They’re not the enemy you’re worried about.

Where are the rest of the clones?

There’s no way in hell a squad of four men could do this much damage…right?

But there are more pressing matters. There’s no signage in the base, which means you’re relying on memory and educated guesses to make your way to the airfield where you know a wide array of starships are parked. You’ve finally made your way up to the ground level of the base, only minutes away from where you think the airfield is.

Unfortunately, the stars are not on your side today.

Footsteps—organic ones, by the sound of it—are coming towards you down the hall.

You duck into an alcove in the wall and press yourself as deep into it as you can, hoping desperately that you’re hidden from view. A few moments pass, and then a clone in that strange grey armor sprints past you. Then a second, and a third, and a fourth.

A few seconds pop by, and you’re about to peek out of your alcove when a grey helmet pops back into view, startling you so badly that you bang your elbow against the steel wall.

“Who are you?” the clone yells.

“Who are you?” you retort, for a lack of any better things to say.

“Sergeant CT-9901. Call me Hunter.”

You blink at him. He tilts his head at you.

You say nothing.

“Hunter! We need to go!” a voice shouts.

“Are you a Separatist?” the clone called Hunter asks you.

“Absolutely not.”

“Then come on!” he exclaims, motioning you to follow him.

“Where are you going?”

“We’re escaping.”

“You’re going the wrong way!” you exclaim. “The airfield is in the direction you came from.”

“Yeah, and we just rigged the airfield to blow. Now come on!”

Well, shit. What other choice do you have?

Hunter takes off running, and you follow as closely as you can. The tall clone with the sniper rifle is waiting for you at the end of the hall, and he says something to Hunter that you can’t quite make out. They’re probably talking through their helmet comms, you realize. The three of you make your way away from the airfield, through a part of the base that you don’t recognize. Here and there, you catch glimpses of the other two clones up aheads, but they don’t seem to be slowing down at all. Metal carcasses of battle droids are strewn around you.

Finally, you break out of the compound and into the sunlight. It seems to be early afternoon, if you’ve been tracking both the passing of time and the cardinal corrections correctly. The base is located in a valley between rolling mountains, surrounded on every side by thick forest and strange rock formations. You follow the two clones to a large boulder, where the other two clones you saw earlier are standing. One is tall, with goggles in his helmet. The other one is even taller, so tall that you could reasonably call him a giant.

“Who is this?” asks the one with goggles.

“Not a Separatist,” says Hunter. “Which is good enough. Wrecker, are we good to go?”

The giant—Wrecker, apparently—gives Hunter a thumbs up, and hits a button on his vambrace.

The airfield behind you blows up. Somehow, it’s one of the most normal things that’s happened all day.

“That should keep them distracted for at least thirty minutes, which is long enough for us to escape the range of their scanners,” says goggles.

“I don’t want to take any risks. Let’s get moving,” says Hunter. He turns to you. “Alright, Miss ‘Absolutely Not a Separatist’. You coming with us?”

“Is that an option?” you ask.

“As long as you don’t shoot us.”

“Didn’t even occur to me,” you say, honestly. “But where are the other clones?”

“What other clones?”

…you’re joking.

“You did all of that yourself?” you ask, utterly incredulous.

“Sure did!” Wrecker exclaims. “It was fun, too.”

“We specialize in smaller operations,” says Hunter. “Wrecker’s our munitions guy. Tech is pretty self-explanatory. Crosshair’s our sniper. We’re Clone Force Ninety-Nine.”

There’s so much information to be taken in right now, you don’t even know where to begin.

“Alright,” you say, because really, you’re completely out of options here. “I guess I’m in.”

~~~

Cool air burns in your lungs. Everything hurts. Everything hurts. Keeping up with the clones’ long strides has forced you to jog in places, and even then, you’ve fallen to the back of the group. Twenty minutes have passed since the airfield was blown to bits, and in that time, you’ve finally made sense of the incredible influx of information you’ve been given. You’ve also developed a veritable laundry list of questions. Chief among them:

“Where are we going?”

Crosshair turns around, and though his helmet covers his face, he’s definitely glaring at you. “To our cache. Keep up.”

“How much farther?” you ask, trying—and mostly failing—to keep the despair out of your voice.

Crosshair says nothing.

Such a conversationalist.

“What’s going on?” calls a low voice—Hunter’s. All four clones are looking at you now, peering through their unreadable masks.

“I asked where we’re going.”

Hunter pauses, tilts his head. Then he starts making his way back down towards you, his posture tense even as his steps are light and fluid. You eye him closely; despite Crosshair’s rifle, and Wrecker’s size, and Tech’s explosives, you’re getting the feeling that Hunter is the dangerous one here. You just haven’t figured out why, yet.

You straighten as he approaches, expecting him to size you up. Instead, he walks right past you, and sits on a fallen tree.

“When was the last time you drank something?” he asks.

…what?

The question sounds downright concerned. You say nothing. The duration of your imprisonment is not information you’ll give out willingly.

Hunter is unclipping something from his belt, now. It’s a small bottle with a colorless, slightly cloudy liquid inside. He holds it out to you, and says, “Drink.”

“What’s in it?” you ask.

“Water, a mild stimulant, electrolytes, and sugar,” Tech rattles off.

Helpful.

Hunter shoves it towards you a little further, and you push it back. Poisoning is not on today’s agenda…not that literally any of this was on today’s agenda.

“You, first.”

Hunter nods, and pulls his helmet off of his head. His face is…not what you expected. His skin is a light brown, dotted with a few faint freckles on the left side, and dominated by a dark tattoo of a skull on the right. His nose is aquiline, his jaw is strong and rounded, his cheeks ever so slightly hollowed. Dark curly hair falls in a tangled mess to his shoulders, held back only by a red bandana tied across his temple. A few flyaways have escaped its hold, as if yearning for freedom.

You’re a professional. You do not ogle the handsome soldier. Instead, you watch closely as he lifts the bottle to his lips and takes a small sip. Swallows. Your eyes follow the motion of his throat.

Satisfied, you nod, and take the offered gift. The liquid is sweet and a little salty, but otherwise bland. A faint bitterness lingers on your tongue when you’ve finished taking a few gulps.

When you hold the bottle out for Hunter, he waves you off. “All of it.”

It takes you a minute, but you finish the bottle, and thank him as you hand it back to him. He nods silently in response. What a repartee you’ve established.

“You feel better?” Wrecker asks.

“Sure do. Thanks.”

“We stowed the rest of our gear at a spot fifteen klicks away,” Hunter says. “Can you make it that far?”

Now that’s the real question. The fluids and the short rest have certainly helped, but your legs still ache, and the mountain in front of you is only getting steeper as you climb. Fifteen klicks is just a very long walk over normal terrain. Fifteen klicks now…

“Definitely,” you say, with confidence. “Shall we?”

Hunter motions the group forward, and you fall in behind him.

What a day.

~~~

Time starts to blur, after that. Your world reduces itself to the diffused ache of exhaustion in your legs and the tree roots under your feet…and Hunter. More precisely, the mud-splattered heels of Hunter’s armored boots, as you follow close behind. The clones’ pace is almost punishing; you start to worry how long you’ll be able to keep up, as the soldiers plod along without complaint. Well…almost without complaint.

“I’m hungry,” Wrecker groans, only for the fourth time in the past ten minutes.

“With only three ration packs left, protocol dictates that we reserve our food supply until we restock, or until nutrition becomes an immediate concern,” says Tech.

“This is immediate,” Wrecker insists.

“Your appetite has been an ‘immediate concern’ since we were three years old,” says Crosshair.

Your own stomach growls in affirmation, as if feeling left out of the conversation. When was the last time you ate? Hours have lost their shape. At this point, you feel like time is being measured by the number of feet you’ve climbed.

Abruptly, Hunter halts. Without saying a word, he swings his rucksack to his front, pulls out a foil ration pack, and tosses it over his shoulder. It sails through the air in an elegant arc, right into Wrecker’s waiting hand. You try not to be too impressed.

(You fail, because it was impressive. Actually, you’re not even sure how it was possible.)

There’s a pause as Hunter’s hand hovers over his rucksack.

Then: “Catch.”

The warning seems only an afterthought, delivered as the ration pack is already airborne. You manage to catch it anyway, and you turn it over in your hands. It’s cold-start, the kind that’s mixed with water to form a vaguely edible mush. Hunter is already moving forward again.

“Do you have any more water?” you ask.

This time, he doesn’t even bother with a warning as the metal canteen comes hurtling at your head. It stings your hand as you catch it. You tuck the ration pack into your belt so you have a hand free to open the—

To open—

To—

What the hell?

“Is this sealed?” you call out, even though the canteen is clearly half-empty, and you remember him drinking out of it just minutes ago.

Hunter turns and starts to make his way back down to you. Not for the first time on this bizarre trek, you wish that you could see his facial expressions. His body language betrays little, his movements as elegant and efficient as a supersoldier’s should be. When he reaches you, he holds out his hand. You drop the canteen into his palm with a little more force than is really necessary, but he doesn’t react, simply twists open the lid without any visible effort.

“The ration,” he says, holding out his hand again.

“I know how to mix a ration pack,” you grumble.

But you’re tired, and your hands are stiff from the cold, and you’re starting to wonder whether this is an elite super-soldier’s equivalent of kindness. You won’t bite the hand that feeds you. With a nod, you hand over the ration pack. Hunter mixes it with the sort of automaticity that betrays a thousand repetitions of the motion. Your fingers brush when he hands it back.

One swig of the stuff makes you wonder if it’s not too late to go back to the Seppie prison.

“Urghh,” you groan.

Hunter makes a sound that’s almost…oh stars, he’s laughing at you. You’re dying of hunger and thirst and trying to drink what tastes like cardboard in puréed form, and he’s laughing at you.

“Never had GAR rations before?” he asks. “They’re not like what you civilians get for your backpacking trips.”

“That was…rude, I’m sorry,” you say, kicking yourself for reacting that way when he just offered you help.

“That’s the usual reaction,” he says. He swings his rucksack over his shoulder and turns back up the mountain. “Come on, we’ve got a long way ahead of us. Drink it while we walk. You’ll get used to the taste.”

“Stars, I hope not,” you mumble.

Hunter’s rumbling laugh floats back to again, and you smile despite yourself. For a moment, you wonder if you’ll get along after all.

~~~

It turns out rations for six foot tall super-soldiers are really energy-dense. With a stomach full of food—if you can call it food—the day starts to feel a lot less like a catastrophic mission failure and a lot more like a strange little side quest. Wrecker seems to feel the same, a bright levity emerging in his booming voice.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Hunter took on three regs at one time because they were picking on Crosshair?”

“When would you ever have had time to tell her that story?” Crosshair asks.

“There were only two,” Hunter corrects, “and they were almost a year younger than us.”

“What are regs?” you ask.

It’s a can of worms that you’re glad you’ve opened.

Wrecker seems to delight in having an audience, and the other three can’t help but contribute to the conversation. Their stories are all out of chronology, and the discussion is frequently derailed by your complete lack of knowledge about the Grand Army of the Republic. The Senate wants it that way, you know. Honestly, it’s incredible how much intel you’re getting right now…not that you feel like you could use it for anything productive. It paints an ugly picture that the clones don’t seem to realize is ugly, a tale of forced conformity and a brutal life.

The landscape goes by. You learn that most clones like them are considered defective and relegated to maintenance duty. You learn that, although the clones as a whole view themselves as brothers, there’s nasty people in any group. You learn who “regs” are, and about the ones who picked on the 99s—Crosshair especially, who grew up tall but unusually thin, unable to develop the impressive muscle mass that most of the clones possessed. You learn that Hunter, the only one not visibly defective in some way, learned to bridge the gap between his squad and their other brothers.

(You learn that, when his diplomacy failed, he was always willing to throw punches in their defense.)

A story unfolds, of four boys who turned into four men, all so different in temperament that it seems impossible for them to be held together by anything except circumstances. Wrecker starts fights because he thinks they’re fun, but cares far more about what other people think of him than he’s willing to let on. Tech simultaneously lives in his own head and is inextricably steeped in the world around him, every phenomenon looking more colorful through his goggles, every system of nature a machine that can be disassembled. Crosshair is a cynic, through and through, but his loyalty to his brothers runs so deep that you wonder if it might be affection, rather than a sense of duty, that drives him. Hunter…

In all of their stories, none of the other clones truly describe Hunter to you. There are no off-handed compliments that he’s brave, or that he’s kind, or that he’s level-headed. Wrecker tells you, “Crosshair is the best lookout in the entire galaxy.” Hunter tells you, “Wrecker has this habit of offering to help people at very inconvenient times,”—an amusingly brotherly way to say that Wrecker is a generous soul. Crosshair tells you, “Tech saved our mission because he read a book about karking butterflies.”

But still, in between the tales of rescues and hijinks, you weave together the threads, and you find yourself looking at a very different person than you thought you had met when your day began. Hunter’s facade of gruffness is hastily constructed and easily chipped away, and beneath it he is not a complicated man. Above all else, he is singularly devoted to protecting others, and everything else about him seems inconsequential in comparison.

Evening falls, and you make it to the place where the clones have stored their gear. Their ship, Hunter explains, is another twelve klicks away, near a small outpost that they initially investigated, and then decided not to infiltrate.

After you’ve finished your dinner—which includes some real food this time, even if it is canned—you find yourself sitting by a tiny brook, too small for anything to swim in it. A day’s worth of stories tumble around in your mind.

You only hear Hunter coming when he’s a few feet behind you.

“I won’t ask you what you were doing in a Seppie detention cell.”

Smart man, you think.

“But,” he continues, “whatever it was you did, they’re going to be after you as much as they’re after us. You need to be able to protect yourself.”

You resist the urge to respond with a dry, “Yeah, no shit, Sergeant.” Instead, you offer a non-committal hum.

“I’ve got a spare DC-17 pistol. You should learn how to use it.”

You turn to look at him. He’s standing with one hand on his hip and the other holding his blaster, empty of a power cell. He looks very serious.

You try to resist the urge not to laugh. You’ve had a blaster in your hand since you were twelve years old.

Instead, you say, “Sounds like a good idea. Now?”

“No better time,” he says.

He makes his way over and sits down next to you, and you find yourself leaning in to watch as he turns the blaster over in his hands.

“So we’ll start with assembling it…”

You’re only half paying attention to the actual words tumbling from his lips. Like a sweater catching on a bush, your mind catches on the low, rumbling timbre of his voice. The sound buzzes in your ears. The sun is going down, but you could swear it’s getting warmer. Was he always that—

“Were you paying attention?” he asks, breaking your reverie.

“Yes,” you lie. Well, half-lie, because you were paying attention…to other things.

“Repeat back what I just told you.”

Well, that definitely isn’t happening. In lieu of an answer, you pluck the blaster and its power cell from his hands. Your conscious mind is barely engaged as you assemble it with steady hands, as quick as you reasonably can without jamming it. A DC-17 isn’t your preferred style of pistol, but the principle is the same.

And if you’re not mistaken, the subtle arch of Hunter’s brow means that he’s impressed.

“Good. Now, this blaster handles a little differently than the ones you’ve probably used…”

Maybe it’s the smooth confidence in his voice, or maybe you’re just desperate to learn more about the man, but you find yourself going along with it. You nod as he explains the kickback of the weapon, its effective range, its possible styles of blaster bolts.

Finally, he stands behind your left shoulder, and quietly instructs you to aim the weapon. It’s as easy as breathing. His hands come up to adjust your grip; his fingers are warm and rough, heavily calloused by his own use of weaponry. The heat lingers even as he pulls away, apparently satisfied with the positioning of your hands.

You immediately slide your grip back to where it was.

“My hands are smaller,” you explain, even though you don’t owe him an explanation, because you’ve been doing this at least as long as he has. You almost tell him that, too, but it would reveal more about you than you actually want him to know.

“Mmm,” he hums, his face now tantalizing close to your ear. “See if you can hit that hollow tree.”

The tree is maybe thirty feet away. Half of you is wildly offended by the suggestion that you couldn’t hit such an easy target. The other half of you is ruled by the pounding of your own tyrannical heart, Hunter’s mere proximity throwing you out of your disciplined calm.

You breathe in. Breathe out. Aim. Squeeze.

There’s now a burning hole in the center of the dead tree.

“Good!” Hunter says, and good heavens, could he not stand so close? “Now—”

Fweeoo.

Maybe you should feel bad about cutting him off. You don’t, at all.

Fweeoo.

Hunter is silent, now, just standing there watching you draw a neat little line of smoking holes in the tree. The petty part of you is winning your internal war, so you line up a sixth shot, turn your head to meet his gaze, and pull the trigger. His dark brown eyes flicker away, then back to yours.

“You’ve made your point,” he murmurs.

You glance at the tree, where a wisp a smoke rises from a knot in the bark. It’s not a perfect bullseye, but a victory nevertheless.

“I’ve made better points,” you retort, smiling. Four precious seconds pass before Hunter finally steps away.

“So, no target practice for you, then. I set up your bedroll. You should get some rest.”

“Which watch should I take?”

Hunter frowns slightly. “None of them. I’m going to scout out the area for a bit longer, then I’ll take first watch. Crosshair and Tech take second and third.”

“Do you want a second pair of eyes?”

“Don’t need them.”

You nod, and suddenly realize what an awkward thing that was to say. “Well then, I’ll head back up to camp.”

“Goodnight,” says Hunter, softly.

You don’t manage to summon a response.

(Your heart still pounds against your ribs.)

~~~

Despite the food, rest, and water, the morning’s trek is harder than yesterday’s. The terrain turns rocky and the foliage becomes sparse, leaving you exposed to the cold wind. The group’s pace slows as you make your way down the mountain, carefully stepping around loose stones that could send you tumbling. Your eyes are once again trained on Hunter’s heels. You trust him more than you trust yourself to pick out a safe path on the treacherous slope.

Still, the difficulty of the endeavor doesn’t seem to dampen the squad’s mood. Hunter’s helmet is off, strapped to the top of his pack, and he often tilts his face towards the sun. The wind blows his curly hair in every direction, until the bandana is only keeping half of it out of his face. Tech is delivering a detailed lecture about geology. You have no idea what he’s talking about. Wrecker seems as confused as you are about the subject, but while you simply let the words wash over you, Wrecker eagerly interjects with questions and commentary. Their dialogue is far from socratic, but it starts to intrigue you, and you can’t help but smile at the exchange. Every once in a while, the conversation is punctuated by a comment from Crosshair, dripping with sarcasm and yet received with good-hearted laughter. Hunter’s contributions, frequent at first, begin to taper off. The other three don’t seem to notice, but then again, it’s not their job to study people. It’s yours.

You’re about to ask him what’s wrong when he answers your question preemptively.

“Someone’s in the ship,” he says, turning around to face the group.

“Clankers?” Wrecker asks.

“No. I would have felt them if they were droids. I’ve been sensing something else: comms, or another type of small electronics. But just now, they turned on power in the ship.”

The cogs in your head are turning. Did you hear him correctly?

“How do you know?” you ask. “What do you mean, you felt…”

You trail off as Hunter holds up a finger to silence you. His brow is drawn into a tight scowl and he closes his eyes, tilting his head as if listening for something.

Tech makes his way over to you. Quietly, he explains, “Hunter can feel electromagnetic frequencies. He can sense droids, or the electronics that people carry on them if they’re quite close. When the electrical power on the ship is turned on, those frequencies change, so he can feel those, too.”

“How could somebody turn your ship on without a key fob?” you whisper.

“The ship has no key fob. It would be dangerous to rely on a small object, which could easily be lost or damaged during a mission, to access our only means of escape. One can enter the ship and activate some systems with no restrictions, and the engine can be started with a key code.”

“And somebody just got on your ship?”

“Apparently, yes.”

You glance up at Hunter. His right thumb is rubbing absently at the scuffed paint on his vambrace.

After a long moment, he says, “There are definitely no droids. I think there are locals here, and we didn’t realize it. We need to move. The ship is only a fifteen minute run from here.”

“Should we leave the packs?” you ask.

“Leave everything except weapons and combat gear. We’ll put the explosives and grappling hooks in Wrecker’s pack.”

“Aww, yeah!” Wrecker cheers, albeit quietly. The rest of the group is in motion immediately, rearranging their burdens and leaving all by the necessities tucked under a rocky outcrop. You have no rucksack, so you help Wrecker in carefully repacking the explosives into his. You’re almost finished when you feel a gentle tap on your shoulder.

“You’ll want these,” Hunter says. He hands you two spare power cells for your blaster.

“Two? But you only have three spares.”

“I’m hoping we can reason with the locals,” he says, “or scare them away. But if things got really bad, I’ve got this.”

There’s a metallic hiss as he slides a vibroknife out of the sheath on his forearm. He twirls it in his fingers a few times, a display of skill so casual that it feels almost unreal.

Wait.

“Back in the base, did you stab those droids?” you exclaim.

Hunter grins, a full smile that seems so out of place in your current situation. And yet, you find yourself mirroring it right back at him.

“Let’s go get our ship back.”

~~~

Jagged rock digs into your skin as you lie on your stomach on a ridge, peering out at the clones’ ship. Hunter was right; you can vaguely make out the shapes of at least three humanoids milling around it. From where you are, though, you can’t see any more details than that. The group’s only pair of binoculars is currently in Crosshair’s hands.

“Three outside the ship,” he says. “Armored, helmeted, and carrying blasters. These might be more than just locals.”

“Anything else?” Hunter asks.

“They’re waving their hands at each other.”

Hunter holds out his hand for the binoculars, and Crosshair hands them over.

“Sign language,” says Hunter. “Either they don’t want to be heard, or they can’t hear. I can’t feel how many there are. The ship is interfering too much.”

“Are they doing anything to the ship?” you ask.

“Not from the outside. Who knows what they’re doing inside of it.”

“I have encrypted all information present on board our ship,” says Tech from next to Crosshair. “It would be nearly impossible for them to elicit any intelligence from its databanks.”

“I’m more worried about them gutting it,” says Hunter darkly.

To your surprise, he does not hand the binoculars to Tech next—he hands them to you. Nodding in thanks, you take them, and try not to think about the way his shoulder presses against yours. You fine-tune the focusing knob until you have a clear view of the people standing in front of the ship.

Then you almost drop the binoculars.

Hunter notices the jerk of your hand immediately. “What’s going on?” he asks, alarmed.

What’s going on? What’s going on?

What’s going on is that you are never getting that ship back, and you’re all in deep shit, and you’re starting to wonder if you really will quit your job this time.

Kark. This.

“Those are Third Hand,” you say.

“Third Hand?”

“Mercenaries. They’re…” you trail off as you watch one of the distant figures make a wide sweeping motion with his right arm. You wrack your brain trying to remember what it means, but it’s been years since you’ve encountered one of the Third Hand. Usually, the correct response to encountering one is to run very fast in the other direction and pray to anybody who will listen that they don’t follow you…and not to ask them for sign language lessons. The only reason you even recognize them is because their appearance is so distinctive: Ubese filter helmets and cortosis-weave plate armor, painted in swirling multicolored hues with jagged black symbols on top, studded with spikes. The effect is like a monstrous creature emerging from a beautiful supernova. These ones have relatively few spikes each—a good sign, but not a great one.

“What?” Hunter asks.

You refocus yourself. “They’re Ubese mercenaries. Very good ones. Usually contract with the Spice Cartel.”

“So what are they doing out here?”

“Nothing good. If there are six here, there are probably at least twelve in the area.”

“How do you know there are six? Can you see them?”

You’ve mentally catalogued everything you’ll be able to learn from looking, so you hand the binoculars back to Hunter.

“Third Hand always travel in groups of threes. There are three outside, so there will probably be three inside.”

“Six is manageable,” he says.

…manageable? He’s joking. He has to be joking. The man who used to start fist-fights to defend his brothers would not turn them into target practice for the Third Hand.

But his voice is deadly serious.

“Six against four?” you ask, incredulous.

“Six against five.”

“I’m not wearing armor. I’m not a soldier. I don’t count.”

“I’ll still take those odds. We need to complete the mission, which means we need to scout the other large bases on this moon. And for that, we need our ship.”

“They’re armed to the teeth and don’t shy away from killing people like you do.”

“We’ve had worse. We need to complete the mission,” he repeats.

“Hunter, what is wrong with you?” you whisper-scream, utterly furious but fully aware of how exposed your position is. “Do you actually think it’s a good idea to take on six extraordinarily well-trained mercenaries just for a ship? Any sane officer would turn his men around right now and send for evac!”

“We don’t need an evac!”

“Stars help us, Hunter, stop trying to be a hero! Why can’t you just be normal?”

Hunter goes deathly still.

Silence falls upon you; the air seems to turn brittle. You glance between the men. Crosshair is staring at you coldly. Wrecker is fidgeting, his eyebrows raised in alarm. Tech is glancing between you, Hunter, and the display on his Hud, his fingers still tapping against his wrist comm.

Hunter isn’t looking at you.

“We have never been normal,” he mutters.

The word seems laced with poison, and your chest clenches. Of course you had to go and put your foot in your mouth. Of course you picked the one adjective that would feel so personal to him. His expression is angry, but somehow you get the feeling that it runs deeper than that.

“Hunter,” you say, softer this time. “This is a suicide mission.”

“Then don’t come.”

Stubborn man! “Has it not occurred to you that I don’t want you to die? Any of you?”

Hunter does look at you now, his face a mix of so many emotions that it’s become unreadable. You meet his dark eyes and hold his gaze, willing him to understand. Willing him to trust you.

“We’ll be going home with one less ship and no information,” he says. Damn him. “We don’t even know where the datapad is, now.

Something about that sentence catches in your mind. You don’t even know where the datapad is. You don’t…

…no, you do.

It all clicks together.

“Yes, we do.”

“What?” the men chorus, sounding more alike than they ever have.

“You told me that there’s a small outpost near here, right?”

“That outpost was far too small and poorly-manned to contain the datapad we’re looking for,” says Tech. “The Separatists would never leave something so valuable so vulnerable.”

“But what if it is well-guarded? Just not by droids.”

Hunter shifts, turns to look at you for real now. The anger hasn’t entirely faded from his face, but there’s something else there now, a new glint. “Are you saying that the outpost is guarded by these mercenaries, and the datapad is actually being kept there?”

“It’s the best explanation. How much do you know about the outpost?”

All four men glance at each other. Wrecker grins.

“Well,” says Tech, “when I sliced into the Separatist servers…”

~~~

The plan is insane.

The plan is so utterly insane that you wonder if it wouldn’t be better just to take on six mercenaries in a firefight to get the ship back.

The outpost is less than an hour’s hike from the ship; the clones were able to land close to it because it lacks the long-range ship detection system that the large base had. The mercenaries have only been at the ship for twenty minutes or so, and based on what you know of the Third Hand, they will pick it apart piece by piece before they’re satisfied. That takes six men out of the running, but the second the alarm sounds at the base, your countdown will begin.

Hunter and his bizarre superhuman abilities prove invaluable. From this range, he can tell you that there are somewhere around forty droids, and that they’re remotely controlled. Tech has been able to override certain models of remote-control battle droids in the past, and he’s confident in his ability to do so here.

Crosshair will set up on the hill overlooking the outpost and cover Wrecker, who will launch an artillery attack against the east end. You, Tech, and Hunter will sneak in through the north entrance, where Tech will slice into a terminal and take control of the droids to attack the mercenaries. You and Hunter will look for the datapad, and once you have it, you’ll steal a ship and escape.

So, just normal Taungsday things.

“If anything goes wrong,” you say, “we scrap the mission. If their scanners are strong enough to detect us, we quit. If the droids are the wrong model, we quit. If there are more than fifteen men, we quit.”

Tech, Wrecker, and Crosshair agree.

Hunter just glares at you.

The trek to the base is made in silence. Your trigger finger is itchy, and you startle at things that shouldn’t bother you: small animals darting between the rocks, your foot sinking to deep into mud, Crosshair clearing his throat. The group walks in single file: Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, you, and Crosshair. You can’t see Hunter from here. It’s better that way.

At one point, Wrecker falls back a little to walk side by side with you. He leans down a little, as if to whisper conspiratorily. The effect is comical—he really just ends up hovering far above your head.

“We, uhh…we failed our last two missions. It was bad. The Admiral said that Hunter made a bad call, and if we couldn’t do the next one, we’d be sent back to Kamino. Said if we couldn’t function like a normal squad, we shouldn’t be here.”

“So if you fail…”

“Tech and me go to maintenance. Hunter and Crosshair have to teach the cadets. Hunter doesn’t mind it”—you remember his careful instruction with the blaster, and a smile flickers across your face—”but he’d rather be out here.”

“Well, then,” you say, shoulders straightening. “We better not fail.”

~~~

The first ten minutes are a dramatic, spectacular victory.

There’s more firepower packed into Wrecker’s rucksack than you could possibly have imagined. The ground shakes when he begins his assault, and a small part of you worries that he might do his job too well, and send the outpost crashing into a pile of rubble. But, though Wrecker might not always come across this way, you spent much of yesterday listening to stories about him: the man is brilliant with explosives. What you wouldn’t give to be watching the display through Crosshair’s scope right now.

Tech, Hunter, and you manage to sneak into the base with little issue. All of the alarms in the base are already going off, so your illicit entry adds nothing new to the cacophany. Quick as a flash, Tech slices into the outpost’s computer system, and then the real fun begins.

The droids are only B1s, but the great strength of B1s is their numbers and their complete disregard for their own safety. Through the outpost surveillance system, you watch the Third Hand mercenaries scramble to deal with the chaos wrought by explosions on one side and traitorous battle droids on the other. There seem to be nine of them here, and before you and Hunter even set out to look for the datapad, four are already dead or seriously wounded.

(Although you know that they’ve all killed more people than you could count, you still wince at the carnage.)

When all of them seem sufficiently occupied, you and Hunter set out, blasters locked and loaded. After three turns—right, left, right—Hunter motions down a narrow corridor.

“You go that way, look on the west side. There’s nobody there, and there’s a communications room about fifty feet down. I’m going south, this way.”

You resist the urge to argue with him, as much as you want to. He took a chance, trusting you, and now you need to do the same for him.

“Comm me if you find anything,” you say.

“I will.”

You’re sprinting down the hallway when you hear him call out, “Be careful!”

One by one, you sweep the rooms off of the hallway. Most of them are small storage rooms or engine rooms, with one small dormitory. At last, you reach the communications room. Knowing that this is the room most likely to have people in it, your heart pounds as you open the door as fast as you can, blaster raised. It’s empty.

Adrenaline keeps coursing through you as you search the entire room, looking for the datapad. There’s nothing. On your way out, you notice a box of empty data sticks. It’s not what you’re here for, but you shove one of them in the nearest console and wait for it to download the basic schematics of the computer. There’s no time to go searching through the computers for information—there’s probably nothing useful on them, anyway—but you’re hoping that knowing what kind of tech the Separatists are using might help somebody back at HQ.

Bzzz. Your comm goes off.

“Hunter?”

“I found the datapad. It’s at the end of the south corridor I went down, at the very end on the left.”

“On my way,” you say.

In the privacy of the empty room, you allow yourself a sigh of relief. This is not your standard sort of operation. Explosions are still shaking the compound, though they’re beginning to slow down, and you eject the datastick even though it’s not quite finished. You’re here for one thing, and Hunter has found it. Only a few more minutes. Then you can all get off of this planet.

Luckily, you encounter no mercenaries during your sprint to where Hunter is. When you arrive, you find him leaned over a datapad that’s been detached from the main console, a strange-looking datastick plugged into its main port. Hunter glances back and nods a greeting at you.

“Almost done,” he says.

You fiddle with one of the datasticks that you swiped from the communications room, ready to switch yours with his the moment that his download is finished. The next twenty seconds feel like eternity.

Then: green light.

Hunter yanks his datastick out of the console. Then, wiith a flash of movement so fast you can barely processed what just happened, he sinks his vibroblade into the datapad and tears it down the center, splitting the machine into two sparking hunks of ruined metal.

~~~

Here’s the thing:

You’re a spy. Spies have rules. Perhaps chief among those rules is, “Don’t trust anyone.” Especially, “Don’t trust foreign special operatives who you just met yesterday.”

Here’s the thing:

That intel was kept on an encrypted datapad that could not be accessed remotely. It was not backed up. And Hunter just destroyed it beyond any hope of recovery. While his mission is safe and secure in his pocket, yours is a complete loss. And he did that on purpose.

Here’s the thing:

Until five seconds ago, you actually liked him.

It takes a moment before your brain truly catches up, and by then he’s moving towards the exit.

“Let’s go!” he calls.

You hate your traitorous legs for the way they heed his order without question, pounding against the concrete floor as the two of you sprint through the halls of the compound. You hate your traitorous hands for firmly gripping your blaster, not once reaching out to grab him by the shoulder and stop him. You hate your traitorous voice for not crying out in protest, for not calling him a liar and a cheat and a terrible excuse for a human being.

You hate yourself for doing as he says, even as his betrayal lies in a smoking heap behind you.

Your body moves automatically, dodging behind a corner when you see a mercenary. Hunter strafes in the opposite direction and takes a few shots at the man. By the thump you hear, you presume that one of them landed.

“Bet you’re glad you don’t have a ‘normal’ soldier with you right now,” Hunter quips.

Anger rises in your throat. Is that really what he’s hung up on? Your single comment, that’s what made him destroy that datapad, ruining your mission? Maybe you’d understand better if he’d done it for the sake of the Republic, but this just feels like a low blow.

As you round the next corner, Hunter pulls off his helmet and tilts his head, apparently listening for something. Briefly, his eyes flicker to yours, and he gives you a cocky half-smile.

Asshole, you think. It’s a petty word and a petty thought, but your anger is pulsing through your body with every beat of your heart, every memory you’ve formed in the past day suddenly tainted. Quieter, but just as poignant, is a deep feeling of shame. Were you really fooled by a handsome face and a few acts of kindness? Is this the man he’s been all along?

You shake your head to clear the thoughts away. Right now, you need to focus. This is the final leg of the plan: you and Hunter have to get to the far north-east side of the compound, where three ships are kept in a tiny hangar: two fighters, and one shuttle.

Hunter is yelling at Tech through comms: “Tech! Open the door into the hangar and get over here!”

You can see the door slowly open up ahead.

So close.

You’re nearly to the door, making a beeline for the nearest fighter, when you hear Hunter shout.

Then something slams you into the wall. Heat envelopes you, carried on a strong gust of wind. You struggle to take a breath.

One second passes.

The sound of blaster fire rings in your ears.

Two seconds pass.

You finally realize what’s happening. Hunter is pressed against you, his arms held up to protect your head. It wasn’t a something that threw you against the wall just now; it was him, pushing you out of the way of what seems to have been a grenade.

“Got ‘im!” Wrecker yells over comms. The sound rings in your ears, tender from the sound of the explosion.

“If my counting was correct, that was the last of the Third Hand,” says Tech.

“Not the last,” says Crosshair. “I see the other six. They’re on their way here. Four minutes.”

Hunter shifts away now, and you try to take a full breath through the smoke.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

You nod. Your voice feels too raw to work right now.

“Come on, we don’t have much time.”

Emotions are bouncing around your head like a damned pinball machine, and you push them all away, focusing on the task at hand: you need to get to a ship. You need to escape. So you follow Hunter through the door and into the hangar. The wind has changed, blowing the smoke of Wrecker’s explosions away from you, and you breathe deeply as you run.

To your surprise, Hunter doesn’t make for the shuttle. He makes for the nearest fighter, instead. Across the hangar, you can see Wrecker wave.

“Wrecker!” Hunter yells. “Start the shuttle!”

“On it!” Wrecker calls back.

“I thought you were all going together,” you say.

“We are. I need to give you this, first.”

Hunter takes your hand and presses something small and hard into it. The tips of his fingers are warm and calloused, and though you could count on his hand the number of times you’ve touched, he feels as familiar as a home.

“Here,” he says. The warmth is gone as quickly as it came as he pulls away, ducking around the fighter to look around the hangar, scanning for enemies.

All you can think to say is: “What?”

“You can access it with the code 223-228-24!”

“What is it?”

“The datastick. Don’t access it until you’re in a secure position.”

“I don’t understand. You destroyed the datapad.”

Hunter turns to look at you and cocks his head. “I got a copy first.”

“Just one, though.”

“I downloaded it to my wrist comm. This is the original.”

Oh.

Oh!

You want to sigh-laugh-sob with relief. Hunter was never leaving you out to dry. His comment about being a normal soldier…that was teasing. You were running for your lives, being shot at, and he was teasing you.

“Thank you,” you whisper, because your voice can’t be trusted in full.

Hunter only shakes his head. “Don’t thank me. We’d have been dead men without you.”

“Not…not the datastick. I just…”

Words stick in your throat. There’s an ocean between you and Hunter that you can’t seem to cross, the crash of its waves inaudible over the pounding of your heart. There’s an ocean between you, and it’s only an arm span across. Words stick in your throat, but your feet…

Your feet are as light as ever, and you find yourself standing in front of him, looking up into dark eyes that finally seem readable. Hope and fear flicker across them in equal measure.

You move slowly, telegraphing your movement to give him a chance to pull away, but he doesn’t. The world stills, and you brush the gentlest kiss on his left cheek, where ink meets blank skin.

(If it were quieter, you would hear his delicate inhale as your lips touched him.)

“Thank you,” you murmur.

You start to step away, hoping—praying, maybe, to all the stars that will listen—that your message was received and decoded. Then a warm hand, calloused from war and gentled from compassion, takes yours. This time, there is nothing for him to give you; there is only an affection that feels so out of place and so, so right. His other hand tilts your chin up.

When he kisses you, all you can think is, finally.

It’s everything that the past two days haven’t been: slow, unsure, and tender. You feel yourself smiling despite yourself. You feel him smile back, and the kiss is broken in the best way possible: with soft laughter.

Time is slipping like water between your fingers.

You kiss him again. And a third time. You’re starting to wonder whether you’ll ever tire of it when the rumble of a ship tugs you from your bliss. It’s Hunter who pulls away first.

“You’ll be okay?” he asks.

The ghost of a smile still lingers on his face, but his brow is knit together with concern.

“I’ll be fine,” you reassure him. “Really. I’m a professional.”

Hunter snorts. “We found you in prison.”

“Occupational hazard!”

Hunter’s laugh is brighter than you’ve ever heard it, and sadder all the same. You brush a finger along his jaw, as if you can catch that laugh in your hand and tuck it in your pocket.

“I’ll see you around, Sergeant,” you say.

Hunter nods. “I’ll see you around.”

The way he turns is abrupt, as if forcing himself to move before he changes his mind. You waste precious seconds watching him sprint across the tarmac and up the ramp of the ship,

Hunter doesn’t look back, but as you watch the ship’s engines ignite, you can almost feel his gaze still lingering on your face.

Time to go.

Somehow, it doesn’t feel like a goodbye.