nightingale

& - platonic/family | x - romantic/sexual | 🔞 - 18+ content

THOSE EYES LIKE FIRE

WIP | Hunter x Bryneir (OC) & others | 51 of 80+ chapters | Currently 297,226 words [Moodboard] [AO3 - 🔞] *Heavy content warnings

A retelling of the Clone Wars through the eyes of a nat-born and a clone. Hunter is the leader of Havoc Squad, later known as Clone Force 99, a special forces unit of misfit clone brothers. Created to serve the Grand Army of the Republic during an intergalactic war of worlds against the Separatists, Hunter grapples with his purpose as he is forced to face his own humanity through the bitter lens of war. Bryneir Q'ade was a prisoner of war in a Separatist facility before joining the Republic army's 501st Legion as a combat trainer. Her past is heavily classified, her true origins only known by a select few. Battles rage within her that threaten to bleed her painful past into an unknown future as she seeks redemption and belonging. Through chance meetings they build a long-distance friendship with broken bricks, destined to crumble if they fail to repair the cracks. They bond over laughter, loss, war stories, and tattoos as Hunter helps her start to come to terms with her past, and Bryn helps him better understand what it means to be human. AKA: a war story examining trauma, grief, sex, disability, queerness, sacrifice, friendship, family, and love.

THE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE

COMPLETE | Hunter x fem!Reader + Hunter & Omega | 5 chapters | 18,093 words (All ages) or 22,836 words (18+) [AO3 - 🔞 version] [AO3 - All ages version]

Hunter enjoys life as a father on Pabu as he hatches a plan to show his partner just how much he loves her... and how much he wants to keep their family growing. Featuring tooth-rotting family fluff, a kinky romantic vacation (faded to black in the all ages version), a visit from our beloved clone rebels, multiple family expansions, a new-ish favorite ship, and a party to celebrate the kid who brought them all together. AKA: Hunter is a devoted husband and loving father who wants all the kids

THE RAVAGES OF WAR

COMPLETE EXCERPT | Hunter & Tech & Wrecker & Crosshair | 4 chapters | 16,849 words [AO3]

Havoc Squad has deployed as spec ops commandos, but are still underappreciated and poorly utilized by military command. In this multi-part adventure of a diplomatic assignment turned catastrophic assault, the Bad Batch takes daring risks to protect the citizens of a remote Wookiee village. But war doesn't come without a cost. AKA: the story of how Wrecker got his scars.

A DROP OF WATER FOUND

ONE SHOT | Dogma, Fives, & Jesse | 4,003 words [AO3]

Following the Battle of Umbara, a court martial has assigned Dogma to probationary duty back with the 501st Torrent Company. He grapples with his understanding of duty as a soldier versus duty as a brother while serving alongside those he betrayed, and some brothers are more welcoming than others. AKA: Rex makes Fives, Jesse, and Dogma work together when the ground falls out from under them.

LOCK, LOAD, & BLOW THINGS UP

ONE SHOT | Wrecker & Hardcase | 1732 words [AO3]

Wrecker sees fireworks for the first time and makes a poor decision. Hardcase has the same idea. Chaos ensues. AKA: We need more Wrecker & Hardcase friendship stories because those chaos gremlins would wreak havoc together.

TATTOOED TROOPERS

EXCERPT | Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, & Crosshair | 5002 words [AO3]

Hunter and his brother do something stupid before their squad takes the next big step in their military training. AKA: the origin story of Hunter and Crosshair's tattoos.

BEYOND ALL EXPECTATIONS

EXCERPT | Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, & Crosshair | 3509 words [AO3]

Havoc Squad is assigned to their first real mission, but things don't go as planned. The commandos-in-training are sent to deactivate a simple shield. Instead, they find opportunities for all of their enhanced abilities to save the day and far exceed their original objective. AKA: The Bad Batch one ups some regs.

A BROTHER & A BANDANA

EXCERPT | 99, Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, & Crosshair | 2523 words [AO3]

Hunter reflects on a memory of his brother as he struggles to come to terms with his grief

Clone x OC Week 2025 | Hunter x Bryneir [Masterlist] Febuwhump 2026 [Masterlist]

This wasn’t how the mission was supposed to go. They’d taken action far beyond their intended objective, not that they had a choice. Echo sat with Fives on the cold floor of the shuttle beside whoever she was.

Fives’ face twisted slightly as he looked over the woman they’d found. “What was that place?”

“A prison of sorts, I guess.”

“Well I know that, Echo. Something about it was… wrong.” 

He was right of course, something was off about that place, sinister almost. But it wasn’t up to them to figure out. They were soldiers. “That's for command to figure out.”

“Yeah, but don’t you want to know for yourself?”

“Not really.”

“Oh come on. You’re not at all curious why the Seppies would do this?” Fives whispered, motioning his hand at the woman in her current state.

“It’s not our job to speculate,” Echo reminded him again.

“Ah, forget it.”

The woman lay unconscious on the floor between them. She was in terrible shape. Cauterized cuts slashed her whole body, ruining her tattoos. Her nose was bloodied and crooked, her whole face purple and misshapen beyond hope for an immediate identification. The raw wounds at her wrists matched the restraints they'd found her in. They'd done their best to bandage her with their minimal supplies. Echo was no medic, but none of her injuries appeared life threatening. They were made to hurt her, not to kill her. The range of colors to her bruising suggested different stages of healing. She’d been hurt like this for a long time.

Echo examined his armor's new scuff and scratch marks to the newly painted plastoid, no doubt a result of today’s mission.

Ah, the mission. What a disaster.

As brand new recruits to the 501st, Captain Rex had assigned them everywhere. Rookie rotations, he'd called it. Today they were with the recon team. They’d been sent to orbit Mantero to gather intel on the dark side of Serenno’s moon, deep in Separatist space. The light side was a known burial ground for the planet's wealthiest, and there was supposed to be, well, nothing on the other side. Just empty mountains and valleys of stone. But the army had found intel suggesting otherwise, so there they were, with strict orders to observe and report. Do not engage.

They'd drifted above Mantero for hours before spotting something on the surface. It didn’t look like a base. There were only a handful of access points and what looked like exhaust vents, with no traffic coming or going. An underground facility, perhaps a bunker. They’d have to get closer to get better intel. To land would have been incredibly dangerous, so instead they maneuvered a covert flyby, waiting until the last possible moment to turn their electronic systems back on to avoid detection.

They'd never get the chance. A Separatist cruiser had dropped out of hyperspace behind them, striking their hull and rendering their cloaking technology utterly useless. They hadn’t had a chance in karking hell. The cruiser shot out their engines, sending them plummeting to the moon’s surface. Half the men were killed on impact, including their medic, crushed under the weight of their crippled ship. They’d fled the crash site immediately, knowing the Separatists would have been on the way, and headed for their only hope of completing the mission. They had hoped the facility had a shuttle they could steal and, if not, a long range transmission terminal to at least report back their findings before their inevitable capture.

The Sergeant had split the remaining men into two teams, one to gather intel and search for a transmission terminal, the other to locate and commandeer a ship.

It was some sort of detention facility, one with suspiciously low security, minimal ray shields, and very few cells. They’d found rounded hallways that appeared to meet in a circle. The soldiers had taken cover, hiding from the patrolling B1 battle droids, when an explosion rocked the facility.

The patrol had taken off just as the red emergency lights kicked in, alarms blaring over their heads. The others causing trouble in the hangar, they'd presumed. They cleared the matching hallways until they’d met on the other side. Fifteen cells, they had counted, all empty, save one. A body. A mutilated man, still warm, still bleeding.

"Nothing we can do for him,” the Sergeant had said. “Scan his face, maybe the GAR can identify him later. Keep moving."

They’d continued down the central hallway, ducking into cover along the angular walls when they spotted another door, this one much more foreboding than the others. Four droids remained here, standing guard.

At the nod of the Sergeant, all four were dismantled with ease.

They knew even before the door creaked open that they were walking into hell. The stench of rot wafted past its rubberized seals, the smell overwhelming they entered the room. Echo's stomach lurched as he stumbled, he had to brace himself against the wall and coach himself not to vomit. 

That's when they saw her. A woman draped in soiled rags, hanging by her wrists over a putrid pile of sludge rotting on the floor. She was in just as bad of shape as the dead man they’d found in the cell, but… she was alive? That was the moment their coms shot off, the others had commandeered a shuttle. They had to leave immediately. 

"Hold on, we've got a prisoner in here!" Fives had yelled as he rushed to her.

The Sergeant had already been at the central computer, downloading its data. "Is she dead?"

"No. She's weak, but alive."

"Kriff…" Echo had cursed under his breath.

Echo ran for the control panel and disarmed it, and Fives caught her as she fell, carefully slinging her over his shoulder.

“I got her!”

"Let's move,” the Sergeant had ordered as he yanked the datastick from the console. “Set charges as you go, we're putting an end to this blasted hell hole!" 

They’d found the shuttle with their men in the middle of a firefight, ducking from cover to cover, shooting bolts at the droids as they could. They'd barely made it on board before Seppie reinforcements arrived. The charges detonated just as the ramp door closed, blowing the place to ash as they zipped into the stars. They were fortunate the shuttle had a hyperdrive. No long range transmission on board, the report would have to wait until they’d reached the—

“Echo? Echoooo…” 

He snapped back to the present as Fives hummed his name amusedly.

“Welcome back brother.”

“Sorry, lost in thought was all.”

“Right, not our job to speculate though, is it?”

Echo opened his mouth, prepared to slap his brother’s devious grin off his face with a smart retort, when the woman stirred. Both brothers jolted as she opened her eyes, then groaned and closed them again. Unsure if she could even hear them, the brothers silently agreed to console her, just in case.

“We got ya miss, you’re gonna be okay,” Echo said.

For a material that didn’t bend or break without extreme force or heat, plastoid was certainly prone to stain. It didn’t matter how hard he’d scrub, the remnants of carbon and blood and dirt would gather in every corner of his armor. It was impossible to fully remove, but the regs didn’t mind in the slightest. The more banged up and discolored a clone’s armor was, the more he’d fought. It was usually a badge of honor.

But he didn’t want her blood to be a part of that.

Hunter sat alone on the floor of the barracks with a bucket of soapy water and a scrubbing brush. Guilt tightened its grip on his chest as his gaze dropped down over his blood-stained armor piled on the floor. A lot of it was yellow, from the Geonosians. But far too much of it was red, all of it from her.

The moments before the blast replayed in his head a thousand times. How else could they have gotten out? Could they have made that run without her firing that kriffing turret? What if he had grabbed it from her hands before it hurt her? What if they had called for reinforcements before stepping foot in the tunnels? Could he have caught her hand half a second faster and at least prevented her blast injuries? That still wouldn’t have undone that horrific burn...

The dried blood melted away as Hunter worked. He'd already scrubbed his own neck five times since returning, where her bleeding forehead had rested. He could still smell it. The sickening blend of burnt blood and charred plastoid. Despite his training, he hadn’t been prepared to see a wound that severe up close, much less on her. They hadn’t even noticed it first, instead having focused on her head, hoping a concussion may have been the worst of it. Until Tech examined her. Hunter had felt the extreme shockwaves of her pain as they pulled off the armor plate, her cries now seared into his brain forever. How had she endured that pain for so long? Adrenaline, had to have been, and it had worn off on the ride back to base when she’d gripped his hand so hard she could’ve broken it.

It had already been two days. Two days of being suspended from duty while command investigated exactly what went wrong on their mission in the sand dunes. Havoc Squad had spent that time stuck planetside on Geonosis, trying to keep themselves busy on base while awaiting a verdict. She had spent most of that time in bacta. It was only a few hours ago that Hunter had gotten word that she was finally out of the tank. He had gone to visit her and was surprised to find her alone, so he’d sat beside her bed for a while. The sedation from the bacta was still very much in effect as she’d slept. She’d been tucked in comfortably under warm blankets, cared for and healing, but still helpless and alone.

The brush’s bristles scratched harder against the plastoid, chipping the painted red and black stripes from the white base. It didn’t need to be perfect, he didn’t even really care if it was clean. He just needed her blood off of it, out of every nook and crevice. This armor was still his to wear until they got back to Kamino, where custom commando sets awaited them. Their white armor would finally be gone. Assuming they weren’t about to be severely reprimanded…

The implications of failure weighed heavy across his shoulders. As a leader, the mission was his responsibility. He’d made the call to go into the tunnels, he’d taken command of the missing scouts, and he’d failed to get them all out safely. Would they simply have to retrain and try again? Maybe he'd be deemed unfit to lead the squad? Would they be disbanded and dispersed among the regs, demoted to maintenance, or flat out decommissioned? If they’d gotten away with the plans and without major injuries, perhaps command would have looked past his choice to disobey their orders… but Commander Cody had made no secret of his discontent when their gunship had touched down.

Hunter flipped his chest plate over in his hands, scanning it for anymore blood. He found none, but the slightest discoloration was still perceptible to him. He laid the chest plate aside beside his shining new helmet before grabbing another armor plate. He never did get their helmets back before carrying her to the gunship, so he’d grabbed a spare Phase II to use in the meantime before returning to Kamino. The stark difference between the bright shine of the helmet and the discoloration of the chest plate only made that faint brownish blood stain stand out even more.

“Finally got around to it, huh?”

Crosshair’s voice didn’t startle him in the slightest. It didn’t matter where they were or what boots they wore, he could always tell the difference between each of his brother’s footsteps.

“Needs to be done.”

“Would’ve been easier before the blood dried.”

Hunter shrugged, not looking up as he continued to clean the spaulder in his hands.

Without a word, Crosshair retrieved another brush from the barracks’ maintenance cupboard and sat on the floor across from Hunter. He dipped it in the soapy water before selecting the next most bloodied plate from the pile, one of the forearm pieces, and getting to work.

Hunter opened his mouth as if to speak, but left his thanks unsaid. They sat and cleaned the armor together, remaining quiet for some time before Crosshair broke the silence.

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

His hands stopped scrubbing as his eyes met his brother’s, but again he chose not to reply.

“She made her own choice, a stupid choice.”

“A choice to protect the rest of us,” Hunter snapped.

“I never said it wasn’t noble, or whatever you want to call it. It was still stupid, and against your orders.”

He sighed. “She’s not the only one who didn’t follow orders.”

“Well,” the sniper continued as he laid the clean armor plate aside, taking another one to work on. “If you had followed your orders, both her and the regs would probably be dead. I can barely tolerate your moping about her being injured. You’d be insufferable if she’d died.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Hunter sneered as he flicked the clean spaulder aside, grabbing a new piece with a huff.

Hunter preferred being alone when his head didn’t feel screwed on quite right. He couldn’t relate to Wrecker’s unyielding optimism, or Tech’s pragmatic intellectualization of every situation. Crosshair always seemed to half-understand, though neither ever vocalized it. But in this moment, his brother’s concern masked by vitriol was an annoyance more than a comfort.

“What’s so special about her, anyway?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. He refused to even admit that there was anything special about her. She was just another soldier who he barely knew, who was reckless and impulsive and stubborn and brave all at once, who sacrificed her own safety for the lives of others without a second thought, who could make him laugh with ease even in a firefight…

“This isn’t about her,” he lied, forcing a shift in the conversation. “I failed. What if the whole squad is punished because of it?”

“We won’t be.”

“You sound sure about that.”

“I am sure about that.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re better than the regs. They’re just not used to it yet.”

“I’m not so sure the Commander sees it that way.”

“He will. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”

“I could have called for reinforcements before going into the tunnels.”

“And depending on how they traveled to us, that would have been even more regs to evacuate with no time to warn them.”

“That’s… true, I guess.”

Crosshair scoffed quietly as he grabbed the last dirty piece of Hunter’s armor.

“Just accept the fact that the mission was a success, aside from your cyar’ika getting herself hurt.”

“She’s not my… ugh, just stow it.” They locked eyes again, Crosshair’s smirk not escaping his notice. “You’re an arsehole.”

“And you’re a di’kut.”

Hunter felt his cheeks tug into a tight-lipped grin. Giving each other shit was how they showed they cared. It went without saying, they both just knew that they would go to the ends of the galaxy and back for each other.

Crosshair tossed the last clean piece of Hunter’s armor into the pile and took the bucket and brushes away, saving him from the task of dumping the blood-tinged water. He changed back into his blacks and quickly reapplied his armor before rubbing his tired eyes. He hadn’t slept properly since landing on Geonosis.

“CT-9901, come in.”

Hunter stopped breathing for a moment before answering his com. “Read CT-9901.”

“Corporal. Report to command with your squad immediately.”

“Right away.”

The ship was as quiet as ever. Which was never. Star ships were never silent, not even in the cradle of a hyperspace lane where every real-space atom gently vibrated through the hull. The monitors beeped soft and steady, signalling air pressure, oxygen levels, and heat stress, the assurance that the staleness of the recycled air was perfectly safe. It brought him more comfort than a planetside villa ever could.

Echo stretched out on his rack, still dazed by the sleep he was eager to find again. He rolled over, cracked his neck, and rolled his stubborn ankles. The stiffness remained. He rolled them harder, pushing the balls of his feet against the metal frame and—

Zap!

Pain shot straight through his calves. The cramping tore Echo from his half-dozed state, making him jolt up in a tangle of patchwork sheets. On reflex he reached down, hands searching to relieve the source. He found nothing. He blinked his vision clear and checked again. Nothing. Only when he ripped the sheets away did he remember.

It didn't matter how many years had passed. His body still forgot, more often than he'd ever admit. Echo scrunched his brow and looked around at his sleeping rebel brothers. They all had their own demons to fight. He could handle this one. So he sat himself up against the rumbly wall, yanked off his compression garments, and tapped his fingers on both stumps. A trick the medical droids had taught him before the war ended. He'd do that until it ended, until his memories could remind his brain of his traumas, until the pain stopped enough for him to sleep once more.

Maintenance sanitation requires the focus of a sniper, to do it properly, that is. Scanning every tile of a mess hall in a reasonable amount of time takes skill, one he'd well learned in his years of searching for food bits gone astray, scuffs where tired boots had dragged, and his arch nemesis — water rings. Challenging to spot from a distance, but up close? Dreadful. His brothers deserved to eat off shining tables for all they went through, for all they would someday be made to sacrifice. If scrubbing was to be his job, then he'd do it well, real well, and make his brothers proud.

The man crouched to the height of the tables, likely worsening his hunched back in order to assess his completed work. All glistening white, clear as day to perfectly mirror the rows of lights overhead… save for one. One light reflected too strangely for his liking. Upon closer inspection, the dulled ring mocked him for his oversight. No matter. He squeezed a bean-sized amount of acryliplast paste onto a clean corner of his rag, neatly folded, and buffed his nemesis away.

Until we meet again, water rings.

Kamino slept as 99 puttered through the corridors. He checked every maintenance closet along his route, taking note of what needed restocking in the morning. He detoured through the laboratories, as he usually did at the end of a day's work, ever eager to watch over the towers of little tubies. Every pod held so much potential. Future soldiers of the Republic, his brothers would be, and he was proud of every single one.

He arrived at the lift, hidden around an unsuspecting corner, easily missed if one didn't know to look for it. Thirteen levels down, 99 stepped out into the hall most would call cramped, but there was plenty of headroom for his stature. He shuffled along so as not to disturb his fellow maintenance clones until, at last, he reached his own small door. He tapped in his code, his daily routine nearly at completion, when a sound that did not belong on a maintenance platform caught his attention.

A sniffle.

The door slid open, its bearings crying out for grease. 99 didn't hear the sound again, but… no, he couldn't shake it. Rest could wait another moment.

At the end of the narrow corridor he reached the open-air storage area. 99 ventured out onto the grated platform, suspended leagues above the roaring waves but, to his relief, found no one. Perhaps he'd heard nothing at all.

99 turned to leave, taking stock of his surroundings. The stacks of durasteel plating and specialized tools were neatly sorted, ready to keep the support column standing strong against the storms. Not all maintenance clones scrubbed tables, after all. But there was a single anomaly. Small boxes stacked in fours, eight stacks across, all perfectly aligned… except for the last stack. The top two boxes were askew, as if bumped at a height lower than even himself, and behind that stack? He found the hiding place of a grey-haired boy with angry eyes.

"Crosshair? Heh, how'd you wind up down here?"

The kid didn't answer him, only stared back down, arms crossed over knees. Strong-willed, that one, always had been.

"Did something happen?"

Nothing.

99 slid down against the wall to sit beside his little brother. He leaned back, at peace with the wind's whistles that filled the silence. After no time at all, Crosshair began to fidget. He pinched the skin between his fingers and huffed out his mystery frustrations. But it was 99's choice to hum a simple tune that sent the boy over the edge.

"What do you want?"

"Not a thing, my boy. Only to make sure you're okay," 99 said with a smile.

Crosshair scoffed. "I'm great."

"Somehow I doubt that. Bad training day?"

No reaction.

"Did the long necks say something to ya?"

Still nothing.

"Fighting with your brother again?"

The kid's nose twitched.

"Ah. Alright then."

The older clone returned to his humming once more. He didn't know the words, but figured the tune must be popular, it was always playing on the broadcast during—

"You're not gonna ask me about it?"

"Hm? No. You'll tell me when you're ready."

Crosshair frowned. "Well it's not my fault!"

"I never said—"

"He thinks he's better than me, I know he does!"

"Cross—"

"I'm not annoying, he's the annoying one! Bosses us all around like the trainers, Tech and Wrecker don't even care that he's mean to me. It's not fair!"

99 furrowed his brow. "What mean thing did he say?"

The boy sat straight up and sneered. "He said some of us are more broken than others."

Alarm bells blared in 99's mind, but he put them aside for the moment. "He said broken, not defective?"

"Same difference," Crosshair spat, recoiling back to his closed position.

"And you're sure he was talking about you?"

"Obviously."

Something stirred up his guts. A sixth sense of sorts that he wasn't getting the full story. Those two boys fought, a lot, both equally guilty of throwing fists and nastiness at one another. But the word broken… it just didn't sit right.

"I'm sorry, my boy. That was not a nice thing of him to say, you're allowed to be upset. I'll talk to him."

"Don't bother."

99 sighed deep from his chest. "Hunter is your brother. He cares, and I know you do too. You just don't show it to each other very much."

Crosshair projected his huff, face soured into pressed lips. "I guess we're both broken defects, then."

"Heh, join the club," 99 chuckled. "I like you better that way."

"No you don't—"

"Yes, I do. All of us 99's are different. That's your superpower. If you boys work together, all of you, you will be unstoppable."

For the briefest moment, 99 caught the kid's eye before the boy buried his chin back on his knees. He'd never agree out loud, that was not Crosshair's way, but his silence said it all.

What little light had spilled in from outside creeped away. 99 resumed humming his little tune. A child's stubbornness could sustain them for quite some time, he'd learned as much over his years watching over his cadet brothers, but eventually even spite couldn't stop the kid's yawn.

"You should head back for some sleep."

Crosshair nodded. "Soon."