Chapter Text
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The outpost had been carved straight into the side of a limestone cliff, all pale stone and rusted durasteel ribs, crouched beneath a bruised sky that looked ready to split open with rain.
From the ridge opposite, Crosshair lay prone in the scrub with his rifle braced against his shoulder and the long, lean line of his body disappearing into shadow. Below, Hunter moved through the outer perimeter like a blade slipped between ribs. Echo covered the east approach with clinical precision, Tech muttered updates over the comms as he sliced the relay box at the rear access hatch, and Wrecker was, somehow, being quieter than usual.
Which meant the mission had already gone wrong.
The medic pressed her back to a cargo crate slick with mist and lifted two fingers to the side of her helmet as another crackle burst over the comm.
“West platform clear,” Crosshair said, voice dry and sharp as broken glass. “Though your heartbeat spiked three points when that sentry turned. Distracting.”
She rolled her eyes at the crate in front of her. “Good to know you’ve found a hobby.”
“I’m serious.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
A low snort came over the line, unmistakably Wrecker.
Hunter’s voice cut in next, calm and clipped. “Focus.”
“Focused,” the medic murmured, already moving.
She slipped from cover and crossed the stretch of open ground beneath the platform in a low sprint, boots splashing through shallow pools gathered in the pitted stone. The rain had not started yet, but the air was thick with it. It clung to the skin beneath her blacks, dampened the loose hairs at the nape of her neck, and made the whole cliffside smell like mineral dust, old engines, and something electric hanging just before a storm.
She reached the door panel Tech had cracked and dropped into a crouch beside him.
“You’re late,” Tech said without looking up.
“I crossed an open kill zone in seven seconds.”
“Yes,” he said. “Late by your standards.”
She huffed a laugh and reached for the compact scanner attached to her belt. The corridor on the other side of the blast door pulsed onto her display in ghostly blue. Two life signs, one stationary, one pacing.
“Two inside,” she murmured. “One’s favoring a leg.”
Crosshair answered a beat later. “The limping one is armed.”
“I assumed the blaster on his belt wasn’t ornamental.”
“Given your tendency to overcompensate, I didn’t want to risk you attempting diplomacy.”
That earned him a flat look at the durasteel wall, which was deeply unfair considering he could not see it.
Tech finally got the lock to cycle. The hatch hissed open with a breath of stale, warm air from inside. Hunter slid in first, Echo behind him, the medic on Echo’s shoulder. She stepped over the threshold and was immediately hit with the smell of machine oil, old coolant, and damp concrete. The corridor lights flickered overhead, turning everything that tired Imperial white that never quite looked clean.
They moved fast. Hunter took point. Echo swept left. The medic watched angles and doorways, one hand on her blaster, the other already hovering near the med pouch at her hip out of instinct more than need.
They were nearly at the archive room when the pacing life sign on her scanner stopped.
“Contact moving,” she whispered.
“I can see him,” Crosshair replied.
A half second later, the storm broke.
Rain hammered the cliffside roof hard enough to sound like blaster fire, and in the sharp, jarring burst of noise the sentry stepped from the side corridor with his rifle already half raised.
Hunter dropped him before he could shout.
The second one spun from inside the archive room, firing blind. Echo shoved the medic back against the wall as red bolts scorched past, filling the corridor with the smell of burning ozone and pulverized stone.
“Tech,” Hunter snapped.
“On it.”
The lights died.
Darkness swallowed the corridor whole.
There was one breath of stillness, then Crosshair’s voice slid into her ear, calm and cutting and infuriatingly steady.
“Down.”
She hit the floor on instinct.
A shot cracked from somewhere far above and outside, impossibly precise through the broken sightline of the corridor slit. The second sentry jerked backward and collapsed with a soundless, ugly finality.
Emergency strips flared red along the floor a second later, painting the walls in blood-colored light.
The medic pushed herself up onto one knee. “You could’ve led with that.”
“And deprive you of the thrill?”
She looked toward the narrow corridor window as if she could glare through stone and rain and distance. “One of these days, your overwatch is going to develop a fatal attitude problem.”
“One of these days,” Crosshair said, “you’ll start listening before I repeat myself.”
Hunter glanced back at them both, expression invisible under the shadows of his helmet but weary in a way only long familiarity could make it. “Save it.”
Wrecker, who had finally burst through the rear access route with all the restraint of a detonator in a tin can, boomed over the comm, “I liked her version better!”
The medic smothered a smile and stood, rolling one shoulder where Echo had slammed her into the wall. No damage. Just a bruise later.
“Archive room’s clear,” Echo said.
Tech stepped past them and into the room, already pulling data spikes from his kit. “The relay’s local backups are older than anticipated. It will take me six point four minutes.”
“Make it four,” Hunter said.
“That would require the Empire to have designed their systems more efficiently.”
“The Empire never makes anything easy,” the medic muttered.
“No,” Crosshair said. “That’s your department.”
She inhaled slowly through her nose.
He had been doing this for cycles now. Ever since Hunter had taken her on officially, ever since one mission had stretched into three, then into a month, then long enough that the Marauder had started feeling less like borrowed space and more like somewhere she belonged. Tech had stopped archiving her med kit as foreign equipment and simply made room for it. Echo asked for her assessments before he asked for painkillers. Wrecker raided her emergency ration stash with the confidence of someone who knew exactly how loudly he would be scolded and did it anyway. Hunter trusted her judgment in the field.
Most days, it felt seamless.
And then there was Crosshair.
Crosshair, with his cutting mouth and impossible aim and the particular talent he had for turning every single exchange with her into an argument balanced on a knife-edge. Crosshair, who obeyed her medical orders only after acting like each one was a personal offense. Crosshair, who somehow always knew where she was in the field, even while speaking to her like she was the single most irritating variable in his sightline.
The archive room door hissed open wider. Tech muttered to himself over the terminal. Wrecker took position on the corridor intersection. Hunter prowled. Echo checked the fallen sentry for extra ammunition.
The medic swept the room again with her scanner and caught a new flicker of heat near the far wall.
“Thermal charge in the vent housing,” she said immediately.
Hunter was already moving. “Tech?”
“I see it.”
“It’s on a relay trigger,” she added, stepping closer. “If the backup system completes a forced restart, it’s going to cook the whole room.”
Wrecker groaned dramatically from the doorway. “See? This is why I don’t trust places with vents.”
“You don’t trust places with stairs,” Echo said.
“Stairs know what they did.”
The medic knelt beside the vent and pried the cover loose enough to expose the round gleam of the charge tucked behind the wiring. Cheap Imperial insurance. Not enough to level the base. More than enough to turn everyone in the archive room into ash.
“Can you disarm it?” Hunter asked.
She angled her scanner beneath the charge, reading the circuitry. “Yes.”
Crosshair’s voice came through at once. “No.”
She paused. “Excuse me?”
“That trigger is slaved to the power relay,” he said. “If Tech finishes the slice while you’re cutting the charge, you’ll trip both.”
“I know how a relay trigger works.”
“Your previous assessment suggested otherwise.”
Her teeth clicked together. “My previous assessment suggested I can see it from here, unlike some people who are making life choices in the mud.”
Tech didn’t look away from the console. “For accuracy, Crosshair’s vantage point currently has a thirty-eight degree downward angle on the exposed panel.”
“I’m aware of what he can see, Tech.”
“Then you are aware he’s right,” Tech said.
A beat.
She hated that. More than hated it. Hated that Tech would say it so casually, with all the emotional tact of a hydrospanner. Hated that Crosshair never sounded smug when he was right, only sharper. Smug could be ignored. Sharp got under the armor.
Hunter crouched beside her. “Options?”
She exhaled once and shifted the scanner. “I can freeze the trigger with a field clamp and give Tech a window.”
“Three minutes,” Tech said.
“Two if you stop narrating.”
“Your bedside manner continues to decline,” Crosshair observed.
She shot a look toward the ceiling, toward the rifleman she couldn’t see. “And yet I’m somehow still more charming than you.”
Wrecker barked out a laugh. Echo muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Not difficult.”
Crosshair went silent, which was never a good sign.
The medic slid the field clamp from her belt and leaned into the vent housing. The red emergency strips painted the backs of her gloves and made the little spools of wire glisten wetly in the half-dark. Rain battered the base overhead. Somewhere deeper in the outpost, an alarm had started trying and failing to cycle to full volume.
Her fingers moved quickly. Pin. Clamp. Twist. Hold.
“Tech.”
“Beginning transfer.”
She kept one hand steady on the charge while the other braced against the wall, knuckles white beneath the glove. Time stretched. The hum of the relay deepened, then shivered.
“Status?” Hunter asked.
“Three quarters,” Tech said.
The charge under her hand vibrated once.
“Move,” Crosshair snapped into the comm.
Her head jerked up. “What?”
“Second trigger in the panel seam. Move.”
She saw it then. Tiny. Almost invisible. A pressure pin she had not caught because the angle from her crouch had hidden it beneath the vent lip.
Kriff.
Hunter grabbed the back of her harness and hauled her clear as the panel blew.
The detonation was small, more flash than force, but it hit the wall hard enough to pepper them with shards of hot durasteel. The medic twisted mid-fall, shielding her face. Her shoulder smacked the floor. Heat washed over her. Wrecker roared something from the doorway. Tech finished the slice in the same breath the room filled with smoke.
Then the rain was the loudest thing in the world again.
For one long second, no one moved.
Hunter was on his feet first. “Report.”
“Fine,” Echo coughed.
“Still handsome,” Wrecker said.
“Terminal intact,” Tech replied.
The medic pushed herself upright, wincing at the sting across the back of her hand where a thin strip of metal had skimmed her skin. Nothing serious. She flexed it once.
Then, in her ear, quieter than before, Crosshair said, “You’re welcome.”
She stared into the smoky red haze of the room. “You only noticed because you were staring.”
A pause.
“Part of overwatch,” he said.
There was no inflection in it at all, and somehow that made it worse.
Hunter exhaled through his nose. “Get the data and move.”
No one mentioned the way she had nearly missed the second trigger. No one mentioned that Crosshair had caught it first. The Batch operated like that. You covered the mistake, learned from it, and kept moving.
Still, the heat sat beneath her skin all the way back to the ship, not from the blast, but from the maddening certainty that Crosshair would file the whole thing away in that narrow head of his and use it later like ammunition.
The Marauder’s ramp groaned open to welcome them home through sheets of rain and the smell of hot hydraulics. Inside, the ship was dim, close, familiar. Engine hum in the walls. Metal deck plates still holding the warmth of old cycles. A half-finished ration wrapper abandoned near the dejarik table that was almost certainly Wrecker’s. Tech’s tools neatly stacked where no one else would dare touch them. The little med corner at the rear already waiting with its sealed cabinets, swinging overhead lamp, and the sterile bite of antiseptic that never quite erased the underlying scent of engine grease and recycled air.
Home, in the way ships became home when they carried the same people often enough.
Wrecker flopped onto the bench by the main hold with the drama of a dying mythosaur. “I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving,” Echo said.
“Exactly.”
Hunter peeled off his gloves and nodded toward the med station as he passed. “Check everyone over before we jump.”
The medic was already unsnapping her satchel. “Sit if you’re bleeding. Line forms to the left if you’ve got complaints, to the right if you’ve got bruises and want sympathy.”
Wrecker lumbered to his feet at once. “What if I got both?”
“You get a lecture.”
He looked betrayed.
Tech deposited the data cylinder beside the nav console and said, with maddening sincerity, “That is statistically the most likely outcome.”
It was almost easy then, as it always was with the others.
Wrecker had a split knuckle and a darkening mark on his ribs from where he’d shouldered through a half-closed blast door because patience had never once darkened his doorstep. He let her disinfect the hand while narrating, in great detail, how the door had insulted him first.
Echo had a stiff shoulder from the corridor firefight, the kind he would have ignored until it limited his range of motion if she hadn’t physically blocked him on his way to the cockpit.
“Sit,” she told him.
“I’m fine.”
“You just reached for the opposite side to unclip your pauldron.”
Echo paused, looked down at himself as if betrayed by his own body, and sat without another word.
Hunter checked in and out of the med bay with that quiet, steady presence of his, taking updates, plotting the jump, tracking the squad’s movement without ever seeming rushed. He trusted her to handle what she always handled. It sat easy between them.
Tech, true to form, insisted he did not need treatment for a shallow scorch on his forearm because the burn was “superficial and no longer actively relevant,” then proceeded to hiss under his breath when she spread bacta over it.
“Your pain tolerance is unimpressive,” she told him.
“My pain tolerance is perfectly acceptable,” Tech replied. “My objection is to your application technique.”
She wrapped the bandage a touch tighter than necessary.
“That,” he said, “felt intentional.”
“It was.”
He considered that. “Understandable.”
That earned a snort from Echo and a booming laugh from Wrecker somewhere near the galley.
It was like this, cycle after cycle. Easy in motion. Easy in routine. She knew where all of them would be before they crossed the threshold. Knew who hid pain, who complained theatrically, who forgot to eat, who would sit down only if physically blocked from leaving. She knew the rhythm of the ship at rest and the rhythm of this squad when the adrenaline wore off.
She fit.
Which was precisely when Crosshair stepped into the med bay and ruined the air.
He had removed the upper half of his armor already, the blacks beneath clinging damp to his frame from rain and sweat. A graze scored along the outside of his left forearm, shallow but messy, where a hot fragment or glancing bolt had torn through the fabric. There was blood drying in a dark line toward his wrist.
He looked at the med cot like it had personally offended him.
She did not look up from sealing Tech’s bandage. “Sit down.”
Crosshair leaned one shoulder against the hatch instead. “It’s nothing.”
Without missing a beat, she set the last strip in place on Tech’s arm and said, “Congratulations. You’ve mastered self-diagnosis.”
Tech slid off the cot. “I did not request to be used as an example.”
“No one asked your permission.”
“Obviously.”
Crosshair remained where he was, expression cool, eyes half-lidded with the exact flavor of annoyance that meant he was preparing to become difficult on purpose.
She finally looked at him.
Bad decision.
Rain had left dark drops clinging to the shaved edge of his temple. A loose strand of wet hair had escaped and stuck near his cheekbone. His forearm was streaked with blood, and beneath the sharp planes of his face there was that same irritating composure he wore in a firefight, like everyone else in the room was several steps behind him and that fact bored him deeply.
“You’re dripping on my floor,” she said.
“Then perhaps your floor should’ve chosen a less inconvenient location.”
Wrecker, passing by the med bay with an armful of ration packs, stopped just long enough to grin. “She said sit down, Crosshair.”
Crosshair did not look at him. “Not helping.”
“I wasn’t tryin’ to.”
Echo brushed past Wrecker and cast one look between them before continuing on, wisely deciding he wanted no part of it.
The medic folded her arms. “Do I need Hunter to make it an order?”
His gaze sharpened. “You’re getting dramatic over a scratch.”
“Funny,” she said. “That’s exactly what everyone says right before they bleed on something expensive.”
“It’s superficial.”
“So is your charm. Sit.”
Wrecker made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh, then vanished down the corridor before shrapnel started flying.
Crosshair pushed off the hatch at last, slow and annoyed, and crossed to the med cot with all the grace of a man approaching his execution. He sat on the very edge as if ready to leave the second she blinked wrong.
“You know,” she said, reaching for antiseptic, “most people say thank you when someone keeps them from getting an infection.”
“Most people aren’t subjected to this much commentary.”
She uncapped the antiseptic. “Most people don’t spend their free time getting shot.”
His mouth thinned. “I was not shot.”
“No,” she said. “You were apparently grazed by the universe itself.”
Crosshair’s eyes narrowed.
She took his wrist before he could decide whether to pull away.
The contact lasted barely a second, glove against damp skin, but something in him went very still.
Not rigid. Not startled. Still.
Then he let her turn his arm.
The cut really was shallow, a long angry scrape where heat had kissed the flesh and peeled the top layer away. It would sting badly and heal fast. She cleaned it anyway, because that was her job and because Crosshair, despite his endless objections, had a habit of pretending smaller injuries did not exist until they became interesting.
Antiseptic touched the wound.
His jaw ticked.
She glanced up. “Aw. Was that discomfort?”
“That,” he said coolly, “was regret.”
“Too late now.”
He watched her hands as she worked, expression unreadable.
Around them, the Marauder settled into post-mission quiet. Tech moved somewhere near the cockpit, keys clicking fast beneath his fingers. Wrecker rummaged noisily through the galley stores. Hunter’s voice drifted low from the front, speaking to Echo about fuel and coordinates and whether the cliff route on Ord Mantell was still being monitored. The ship’s engines shifted tone as Tech began pre-flight startup. Outside, rain drummed against the hull in soft, relentless sheets.
Inside the med bay, the overhead lamp cast a small pool of light over metal cabinets, sealed bacta packs, the white edge of gauze, and Crosshair’s forearm resting in her grip.
“Your methods are wasteful,” he said after a beat.
She did not look up. “And there it is.”
“You used a full antiseptic capsule on a surface graze.”
“I’m so sorry my commitment to hygiene offends you.”
“It’s inefficient.”
She dabbed the wound once more, precise and unhurried. “You know what else is inefficient?”
“I suspect you’re going to tell me.”
“Having a sniper who treats basic first aid like a moral failing.”
His stare lingered on the side of her face. She could feel it, thin and exact as a laser line.
“Maybe,” he said, “if your patients didn’t leave these conversations more injured than they arrived, I’d be more cooperative.”
She snorted before she could stop herself. “That from the man whose bedside manner could sour caf.”
Crosshair’s mouth gave the smallest twitch. Not a smile. Something meaner and smaller. More dangerous for how brief it was.
“There,” she said, smoothing the edge of a bacta strip over the scrape. “See? You survived.”
“Miraculous.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
She reached for the wrap to secure the dressing and, almost without thinking, said, “Hold still.”
Crosshair went quiet.
Not the normal quiet. Not the one he wore like armor around everyone else.
This one landed soft.
She frowned faintly, eyes still on his arm as she wound the bandage once, twice, anchoring it just snug enough to stay put. His skin was warm under her fingers. Warmer than it should have been after the rain. The tendons in his wrist shifted once when she turned his hand to check the wrap, and there was an odd sort of care in the way he didn’t pull away, didn’t make one of his usual comments, didn’t do anything but sit there and let her work.
The silence stretched.
It should not have.
She was used to patching people up. Used to bruises and burns and split skin and the practical intimacy of treating injuries. Bodies were mechanics when you did this long enough. Systems. Reactions. Pressure, pulse, damage, repair.
But this, all at once, did not feel practical.
Maybe it was the low light.
Maybe it was the rain on the hull, turning the ship into something close and sealed and private.
Maybe it was the way the mission’s last adrenaline still pulsed faintly under her skin.
Or maybe it was the simple, stupid fact that Crosshair had finally stopped talking.
She secured the final wrap and lifted her eyes.
He was already looking at her.
Not at her hands. Not at the bandage. At her.
The air changed.
It did not shift much. Just enough. Like a hairline fracture creeping through transparisteel, silent until the pressure found it.
Her fingers were still around his wrist.
His gaze dropped.
Slowly.
Not to the med kit. Not to the wound.
To her mouth.
It was so brief she could have pretended she imagined it, except for the way his throat moved when he swallowed after, sharp and controlled, and the way heat rose under her collar without permission. Her own gaze betrayed her in the same breath, catching on the long line of his throat, the pale hollow at its base disappearing under the edge of his blacks, the faint flex there when he breathed.
Kriff.
She released his wrist too quickly.
The motion jolted the cot. Metal clicked softly.
Neither of them said anything.
From somewhere up front Wrecker shouted, “Did anybody see my other glove?”
Tech answered, without even a trace of interest, “No one has seen it because it was consumed by the engine intake three rotations ago.”
“What?”
“You were informed.”
“I thought that was a joke!”
The sounds should have broken it.
They didn’t.
Crosshair’s eyes lifted back to hers, unreadable and far too aware. There was no smirk in them now, none of the usual lazy cruelty he used to keep distance in place. Just attention. Narrow, focused, intimate in the worst possible way.
It made the little med bay suddenly feel too small.
She turned away first, reaching for the discarded antiseptic wrapper just to have something to do with her hands. “Don’t read into it.”
His voice, when it came, was low enough that the hum of the ship nearly swallowed it. “Into what?”
She hated that he could do that. Ask a simple question and make it feel like he was aiming.
“The treatment,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “Hunter needs everyone functional.”
A beat passed.
Then, with that maddening coolness sliding back into place one piece at a time, Crosshair said, “Whatever helps you sleep, medic.”
The title in his mouth should have sounded dismissive.
It didn’t.
That was the problem.
She stepped back from the cot and folded her arms, as if distance could put the ship right again. “Try not to tear the wrap loose the second you leave.”
“I’ll do my best to survive your medical tyranny.”
He stood.
For one absurd second, because she was still close and the med bay was still too narrow, they were nearer than they needed to be. His shoulder almost brushed hers. The scent of rain and gun oil and clean metal clung to him under the sharper antiseptic. She could feel the ghost of warmth where she had held his wrist, as if her hands had decided memory was their business now.
Then he moved past her and out into the corridor.
The hatch slid half shut behind him before he paused.
Without turning, he said, “You missed that second trigger.”
Her spine stiffened instantly. There it was. Ammunition.
“I know.”
“I know you know.”
She stared at the back of his shoulder through the narrowing gap.
“I also know,” he went on, “you adjusted your scanner too high because the first panel reflection pulled your focus left.”
She said nothing.
Not because he was wrong.
Because he wasn’t.
The hatch remained open a fraction longer.
Then, in the same infuriatingly even tone, he added, “Don’t do it again.”
The door slid shut behind him before she could decide whether to throw a tray at it.
For a long moment, she just stood there in the little pool of med bay light, the rain beating steadily against the hull, the ship humming under her boots, her own pulse far too noticeable in the quiet.
Annoyance came first. Reliable. Familiar. Easy to hold.
Of course he would wait until the end to mention it. Of course he had seen it. Of course he had catalogued the mistake in that relentless scope of his and handed it back to her like a blade.
And yet.
He had caught it.
He had warned her.
He had watched closely enough to see exactly where her focus slipped.
Her eyes flicked, unhelpfully, toward the closed hatch.
The stupidest part was that she could still picture the brief drop of his gaze to her mouth. Still feel the steady weight of his forearm in her hands. Still see the line of his throat when he swallowed in that too-quiet med bay, like something had snagged there and refused to go down clean.
It meant nothing.
It had to mean nothing.
Crosshair was difficult, abrasive, impossible to satisfy, and constitutionally incapable of letting any conversation between them pass without drawing blood first. They did not like each other. They barely tolerated each other. She had known that as surely as she knew the sound of the Marauder’s engines or the precise drawer where Tech kept replacement couplings or which ration bar Wrecker would complain about before eating anyway.
That was the routine.
That was what made sense.
So why, when she looked back down at the abandoned wrap on the cot, did the med bay still feel charged, as if the air between them had been split open and hadn’t yet realized it was supposed to settle?
Up front, Hunter called for launch status. Tech answered. Echo said something dry that made Wrecker groan in protest. The ship’s engines deepened, vibration rolling through the deck plates as the Marauder prepared to lift.
The medic sealed away the used supplies with more force than necessary and shut off the overhead lamp.
Darkness swallowed the edges of the med bay, leaving only the dim corridor light and the red blink of standby monitors.
She told herself she was only listening for the shift in the engines.
Only steadying herself after a mission.
Only annoyed.
But as she stepped into the corridor and the ship rose into the storm, her gaze snagged automatically toward the rear viewport, toward the vague reflection of the squad moving in the low light, searching without meaning to for one narrow silhouette among them.
That, more than anything, was what irritated her.
Not the argument.
Not the graze.
Not even the way his voice had gone quieter when the others were gone.
It was the attention of it.
The awareness.
The ugly, intimate little fact that for the first time since joining the Batch, she could not decide which was worse: that Crosshair had been watching her that closely on the ridge, or that in the med bay, when the room had gone still and stupid and too small, she had realized she had been watching him right back.
Unfortunately, that seemed to be mutual.