Hello lovely! Adoring your blog!
Can I request something for your drabble post?
Was thinking (in keeping with current events lol)
Crosshair and Omega and 'Eclipse, Goggles'.
Maybe some fluffy angst about trauma bonding by watching an eclipse through Tech's spare goggles? 😭😅
Thank you! X
thank you so much for the prompt! This ended up being quite a bit longer than a drabble - nearly 1K. Enjoy!
under sun and shade
Omega and Crosshair share memories of Tech on a sunny day.
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He finds her under the shade of a vast spreading tree, sunlight streaming through gaps in the leaves and catching in her golden hair. Batcher frisks beside him, then lets out a happy bark, charging to Omega’s side and rolling on the ground beside her. Omega pats her absently, then squints up at him.
”Hi, Crosshair.”
”You weren’t at lunch. I told Hunter I’d check on you.”
She gives him a wan smile. “You both worry too much.”
He raises his eyebrows. This from the kid who’d been kidnapped by bounty hunters and the Empire, who still had the Empire after her. “I’m not sure we worry enough.”
She chuckles a little, but it’s nothing like the laugh he’s gotten used to. Crosshair frowns, leaning against the trunk of the tree. His shadow blocks the dappled sunlight playing over her hair and face. A guilty look crosses her face, and then he realizes what she’s holding.
Tech’s broken goggles.
He goes cold, despite the sunny day.
“I just…” She hangs her head. “I miss him, Crosshair. I thought maybe I’d go and think about him for a while.”
Crosshair swallows. He’s not sure what to do here. She left them to go off by herself. Is he supposed to let her be? “I can… leave you alone.”
Her face twists to one side. She’s crying silently, trying not to show it. For a moment he almost does leave — he’d want to be alone, if it were him (wouldn’t he?). But that doesn’t feel right. He sinks down to the ground beside her and reaches out, stiffly patting her on the back.
She curls up under his arm so quickly he’s taken by surprise. He shifts his arm, brings her a little closer. It’s strange, feeling like a shelter, like he’s… safe, for her. The chill in his chest fades.
”Don’t you miss him, too?” she whispers.
”Yes,” says Crosshair. “Of course.” A muscle works in his throat. He closes his eyes, blinking back a sudden sting. “Did he like it here?”
Omega laughs, though she still sounds teary. “I think so. I was remembering how he recorded all the birds. Not just their calls, but everything to do with them — how their wings sounded when they flew, the sounds of the bugs they liked to eat, the noises their babies made. He used to sit right here recording sometimes. Then he’d play them back for me, telling me all their names.” She lets out a long breath. “I think talking about him helps.”
Scenes flash before him. Tech in their quarters back on Kamino, acting out every new plan that came into his brilliant mind. The confident little smile he’d get, pulling off something insanely clever. His voice rising with excitement when figuring out the twists and turns of a new language. Understanding you does not mean that I agree with you.
Crosshair opens his eyes, looking out at the distant sea, the sunlight shimmering on the waves. “Did he ever tell you about the eclipse on Ryloth?”
”No,” she says, scooting closer to him. He squeezes her shoulder.
“I was on watch. Hunter and Wrecker were laying low, resting up for a night mission. Tech was supposed to be, but he joined me. He wouldn’t stop talking about an eclipse by the largest moon.”
“An eclipse? During your mission?”
“It was very rare. He knew exactly how rare, of course.” Crosshair smiles slightly at the memory, though he’d been irritated by Tech’s chatter about the stages of the eclipse and Ryloth’s five moons and the fact that only the largest moon could initiate a total eclipse.
“Of course.” Omega looks up at him, curious, her eyes dry. “What was it like?”
“Strange,” Crosshair admits. “The light went wrong. We’d been on Ryloth for two weeks. I thought I knew the place. Until totality approached, and everything fell dark. And quiet.”
His arms prickle with goosebumps. It’s still such a powerful memory, the shift in the light’s register, the deep unreal shadows descending upon the world before them, the noises he’d gotten used to in the distance faltering into silence. And then Tech beside him, voice hushed: “Totality. It will last for six point two minutes, and this planet will not see such a spectacle again for thirty years. We will have no other chance to see this event on this world in our lifetimes -- now, Crosshair! Look!”
Crosshair shivers. “We’d seen a lot of the galaxy by then. But that stays with me. It was… beautiful. And Tech wanted me to see it with him.”
He tries to describe it to Omega, though his halting words are nothing like as clear as the memory he still carries. The image flares in his mind once more, the sun a black upon black disk, a white halo of hazy corona swirling and shifting around its borders, its light not moonlight or sunlight but something else entirely. He’d drunk it in, goosebumps rippling on his arms. And then he turned to Tech, whose brown eyes were wide and unblinking behind his goggles, his face shining, transported. “It is…” Tech paused, then shook his head, gazing up at the corona. “It is beyond my ability to describe.”
Crosshair had just nodded. “I think I know what you mean.”
They didn’t get to talk much about it after; the mission had taken precedence, and then there was the next mission, and the mission after that. But every time it came to mind, his arms prickled, and he remembered Tech, his face glowing.
Omega shifts beside him, and he’s back on Pabu, on a bright sunny day beneath the shade of a drowsing tree. She pulls away from his embrace, looking down at the goggles in her hands.
“I like that story, Crosshair.”
He takes a deep breath. Perhaps talking does help.
“I do, too.”
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Mazel Tov
AKA Miles Sucks 3/3
Miles Bron may not be the complicated genius, master manipulator that you expect, but he certainly does his fair share of manipulating.
This is one of three moments I wanted to zoom in on
Miles predictably tries to take back control of the situation. "I get it, guys." He holds his hands out maganimously, acting unbothered. "Let it all out" frames their actions as a tantrum. As an expression of feeling that he magnanimously understands. As an outburst that they will get over, then everything can return to normal.
The music ends on a triumphant note, and Claire and Lionel congratulate each other. They've finished knocking over most of the glass objects in the main showroom, and the Disruptors' vigor peters out.
Miles senses an opportunity and snatches it, breaking his own drinking glass. Basically, "Hey, I can do this, too! We're not so different." Again, framing the event as a singular outburst, after which nothing really has to change.
His next words are to Helen. "Ok, are we done?" Because his Disruptors have finished disrupting. It's time to knock it off and go back to everybody's rightful places. Listening to Miles.
Thankfully, Helen wasn't satisfied with a little glass. Because the Disruptors were, and Miles knew it.
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