The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

Febuwhump Day Eight: "Why Won't It Stop?"

Author's Note: Most post-Kamino drama and angst. :)

~ Amina Gila

It might have been a few weeks since Kamino, but Omega's mind is still in the past. She thought they could get Crosshair back. Maybe she could have tried harder to talk to him. Maybe she could have kept them together. She thought she could. It turns out she's not the only one who feels that way.

Their first mission post-Kamino is... it feels different somehow.

Hunter is healed now, but he's still quiet. Distant. Almost like he's not even there. Echo and Tech are back to arguing, and Wrecker is... what she can only call ragefully distant.

He threw a boulder off a cliffside for no reason.

Omega had stared at him blankly, half freaked out, but no one else said anything, so she'd followed their lead.

She hates it when Wrecker's angry. He's always so goofy, and Omega has hardly ever seen him angry. About anything. The last time was somewhere on Kamino, and before that, it was... was when he had Hunter pinned up against the wall, a millisecond from snapping his neck and Omega saved him.

He could've died there, and Omega knows it wasn't Wrecker's fault, and she certainly isn't angry at him, but she still can't help being jittery and uncomfortable when he's upset.

Here they are now, sitting on the steps of the Marauder together, her staring up at the stars.

Wondering where Crosshair is.

Wondering which one is Kamino.

Wishing she could stop thinking about it.

"What's with you?" Wrecker asks finally when she sighs again, eyes still fixed on the sky. She hasn't moved since they sat down together out here. She just doesn't have the energy to.

"I keep thinking about Crosshair," she admits, "About Kamino." It sounds so silly when she puts it to words. "I really never wanted to go back, but it's just... gone now."

"Yeah," Wrecker mutters.

Omega sighs, closing her eyes. "I really thought we could get him back."

"Me too, but... he's gone."

It's the brutally honest truth, and one she doesn't want to hear. She glances at Wrecker, but he's not looking at her. There's something different in him. She wishes it would just feel normal again, that she'd feel free, and they could... just be themselves again. "I told Hunter we'd be able to get him back," she mumbles, "I – I thought..." Talking about it won't help them.

She just thought she'd get to have her family together again someday.

She was wrong. Omega knows thinking about it, or even talking about it, isn't going to change anything, but she wants to. It feels like it might get it out of her head somehow. He'd been so... angry at them. He was hurt, too. Omega had tried to talk to him, but...

His words still sting.

Maybe he wasn't wrong. Maybe – no.

There's nowhere else any of them belong. Finding her way back to them had always been Omega's dream, no matter how many times Nala Se always told her she'd distract them. She couldn't accept it any other way, because they were the only people she would mean anything to, that she could be with, that she could... anything.

"He didn't want me," she says, and she shouldn't be talking about it, but she can't get it out of her head. "He didn't see me as one of you."

"Don't matter what he said," Wrecker replies dully. "He's wrong."