I Mean Not Really A Spoiler, But After That Episode, I Am Going To Throw Up. I Now Hate Everyone And

I'm literally obsessed

Cold is the Night (Crosshair x F!Reader) ★ Ch. 3

⠀ Chapter 3: The Cave | AO3 Chapter Masterlist | Ongoing Chapter Summary: In the dark of the cave, you and the Commander wait out the storm. Notes: ★ tysm for all the positive responses to this fic! ★ realized I didn’t point it out before, so: the title of this fic is a reference to the song of the same name by The Oh Hellos! ★ we’ve got a rough final chapter count: around 7! ★ I’ve roughly plotted out this whole story in advance, but I’m writing & publishing it alongside the airing of season 2, so there might end up being incongruencies with canon plot developments. but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ★ enjoy ❄️

“There… That should be good,” you huff, leaning back after you finish the final pat of snow surrounding the Commander’s knee. “Is the pain starting to die down?”

9904 responds only with a nod… But after spending the better part of an hour alone together, you’ve already come to expect this.

You back off without another word, returning instead to your place across the fire from him. You feel his visor follow the movement, but opt to say nothing.

What, after all, are you supposed to do with CT-9904?

If you’re continuing forward with your actual mission objective, the answer is obvious: find a way up the mountainside to the transport that brought you here, get off this frozen rock, and return to base. Carry on as you have been, bunking alongside the enemy and feeding snippets of vital info back home when you can.

Hell, you could probably even get away with killing the Commander and saying he died in the avalanche just like the rest of your squad.

You try not to flick your alarmed gaze toward him at the very thought.

All that sounds well and good, except…

You were never meant to die in this post.

Sure, your infiltration of Imperial forces has never had a set exit strategy—but it’s also never occurred to you whether or not your espionage was meant to simply continue on until you got killed… Or worse, exposed.

And in recent weeks, it’s certainly been a close thing.

There have been a few close calls, rebel escapes that seem a bit too convenient—you’ve seen it in the clench of Vice Admiral Rampart’s jaw at each new “failure.”

The enemy is wising up—or perhaps you’re just getting sloppy.

Either way…

If ever you were looking for an out, a way back to Segomo IV, this would certainly be an excellent opportunity.

You could make it back to the transport, but then proceed to send an encrypted signal back to your camp… Get picked up and flown home with the Empire none the wiser; it would simply look like you had perished alongside your squadmates, body likely disposed of by Karthrexia’s hostile fauna.

You could be out of this damned armor and back with your people before the Imps had any real chance to investigate a possible information leak—

Across from you, the Commander shifts position…

And just where would that leave him?

Could you bring him in as a POW? You know as well as the rest of the death troopers that Rampart has been stingy with offering details to the Commander, so interrogations might prove unfruitful… And with clones being cycled out of use, CT-9904 is unlikely to serve as a very valuable bargaining chip either.

But he’s a person, a small voice in the back of your head chides. He has brothers out there. A family.

You grit your teeth—

So do countless people the Imps have mowed down. And what of them?

With some effort, you force the cold chill of indifference into your thoughts.

I’ll do what I need to do to survive—with or without CT-9904.

“Why did you save me?”

And just like that, the Commander’s sandpaper voice interrupts your self-discipline. You look up at him.

“Excuse me?” Your faux-clueless tone sounds unfamiliar as it leaves your helmet’s modulator. In reality, you know as well as he does that it’s a fair enough question; your chances of escape diminish significantly with an injured companion in tow. He’ll slow you down, at best.

“Don’t play coy, 2653. It doesn’t suit you.” The Commander’s accented drawl sounds bored, almost disinterested, but you know better—your answer here could make or break the next several hours of your shared survival.

The best lies have something of the truth in them, you remind yourself.

“I don’t necessarily share the prejudices of my fallen comrades, Commander,” you begin hesitantly, watching the way his helmet shifts ever-so-slightly at your admission. You continue: “Clone or no, a soldier is a soldier… And I’m not gonna leave a man to die if I can help it.”

It’s not like the other death troopers had made any real effort to disguise their disdain for being given orders by a clone… And though 9904 plays his cards close to his chest, you’re sure his subordinates’ resentment has irked him all the same.

A clone is a sentient being, the same as you. It’s an increasingly unpopular stance to take, even amongst your true allies back on Segomo IV—but if your conscience is what brought you into this fight, it’s your conscience that muddies the waters, as well.

You know yourself, though, and in truth, it’s not just your respect for life that urged you to pull 9904 from the snow—

It’s the knowledge that’s excited you about this entire mission since the beginning. The passing suggestion made by a fellow rebel, one that has been nurtured and blossomed in your thoughts into a greater idea:

With the right, push, CT-9904 could be on your side.

Across from you, the Commander scoffs.

“You should have left me,” he states matter-of-factly; but there’s something else in his tone, something almost like… Disappointment? “Prioritized yourself.”

…And is that not the same vicious thought you had been toying with mere minutes ago? Swallowing thickly, you mumble your response:

“Negative, sir.”

Silence overtakes you both once more as you sit on opposite ends of your meager fire. Brutal winds are howling outside, even bringing the occasional flurry into the dim light of the cave where you’re currently sheltering.

After some indeterminate amount of time, anywhere from several minutes to a couple hours later, you can feel yourself starting to fade.

Turning to your pack pressed against your side for warmth, you pull out a couple ration bars.

“We should eat, keep our energy up,” you explain, voice slightly scratchy from disuse in the cold. Gently, you toss the Commander one of the packages—which he of course catches with eerie precision.

You hesitate only momentarily before removing your helmet, shaking your stiffened hair free from your face in the process. The frigid air nips at your nose and cheeks with a pinprick sting.

The visor of CT-9904’s helmet lifts to meet your gaze.

“...Sir?”

His gloved grip on the ration bar tightens; you can hear it in the crinkling of the wrapper. He’s… Deliberating something, though what, you’re unsure.

At last, with a hissing sigh—he moves to remove his own helmet.

You’ve made a concerted effort throughout this past year to not grow attached to any of your “comrades,” which in the most part has been a breeze thanks to their grating personalities… But perhaps that is why, upon seeing 9904’s face now, you feel like you’re truly looking at him for the very first time.

The regular features of the clones’ faces have been refined, somehow sharpened, on him. The harsh line of his stubbled jaw is limmed in the flickering orange light of the fire, which in turn gives the normally-silver hue of his close-shaven hair a warm glow. A sharp tattoo cuts across his right eye, reminding you in striking clarity of his true name:

Crosshair.

To the Empire, though, he’s just a number—you all are.

But I am not the Empire, you think to yourself. Not really.

At length, he quirks one dark eyebrow—you’ve been staring at each other, you realize. Cheeks flushing a bit more in the chilly air, you look down to your ration and begin unwrapping it. He does the same.

“I think we’ll be able to make it out of this.”

You’re not sure what compels you to say it; perhaps it’s a reassurance as much to yourself as it is to him, you realize bitterly.

You have to make it out of this.

The alternative is, right now, unthinkable.

Crosshair responds with a thoughtful hum, low and tentative like the growl of an animal. Then:

“...You will.”

You.

Not we.

You eye his leg skeptically where the snow is half-melted around his knee.

The two of you eat in silence; the sound of your own chewing barely audible in your ears over the roar of the blizzard raging outside.

The fire is starting to dwindle, and you have nothing to fuel it. You frown.

This is all nothing but a waiting game, now, just as Crosshair had posited earlier—we wait out the storm, he’d said. Regardless of what internal decision you come to, of what you choose to do next, that’s all this is right now: the two of you, alone together, waiting for nature to calm itself beyond the walls of this cave.

As the fire continues to gradually shrink, so too does your only light source in the dark.

“We should sleep,” you mumble, long after you’ve both finished eating in not-altogether-uneasy quiet.

Crosshair’s dark eyes dart upward to meet your own; he nods slightly, before donning the protective warmth of his helmet once more. Reluctantly, you follow suit.

Okay, this… Might be a hard sell.

But you trudge on.

“Commander,” you begin—and you think you notice his posture already stiffening, bracing himself for whatever comes next in your precariously hesitant voice. “The fire is dying. We should, um… Sleep side-by-side, conserve heat. Back-to-back, if you’d like.”

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the man seated across from you to be a statue, the way his visor snaps to pin you with its inscrutable green plane—and stays there.

Shit shit shit, what are you doing? You’re pushing your—

“Alright.”

Beneath your own visor, you blink.

Alright.

“...Okay, then.”

Gingerly, you move forward to his side of the fire.

It’s a painfully awkward thing, making your limbs work the way you need them to—and not just because of the cold air making your joints feel stiff. Not in at least a year have you shared your personal space with somebody so intimately, and you’re suddenly grateful for the discomfort of the helmet if it manages to obscure your blushing wince.

If Crosshair feels the embarrassment of it all, though, he does well to hide it. Brushing the remaining snow away from his bad knee, he lithely curls into himself in one easy movement, laying on the cave floor with his broad back facing you. Through some maneuvering, you manage to accomplish the same—determined to throw shame out the window, you press the length of your spine to his, quietly reveling in the warmth even his armored body provides.

“Do not hesitate to wake me,” Crosshair mumbles through his modulator; and aligned to him as you are, you’re able to feel the shaky exhale that punctuates his words. Try as he might to conceal it, the man is exhausted.

You nod in affirmation.

“Yes, sir.”

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Final Notes: ★ the huddling-for-warmth trope can, and will, always kick my ass. ty for reading ★ I’m currently looking for fic requests, so come say hi! Join the taglist! Tags: @2clones-1kamino @tsedeshgishnii @badbatch-simp24 @lightning-wolffe @ladykatakuri @redheadgirl @heyitsaloy @stardust9905 @arctrooper69 @kaitou2417 @fangirl-goes-nova @ttzamara @taylahk109 @merkitty49

Tumblr finally gives us the option to poll each other and the first immediate thing we did was have a poll that was just racing a snail, a caterpillar, and a worm.

And it was so magnificent that both bug and bug race are trending.

I love you guys. I could kill you for not crowning worm the winner, though.

Of course I do I'm from the Deep South and was (dead seriously) raised on a farm in a small town. where I would ride a house to go get a Dairy Queen ice cream.

Reblog if you say "Y'all"

Y'all this is so true LMFAO

For anyone asking, my requests are not going to be open because I don’t have it in my heart to write anything about what just happened. So please, do not ask.

Me: "I should go to bed I have somewhere to be at 6am"

Also me at 1am: "Just reading a little fanfic won't hurt"

I'm wilding over here they are too cute

TO BE FAIR... Potential romance is making me 👀 as well

It is a legal requirement for people to tag me in icons and gif sets of Crosshair from the new episode sorry I dont make the rules but I sure as fuck enjoy enforcing them

I am dying this episode gave me a little bit of life

*hunter gets called a father*

*all of the domestic family moments*

* “have fun” *

* “brown eyes” *

me:

FUCKING HELLS I LOVE CROSSHAIR SO MUCH

HE IS NOT GOING TO SELL THEM OUT EVEN IF IT KILLS HIM, I CAN’T DEAL WITH THIS I FEEL SO FUCKING SICK

Hey @mrs-grumpysniper did we both just watch the same thing? Are you ok? How are you doing? Me personally, I am sobbing as I type this and hope all this is spelled correctly.