Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, you’ll tell me when I get there?”

Obi-Wan sipped his tea and hummed in thought, completely engrossed in his favorite hobby of eavesdropping as Cody growled into his comm. After the infernal buzzing had interrupted his recommendations on troop placement for the third time, the commander had stepped to the other side of his office to take the call, but the Jedi’s hearing was keen and he could still pick up a few words here and there. He was fairly certain the caller was Rex, and he thought he heard him say something about 79’s, but he would have to pry the rest of the details out of Cody once he clicked off.

Based on the deepening, shortening quality of the commander’s words, it wouldn't be a long wait.

The Jedi had hardly let the thought pass before Cody sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, the long scar that carved around his temple crinkling as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Fine. I’m coming. But I swear, if it’s something serious, you are never going to watch him again.”

He snapped off the connection without waiting for a reply, then turned to Obi-Wan, dark brown eyes glaring with tired annoyance as he reached for his helmet. “I have to go,” he ground out. 

“Can I come?” Obi-Wan was already setting down his teacup, knowing Cody wouldn’t tell him no. He caught the commander’s sharpened stare just in time, and swerved the warm cup away from the datapad he had very nearly used as a coaster. 

Cody’s relief over the avoided catastrophe hardly softened his chiseled features at all. “You don’t like 79’s,” he reminded him. 

“Is that where we’re going?” The Jedi slipped one arm into his robe, then wrestled with the other. “And I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I said the volume was a bit extreme for the place to be billed as relaxing.” He retrieved his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. Not that there would be a need for it at a clone bar, but Coruscant was still a dangerous place, and “than sorry, better safe is,” as his great-grandmaster liked to say.

He made sure the weapon was secure before glancing back at Cody, blinking twice as he tried to pinpoint Cody’s eyes through the darkened HUD of the soldier’s now-donned helmet. “But after six hours of reports, volume is something I believe I would very much appreciate.”   

Cody huffed in what could have been construed as agreement, but was probably lingering pique with whatever errand they were about to undertake. “Come on, then.”

With that, he turned out of the door and into the hall, leaving Obi-Wan to follow and wonder which of the unsuspecting clones enjoying leave was about to be the target of his commander’s smoldering ire.

He didn’t have to wait very long to find out, because as soon as he and Cody stepped into 79’s, the commander turned abruptly to the left and made a brisk beeline for a booth near the very back of the place. Given the booth’s more secluded position, Obi-Wan assumed they were heading toward some kind of lover’s tiff or maybe a situation regarding a vod who had had a bit too much to drink and was sleeping it off.

He was wrong on both counts, though Rex and Jesse certainly looked like they expected Cody to cause a tiff and the long-haired, younger clone with them definitely appeared to be sleepy. 

“Hello, Rex. Jesse.” Obi-Wan had felt their presences from across the room, and as he stepped up to the table he recognized the sleepy one as well, the skull tattoo that covered half of his face bringing up several recent missions that were unforgettable, even if his own part in them had been minor. “Hello, Hunter.”

Hunter’s amber gaze flicked up from beneath wayward dark brown curls. His crimson bandana was the same as Obi-Wan remembered, but it was doing an abysmal job at keeping his fluffy hair back from his face. 

“Hi,” he said meekly. 

The Jedi frowned slightly, a shallow dent appearing between his red-blonde eyebrows. That wasn’t how the gruff, knife-wielding sergeant of Clone Force 99 usually sounded at all.

He didn’t get the chance to comment because Hunter’s eyes had already shifted to Cody, his face lighting up when he saw his ori’vod. “Hi, Cody,” he chirped.

“Hello, Hunter.” Cody wasn’t looking at the sergeant, though - he was glaring a hole through Rex’s cringing soul. “I left him with you for one kriffing hour–” he began sharply.

“It was actually eight,” Rex interrupted quickly. “And you didn’t warn me!”

Jesse was hiding behind the blonde clone, watching the 212th commander warily. Obi-Wan wondered if the captain was actually in any danger due to whatever had occurred, and if he should hold Cody back if he was. “About what?” 

“This.” Cody looked irked now, not enraged, as he swept his arm in a gesture toward Hunter. “His enhancements screw with alcohol intake.”

“He only had one!” Jesse protested. 

“Which is plenty to make him loopy as heck.”

The lieutenant chuckled. “He is that. Well…” He pondered the term for a moment. “It’s more like he’s sleepy, I guess.”

“I didn’t know he did that!” Rex glanced from Cody to Obi-Wan, his eyes shining shades of brown that were confused and weary. “He’s enough of a handful when he’s not like this. I wouldn’t make him worse on purpose!”

Hunter turned his big mastiff-puppy eyes on the captain, hurt bleeding from his soul. “Rude.” If he had articulating ears, they would have been swiveled back. “Now Cody is my favorite.”

Rex’s stung look of shock would have been comical had it not been so genuine. Cody ignored his blonde vod’ika and turned a questioning eye to the long-haired one. 

“I’m always your favorite,” he prompted warningly. “Right?”

“Nope.” Hunter shook his head. Obi-Wan noticed that there was no glass within his reach, but a third one had been pushed to Jesse’s side of the table, as if the sergeant had shoved it away when he had begun to feel the effects of its contents. “Earlier, it was Rex. But he said that, so now it’s you.”

Rex’s expression melted into despondency. “Now, that’s not fair.”

“Why can’t I be the favorite for once?” Jesse asked aloud.

Hunter pointed in the general direction of the 501st trooper’s face. “Because your tattoo is crooked.”

Jesse’s jaw dropped the same instant that Obi-Wan’s clenched as he tried to keep from laughing. He rather liked this version of Hunter with its unrestrained snark – it was like Crosshair’s attitude had merged with the tracker’s more mellow nature.

“Where are his squadmates?” the Jedi asked, hoping to deflect from the favoritism disagreements.

“With Echo and Fives, goofing off.” Cody looked exasperated now. “I left Hunter with Rex so he could have ‘big brother time’ before all three of us were supposed to meet here. Hunter’s never come here before.” The commander’s tired gaze returned to the sergeant. “You were supposed to get a soda.”

Hunter had almost dozed off, but jerked back to attention when he realized he was still part of the conversation. He looked so out of sorts that Obi-Wan was fighting the urge to just drape his robe over the young clone for a blanket and let him sleep. “Rex didn’t get a soda,” he said flatly, as if that explained everything.

It did not, and Cody’s squint told him so. “Why does that matter?”

“Shinies get soda.” Hunter gave Cody the kind of embarrassed, annoyed frown that had graced the face of many a crecheling when Obi-Wan was on babysitting duty. “Didn’t want Rex to think I was a shiny.”

“You are basically a shiny,” the commander countered.

“No m’not.”

Jesse snickered and held up his comm to snap a photo. “Wait til the not-a-shiny’s batchers get a look at him being ridiculous in front of a Jedi.”

Rex groaned and covered his face with his hands.

“That’s right, Cody got a Jedi.” Hunter blinked sluggishly and raised his hand in a languid wave. “May the Force be with you, or whatever.”

Cody sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose again. 

“Oh, dear.” Obi-Wan put quite a lot of effort into trying not to smile at the sergeant’s predicament, but it wasn’t quite enough. His lips quirked up at the corners and set his blue eyes dancing. “Poor thing.”

Hunter undoubtedly heard the sentiment, though from his relaxed reaction, he likely didn’t realize it was referring to him. 

“We don’t have a Jedi.” The tracker huffed and shook his hair out, prompting Jesse to snort when a few longer curls flopped over his eyes. “Wrecker asked for one, one time - little green one at the Temple. But Wolffe said no.”

Cody’s eyebrows rose a few centimeters. “Yoda?” he blurted incredulously.

Yoda, with the Bad Batch? Obi-Wan almost choked at the thought of the chaos that would have ensued.

“No.” Hunter wrinkled his nose at the commander as if he were offended by the suggestion. “That one’s crazy. This one’s a baby.”

Grogu, then, Obi-Wan surmised. Still equally capable of mayhem in the correct circumstances.

And why did he get the feeling that being raised by the Bad Batch would have qualified?

“Okay, enough about Jedi and the unfairness of life.” Cody suddenly reached behind Hunter’s head and grabbed a handful of his blacks, fingers curling into the collar that stuck out beneath his armor but somehow avoiding the tangled tendrils of hair. He hefted the smaller clone out of the booth with one hand and a grunt, then made a face. “Why are you in armor, anyway?”

Hunter made a face right back, with considerably more emotion etched into the effort. “You’re in armor,” he retorted, once again reminding the Jedi of a crecheling spouting off to an older Initiate. 

“I was working.” Cody rolled his eyes and set his vod’ika on his feet. “Do you even have dress grays?”

Hunter shrugged. “I dunno. Ask Tech - he’ll check his spreadsheet.”

“Tech’s not here,” Rex reminded him. “He’s with Echo and Fives.”

The sergeant looked mildly alarmed. “Then who’s keepin’ an eye on Cross and Wrecker?”

Cody sighed. “They are, Hunter.” He guided his enhanced, extremely drowsy little brother toward the exit with one arm, motioning for Obi-Wan to follow. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The commander marched out of the bar with Hunter half-leaning against him, half-walking on his own, and Rex and Jesse following behind and looking somewhat sheepish. Obi-Wan chuckled as he brought up the rear, smiling to himself as the cool nighttime air washed over his face.

There was never a dull moment when the Bad Batch were involved, not even on a flimsiwork day – and not even when there was only one of them around.

Chapter Text

Cody swerved to the left as Hunter stumbled, trying to help his little brother back up before he took a real fall. “Oh, no, you don’t, vod’ika. Stay with me.”

Hunter huffed in annoyance as he tried to pull away again. Luckily, that one glass of alcohol still had him reeling, and at the moment he could put up as much fight against Cody as a wet tooka kitten. A true enemy would have been a different story – Cody didn’t even want to know what a less-restrained, usually feral Hunter would do in that situation – but for now, the sergeant was being fairly docile.

“I just want to go home,” he said flatly.

The commander shook his head and smiled fondly at his just-over-tipsy little brother. He was glad he had sent Obi-Wan, Rex, and Jesse away just after leaving 79’s – when he regained his control, the sergeant would probably appreciate having been spared an audience to his overly mellow behavior.

“That’s where we’re going,” he told the tracker for the fourth time in two minutes. “I’m taking you to the Marauder, remember? That’s where Crosshair and Tech and Wrecker are.”

Or at least, that’s where they had been when Tech had finally answered his call. It would seem that the engineer had heard the control panel’s comm buzzing with each of the three attempts Cody had made, but had been so invested in the sabacc game between himself and the Domino twins that he hadn’t thought it was worth stopping for until he had realized that Cody might be calling about Hunter.

While the commander wasn’t entirely thrilled to know how low he ranked on Tech’s list of important things, he was ecstatic that he wouldn’t have to put up with Hunter all by himself for the rest of the night. He still had reports to complete, thanks to the interruption that had been Rex’s call, and cuddling a clingy vod’ika all night wouldn’t help with checking those off his eternal to-do list.

“And Echo and Fives,” Hunter chirped back automatically. “They’re with us now.”

Cody’s grin flashed in the dim lights that shone down from overhead. With Hunter’s enhanced senses already scrambled, he had turned down the darker side streets on their way back to the Marauder’s landing pad, hoping that the fewer lights wouldn’t irritate the tracker as much as the wider, more crowded sidewalks. Despite Coruscant’s seedy nightlife, he was confident in his ability to keep them both safe until they reached the Omicron – and in the thought that after Fox’s Corries had recently swept this sector, any violent offenders would be less than inclined to try their tricks on a clone trooper.

“Yeah, I know.” He chuckled as he steered Hunter around an overflowing trash bin and watched the sergeant’s nose wrinkle in protest at smells Cody’s own sniffer didn’t even detect. “You guys sure adopted them quickly, didn’t you?”

“Yep.” Hunter was quiet for a few seconds longer than he had been for the rest of the walk, and Cody briefly wondered if the back alley scents were about to cause him to lose whatever he had eaten for dinner.

When he finally spoke up again, his smoky words were more subdued, almost sad. “Do you ever miss it?”

The question threw Cody for so much of a loop that he almost stopped to stare at his younger sibling. “Do I miss what?” He adroitly sidestepped the shards of a broken bottle that had spiderwebbed across the pavement, being careful to tug the younger officer along after him.

Hunter dutifully followed his lead, but didn’t forget the topic. “Being with your batchers,” he went on bluntly, tripping a tad over the b’s. “All th’ time. Like on Kamino.”

After the stumbly explanation, Cody fell silent for a full minute, his mind spinning uncomfortably as he guided their path toward the place Tech had stowed the Batch’s ship. He was a marshal commander; he had been trained since decanting to be a calculating, killing machine, and an expensive, efficient one at that. He wasn’t supposed to have attachments. He wasn’t meant to miss his batchmates.

And yet, he did.

Cody didn’t believe the propaganda about himself and his siblings, that they were simply created units, far removed from the higher levels of humanity. How could he, when he knew his brothers, knew their laughter, their sorrow, their souls?

How could he, when he knew himself?

But now was not the time to be pulled into those thoughts.  He needed to drop off Hunter, then get back to his office. War waited for no one.

Still hanging onto Cody’s shoulder for support, Hunter suddenly huffed in irritation. “Fine,” he sulked. “Don’t answer me. I’m jus’ your brother.”

In spite of his sobered thoughts, Cody smirked. “You’re a brat,” he corrected good-naturedly. “But, yeah. I miss them.” He could admit that, at least, without hashing out the convoluted nature and ethics of their creation and occupations. He even dared to crack a real grin. “Even Wolffe, sometimes.”

Hunter nodded as if he understood, though to be honest, Cody didn’t see how he could. The Batchers had always been together – they couldn’t be separated on Kamino, and only partially due to their combined tendency to go feral if such a thing was attempted. As an experimental batch, they had been kept a secret for over half of their short lives, and stigmatized for the rest. Only recently had they made any reg friends, and that was only once they broke past their own distrust that had been caused by other shinies on their home world and dared to give the older veterans a chance. Luckily, blooded troopers didn’t have quite the same naïve prejudices against the experimentals as the green ones did; as long as they could fight and help keep their squads alive, they were willing to take them in with few further questions.

Even so, Clone Force 99 remained an enigma to most of the GAR, an elite group who stayed firmly put in their own little pocket of operations where they could keep each other safe. They had never split up, not like Cody and his batch had been required to. Now he only heard from Wolffe when they both weren’t dodging death. Communication with Fox was even more unstable, depending on how close he was to Coruscant or if another Commander had been in touch with their batch baby recently and could relay the news between the rest. He saw Rex more often, but in his military capacity – it was rare that he could hook an arm around his vod’ika’s neck and ruffle his blonde hair like he used to almost every day. He missed those moments. He missed them all.

He didn’t know how Hunter could know that sense of loss, since he was never very far from Crosshair, Tech, or Wrecker, and never had been. Unless the sergeant wasn’t referring to them at all, and was talking about –

“I miss Ninety-Nine.” The young tracker’s eyes looked a bit glassier than they had upon leaving 79’s, and not because of the dim light or the minute amount of alcohol that was still in his system.

Unwelcome, painful memories snapped to the forefront of Cody’s mind and he winced. That was a different kind of pain entirely, than the one he had been thinking of – a different kind of missing. Missing Rex, knowing he was on the other side of the galaxy, was the kind of loss that throbbed behind his sternum and ached when he saw a blonde trooper scampering through the Negotiator. Missing Ponds was a void, one that burned and bled, because he knew he could never get him back.

Hunter sniffled, and the commander sent up a sudden, desperate prayer that he wasn’t about to see his little brother cry. He had only seen Hunter cry twice – once as a cadet on Kamino, the only time Cody had ever been there right after one of the 99’s curated “tests,” and then again as a slightly-older cadet, a blue shadow in a hologram when Cody had been forced to tell him that Ninety-Nine was gone. Both had been moments the commander would rather shoot himself in the foot than relive.

“Thought we’d never get another brother,” the tracker went on, keeping anything beyond the sniff at bay for the time being. “Ninety-Nine is gone, you were gone, and the regs didn’t like us.” Hunter raised his free hand and swiped it rapidly across his eyes. “Then we got your distress signal over Lola Sayu, and met Fives’n’Echo, and now we’ve got two.”

Cody’s soul glowed at the warmth he heard in Hunter’s tone, and his heart clenched in his chest.

Ninety-Nine’s death was still a tender and open scar for the young sergeant and his squad mates, one that broke back open easily, that would take years to stitch together more stably in the young clones’ hearts. But the wound was beginning to heal – slowly, as most losses did, but healing nonetheless. And now he knew it was due, at least in part, simply to the presence of the two crazy ARCs Rex had snatched up off Rishi.

“I don’t know why they like us, honestly.” Hunter was regaining a little of his balance, but his senses seemed to still be throwing him off because he cringed under every sizzling street light. “But I hope they stay. I don’t want them to leave.”

Well, that was something Cody could help with, at least.

“Leave?” he repeated, dialing up the disbelief for his drowsy little brother’s sake. “Hunter, they won’t leave. Rex says they’re clingy as heck – you’ll be lucky to get five minutes without them.

Hunter shrugged, but Cody saw the smile that wrinkled his skull tattoo. “Cross’s like that too. I can handle it.”

“I’m sure you can.” His ori’vod returned the smile, then slowed his pace so Hunter wouldn’t pitch forward when they turned the next corner. “Now, let’s get you back to ‘em, okay? I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you.

Happy was an underestimation in the extreme.

The moment Cody dragged Hunter up the ramp and into the cabin, Fives’s cheerful shout almost drowned out even Wrecker’s rumbling, welcoming bellow.

“Hey!” The ARC’s head snapped up from the sabacc game, his enthusiasm causing him to scatter his own cards over Echo and Tech’s laps. “There he is!”

Cody rolled his eyes at the overexuberant trooper, and wondered how Rex – and now Hunter – dealt with him and his twin on a daily basis. “Here we are,” he confirmed dryly. “The knuckleheads are reunited.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Echo retorted, just as flatly. “Or, Commander, rather.”

Cody scoffed but had to smile – then he had to grab a fistful of Hunter’s blacks again, right at the nape of his neck, as the sergeant tried to slink off toward Wrecker and Crosshair and the conspicuously unsecured armory. “Nuh-uh-uh, you belong here.” He took a few steps toward the Dominoes and Tech, pulling Hunter along with him, then shrugged the tracker unceremoniously off of his shoulder and directly into the card game. “Here. He’s yours again.”

Echo raised a cry of indignation, but Tech simply beamed.

“Thank you,” he said brightly, brown eyes glinting mischievously behind his goggles. “Echo was winning.”

“Yeah, now Tech can go back to beating us all,” Fives agreed. He scooted closer to the engineer so Hunter could have a place to sit, though the sergeant actually ended up leaning on the ARC more than sitting up on his own.

One of Cody’s eyebrows quirked up in curiosity. “Since when does Tech play sabacc?”

Crosshair snorted and smirked at the genius batcher, his keen eyes gleaming knowingly as he polished his FirePuncher to a lethal shine. “Since he needs credits to impress his lady pirate, so she doesn’t dump him.”

Cody’s jaw dropped. “The woman General Kenobi hired to investigate the Sith temple? Phee Genoa?” His eyes snapped back to Tech, who he noticed was now hiding behind his cards and blushing hard. “Tech, you’re dating a pirate?”

“She is not a pirate.” The engineer’s calm tone was a false one, given the fact that his ears were already turning crimson at the tops. “She is a liberator of ancient wonders. And very good at it, I might add.”

Crosshair gagged. “Look, he’s infatuated.”

“Come now, Cody.” Fives grinned as he put on a posh, exaggerated accent and elbowed the engineer in the side. “Don’t you know Tech is simply fascinated with Pabu culture?”

“He’s enamored with it,” Echo added, beaming at his twin. “Absolutely fixated. I think he might marry it, actually, given the chance.”

Tech’s ears were almost purple, but his voice was butter-smooth when he spoke. “Wrecker?” he asked sweetly.

“Yeah?” Wrecker choked, trying not to laugh at his brother’s predicament.

“Would you be willing to help me bury two ARCs on our next assignment?”

Fives gasped, clasping one hand over his heart in mock horror. “But then you’ll be down two groomsmen at your wedding!”

“Hey.” Hunter looked only seconds away from dozing off again, but somehow he found the energy to reach up and shove Fives in the shoulder, just hard enough to make the other clone laugh. “Tech can have a girlfriend if he wants.”

“Fine.” Fives’s arm suddenly wrapped around Hunter’s shoulders like a gray-and-crimson python and crushed him into his side. “But the rest of you can't!”

Hunter squirmed in the ARC’s death grip, snarling in a way Cody wished he could say was harmless but wouldn’t dare to, not when he knew how hard a certain little tracker cadet had once bitten him. “Lemme go,” the sergeant ordered.

“Nope.” Fives hugged him closer and set his head on top of Hunter’s, grinning evilly. “I’ve got my feral little brother, and then the scary skinny one and the big one—” He nodded at Crosshair and Wrecker, respectively. “—and Echo, so the only way Phee can have the smart one is if I keep the rest of you!”

To Cody’s shock, the only protest he received was from Echo.

“Everyone else has a descriptor but me?” the other Domino frowned. “Aren’t you forgetting your twin brother?”

“You said earlier that Tech was your favorite,” Fives drawled back, quick as a whip. “You’re my ex-twin now.”

Echo’s eyes darkened to a stormy black, and Wrecker scooched his way out of what would be his new brother’s trajectory, if he did, in fact, decided to murder his batchmate. Cody doubted this little spiff would go that far – still, he decided to take his leave before he witnessed anything that would require more flimsiwork. He wasn’t stupid, after all.

But as he made his way back to the 212th’s barracks and the cramped little office that had been added to the back, he grinned like he was. Because no matter how skilled or experienced his brothers were, he truly did worry about all of them, even the Bad Batch, and especially Hunter. That’s why he had growled at Rex, why he had insisted on being the one to get the tracker back to his squad. Having Fives and Echo with the younger clones all the time as two more protective ori’vode for the remaining experimentals wouldn’t stop him from worrying, but it would help.

Cody was passing 79’s again before he realized he was humming, and smiled.

Maybe, it already had.