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The galaxy was asleep, but Hunter was not.
Ever since that fateful encounter with the Bounty Hunter on Bracca, he had been cursed with haunting nightmares, each time jolting him awake, the tears of despair not yet dried on his face.
They had been too late. In his dreams they had always been too late, too late to locate her coordinates, too slow to catch her escape pod in time...
And each time the torch would go out in the darkness and Hunter would shatter under the pain, feeding itself from the never-ending pit of despair in his stomach.
He turned on his side, always careful to put as little pressure as possible on his wound, yet another constant reminder that he had almost failed.
The silence grated in his ears.
It was better not to sleep and leave the wicked dreams bottled up in his subconscious, where they wouldn't harm anyone.
Hunter blinked, his eyes watering from staring too long at the wall across from his bunk, where every shadow had taken on the shape of a creature with a blaster, pointing directly at his heart. Or worse, at a smaller human being.
His heart was fluttering, wingbeat fast, winding up the rest of him.
Too late...
Suddenly, his ears detected a heartbeat that wasn‘t his own.
Even his enhanced senses took a moment to recognise the girl in the darkness, the tugging in his chest at the vulnerable sight unmistakable.
Her eyes rubbed red and she looked a little different, like something beneath her face had broken.
Stabbing fear washed over him like a wave, destroying everything in its path. Too late, too late...
"Can‘t sleep?“ His chest was so tight, he had to force the air through and out of his nose.
The trembling of her upper lip betrayed the tears hidden behind her pupils, her chest rising in stuttering movements as she nodded.
"It‘s all right. You‘re safe“, he said quietly, conceding with a long outward breath.
"I had a bad dream."
The shadows of the night did not discriminate between their victims. In the deepest, most twisted corner of his mind, he wanted to see them all burn for what they had done to her.
In two steps he was with her, kneeling down, his hands resting on her slender shoulders as anchors of reality.
How he wished he could do more than that, that he could do the same as Cut or Wrecker and just wrap her in his arms, but such gestures were unfamiliar to the sergeant in him.
Showing affection was not something that was taught in war.
"You don't have to worry Omega.“ His heart was dragging its way to his throat, the blood in his veins felt unnaturally rapid, the rage in his core threatening to boil over.
"None of the Kaminoans will come anywhere near you." And should they dare, their last seconds in this damned galaxy would be counted, Hunter would see to that.
"It wasn't about the Kaminoans." Her eyes filled.
Oh.
"The Bounty Hunters won't be-"
"It wasn't about the Bounty Hunters either. Not exactly." Hunter tried to hold her eyes, but her gaze kept slipping away.
"I saw you fall, and, and, you didn't get back up again. And I wanted to feel your heartbeat, but it-" and the memory of it contorted her face and pierced his heart. It wasn't just his mind that seemed to refuse to separate lies from truth.
His breath got stuck somewhere between his ribs.
Hunter could feel a part of him awakening, the spark in his chest, things he wanted to say rolling over each other, gathering speed.
"It's okay," he squeezed her shoulders in an attempt to reassure her. Or himself?
"I'm here." They both were, but in some inexplicable way that didn't lessen the pain.
As if that wasn't enough.
Barely noticeable, Omega nodded as unshed tears still gleamed in her eyes.
"Can I-", but she abandoned the sentence and looked straight into his eyes, as if searching for something in them.
And not finding it.
"Never mind.“ And with a skinking feeling in his gut, Hunter thought he heard it in her voice then, the smallest stirrings of hopelessness.
With a smile that failed to reach her eyes, she turned to leave.
His heart reacted and a blaster went off inside his chest.
"Wanna stay here?“
And when he heard her choke over a sob at his question, he was sure of one thing:
He was so tired of pretending.
With one swift movement he pulled her to him, locking his arms around her back. And as she wrapped her trembling arms around his neck, hiding her tear-streaked face against his shoulder, he could feel the galaxy shrinking to just him and the girl he so desperately wanted to protect.
"I-I thought-t I-I l-lost y-you-“ Oh how he knew that feeling.
He pulled her tighter, his hand running soothingly up and down her spine, feeling her racing heart in his chest as she let go of all the pain she had bottled up inside.
"It‘s alright, I‘m here.“ Because what else could he say?
She clung to him and he felt heart-rending sobs escape her, wracking her entire body.
He kept holding her in his arms, kept murmuring reassurances, kept listening to the ache inside him grow ever quieter.
Maybe this was enough?
He felt her try to pull away from him a little, as if she had suddenly remembered something.
"Am I hurting you?“ A hint of self-blame tinted her quiet voice. "Your wound-“
This kid.
He removed a hand from her back and gently stroked her hair in reassurance. "Not at all.“
His shot wound burned like fire. But he would take every pain, no matter how sharp, to give Omega what she seemed to crave most right now: the certainty that he was here, that they were both here, and that their minds were just playing cruel tricks on them.
Hunter felt as though he would slide away into the blackness gathering at the edges of his brain if he ever let go of her. It was no longer just the feeling of responsibility, no longer just the feeling of solidarity because she was like them. In his gut he could feel it tilting, abandoning all these sentiments to reach for other words.
There was something new fueling the flame in his chest, something that was too precious to name. All he knew was that at the thought of how close they had come to losing Omega, his core contracted painfully, and a sense of darkness unlike anything he had ever experienced threatened to consume him.
He couldn‘t imagine a universe with her gone.
And there was nothing he wanted more than to promise that he would always be there for her, but experience had taught him that fate did not care about such promises.
So he held her tightly against him, a living barrier between her and the nightmares she didn't deserve.
And the tears that crept from his eyes and got caught in her blonde curls were the words his heart could not say.
But hidden beneath all the chaos and turmoil they were made of was a strange sense of calm that spread with every steady heartbeat they shared.
Maybe, he thought as he carefully lifted the girl up to put her in his bunk, that would one day be enough to heal the brokenness within.