Cross and Crow
Part One
The Mount Tantiss cell where they kept Crosshair had a window, fortified with durasteel bars and a view that showed an indifferent blue sky with thin, half-hearted clouds.
The bastard scientists said the window was a show of kindness.
Crosshair found it cruel.
The view told him very little of his surroundings. He was facing North, two levels above ground. There was a docking bay to the East. No air traffic besides the occasional Imperial freighter carrying supplies.
His eyes would snap to any movement outside, his heart betraying him with painful lurches, hoping that one of those damn supply ships would be the Marauder. His brothers swooping in to his rescue, forgetting every cruel thing he had said and done to them. End his nightmare. Take him back.
After two weeks of false hopes and bitter heartache, he sacrificed his thin blanket to cover the window.
Fuck them, he decided. They abandoned me first, anyway.
On that first blanketless night, his sleep was broken. He shivered through fractured dreams of a remote outpost, Mayday in his arms, staggering towards the warm light in the distance that seemed to drift farther away the longer he walked.
“Almost there…” He lied to his brother. “Hang on…Just a little farther.”
The next day, sunlight burst into the cell with laser precision, blinding him with thoughtless cheer. Crosshair snarled awake, squinting at the window.
There were holes in the blanket. It looked like the cheese he’d pull off his sandwiches and toss to Wrecker, only to have Tech point out the importance of calcium in Crosshair's diet.
He pulled back the blanket and peered out the window. The sky was empty. Even the clouds had abandoned him.
Still…something made these holes.
Breakfast came soon after. They fed him generously. Wanted him healthy for the experiments that came at him every three days.
He collected a piece of bread, a few bits of whatever the Empire considered "sausage", and a clump of egg whites. He placed the offerings on the sill.
At worst, ants would come.
The crow swooped in immediately, soundlessly landing, but cawing bombastically in Crosshair’s face. He nearly fell backwards into his cell.
He growled back at the corvid.
The crow ignored him and pecked at the food experimentally before accepting the eggs, knocking the bread and sausage back into the cell.
On training missions off-world, Crosshair would birdwatch through his rifle's scope. First out of boredom, then out of fascination. Birds didn’t thrive on Kamino so any chance he could, his scope would search for these creatures that took for granted the stormless skies.
More often than not, Hunter would toss something at him, pulling his brother’s focus back to their training. Once Crosshair deflected the pebble Hunter threw at him and it pinged Wrecker in the head. Wrecker turned and slapped the datapad out of Tech's hands. Tech, fuming at being wrongfully accused, tackled Wrecker and Hunter dove in to break them up. Crosshair sat in his perch, pleased with himself at the chaos below while above him two territorial hummingbirds fought over a tree too big for either of them.
The squad got black marks on their record that day. It was worth it.
After eating the eggs, the crow tilted its head left, then right, thoroughly examining Crosshair in every direction it could turn its large, midnight head. After its studies were complete, it flapped noisily away, leaving two black feathers behind.
Crosshair kept the feathers hidden under his pillow.
The crow didn’t return for the rest of the day.
But Crosshair started looking out the window again.
A full day of experiments. Poking. Prodding. Gassing. Drugging. Restraining. Isolating. Breaking. Rebuilding.
By nightfall he was dragged back to his cell without being told why they did any of it. They owed him no explanation.
And if I knew, would it be better? Worse?
They gave him stew. He could barely stomach smelling it.
Fighting the tremors in his hands, he plucked a piece of potato, shredded meat, and a few beans from the bowl and climbed onto his bed to the window. He placed the offering, then passed out onto his mattress, dead to the world.
The next day he awoke to a shrill caw.
His heart leapt in a dangerous way. He didn’t want to feel this. He didn’t want to experience a reprieve from this nightmare, a joy that could be ripped away at any moment. The crow was just a scavenger, a hungry opportunist. Eventually, it would move on and Crosshair would be alone again.
The crow looked at him and he scowled back.
It rolled the potato back into the room and onto Crosshair’s bed, which-
Crosshair blinked. It wasn’t a potato the crow had give him.
It was a pinecone. Young. Unfurled. A little green.
When he looked up again, the crow was gone.
He hid the pinecone under his pillow, next to the two feathers.
Dreams were more dangerous than hope. On nights after an experiment, he was usually too exhausted to dream. But this night he had pulled the pinecone from beneath his pillow. He clutched it as he slept.
And he dreamt of an ocean.
Loud waves crashing against the sturdy pillars of Kamino’s science facility. Crosshair and his brothers, too young to be soldiers and old enough to know better, sat preciously on a ledge overlooking the endless sea. They snacked from a tin of biscuits Tech and Hunter had stolen as a “stealth exercise”.
Crosshair balanced the tin lid on his finger and spun it for Wrecker, who giggled and clapped, getting biscuit crumbs everywhere.
Hunter said something to Crosshair, but the words were lost under the roar of relentless waves. Crosshair tried to shout back, but his words turned into a shrill-
Crosshair snapped awake, his cheeks cold and wet.
He hissed and wiped the tears away, squinting up at the crow who was waiting for breakfast, beak pressed through the bars impatiently.
Breakfast came in the form of pastry discs, eggs, strips of meat that weren’t bacon.
The crow seemed to like the eggs best. Crosshair added more to the sill.
And the crow rolled another trinket onto Crosshair’s bed.
A piece of white plastoid.
It joined the pair of feathers beneath Crosshair’s pillow.
The pinecone stayed with Crosshair as he slept at night. It helped him sleep. It kept nightmares away.
More experiments. Suffocating. Burning. Freezing. Breaking. Rebuilding.
When he was dragged back to his cell, he saw food was waiting for him. Some sort of egg hash, leftovers from the morning.
He left his offering on the sill for Egg, then he and the pinecone slept.
Too exhausted to dream, Crosshair woke to the sound of two loud caws. Always two.
Crosshair added more eggs to the sill and a piece of the terrible bacon.
Egg pecked at the bacon suspiciously, letting out a little disgruntled cluck that made Crosshair’s lips to twitch unexpectedly.
He didn’t smile. But he wasn’t scowling.
The tense knot of hopelessness was loosening in Crosshair’s chest as if Egg had been pecking at it each morning, fraying his sanity, giving him false peace.
Throw the tray at the window, he begged himself. Bang the cup on the bars. Shoo Egg - shoo the crow - away before reality kicks in. You’re in here. Egg’s out there. One day, he won’t come back.
Crosshair stared at his tray. It shook in his hands.
But then something clattered on the tray.
Crosshair stared at the object.
Too late. Sanity gone. This isn’t real. It can’t be. I want this too much.
A piece of crudely crafted wood, a message carved in.
Crosshair stared at the words, struggling to keep his hope smothered.
He knew that handwriting. Meticulous. Precise. By a hand that taught Crosshair how to write, that comforted him when the thunder was too loud and the lightning too bright, that would ball into a fist when regs teased him about his hair, his lankiness, his uniqueness.
Crosshair climbed onto his bed.
Both he and Egg looked down together.
Crosshair hadn’t spoken in months, but there was no one else in the galaxy he wanted to speak to more than his brother at this moment.
With a raspy hiss he asked: “Where the hell are your goggles?”
