The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

Author's Note: This is for Day 3 of Haunted Clone Week. 

Hunter's abilities let him see and feel things his brother can't. He didn't know that meant he could see ghosts until Omega's captured, and he and Wrecker are left alone.

Hunter can't say when it first happened. He just knows that, one day, when he wakes, he feels something.... Nearby. Someone else is here, watching him. He feels the way their energy field flows around them in the same way Tech's did, but it feels too... cold.

"Tech?" he whispers, anyway, before remembering the shot and fall and screaming. Wrecker and Omega screaming on top of each other. Until he remembers how he, Wrecker, and Echo set up the stand for Tech's goggles because that was the most of a memorial his little brother is ever going to get.

There's no answer, but something moves.

He's losing his mind. Tech is gone.

When the datapad he's on starts staticking and flickering, when the lights flicker and the room grows cold, he ignores it.

All he does is cry himself to sleep again.

***

"I keep hearing things," Wrecker whines, "I don't know. Somethin's off."

"Something how?" Hunter asks, looking up. His eyes hurt from staring at his datapad for so long, but they don't have time to stop. If Wrecker needs a minute though, Hunter will give him one.

"I dunno. The Marauder's always so cold." Wrecker shives, staring blankly at the broken piece of the brother between them. "I just keep thinking I hear shuffling, and it's nothin'."

"Maybe you need to sleep more," Hunter tells him off-handedly. "We've both been tense."

The lights flicker. He feels something – something. Maybe he needs to sleep more. He's hallucinating now.

***

Hunter could almost swear he feels someone right next to him. He shifts his hand over, eyes closed, trying to touch them. Tries to take Tech's hand or ask – no.

No.

His hand feels tingly. Wrong. Like his energy is trying to merge itself into that of another.

Hunter pries his eyes open, instantly on edge and on full alert.

He could swear he sees something. No, someone – flickering like a hologram. He sees a face, light and translucent against the dark, solid ceiling. A face in his dreams, nothing but a memory.

He jolts upright, gasping. He must've made some sort of panicked sound, at least, because Wrecker yells his name and skids into the back, blaster out and all.

He looks back at where he could swear Tech was, and there's nothing.

His brother's face is gone, and he was just there. Hunter saw him. Felt him. His brother was here, and now he's gone again, and he can still see the face in his mind. He can still see his brother, sitting there watching him with the same quiet worry he knows he would be if he were still here.

"Hunter, you okay?" Wrecker asks panicked. "I heard something – is someone –"

He tries to talk. Can't say anything, and tears spill unbidden down his cheeks.

That was Tech.

It was a dream, but it was so, so real.

Hunter can still see his face in his head.