The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

Twin Week Day Six

Author's Note: So... the plot makes no sense. Ik. But the only important background facts that matter are:

1. The clones are werewolves

2. Emerie lived with her brothers for a couple of years on Kamino

3. Hunter fell on Eiradu instead of Tech

Also, this is the most What Is This fanfic I have ever written and I hate it. :)

~ Rivana Rita 

Emerie always remembered her brothers and longed for a way to get them back. She never lost hope, though she didn't quite expect them to show up on Tantiss, to see her twin brother trapped as a wolf.

"They're here," Omega had told her, "Hunter's here. I know he is." She can't shake the sight of her little sister's helpless eyes on her. "Hemlock said he was dead, but he lied."

Emerie never knew Omega, or at least she didn't remember her sister. She thought she was the only girl.

"It's nice, not being alone."

She remembers stealth from the bit of her training on Kamino, before it became too obvious she was incapable of the same level of strength and skill her brothers possessed. She remembers them. She always remembered them.

She remembered Crosshair's scent, the gentle smoky-fog, even years later from the moment she saw him again. She had long since given up hope that she ever would see him again, even if she never stopped dreaming for it, until he'd shown up out of nowhere as a prisoner on Tantiss.

Emerie forces those thoughts away rapidly. She doesn't want to think about Crosshair. Her little brother has changed so much from the chaotic little furball he used to be. He's so empty and broken. So ragefully defiant.

But this is for Omega, for all of her brothers. For her squad.

The squad she never got to be a part of; the pieces of herself that she lost so long ago. The memories of the days she spent with them when she was little are hazed over and distant, something that almost feels imagined, but they're the only siblings she's ever had, and she could never forget them. They're the only anyone she's ever had.

Emerie has never broken Hemlock's rules before, not blatantly. She is a werewolf, and in a sense, his pet, and she is not defiant. She knows better than to object to his orders when she has no chance of victory. Loyalty is... easier. It's the only thing she's ever known. After Nala Se took her from her brothers, she was nothing. She would have been nothing more than her pet experiment, discarded, locked away in a lab to be studied or whatever the Kaminoan would want done with her. Hemlock was the one who saw potential in her. He gave her something more, even if that doesn't mean she's any less his pet. That is simply how it is. It is a fact, and one she may be bitter about, but a fact, nonetheless.

Besides, she never had anywhere to go back to. She never knew how to come back, but her brothers... came to her.

The room is dark. Emerie knows she does not belong in here, and coming here without Hemlock's approval will not bode well for her.

This is where Hemlock spends most of his time. This is his operation, not one Emerie has ever been privy to.

There's a soft, whispering presence in her mind. Familiar.

Quiet scratching and snarling greet her ears. There are cages here. Only a few, but all occupied with the familiar brown-to-black that all her brothers are. Because they're being kept in here in cages like animals. That's – that's what people see them as. She hasn't interacted much with the outside world, but the other scientists here see it that way. She feels the stares, the whispers, the way they look down on her for being lesser. For being part animal.