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limey-self-inserts · 2 years

Text

Point Omega

Word Count: 4k+ Warnings: Altering canon events, violence, threat of kidnap (per canon), manipulation, scene of F/O vs. S/I Summary: This is the moment where Ajax turns off the route of bounty hunting with Cad Bane. It is not kind or gentle. It is full of anger, revelations, and lightning.

Author’s Note: I haven’t seen any self-ship/self-insert fics which involves a fight/’break-up’ of a person’s F/O and their S/I, for understandable reasons. I understand that such a thing considered can cause a great deal of distress. Everyone writes their own canon though - everyone’s universe is unique. Your F/O loves you and cares for you. In this universe, with this F/O, it is not permanent. It is a point on my self-insert’s timeline. There will always be the times before this where they and this F/O worked together and were allies and friends. Read with a grain of salt and a mug of tea if so needed.

[Features a comic break with image description.]

art tag: @call--me--home

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Omega had to get away. That was all that powered her thoughts, her movements, her breath that cracked the frigid cold air wherever they were now. Somewhere high up in the sky, full of invasive clouds that seeped in through windows and air vents. The buildings reminded her of the Kaminoa facilities, but it was too bright and too dark at the same time - frozen white surfaces reflected the harsh sunlight, but the cloud cover devoured most of the light and left deep patches of shadow that Omega ran through.

Run. Keep running. She didn’t know how long it would take for Cad Bane, his robot, and his apprentice to find out that she’d fled the ship. Not long at all, she feared. But then it was a matter of how long until he managed to track her down. He’d already found her within a galaxy, how hard would one building be. These fears chewed at her heels, making her run even faster until her lungs were so full of cold she feared they’d be too frozen to keep going.

Again, again, again. She whispered into her comm device, praying for a response. And she got it. Crackling, desperate, but there. It was just a matter of finding a source of power to amplify her comm and push the signal into the clouds. But when the shadow loomed through the fog of the building, Omega’s heart leapt up into her throat.

“Hey,” the voice crackled over the apprentice’s mask vocaliser. The icy sunlight on their goggles gleamed Omega’s own reflection back at her, wrinkled with panic and exhaustion.

“You won’t take me back!” Omega snapped. “You can’t! My friends are on their way!”

“...Do they have your location?” Their head tilted to the side. Why hadn’t they moved? They were just lingering in the corridor, standing there with hands at their sides. Omega’s fear began to rise ever higher as she started to move towards the door.

“Why do you care?!”

“Because I want to get you out of here.”

What? No, this had to be a trick. Omega froze in place, and immediately Ajax moved. Leaning down, they swiped the comm device from her hand.

“Do you have Omega’s location?” they asked Hunter directly. “Yes or no.”

“...Not yet,” came Tech’s voice crackling back. “We’re still focusing in on the signal origin.”

“Focus on the comm network passage route. It’ll be faster.” And Ajax passed it back to Omega. She held onto the comm band tightly, giving Ajax a strong confused look.

“...Why are you helping me?” she asked.

“That’d be an excellent question.”

For a few seconds, Omega had allowed her fear to abate. But it soared again as the roughened drawl of Cad Bane’s voice echoed down the corridor. Ajax turned, started to nudge Omega to the gap in the frozen open doors, but a sharp blast echoed like a plasma blade down the corridor. The bolt severed the comm band connection and jumped the door into action, sealing itself and leaving Omega trapped.

But Ajax was in the way too. Shoulders braced, they looked down at Cad, slowly pulling back their goggles so the cold blue could meet cold red directly.

“I’m real disappointed, Ajax,” Cad said, and there was true disappointment in his voice. The life of a bounty hunter was a harsh one of stabbed backs, if one didn’t keep their wits about them or kept a high enough standing that no-one would dare be foolish in such ways. Allowing someone in close was a risk, and Cad had taken it. For a long time, it’d paid off in more ways than one. And let himself be damned, Cad liked Ajax. And now he was hurting for it.

“This isn’t right,” Ajax snapped. “She is a child.”

“She’s a clone. An asset,” Cad replied, his stance firm. “And we’re being paid to return her.”

“We kidnapped her!”

“And? We take in bounties all the time. We even kill people, Ajax. What’s got you in a fuss now? Just because this one’s a kid?” Admittedly, Cad knew that Ajax didn’t particularly enjoy the killing part of bounty hunting. They did show preferences to avoid the tasks, but if he worded it well and kept them away from the messy part, they did well. So maybe it was because he was hurting that Cad pushed that subject towards Ajax, and he felt both pain and pride to see them flinch.

“Maybe so,” Ajax retorted. “Maybe this is the breaking point, after everything else. I’m sorry, Cad. I need you to trust me. We can’t let them take her back.” Their voice cracked and crumbled, even past the distortion of their mask. Bright eyes, wondrous eyes, stared Cad down with a plea. He glanced down and away, to the blaster in his hand, then back to them. “Look, those clones that were taking care of her should be on their way now. We can just leave her. They’ll pick her up, it’ll all be fine.”

“That just means I need to move quickly.” In a flash of movement, the blaster was raised and fired, a pulse of blue knocking into Ajax. Omega watched in shock as hunter turned on hunter, her surprise ally hitting the ground with a heavy thud. She barely got her mind together to react before Cad had grabbed her wrists and dropped a pair of cuffs on them. The faint shouts of Hunter, petering off the barely held together comm band, were smashed under Cad’s heel.

“Why did you do that? They were your friend!” Omega snapped up at him.

“It was a stun bolt. They just need time to rest, get their head back on straight,” Cad responded. His cold demeanor was shaken though, there were the strings of regret pulling through his words as he glanced down at Ajax, then turned to his own comm band. “Todo, come down here and get Ajax. Bring them back to the ship while I make the trade.”

“Understood, Mister Bane!”

Peering over her shoulder, Omega watched Ajax’s form vanish into the fog of the cold building.

----

Worse went to terrible. Taun We was dead. Fennec Shand faced down Cad Bane, tension rippling through the space between them. When Cad and Ajax had faced each other off, there’d been hesitancy - here there was nothing but ruthless intent. The shadows here were far more dramatic, every passing cloud scattering across the opponents’ faces. Omega held her breath.

“Send the girl over, and you’ll get your payment,” Fennec called over. “The credits first,” Cad insisted.

Another breath. Another silence. A shadow passed briefly over Fennec’s face. Wind whistled outside the windows.

[ID: A 3-panel comic. Cad Bane stares down Fennec Shand, looking wary. Fennec stares Cad down, a blaster pistol raised, while the shadow of a flying creature approaches the window. Both are taken by surprise by a blue draconic creature that hits the windows with a roar, trying to push inside. End ID.]

Everything spun out of place within the space of a single second. Omega couldn’t cover her ears from the harsh screeching roar, and neither Cad nor Fennec seemed prepared for the beast’s sudden arrival. Fennec turned to begin firing out from the window, but Cad could see the opportunity rising and fired on her, causing her to have to back away into an alcove. A thick muzzle of blue scales smashed into the window gap, rows of thin pointed teeth peeking out as another screech hit both Cad and Omega, backlit by a building bright blue crackling light.

Cad dove to one side, Omega threw herself to the other side, as a bolt of lightning snapped through the air, scorching the metal wall. Now it was Fennec’s moment to turn on Cad, and she did, stepping out and firing on his position. Forced to hide for a moment, Cad couldn’t pay attention on Fennec, Omega, and the lightning beast outside that seemed to be trying to claw apart the metal barrier. With Todo’s voice trying to get his attention over the earpiece, it was turning into an outright nightmare of focus. Gritting his teeth, Cad dodged backwards from another bolt of lightning, turning his gauntlets to the window and firing out twin streams of flame. The beast let out a yelp of pain and surprise, and the great shadow fell away from the window. Now Cad could breathe again - at least, better than when he was trying to juggle two adversaries instead of one.

Omega quietly thanked the strange random intervention of this planet’s resident wildlife, as she hurried through the corridors. If this station was anything like that from Kaminoa, then she knew exactly where to go next. Her comm device was gone, but there would still be some sort of communications array that she could activate and send a new signal from, to connect to Hunter and the others.

Further and further into the building, the icy light of the outside was smothered completely, replaced instead by sickly green emergency lighting that did very little to sweep away any mist that managed to sneak all the way in. No sound from the outside could crawl this far, the metallic shriek of blaster fire falling quickly away as Omega got as far as she could from the bounty hunters fighting over her. All she could hear was her own footfalls, her own breathing in her own exhausted lungs.

But….there was someone else again. Wheezing exhales, a soft groan of pain, and then footsteps carrying them along. Hiding a gasp of fear, Omega ducked through a nearby doorway and hid just out of sight of anyone passing by. But she could at least look up to see who had followed her.

It was Ajax. The mask was gone, the goggles were hanging loose around their neck. Their hair was tousled in nearly every direction possible. A couple patches of their jacket now had scorch marks from some unknown source. Tired eyes scoured the corridor as they paused for breath, then began to move along.

“Ajax,” Omega whispered, just softly enough for the bounty hunter to hear and promptly jump a foot away in shock.

“Hh - oh, frag’s sake, you scared the soul out of me,” Ajax hissed, darting in through the door. “Are you okay? Not hurt? I - let me try to get these off you.” They fussed over the handcuffs until the lock button was located, pressed down on, and the metal device tossed off to the side to leave Omega free again.

“Are you alright?” she asked in frantic concern. “You’ve been burned!”

“Honestly, this is nothing.” Ajax waved off the blackened patches of their jacket. “I have lost my mask though, and, uh….can’t really breathe right now.”

“You can’t breathe?!”

“I give about an hour before my body gives up on me for lack of oxygen. Less if I exert myself. We need to get you somewhere safe before that happens.” Patting Omega on the shoulder, Ajax started to wander around the room they’d stepped into. A series of consoles brokenly circled the outside of the chamber, and in the middle were several cloning tubes, abandoned Kaminoan clones left within. Ajax stared up into one of the motionless figures, then down to Omega, who also stared at the clone. How long had they been left here? Did they even know? Were they people in suspension or just empty bodies?

“...What is the plan exactly?” Ajax asked quietly, breaking Omega from her thoughts.

“I need to make sure my friends can find me,” she replied, hurrying over to one of the consoles and activating it. “If I recalibrate the communication satellite array, then it can boost a signal out to them.”

“Okay. You work on that, I’ll keep guard.” Easier said than done with three doorways leading into the room. One of the three seemed to be sealed shut from negligence, so that left Ajax pacing between the other two doors while Omega worked away on the console, oftentimes moving behind the collection of clone tubes. So when Fennec entered the room, Ajax was conveniently out of sight.

“Omega,” Fennec called over, causing the young girl to jump and back up to the console. “You need to stop running. I’m just trying to help.”

“Are you? You tried to take me away once before, but you won’t do it again,” she snapped. “My friends will be here soon.” It was a hopeful truth - the array was online, the signal going out. She couldn't speak to them, but she could know someone was catching that signal, and since the Batch had been searching for her in this sector, they had to have caught it. They would be coming.

“You can’t rely on them. You can only rely on yourself, and me,” Fennec insisted. “I want to get you someplace safe.”

“They are safe!” Omega argued back.

“Listen to the kid,” Ajax voiced, stepping around the other side of Fennec, a hand raised with the pulse of electricity beginning to form in the palm of her voltic gloves. “She’s leaving with the clones, alright?”

“...This is unexpected. You’re Bane’s partner, aren’t you?” Fennec said, not questioned.

“Ex-partner at this point. Different opinions on what was good and fair.”

“That was on you to think that he could think of anything good or fair. It’s only ever about the credits.” Ajax was starting to prickle, her posture shifting with tension and frustration.

“You’re wrong,” they growled.

“Maybe. But you stopped paying attention, didn’t you?” Fennec kicked hard upward, knocking Ajax’s hand to the side. As they reeled back to steady themself, she fired two shorts quickly, the bracers of the voltic gloves snapping open and the humming light vanishing with a cough of smoke. After staring down at their hands in shock, Ajax looked up to Fennec’s blaster pistol.

“Huh,” they murmured.

“Didn’t Bane teach you anything about not letting your opponents get to you? It’s unfortunate. You were doing such a good job to keep the kid away from him and now I’m going to take her from you.”

“Didn’t anyone teach you about overconfidence?” Before Fennec could reply to that, Ajax circled their hands around, a pulse of electricity flowing down their arm and firing past her, hitting Todo in the doorway behind Fennec. Now it was her turn to look stunned.

“What?”

“I never said that the voltic gloves worked in the first place.” With a fatigued grin, Ajax stepped in quickly, dropping a foot behind Fennec’s leg and tripping her backwards. Omega slammed a hand on the console commands, releasing one of the clone pods to drop onto Fennec as she stumbled. The plasti-glass shattered on impact with the ground, leaving suspension fluid and an empty body to fall over Fennec and pin her, just for the moment. Omega grabbed onto Ajax’s hand, tugging them out of the room, and the pair fled down the next corridor.

----------

Several long twisted corridors and three sets of ladders later, and Omega was leading the way around a balcony view-point towards the emergency ladder. Ajax was close behind her, but the more they ran, snuck and jogged after Omega, the more she could hear them struggling. A couple of times she suggested they stop and rest, but Ajax just shook their head. They knew Cad was after Omega, and that meant he was after them too. They knew his persistence. The two of them had to keep moving.

“How much further to the emergency launch pad?” Ajax asked as Omega paused, peering up and over the balcony side.

“It should be just down there,” she explained, pointing into the thick cloud cover. “Every station has a launch pad near the balustrade. Normally it’d be underwater, and there’d be a system to bring it up, but…I guess not here. It’s a long climb down, but we’re almost there.”

“Good. Good good.” Ajax coughed, and Omega gave them a heavily concerned look. Stepping back over, she took their hand. The gloves were gone, abandoned somewhere in the corridors behind them. Now instead she could see and feel prickles against the skin. Distortions where smooth turned rough, where flushed red turned to purple and blue. Ajax’s face was paler too, cheeks turning to blue and distorted outwards just a touch more than usual. They were doing very badly, and if Omega could at least get them into a pressurized atmosphere with more oxygen, then she could consider Ajax’s work repaid.

The sound of heavy but slow footsteps rang along the floor of the balcony. Ajax bristled, pushing themself fully upright and stepping up to shield Omega. Despite everything, she held onto their hand and they squeezed gently back.

“This game’s gone on for long enough, lil lady,” Cad said as he walked into view, fog and cloud parting for him. “Ajax, turn the kid over. Come back to the ship. It’s not safe for you to be doing this.”

“So what? I’ve done stupid shit before to help people. It’s in my nature,” Ajax retorted, a weak smile and weaker laugh on their lips. “You going to stun me again? Drag us both back?”

“If I have to. I don’t wanna lose you. Not after everything we’ve done together,” Cad stated, stepping in closer. “Although after today, you’ve got a lot of trust to regain on my part.”

“Well, sorry about that, I guess. It’s not every day that someone gets a kick to the moral teeth and decides to jump ship.” Ajax snorted, and raised their hands in a defensive fighting position. “I’m not budging, Cad. Omega goes free.”

There was a long harsh silence, as a line was severed completely between the bounty hunters.

“...I knew those gloves of yours were phony,” Cad drawled as he lifted his blaster, fiddling with the settings. “But even so, what do you have besides an electric shock that could get past my weapons and my skills?”

“I got me,” Ajax rattled out. Were they bigger than a moment ago? The blue was spreading fiercely, scales reflecting the weak sun in cyan gleams. When Ajax grinned, it was with sharper teeth, longer teeth. When they exhaled, the air smelled of an incoming thunderstorm.

Cad Bane backed away a step.

Omega glanced at the hand she was holding, and found it covered in scales, the fingernails turned to claws. And yet her own hand was cradled so tenderly and carefully that she didn’t feel afraid that she’d be scratched. Instead she watched with an awestruck fear as Ajax’s presence loomed over the balcony, their face contorting from fins that poked out behind their ears and thick tendrils from underneath their eyes. Oh, those eyes. Omega remembered those eyes from outside the windows.

“You said the emergency launch pad was just below, right?” Ajax asked through brittle lips.

“What? Oh, yes,” Omega stammered back.

“Then hold on.” Scooping Omega up, Ajax held her to their chest and flung themselves over the side of the balcony.

They fell, Omega’s breath left behind. Her hands dug tight into Ajax’s jacket, eyes wide as she watched the station plummet upwards into the clouds. And then, with a thick leathery snap, she watched a pair of wings open up from Ajax’s back. Suddenly their out-of-control fall was a shaky gliding descent, Ajax spiraling around through the cloud cover.

In a sudden gasp, the clouds parted below, more sunlight shining down over the landing pad. The light also reflected off the small metallic body of Todo, speeding down and around on thrusters.

“You must not resist, give up the asset!” he demanded, vocal projector wobbling as Ajax flipped themself over to pivot away from the bot. “If you do not, you will both surely crash! Your injury is limiting you!”

Injury? Peeking over Ajax’s shoulder, Omega could see the sizzling burn mark from a blaster shot burned into the right-side of their back. No wonder the pair were descending in faster than comfortable circles. Ajax let out a low rumble of a noise, opening their mouth and letting a strike of lightning slap the air close to Todo. It was an ungainly flight, Todo weaving in to block the way only for Ajax to pivot to the side or Omega to swing her body weight to move Ajax herself. Todo would lunge out to grab and Ajax would retort with a lightning bolt. This left Omega with one eye on the bot and one eye on the rapidly approaching pad.

“Ajax!” she shouted. Attention turning immediately, Ajax sharply rotated, a tail from seemingly nowhere slapping into Todo and sending the bot spinning away. The wings folded tight around Omega, and the pair collided with the metal floor.

“Go..” Ajax wheezed, arms letting go of Omega. “Escape pods are there.” Their wings opened up, and Omega shivered under the sudden sweep of freezing air that was rushing over the platform. But there it was - her ticket out from this frozen nightmare. Clambering and tripping over her feet, she hauled over to the pod, running past Todo flipped on his head. Behind her Ajax limped along awkwardly, wings dragging over the flooring.

“Hurry, get in!” Omega called to them, activating the pod and hopping just beyond the doors. With some effort and a tumble, Ajax squeezed into the back of the pod and lay there, exhausted and gasping for air.

“I knew he was a good shot,” they mumbled, focus slipping away. As Omega rapidly typed in the launch code, Todo slammed against the pod screen.

“You’re not getting away!” he called out, vocal muffled by the plasti-glass. Glaring back in determination, Omega slammed in the final button and the pod hummed to life. With the pod forcefully rocketing away, Todo was scraped off the screen by the sheer inertia, abruptly disappearing from sight. The station was left far behind with the bounty hunters. Omega could breathe. As she slumped over in the pilot’s chair, she glanced at Ajax. What had been Ajax.

“You were the beast that attacked us,” she commented. “Attacked Bane and that other bounty hunter.” The thing that was trying to look like Ajax let out a grumble, somewhat pained, and tried to fold their wings back into place.

“Not my finest moment,” they replied, teeth clacking together as their face started struggling back to humanoid. “It’s…an emergency thing. And I was angry.”

“It was pretty scary.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I won’t do that to you again.” As Ajax gave Omega a small weak smile, the pod abruptly shuddered. A red alarm began to blink - one of the engine cords had been severed. They were about to go into free-fall. Omega desperately hammered at the console, trying to reroute power back to the engines, but it was no use. The open sky started to drift upwards as the pod faltered, peaked, and dropped back downwards. Omega was left clinging to the driver’s seat, Ajax curled up around them, the pair holding on for dear life.

But then everything shuddered to a halt. They had stopped. Tension gripped them both as eyes turned to the ceiling hatch that lurched open. And then sweet Wrecker’s voice echoed down, and Omega cried out in return.

She was safe.

Ajax smiled as they watched the child ascend the ladder, their face full of weariness. Limbs aching, chest burning, head swimming as air they could breathe returned to their system - they staggered to their feet.

“There’s someone else down there,” the big one voiced.

“They saved me! Ajax!” Oh? They turned their head up, peeking through the hatch to Omega’s face. All those other clones surrounding her looked down, in various states of confusion and shock.

“Hi,” they croaked out.

“Why aren’t you coming up here too?” Omega asked.

“...Will your friends let me?”

“Of course! You helped me after all.” She reached down a hand, and although Ajax was certain that she wouldn’t be able to help them up the ladder, they smiled in gratitude and started the agonizing process of climbing up. When they faltered within arm’s reach, another pair of arms lifted them the rest of the way and deposited them on the floor of the new starcraft.

“Aren’t you Bane’s partner?” one of them, Hunter, questioned, already bristling protectively.

“Well, they were,” Omega voiced. “But they’re not anymore. They helped me escape after all.”

“I’m pretty sure you did all the escape work, kiddo,” Ajax said with a weak laugh and hard cough. “I just talked a bunch and had a fight with gravity.”

“They’re….not well, that much is to be assured,” another, Tech, commented. “If they are trustworthy, as Omega says, we should at least let them recover.”

“That’s a fair question. What exactly are you?” It was difficult to get Hunter to budge. Ajax respected that. They also respected the rapid swaying of the floor under their hands.

“I’m Ajax,” they said with a final thin smile, and that was it.

#writings #world: star wars #self insert #this has been in my head for a LONG time #not sure whether it was the desire for catharsis or drama that powered me to get it down #anyway if anyone needs me I'll be curled up with some fluff for the next week

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