Ci/Ciaran

🦉 The Campfire

Kashyyyk | 21 BBY | First camping outside of the 41st Ranger Platoon base

Clone Medic Text was a nervousness babbler. Just to be fair, he has been actually silent all duty day, focussed and observing their new Commander and her actions. In his opinion, they couldn't have gotten a better deal. She was tough, quite protective and the best – she let them do their job.

Before moving out today, he had double checked his medic field backpack and added some of his own special features to impress and almost made it too late for the call. So he had skipped shaving and hid behind his bucket as long as possible.

Luckily the Commander seemed to be cool and collected, not too stern, not different than on their first mission together, before they were an official unit. Maybe it's just his hopes, but especially after official hours now she was smiling often and was – thankfully – quite a good listener!

Text though, he maybe has never had the chance to indulge rambling about his interests (fauna) in that scale before and maybe never will have. This moment at the campfire will linger in his head and his heart. This was so much better than his escalated downtown adventures in Coruscant!

Her sudden hand on his shoulder was at first a bit unsettling, but he got the hint, calmed down his mood a bit. He was happy with everything right now. Who could blame him? She was one of the most beautiful nat-borns he ever saw (his trainers on Kamino, some Jedi from the distance, Geonosians and Wookies, some others at 79s) and she hasn't stopped him yet and now she's even laughing!

He could get used to this. That's my Commander now, he thought, grinning cheekily at her. If he died tomorrow fulfilling his duty under her command, it would be a kriffing honor.

---

Padawan Commander Eo was nervous now too, because it was the first after official hours outside of the protection of the base. She somehow landed here, alone in the wilderness of Kashyyyk with the 5 clone troopers she initially had chosen out of the locally stationed 41st, just for a single special Jedi Padawan mission. She never thought about seeing them again, even less, that they could've got assigned to her as her own unit – long-termed.

Now she was sitting with the very same clones on some lost crates around a campfire in the small abandoned foothold they headed to camp for the night. This was strange, but in a nice way. Together they already have made themselves a name as a unit, by mere chance.

So those five men are again under her command now. For the first unofficial mission just one week ago, she had chosen them for their specialisations and for somehow standing out of the mass. Outsiders, just like herself, as she struggles with her Padawan training despite being mighty in the Force, allegedly.

If she had known that she would end up stuck together with those men, she maybe would have chosen differently. Or maybe not?

Anyway, at the moment she felt comfortable at the warm campfire, listening to Text's excitement ramble, his familiar deep clone voice full of joyful passion, his eyes sparkling from sharp intelligence, playful- and watchfulness alike and – if she squinted – a glint of madness. No wonder actually.

Eo liked him. She let him talk her ears off, also because kind of positively surprised that such a young clone trooper reached out to her like that.

It warmed her heart, seeing Text revive like this after being all day not only a badass attentive medic, but also a quiet and highly skilled close combat fighter. She badly wants to know how a Gen 3 clone, not older than maybe 8 or 9 years, biologically 16 or 17, could have developed skills like that.

She laughed, as he started to wave with his data pad, already leaning in to explain even more dramatically. Without further thinking about it, she placed her hand on his shoulder, steadying him and herself in their shared laughter and tried to save him from himself. And maybe also a bit herself from him.

Looking into his mirthful eyes and then over the other watching pairs of almost similar looking amber-brown eyes – curious, incredulous, mischievous and amused – Commander Eo realised maybe for the first time, that she might have made a big mistake with her choice of the men.

She could already feel the attachment. The one thing she shouldn't have felt for them. She could be a brave, nice, caring and good Commander for them, but according to the Jedi's lessons she absolutely shouldn't feel what she felt now. And this wasn't even the first time that her heart hurt for those clones.

It wasn't fair, that this talkative clone-teenager looked almost as old as herself and even obviously enjoyed it, flirting with her, similarly like his more shy but mischievous brother Voice. And that one somehow managed to look big, but he was even younger than Text!

It wasn't fair that those intimidating Gen 1 clones, Forest and Source, were clone-biologically 22 years old, but looking 30 or more, just have seen real 11 years of life and most of that not even outside of Kamino. The rest of it basically from one death trap into the next.

It wasn't fair, that her still young Gen 2 Sergeant still emitted fear, when she would only turn into his direction, but then showed to her the stable and seasoned warrior, looking with his wide eyes straight at at some point over her face. She only knew that Sixoh had been thrown from Kamino directly into the Second Battle of Geonosis and then with the rest of Green Company into the dark void, serving on the Tranquility. Kamino and that was his whole life so far.

Padawan Eo knew Master Luminara Unduli and her fellow Padawan Barriss Offee. Whatever horrors Sixoh might have had to face, it couldn't have been them.

Text has calmed down and drew something on his datapad. Eo watched Forest tending the dying campfire. The seasoned clone's face neutral and his eyes on the last flames, the whole man quite a clone-untypical picture of deep thoughts, sitting barefoot in a deep squad like many of the wookies.

Heavy Gunner Voice got up, yawning and called it a night, startling poor skittish Sergeant Sixoh, as he patted on his shoulder from passing by behind him.

Source didn't look up from his datapad as the Sergeant next to him relaxed again with a sigh after Voice' sudden familiar gesture, but the ARC Trooper's facial features relaxed a bit and some of the face lines smoothened in the cold light of his datapad.

Then, without tilting his head or moving his face, he looked up, straight into Eo's eyes, catching her watching him.

The mikkian froze, as she was locked into the most direct and intense stare she received so far from a clone, or even generally. She blushed like a little girl. Force, nothing about this was fair.

She shook off her unsettlement, chuckled over her own reaction and held his glance with a smile. She was the Commander and she was in charge, no little girl at all! Eyes still locked, a hint of a smile played around Source' lips, so small that Eo wasn't sure if he even moved a face muscle.

The mikkian's tendrils coiled slightly. This felt like going into the absolutely wrong direction and sadly it's to her making it good again.

Flirting wasn't "forbidden", but before working together with clone troopers, all of the Jedi, together with the other nat-born GAR Admirals, Lieutenants and else, were basically reminded with cold Kaminoan words, that clones might look and behave like mature humans, but in the end they're trained war machines, the human nature carefully suppressed for their own wellbeing, meaning they had buried wishes and questions that shouldn't be stirred awake. Not a few Jedi fell their serenity out of their faces for a moment, Eo included. It felt like a nightmare to her.

Dank Farrik. This wasn't just awkward, this was the madness of war. And Eo was even more determined to become the best Commander her new clone trooper squad could have. They deserve as much life as she could provide them under her protection and she can't take that those five living souls, so bright and beautifully complex in the Force suffer, because of her mikkian- or whatever weak struggles, that keep her away from getting knighted.

She must give not less than her very best. She owes them.

The Commander nods at Source, standing up, trying to look tall and grounded. "Voice is right, let's get a bunch of sleep. Tomorrow we'll head out at 0900. Goodnight, troopers." The four remaining clones nodded back and did one of their weird cloned-voices choruses – "Good night, Sir".

She flashed a warm smile to them and turned away. Entering her tiny Commander tent, her heart felt heavy. She had to do her meditation before sleeping. Badly.

She had to sort herself properly, reminding herself that she's obligated to protect those brave men.

Also from herself.

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