The Whispering Escapes

„Proceed with care.”

It is nothing new for Delta Squad to be tasked with the recovery of corpses. Simple as it is, those are the aftershocks of every battle and there is no reason to grief about it. They are a special operation unit after all.

Boss slowly stalks down the platform of their Nu-class shuttle, followed by the rest of his squad mates, blasters at the ready. The scans from the orbit didn’t show any more activity on the surface but in his book, it pays off greatly to be cautious.

Devaron is a pretty by-the-reg jungle planet. From above, it looked dusty but upon landing, they learn that the mist in the air is more of a yellowish fog that lingers over the place like a bad omen.

The only thing that noticeable sets Devaron apart from other jungle worlds are the colossal vines that tangle together into vast systems and entirely replace any trees.

After a slow glance around, Boss’ suit systems inform him that there are no more droids around. Instead, a pressing eeriness lingers over the forest. No rustling of the wind and no sounds of far-away animals are breaking through the silence of the late afternoon.

“Clear. 0-7, 6-2, you take the right side. I want every trooper checked for vital signs.”

“Yes Sir.” Scorch and Sev head off while Fixer trails after Boss to check on the bodies scattered around the entrance of the Temple of Eedit. Here, there are less troopers, but more droids, laying around.

“What a mayhem,” Fixer notes while they approach the first natborn body, a dead Roonan. This must be Jedi Master Halsey.

His body is lying a good bit in front of the staircases that lead up to the Temple of Eedit, half-sprawled out over a destroyed B1-droid. A soft layer of dust has already settled over the palish-blue skin of the Jedi, making him look almost like a mummy from a different time.

Boss looks him over carefully. The otherwise milky eyes of the Jedi Master have cleared up a great bit after his death; the cloudy whitish blue is now tainted with clear watery spots seeping through the membranes into the front of the eyes, mingling with tints of red blood and bites of sand cast there by the soft breeze.

The Sergeant pulls out his scanner and lets it run over the scene to assess the wounds and the surroundings of the body for a later reconstruction and investigation at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

Once the scan finishes, both commandos crouch down by the body.

A large hole, seemingly caused by a sharp weapon, is gaping in the Jedi’s chest and around his ripped-open robes. If Boss squints he can imagine the white checkered floor through the wound.

A pool of blood has seeped out onto the stone and dried into a muddy puddle.

“This was not caused by a lightsaber,” he comments to Fixer.

“Indeed. A non-cauterizing weapon… That is unusual,” Fixer returns.

Boss would very much like to say that after all the time they have spent on missions in the Outer Rim, all the training simulations the longnecks have pushed them through, that by now, they have seen it all.

The majority of dead people they are tasked to retrieve, are killed by blaster bolts. A much smaller minority by lightsabers. This is… dubious at best.

He reaches out and gently pulls the brown robes to the side — revealing pale blue skin — to assess the other wounds that are visible to the eye.

A few smaller, but deep holes are etched into the stomach; small, nearly triangular cuts that expose the flesh and have drawn blood on impact.

“3-8?”

His gaze shoots up from the stomach of the Jedi Master and instead he turns to investigate the neck to which Fixer is directing his attention.

His second-in-command is pointing out two black half-circles that meet at the ends— bite marks.

“That is, indeed, concerning,” he comments. What kind of beast had done this? Able to erase the lives of two Jedi and an entire platoon of clones from existence and mauling their victims like some sort of animal?

Fixer lets his eyes wander around and up the walls of the sand-coloured Temple behind them. “Let’s hope they were smart enough to activate the holo recorders during the attack.”

Meanwhile, Sev and Scorch return from the long bridge that is leading up to the Temple of Eedit. There is strength in their steps, Boss thinks. None of them are startled by scenes like this anymore. For better or for worse.

“There are no survivors in the unit. Everyone is dead,” Sev announces.

Boss sighs gruffly. “Alright. Call backup to recover their bodies. We take care of the Jetiise.”

“Yes, Sir.” Both troopers turn on the spot and head back to the shuttle they arrived with to start the long-range transmitter.

Boss and Fixer lift Master Halsey into the first stasis pod without further ado before they turn to take care of the other Jedi. In their mission briefing from the Council, two of them had been mentioned. One master and one apprentice.

The padawan’s body is lying on its side, just by the entrance gate of the temple. Maybe his master was trying to protect him from their attacker. His body looks largely undamaged from afar, mostly standing out from the other bodies due to its species— a purple Nautolan boy.

Boss and Fixer stride up the first staircase. The kid is a little taller than Master Halsey but lying there, on the edge of the stairs, he looks bruised and battered, too young to fight a war and too young to lose his life in one. Boss doesn’t ponders about sentimental stuff like that.

They approach the body slowly, carefully. “Odd,” Fixer mutters.

Unlike his master, the child has no visible open injuries, and no blood is seeping on the floor under him. Large parts of his forehead and head tentacles are covered in deep brownish bruises, one of his arms is twisted into an awkward angle.

Upon getting closer to the body, Boss pulls out his scanner again to secure the shot so they could finally pack up the bodies and leave.

He halts when Fixer presses his fingers to the kid’s neck.

“What’s wrong?” Boss asks while he turns his attention back to typing on his holopad, configurating the scanner.

“I think he’s breathing,” Fixer answers, leaning back on his heels and holding his fingers in front of the kid’s mouth to feel for his breath.

Boss cuts the process short, swiftly scanning the padawan’s body. “I’m getting vital signs. He’s alive but declining.”

In a matter of an eyeblink, he makes a decision and activates his com. “6-2, 0-7, bring the other stasis pod over here. The padawan is alive, we pack him up and evacuate, stat.”

“Every bone in his body is broken. This is not gonna be fun,” Fixer mutters after he snatches the scanner from the other commando.

Boss looks out for the other two members of their squad while Fixer pulls out the small field medpac from his backpack.

Scorch and Sev don’t take long to hurry over to them with the other stasis pod.

“3-8, help me turn him over,” Fixer commands and Boss crouches down next to the kid to turn him over by the shoulder.

“Is he responsive?” Boss asks. He certainly hopes he isn’t.

“No, I don’t think so.” Fixer uses his knuckles to rub the kid’s sternum who, in response, give a light twitch with his hand and a soft whimper.

“Oh, kark,” Fixer grumbles, lightly holding the padawan in place so he wouldn’t further damage his body with any sudden moves.

“What happened to him?” Scorch asks.

Fixer only offers a non-committal shrug. “No external injuries. Scanner shows a broken spine at waist height but no nerve damage, a shattered arm, a severe concussion and general dehydration. Make me guess and I’d say this is impact damage. Maybe he fell from a high altitude.”

Scorch turns his head up to look at the Temple of Eedit but there are no balconies or constructions of the like.

Fixer gets to work swiftly and efficiently with hands so steady they might as well rival a Kaminoan trained medic.

He hooks the child up to scanners, pinning the vitals to his HUD, checks his skull for any fractures and twists his arm back into position with a crack that makes Scorch turn away and walk a few steps.

After he secures the limb in a bone stabilizer, he turns his attention back to Boss.

“Let’s get him moving. He’s stable enough for now but it’s a long way back to Coruscant.”

“We take the lining of the pod out and lift the kid onto it, first. Then we lift him with the padding into the pod,” Boss explains the plan that he has come up with over the course of the last few moments.

“We have nothing suitable to sedate him with but knocking him out manually is risky with the head trauma he already sustained. Let’s just do this fast and then make sure he can’t move too much. Do not let him sit up under any circumstances,” Fixer explains to the other three commandos.

Scorch and Sev both nod and lift the white cushy lining out of the pod. They place it on the floor aligning it with the back of the young padawan. Boss really hopes this is going to work out. It would be a shame if they would be the cause of the final kill of this massacre.

“How nice of you to consider ‘knocking him out manually’,” Sev quotes. Fixer shoots him a fiery glare. “You’ll wish we had that possibility once the kid is screaming in pain.”

Boss crouches down by the child’s head and gently pushes his hands under his neck, locking his fingers together to cup his nape. “Now, get on with it. 0-7, you support his legs, 6-2, you take his side, I stabilize his neck. 4-0 gives the count..”

Sev wraps his hands around the kid’s ankles while Scorch rests one hand under his hips and one hand under his shoulders.

Boss nods towards Fixer who still leans over the child to inject a pain hypo into his neck.

“That’s gonna buy us a few minutes. On the count of three. Solus, t’ad, ehn!”

They swiftly lift him onto the padding of the stasis pod but as soon as they get him off the floor, a soft sob leaves the kid’s throat and a trembling runs through his body.

His already shallow breathing stops for a few too long moments and none of them dares to move until it kicks back into rhythm. Fixer rests his hand on the kid’s chest to keep him from sitting up. “Easy. Don’t move.”

“Give him a few moments. His vitals are all over the place,” he directs his squad mates.

The kid is gasping for air, each shaky breath sending trembles through his body. They watch for a few seconds before Fixer rests his hand against his diaphragm. Boss faintly remembers this from training as part of getting someone to do box breathing.

He remains seated by the kid’s head while they wait for him to calm down. Boss settles on carefully watching his face. His eyes are oddly milky, and he really hopes that this is either a Jedi thing or something else distinctly non-human instead of being caused by the potential brain damage that is still in the room with them.

The tint of the largest part of his face, as well as his head tentacles is a dull purple except around his eyes, mouth and neck were the colour switches to a pale green or yellow.

Finally, Fixer gives the signal to move on so Sev and Boss get into position again to lift the padding back into the stasis pod.

“On the count of three, again,” Boss orders.

Fixer administers another pain hypo before they lift him into the pod.

The kid lets out a weak whimper when they finally set him down and Boss is pretty sure he hears Fixer mutter something along the lines of ‘needing a kriffing medic on the team’. Boss is not sure if a real trained medic would be any more helpful right now.

They work together with their usually efficiency to wrap everything up. Boss attaches both lightsabers to his belt to hand them over to the other Jetiise on Coruscant and with that, the ramp of their shuttle closes up behind them.

Now that the tricky part is over, they step back into their routines. Sev and Scorch head into the cockpit to work on getting the bird back into the air while Fixer keeps hovering around the kid, attaching him to an IV.

The situation seems to calm down for now, especially once they finally leave the atmosphere of Devaron and dive back into the infinity of hyperspace.

Of course, the kid decides that this is the kriffing right moment to strenuously pry open his eyes. The milky covering of his eyes seem to be some variation of eye lids.

For the largest part he seems disoriented, so Boss hopes that he is either too far gone to feel any pain or that this is another kind of Jetii thing. That would certainly be practical.

Fixer pushes his hands under the lip of his bucket and sets it to the side unceremoniously. He really is putting on the calm, peaceful, ‘no problem, you totally don’t have 50 broken bones’ façade on thick, but for now it seems to be working and if that is all it takes to keep the kid calm, Boss is not about to start complaining about it.

“Hello, ad’ika,” Fixer says in that kind Fixer-voice that he only puts on for tookas, severely injured brothers on the brink of dying and… well, and the far and few between children they have encountered during their missions. Boss watches his brother carefully caress the padawan’s palm with his fingers and, in return, the kid wraps his hand around them.

“We’re taking you back to Coruscant, yeah?” He clearly isn’t expecting an answer. “They’re going to take good care of you.”

It is difficult to tell what exactly the child is looking at and even more so if he is actually focusing on it or just staring blankly through the two commandos. Aside from some twitching and fussing he doesn’t really move much.

“His heart rate’s going up again,” Fixer whispers to Boss and determinedly opens one of the cupboards in the wall of the ship which has the red medical logo painted on it.

“Can’t you sedate him?” Boss asks, watching the other rummage through their options of medication.

“I already told you, I’d rather not. Reg manuals say not to administer sedatives in case of a concussion,” Fixer explains. “I can keep him pumped with pain medication.”

Boss sighs and gestures vaguely. “Dose him as high as you can.”

“Yessir.” Fixer grins and turns the end of the hypo a few times before he injects the child with it. After that, it only takes a few seconds for his head to tip to the side.

“We are en route to Triple Zero,” Sev announces when he leaves the cockpit to join them in the back of the shuttle. “The Jetiise are awaiting us.”

“ETA is 22 standard hours from now,” Scorch adds, following his older vod.

The knock on Mace’ door comes unasked for. Tholme’s funeral was held just a couple of hours ago and Mace all but rushed back to Coruscant from his mission to Hissrich in order to attend the service.

The knocking persists, getting louder even, and Mace briefly rests an arm over his eyes. There are only a handful of Jedi who are this intrusive. In addition to that— judging by the storm of emotions that was raving down the hallway until it was halting right before his door— Mace has a pretty good idea who is attempting to kick down his door right now.

He slowly stands up and straightens his robes. He should really change and then maybe settle for some meditations.

When Mace opens the door, he is met by the haunted expression of Quinlan Vos. The Kiffar Jedi looks a little dishevelled, a few stray braids fall from his bun.

“Knight Vos,” Mace greets him.

“Master Windu. I require your help,” the other Jedi answer and suddenly holds up a large, mildly rugged looking loth-cat. Large scars run across its face and snout, one-lower canine sticking out from it’s snout.

Jeanie, the loth-cat that belonged to Tholme. Until a few days ago…

“I’m trying to get her to eat something but it’s impossible to convince her,” Quinlan explains.

Mace sighs again. Tholme was most beloved among his fellow Jedi, many had lost a friend and mentor with him. It figures that even his cat would be grieving his loss.

He reaches out and takes the sepia coloured cat from Quinlan’s hands. She’s soft under his fingertips and twitches in his hold for a moment before settling along the length of his arm.

“Come inside, then,” Mace invites. Quinlan has rarely visited his quarters before. Usually, they would meet by chance in Tholme’s rooms.

He follows Mace inside, who takes the cat into the kitchen with him. Quinlan leans against the doorframe, watching the Jedi Master open one of the cabinets and pull out a pouch of loth-rat treats.

“Look at that. You do bribe them. Master Tholme always wondered why she was so petty about her usual food after every time you watched her,” Quinlan notes with a smug grin.

Mace opens the pouch and shakes a few treats into his hand, offering them to Jeanie.

“I have my way with animals, Vos. Don’t underestimate me,” he answers.

Jeanie perks her satellite ears up happy and purrs at Mace before he starts to lick the treats out of his palm. Her tongue scratches over his skin while she gobbles down the food. Judging by how hungry she seems, it looks like she really had refused food.

Mace reaches out with his other hand to scratch between her ears.

“I’ve been trying for the last three days to get her to eat. Impossible little beast,” Quinlan mutters. “Since she found out that her favourite person wouldn’t come back…,” he trails off at the end.

Mace looks up at him, and it isn’t very proper to grief his lost friend beyond the funeral, but another day won’t do much harm. Then again, Quinlan might need a few more days. The questions he should be asking himself is where to draw the line.

The war rests heavily on both their shoulders. Since the Battle of Geonosis, Quinlan has been deployed almost non-stop, often acting as an agent for weeks at a time, infiltrating deep into Dark places.

Long over are the times when Quinlan and Obi-Wan would get in trouble together, raised in the safety of the Jedi Temple, with war only in the backs of their young minds. Mace knows he is capable, still he wonders how much it would take for the younger Jedi to fall or break.

Jeanie rubs her head against his fingers, demanding more treats. Mace pours them onto the counter and leaves the pouch open for the loth-cat.

“Would you like some tea?” He asks Quinlan.

The other hesitates. “If you’ll have me— gladly,” he finally answers, smiling mildly.

Mace sets up the kettle to heat up before looking through his tea stash carefully.

“Was the security footage from Felucia recovered?” Quinlan inquires, striding over to run his hands through Jeanie’s long fur.

“No. The main computer of the outpost was destroyed long before the recovery team arrived,” Mace answers. They are still underestimating this new assassin of Dooku’s, even though they had many losses to grief due to their activity. A walking shadow, that was yet to reveal themselves. It irritates Mace far beyond his usual grouchiness.

If Mace is entirely honesty, the Council has gotten into a heated debate just yesterday, if this assassin even is one and the same person or rather an organised group of highly trained Sith Acolytes. He wouldn’t bring it up now though, Quinlan didn’t need to know that.

The younger Jedi sighs and rubs his hands over his face. Chaos has been ranging through Quinlan’s head since he felt the rip in the Force and soon later, had gotten the holo call that Master Tholme was presumed dead.

“We might never find out, who was the cause of his death,” Mace notes while he stirs together the herbs for some tea in a copper tea pot.

He feels anger stir up inside of Quinlan before it changes to a feeling of deep, draining defeat.

“So be it,” he says pointedly and crosses his arms.

“Don’t regret what could have been,” Mace says. He is well-aware that Quinlan was, at first, supposed to join Tholme on this mission but then got ordered to complete a task elsewhere.

“Yes, yes, I know. You are starting to sound like Master Yoda. ‘Empathy, the dead need not, young Vos. For those remaining, empathy we should feel’,” Quinlan quotes.

Mace snorts softly. “Seriously, his wisdom you should take. Right, he usually turns out to be,” he answers while he pours the herbs into the kettle.

Jeanie curiously staggers over to Mace and tries to sniff the kettle, but he picks her up and sets her down on the floor.

“No. This is not for cats.”

Jeanie meows offendedly but staggers off slowly, limping a little from an old leg injury. It is an almost fun parallel to Tholme’s bad leg.

Mace carries the tablet with the cups and the pot into the living area, Quinlan trailing after him and slouching down on the couch. Mace doesn’t comment on it. They had attempted to train this habit out of Quinlan since he was 10-years-old, and he still wouldn’t sit properly 25 years later.

Jeanie has settled on stretching out in front of the window, bathing in the sun contently with her front paws tucked to her chest. Mace places the tablet down before throwing a pillow on the floor, which the loth-cat claims immediately.

He sits back down and pours them some tea, picking his cup up, taking a slow sip.

“I’ll accompany Obi-Wan to Nal Hutta soon,” Quinlan begins. “May I ask you to feed her and look after her a little?” He requests sheepishly. He has never been eager to admit that he had a soft spot for Jeanie. even when she behaved so arrogantly towards him.

“Would you explain to me again, why you believe the Chancellor is a secret Sith Lord?” Quinlan watches Kix grouch and Tal lean back in his chair, covering his face with his hands.

“Hey now. You are trying to get me to believe your weird-ass conspiracy theory. Bear with me,” he argues.

‘Weird-ass conspiracy’ is putting it nicely, if Quinlan is entirely honest to himself.

‘Weird-ass conspiracy that, would someone act on it, would affect the entire political system of the Republic in addition to thousands of allied systems in either a very good or a very bad way’ would be far more accurate.

He brushes a few stray locks from his face and rests his chin on his hands.

Vet gets up and starts digging through Kix’ desk until he finds a disk-shaped holo projector. The medic looks like he just aged by 40 years.

“Would you like to see our conspiracy board?”

Quinlan nods eagerly and questions, for a moment, why he keeps hanging out with people who make conspiracy boards in their free time. Freaky.

Vet nods, locks the door of the medical office and places the holo disk down on the floor. Upon activation, multiple holo displays shoot up in the room, surrounding them whole.

The sheer amount of material doesn’t immediately become obvious, but when Quinlan looks closer, he notices that there are hundreds of protocols of incidents, information from manuals about the Force and messy notes scribbled in Mando’a on the sides of medical papers.

“You guys really are into some freaky stuff,” Quinlan notes, smugly.

Kix proceeds to rest his forehead on the table. He looks beyond stressed and Quinlan can understand it very well. He isn’t entirely sure if this is treason but considering the jurisdictional situation of clone troopers, Quinlan is pretty sure that less would be counted as treason, already.

“Alright, alright. I’m looking.” He gets up and rests his hands on his hips, inspecting the boards more closely.

“The most notable indicator is what we assume to be some sort of mind control,” Tal explains.

“Mind control?” Quinlan inquires.

“Correct. I noticed it with the command squad first. Fox and Thorn, mostly, but on some occasions also Stone and Thire. They return from meetings with the Chancellor or patrols distressed, with gaps in their memories. Sometimes they lose days at a time.”

Quinlan nods. He is listening, thinking. He had never thought about the Chancellor that much. Thankfully, his role as a Jedi Shadow didn’t require him to deal with politicians often.

Then again, Quinlan thinks, if he were an evil Sith Lord, he would prefer to hide in plain sight too. To think that a Sith Lord would make it to political leader though… unlikely.

In addition to that, he would have guessed that, if not him, the members of the High Council would notice a Sith Lord if they came across one, right? Or maybe not…

To say he is torn on what to believe would be a tremendous understatement.

“After shooting that 501st trooper, Fox insisted he wanted to set the gun to stun but that he wasn’t allowed to. He was erratic about it, almost maniac,” Tal explains.

“He is also paranoid. I while ago I was visiting Tal and Commander Fox was, seemingly, unreasonably hostile. He almost kicked me out of the base. Thorn had to drag him away,” Kix adds.

Quinlan is no stranger to gaps in his memories. Even before the whole amnesia situation, most of his life had disappeared in a thick fog with only a few treasured moments clearing up. For the larger part of his life, he had navigated his actions more on instinct than on experience.

Still, mind control was only one possible explanation. Out of, possibly, millions.

“I’m inclined to believe you, guys. Really. I know you take your jobs seriously. But I fear this is not going to hold up in an argument with the Council,” he explains.

The medics exchange another glance, possibly weighing risks with opportunities.

“Tengaana kaysh burrenaar nynir hets," Vet says grimly. Quinlan doesn’t know Mando’a beyond the most basic phrases, so he settles for watching their expressions.

Kix hums, in thought, while Tal seems rather torn on whatever Vet just suggested.

“Tion cuyi gar morut’ye?” Tal inquires.

"Elek,” Wolfpack’s medic answers and nods once, confidently. “Ni urmankala alor Plo miite.”

The way Vet pronounces ‘Plo’, with a Basic accent raises Quinlan’s attention. Is the other Jedi involved as well?

Tal sighs but then nods and reaches into the desk, only to drop a stack of flimsi in front of Quinlan.

“Flimsi?” Quinlan questions.

“In case there is someone digging around in our data. Someone who… should not know about this,” Tal explains and flips the stack open.

“Mostly the commander but also Thorn, when he was staging as Fox in his armour, started to turn up with lightning scars a few months ago.”

The pictures are truly gruesome. Large branches of lightning are raking up their flanks, backs and thighs. Worse, Quinlan has seen scarring like this before. If only he could remember where…

“We figured early that these wounds are not caused by regular lightning strikes or electric shocks from… technical components or something like that,” Vet explains.

“It tuns out the voltage for wounds like this without causing lasting physical damage is very specific,” Kix notes.

“I don’t want to know how you figured that out, thank you,” Quinlan quickly interrupts him. He really doesn’t have to know everything Kix is getting up to for research purposes.

“Our point being, Thire let me take a look at the Senate and meeting schedules and I figured out that these scars always appear after meetings with the Chancellor,” Tal continues. He sits back down next to Vet and bumps their shoulders together lightly.

“So, why only bring this up now?” Quinlan asks while he continues to flick through the images. They don’t actually differ that much from each other, other than the fact that with progressing time, more and more faded lighting patterns appear in addition to the fresh wounds.

Suddenly, a memory pushes to the forefront of his mind… Asajj’s body was littered with these too, although they were a little harder to spot on her ashen skin. She usually kept them covered with her bounty hunter attire but on a few occasions, he had gotten glances at her battered skin.

“At first, we thought it was a Jedi ability. Still, weird but nothing sinister. General Plo is capable of summoning lightning strikes, after all.” Vet pulls Quinlan from his thoughts. He shakes his head a little to wade off the memories again.

“Yes, electric judgement. It’s rare and not very popular, indeed,” Quinlan answers.

The medics look at him expectingly.

Quinlan thinks, ponders. It is nice to know that they trust him enough to share this knowledge with him, but he wasn’t exactly popular with the Jedi Council right now.

“Tell you what,” he begins. “In order to bring this up, we will need concrete evidence. This is a great start, but I fear it will not be enough to convince the Council. Nor can we just act on this and shoot the Chancellor.”

Actually, that’s not the worst idea Quinlan ever had. He waves the thought off before he can start plotting.

Tal eyes him warily. Vet and Kix look at each other in defeat.

Quinlan sighs. He has a feeling that their suspicions aren’t entirely pulled out of thin air.

“General, you have to do something,” Kix pleads. “I don’t know how much longer they can survive this. And I can’t even begin to imagine the catastrophe that this set-up will cause one day.”

“Alright,” Quinlan mutters and rubs his forehead. “I’m sure we can find out when the senate is holding their next meeting. I can sneak inside the Chancellor’s office and take a peak around, see if I find anything suspicious.”

Tal’s expression lights up. Quinlan knows this is more than they had hoped for.

“Thank General. For everything. We’ll cover you,” Tal says.

While they are waiting for a medical droid, Fixer just thinks that he is glad, it was only Boss’ arm that got crushed by the speeder and not his ribs or head or any bones that are protecting more vital body parts.

Boss looks pretty pale, the broken arm— which Fixer securely fixated in brace right after the accident— rests in his lap.

After a few minutes, a 2-1B droid finally enters the room. It goes to work without further explanation, using a medical scanner to assess the condition of Boss’ right forearm.

“It looks like the fracture is more complex. The use of a bone mender would be advisable.”

Boss nods. “Well, I’m here.”

“Good. Please remove everything that is covering your upper body,” the droid sounds before stepping over into the storage area.

Fixer approaches Boss and makes a notion of starting to help him but Boss quickly brushes him off.

“Leave it. I can take it off myself,” Boss says, sharply. Fixer lifts his hands apologetic but doesn’t look the slightest bit intimidated.

Boss attempts to pull his healthy arm out of the sleeve, but the blacks cling to his skin. The next try, Boss takes the end of the sleeve between his teeth and attempts to bend his elbow out of it.

“You’re pathetic,” Fixer notes from where he is leaning against one of the countertops in the back with crossed arms.

Boss rolls his eyes but lets go, eyes Fixer down unimpressed.

“Ne'johaa,” Boss grumbles, but inclines his head in a gesture that tells Fixer to come over.

The slicer pushes himself up from the wall and approaches him cautiously, like Boss is about to snap.

Fixer pushes his fingers under the sleeve cuff and wordlessly helps Boss to free his healthy arm.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” Fixer tells before he is starts extracting Boss’ other arm from the suit. Carefully, Fixer removes the splint before he helps Boss to manoeuvre the top over his head.

Boss supresses a pained cry. Breaking bones always hurts but right now he can almost imagine how the bone fragments are crunching against each other and he hates the image with all his heart.

“Like you could. We break bones every other week,” Boss huffs through clenched teeth.

“We break bones, we don’t shatter them,” Fixer corrects, taking a step back.

“Same thing,” the older comments and lays down on the exam table, watching the medical droid approach with the pain inhibitor hypo.

The droid doesn’t say anything, just administers the hypo and watches while Boss sticks his arm into the bone mender. The hypo relieves the worst of the pain and makes him relax just a little bit.

After the medical droid adjusts the bone mender, he leaves the room again, leaving Boss and Fixer behind in silence.

Fixer snatches the holo chair for himself and pushes away from the desk in the corner, floating over until he turns up next to Boss.

“You can go, you know? I’m good alone,” Boss explains. The whirring of the machine used to intimidate him, but that feeling is only a background noise, now that he fell victim to broken bones as often as he did.

“And watch Scorch and Sev bicker over whatever di’kutla thing they have found? Nah, thanks,” Fixer kicks up his legs to rest on the medical table and pulls out his datapad.

When Boss turns his head a little, he can watch the slicer work on the mission report. At least that is something he won’t have to take care of later.

In Boss’ experience, the mending of a broken bone takes around 30 minutes. In addition to a long nap to recover from the physical stress, or so Fixer has told him.

After over an hour, the bone mender is still working. It makes Boss wonder if that thing is already anywhere close to finishing and how much longer he will be stuck here. The exam table is getting uncomfortable slowly.

It takes another few minutes before pain creeps back into the forefront of Boss’ mind. It isn’t the same bone crunching pain as before, this feels more like a deep, bruising pressure that threatens to crush his arm once again.

“Hey Fix?” He asks.

Fixer hums and nods but doesn’t look up from the datapad. He rakes a hand through his hair, a gesture of focus.

“How long do these things need?”

Only now does Fixer seem to notice the progressing time. He frowns and gets up, stepping around the table.

Boss watches the slicer touch the display of the bone mender a few times. It beeps a few times, and Boss really hopes that Fixer isn’t just messing up his arm or anything like that.

“It seems that the bone mender can only give a rough estimation based on your scanner pictures and the already made progress, but the estimation is another hour before the mending is done.

Boss frowns and turns his head away with a huff. Great, another hour of this aaray.

“Is the pain returning?” Fixer inquires.

Boss stays quiet for a moment before he determinately turns his head again to look Fixer in the eyes.

“Should it?” He grits out.

Fixer rolls his eyes, already used to the stubbornness of his vod. He approaches the cabinets and starts digging through one of them.

Boss frowns at Fixer’s actions. He can already feel the trouble coming at them.

“I can give you some more pain meds,” Fixer suggests when he returns to Boss’ side with a hypo in his hand.

“Fixer, put that back,” Boss states and lets a little bit of his command tone slip into his voice.

“Relax. I’ll adjust the inventory status before we leave. Noone will notice,” Fixer brushes him off and holds the hypo up, looking at Boss expectingly.

Boss sighs and rubs his forehead with his free hand. “Fine.”

Fixer tilts the other’s head to the side gently before placing the hypo against his neck. He doesn’t give a warning before the injection, but Boss doesn’t care because the pain fades immediately and his strained muscles melt against the table.

“You steal medical supplies often?” Boss asks.

“I don’t steal.” Fixer pets his shoulder. Boss attempts to swat the hand away but his movements are pretty sluggish already.

“I’m merely avoiding long request and distribution processes.”

Boss would care way more about Fixer’s criminal streak if he had more energy right now. Is this the treatment that is tiring him out or…

“Fixer, did you drug me?” Boss accuses. His vision is swimming just a little. That osik’ovid.

“Just something to help the pain. But a little rest would do you good,” Fixer smiles mildly before he sits back down in the holo chair. He looks smugly satisfied.

Boss thinks about complaining for a second but figures that he can back at Fixer later.

“Don’t steal any more meds,” Boss says, annoyed, before he closes his eyes and relaxes his body.

“No promises, Sir. We are pretty low on antibiotics,” Fixer chuckles.

When Ahsoka wakes early in the morning, she immediately knows that it is going to be a very long, very pain-filled day.

The pain in her shoulders and elbow joints has set in a few months after the first training exercises with Torrent Company. Maybe she wouldn’t even have associated it with the stunners but the pain that bristles in her body is so electric that she can’t really think of a different explanation.

Their last training session was a while ago but after missions the pain has a nasty habit to flare up for a rotation or two.

Still, Ahsoka drags herself out of bed. She probably won’t have to be anywhere today. They are en route back to Coruscant after rescuing Master Windu and Master Skywalker on Vanqor. Both masters are currently recovering in bacta tanks.

Slowly, she slips into her boots and gets up with one hand braced against the wall. Caf. The heat might help and the caffeine will for sure help so that will be her first stop.

She slowly trudges into the mess hall and towards the caf machine. The hall is still almost empty, and it will probably take another hour before the rest of the 104th begins their day.

The caf maker fills the flimsi-cup slowly with a soft trickling of brown liquid. Ahsoka folds her arms on top of the machine slowly and rests her head on top of her arms.

She lets her eyes close again. If she just doesn’t move at all and lets her mind slip a little more towards meditation, the pain is almost bearable.

“Morning, Commander.” Ahsoka startles into awareness again, likely a few minutes later.

Vet, Wolfpack’s CMO, is now preoccupied with the caf maker, offering her the full cup while placing an empty one under the output for himself.

She slowly reaches out for the cup, but when she lifts it up to her mouth, a tingling numbness shoots through her arm, almost making her drop the cup.

Vet reaches out and takes the cup from her again before she can spill it over herself.

“Careful,” he comments. “Are you alright?”

Ahsoka nods swiftly. “Funny bone,” she forces out through clenched teeth.

“Togruta have funny bones?” Vet inquires, setting her cup down on top of the caf maker.

“I think most people have funny bones.” She goes back to leaning against the machine, resting her head on top of it. This feels way nicer. Maybe she can just stay right here.

“Clones don’t.”

“Oh.” She smiles a little at Vet. “That sounds practical.”

He picks up his caf and takes a sip before looking at her intently.

“Are you sure you are feeling alright, Commander? Respectfully, you look a little unwell.”

Tricking a medic is difficult, especially— Ahsoka noticed early— if it is not your own medic but one who looks especially closely because they are newly responsible for you.

It is also a bad start if the medic is already suspicious, but Ahsoka hadn’t really thought that she would meet Vet here this early, so she unfortunately came unprepared.

“Just some pain,” she replies.

Vet frowns, the white scar on his temple crinkles with worry as his eyes narrow.

“Pain?” He inquires.

“Only a little buzzing.”

“Buzzing?” Great, looks like she is only talking herself deeper into the hole.

Vet eyes her down critically and Ahsoka is feeling a little uncomfortable under his gaze, but she stays put.

“Where exactly?”

“Just my shoulders and elbows. But it’s not a big deal, it happens.” The tips of her lekku twitch softly.

“Would you let me take a look at that? What you are describing could be indicating nerve damage.”

Ahsoka hesitates, displeased and looks at him grouchy.

“Nerve damage requires monitoring,” Vet adds, suddenly sporting his best sabacc face.

Finally, Ahsoka ends their stare-down with burying her face in her arms again.

“Fine,” she muffles. “But don’t tell Master Skywalker.”

“Don’t worry. We won’t take him out of the tank until we hit Triple Zero. Absolute confidentiality,” he grins at her with an odd mix of danger and complicity.

It inclines Ahsoka to slowly push up from the caf maker and follow the medic down the hallway.

The medbay isn’t far from the mess hall but Ahsoka already wishes herself back into her bunk to sleep some more and then stretch out under the air conditioner.

“Hop on, make yourself comfortable,” Vet says when they enter one of the treatment rooms. She slowly settles to sit on the biobed, still facing Vet who is now scrolling through the datapad in his hand.

A small red astromech rolls around the corner, cheeping happily and halts in front of Ahsoka’s legs.

“Ahsoka, meet Red. She’s equipped with medical protocols,” Vet introduces the little droid by her feet.

She smiles softly at the astromech. “Nice to meet you, Red. I didn’t know astromechs could be medical droids.”

“Rico thinks that the 2-1B droids are eerie so one of the guys redesigned a medical program that would fit a different type of droid.”

Red’s optical lens turns a few times, calibrating, before she starts to scan Ahsoka.

“Do you think you would prefer warmth or cold to relieve the pain right now?” Vet asks. “It is up to your personal feeling.”

“Cold, I think.”

“Alright. Do tell if that changes.” He picks up two cool packs and presses one on each of her shoulder. It dulls the buzzing feeling a little, making her sigh.

The little red astromech chirps eagerly and circles around the biobed towards Vet, projecting the results of her scans for the medic. Vet eyes them critically.

“Yes, it does look like there is some minor damage to the nerves in your arms. Any idea what could have caused this?”

Ahsoka shrugs into Vet’s hands to the best of her abilities. “Probably from the stuns during training,” she offers. It is her best guess after all.

She can see and feel Vet freeze, his force signature suddenly clouding with a looming confusion.

“Excuse me?”

“From stuns,” she repeats.

“Yes, I got that. General Skywalker lets the training droids shoot at you with actual ammunition?” Vet inquires. His hands rest firmly on her shoulders, but he doesn’t press down painfully.

“Well… it’s not exactly the training droids shooting. Master Skywalker thinks I should gain more experience with deflecting the attacks of life forms since they are more unpredictable so—”

“Force, if I catch that Jedi,” Vet growls unhappily. He crouches down a little and catches her gaze, looking at Ahsoka intently.

“Just so I am understanding this correctly. General Skywalker— who, by the way is responsible for your health and well-being— lets Rex and his guys shoot you with stunners?”

Ahsoka feels like she should deny the claim, but it would look pretty unbelievable at this point, so she simply nods.

“That describes it pretty accurately,” she gives in.

“Do you—” he takes a moment to gather his words. “Have you got any idea how dangerous that is? Stuns were developed to hunt down criminals. It is generally accepted that a proportion of people will sustain injuries because it is a safer option than lethal ammunition.”

“Vet, I’m fine,” she attempts but the medic is ignoring her on account of continuing his lecture.

“Aside from relatively harmless side effects, you could also suffer seizures or heart palpitations. Or you could end up comatose. Or dead. How often have you been subjected to this sort of training?”

“Uhm… hard to tell,” she answers. To be honest, she has no idea, really. It has been a few months since Anakin brought this sort of training up for the first time in the hangar on Coruscant.

“Is it a regular occurrence?”

She nods. “Kinda.”

Vet exhales audibly and he looks like he is trying really hard to hide his horror. He looks down, pondering, before his eyes meet Ahsoka’s again.

“I’ll have to bring this up to General Plo. This sort of thing is seriously dangerous. If you are subjected to more stunning, the pain in your arms could become chronic. Okay?”

Ahsoka grumbles but finally complies and nods. “Fine. But don’t do the retelling this dramatic.”

Vet sighs but nods and stands up again, only to pull her into a very gentle hug.

“You are a disaster. And Skywalker and Kenobi, too. Your entire lineage is a catastrophe. I have not envied Kix for a single day of my life,” he complains and it mildly reminds Ahsoka of Wolffe.

She chuckles softly but leans into the hug.

When Fox was first assigned to the command batch to train under Alpha-17, he was the equivalent of a 6-year-old child. They were sitting on the floor, Fox between Cody and Wolffe while 17 had explained to them the importance of preening and showed them how to take care of their wings.

At this point, Fox’ wings barely reach the length of his outstretched arms. His primaries and alulas are a deep-red colour, the feathers that are closer to his spine blend into a pinkish ombre and then a light beige colour.

A few years later, they will paint their armour in accordance with their primaries. Generations of his vod’ika will wear armour that carries the colour of Fox’ wings.

On Kamino, they take the preening very seriously. Not that that is very difficult. 17 shows them a few times, after that it becomes their favourite bonding activity.

After an odd growth spurt, Fox’ wings tuck on his shoulders painfully. He holds his head up high during training but at night he lets Wolffe tug him into his cot and rests on his chest, letting both his wings hang down to the floor.

After they ship out to different battalions across the galaxy, Fox rarely sees his batch anymore.

-----

Ponds stalks down the halls of the guard barracks. The first thing he realizes is that he stands out. Not just because his armour is coloured differently. The thing that really strikes him is the fact that all of his brothers here have the same patters painted onto their armours.

Ponds can’t tell them apart. It’s an uneasy feeling that makes his wings bristle softly.

The troopers eye him equally suspicious, dodging him, always two steps away and keeping their heads turned away from him.

Fox’ office lies quietly at the end of the hallway. Ponds approaches it and braces himself before he knocks on the door heavily.

There is no answer to his call, so he opens the door and steps inside, slowly taking in the scenery.

Fox is passed out at his desk, head resting on his arms with a few datapads stacked around him. Ponds has no idea for what one could require more than one datapad, but he has a feeling that the reason is depressing so he isn’t too eager to find out.

He approaches him quietly, sets his helmet down on the side and steps up behind Fox.

The other’s wings look rumpled, dull with a lot of broken primaries. It is a little hard to tell because of the colour of Fox’ wings, but Ponds is pretty sure that there is blood drying at some of the feather bases.

Carefully, he brushes his fingers over the first row of coverts, carding them back into place. He keeps his touch light, so he doesn’t startle Fox awake but the other doesn’t so much as stir, just stretches into the touch longingly.

Ponds makes a split-second decision and soon later, makes the first com call.

-----

Fox wakes slow and syrupy which means that he is neither waking from being knocked unconscious nor being awoken by the alarm for the next shift cycle.

A weight lies heavy on his chest. Did Hound let Grizzer get to him again? That di’kut.

Fox reaches up sleepily, but his hand doesn’t find the leathery hide of a reptile. Instead, his fingers find soft feathers, fluffy and well-preened. Oh. Another vod.

Slowly he opens his eyes, rubs his face with his hands before he attempts to push himself up on his elbows.

“No,” someone huffs firmly from beside Fox and throws an arm over his chest, effectively pinning him down on the mattress again.

Fox turns his head and catches the attentive gaze of Wolffe resting beside him, only dressed in his blacks and his wings stretched out comfortably. One broad, dark maroon coloured wing rests behind his back, the other is stretched out over Fox and Thire, who turns out to be the vod resting on top of his chest.

Looks like his youngest commander was in need of some cuddles. Clingy.

Fox huffs offendedly but lets Wolffe pin him to the ground. He didn’t even know that his batch would be on Coruscant any time soon. They haven’t been keeping up really.

“What are you doing at the homefront?” Fox inquires. It comes out sharper than he wants it to.

Wolffe ignores the rude tone. “Only me and Kote,” he answers. “And Ponds. He got special medbay clearance for cuddles from Camouflage. Something about being taken hostage but apparently Commander Tano got him out at the last moment.”

Hostage? Fox usually has no idea to where his brothers are deployed. He used to keep tabs on them but over the months, he kind of lost them out of sight. Not that they reach out a lot, but Fox prefers to blame himself.

He lifts his head effortfully to search for Ponds across the room. He finds that not only his batchmates but also a larger part of the guard command squad is spread out around the room, sleeping and dozing.

Right next to him, he spots Thorn who has his arms and his wings wrapped tightly around Hound. Grizzer is settled between in the free space by their legs, dragon wings and tail curled around Hound’s bucket possessively.

Buried under one of Grizzer’s wings, Fox can even make out the faintest sliver of Edee’s tiny, spotted loth-cat wings. Since Thire dug that beast out of the dumpster, it has become good friends with the massiff.

Across the room, in an actually bunk, Ponds and Cody are tucked close together, their wings hanging from the mattress on both sides. A small pile of mixed coloured feathers indicates that some preening happened before they had fallen asleep together.

They look relaxed, Fox couldn’t even tell there was something wrong with Ponds by the way he is calmly resting in Cody’s arms, tucked under his chin. He will have to check over the reports later to find out what exactly happened to their batchmate.

A little closer to the door, Tal has his back turned towards Fox, but he can identify him by the glowing amethyst colour of his slim wings that stretch out over two other vode. They seem to be a couple of Thorns tubbies, judging by their young, fluffy wings.

He whistles happily. Something about having all his treasured vode close to him stirs a healing warmth in his body. They rarely have the chance to cuddle and nest together in the guard, and the last time Fox got the same opportunity with his batch was after the battle of Khorm when Wolffe lost his eye and almost got killed.

Wolffe laughs lowly at the noise.  

“We missed you, Fox’ika,” he notes and brushes his fingers through Fox’ curls.

Fox nods solemnly. “I missed you, too.”

A heartbeat of silence. Then he finally gets the courage to ask. “Why are you here?”

“Ponds called us. He was pretty dismayed by the state of your wings. Said you looked like you hadn’t preened them for weeks. You medic put you on leave, by the way. For the wing thing.”

Fox groans in annoyance but at the same time he suddenly notices how light his shoulders feel. There is no pain in his back whatsoever and his wings feel light and fluffy like they used to before he got deployed to Coruscant. Someone must have preened his wings thoroughly while he was asleep.

Maybe this isn’t too bad.

Thire shifts a little on top of him and buries his face against Fox’ throat. He takes another look around the room, his vode, despite all they encountered are still alive. His batch is still complete, despite all odds.

Scratch that, ‘not too bad’ doesn’t even begin to describe the thankfulness Fox is currently experiencing. This is the best he has felt in months.

Wolffe scoots a little closer to Fox, letting the other bury his face against his shoulder.

Fox tightens his hold around Thire and closes his eyes again.

“Hey, Bacta. Still working hard, I see. You got a minute?”

Bacta turns around and barely has time to jump over to the swaying Jedi who is half-leaning against one of the tent posts, wrapping his arms around Vos’ mid to stabilize him.

The 212th has been deployed on some kind of moderately temperatured, dust desert planet for the last few rotations. There are no battles, no shootings, just some recon and putting up GPS posts.

There are also no reports of other Jedi in this planetary system… then again, Quinlan Vos is a Jedi Shadow, so it is kind of his job to be invisible.

In accordance with their mission, there is little to do for the medics, just some scratches and irritated throats from all the dust. Still, Bacta is awake, sorting through some paperwork, tidying up their supplies and watching over his junior medic sleeping in the back.

Good cue.

“Choke, get over here!” Bacta shouts. Vos’ knees yield under him and the only thing Bacta can do is help him get down on his back more or less undamaged. The Jedi is paling quickly.

“Where di’ the floor go?” Vos asks and that amount of slurring is definitely not normal, but at least he is not unconscious so Bacta will count that as a win as long as he still can.

“It caught you,” Bacta answers, putting on his stern medic voice while he takes a closer look at the Jedi in his lap, pressing his gloved fingers to Vos’ neck. His pulse is jittery under his fingers.

“Ha! OI’ reliable. Floor’s always there to catch ‘u.” He trails off at the end and finally Choke hastes around the corner. He puts the shock kit he carried over his shoulder down next to them with a soft thump and kneels down on the other side of the Jedi.

“General?”

“Hey---- Choke, righ’? Fancy seein’ you all ‘ere. Who are the other two guys?”

Choke looks up at Bacta with a concerned frown, but the older medic just shakes his head in tired irritation.

“Alright, General. We’re gonna take care of you.”

The 212th occasionally meets General Vos on assignments, not very often but both the medics and especially Commander Cody have had their fair share of experiences with the Kiffar.

They count it as a win that his usually dallying personality is still shining through, but it is worryingly shallow, forced, like he is clinging to it, and the double vision is definitely a big point of concern.

“What happened?” Choke asks while he opens the kit and pulls out the scanner. Bacta reaches over and uses the little penlight to inspect Vos’ pupils. They are dilated, very much so, and don’t even retract when he flicks the little light right over them.

“The Seps drugged me,” Vos huffs.

“That much is obvious, Sir,” Bacta states. “Any idea what the drug could have been?”

“It cert’nly wasn’ Sansanna Spice,” the Jedi offers and somehow Bacta isn’t at all surprised that Quinlan has likely tried every drug in the larger part of the galaxy. Choke grins lowly, hiding his smirk behind his hand before he goes back to setting up a hydration IV.

“Prob’ly some mind sor’ of mind probe.”

“Mind probe?” Bacta inquires. “You were tortured?”

“Only a lil’ bit.” Ah, yes. Very reassuring.

Bacta looks up at Choke, but the younger medic just shakes his head and shows him the scanner results. Nothing. Not uncommon, especially the databanks for planets in the Outer Rim are nothing close to complete.

“We’ll start you on some antidotes and see if that helps,” Bacta explains and gets up from the floor, leaving Vos with Choke to dig through the supplies for the most broad-spectrum antidote they are equipped with.

He tosses Choke the hypo who catches it out of the air before he reaches for his comlink.

He calls General Kenobi. Technically, the General needs sleep, more than most of the men under his care but Bacta isn’t too eager to later get an earful from the Jedi for not alerting him about the latest predicament of his best friend.

After a few moments— in which Bacta and Choke together managed to manoeuvre Quinlan onto a biobed— their general hastes into the medical tent, letting the flap fall shut with a soft huff of wind.

“Obi!” Quinlan calls and reaches out for the other Jedi.

Obi-Wan nods towards Bacta and Choke as a greeting. He looks a little dishevelled and tired but approaches Quinlan and takes his hand.

“Hello, Quin. I see your mission isn’t going too well?”

“I’s goin’ great. I was about to leave ‘en I got caught. You under’stimate my abilities,” the Jedi insists.

“Don’t mind him, General, he is drugged up well right now. We are working on that,” Bacta explains.

“Your medics are so nice, he hasn’t even given me the evil medic look yet.” Quinlan looks at Obi-Wan as intently as possible with glassy, half-open eyes, pointing exaggeratedly at Choke.

Choke grins a little and catches the hand that Quinlan is waving in his direction, so he doesn’t pull the IV line from his arm.

“Tal is always so mean to me,” the Kiffar complains.

“Yes, I can see why. You are mean to Tal, too. Always getting shot or in some sort of trouble,” Obi-Wan explains with a gentle smile and steps a little closer to the other Jedi. Quinlan rests his head against Obi-Wan’s stomach.

Bacta sits down on the edge of the biobed so he can catch Quinlan’s gaze.

“General? Are you scared? Any feelings of anxiety?” He asks, seriously.

“’S that a threat?” The Kiffer asks, the tone of his voice half-way to suspicious.

Bacta ignores him, turns to Obi-Wan again.

“It doesn’t look like the drug he was given is an anxiogenic. It is likely that is was some sort of psychoactive substance. It will wear off in a few hours,” he explains.

“You’ll stay?” Quinlan looks up at Obi-Wan with pleading eyes.

“Well, if our medics have nothing against that, I believe I am not needed elsewhere at the moment.”

“No objections, Sir. If someone can keep him in bed, it is likely you.”

“Well, you heard him, Quin.”

“Master Windu,” Depa notes surprised when she enters the strategy room of the Jedi Temple.

“I thought the instructions Master Che gave you explicitly included lots of rest?”

Mace switches off the holo table and looks up at his former padawan with an unimpressed frown.

“I am resting,” he argues. It’s true, other than the slow stroll from his quarters to the strategy room, he hasn’t moved an inch today. It left him rather twitchy, honestly.  

“Oh, I am convinced you are,” Depa leans over from behind him and reactivates the holo table.

The display shows scenes from the Triumphant that could be recovered before the ship entered the atmosphere and crashed on Vanqor.

Depa was present during the debriefing, and of course she was informed about Mace’s injuries and recovery. She knows exactly what she is looking at.

“That’s him?” She inquires and points at the long-haired boy. Boba looks exactly like he did in the Arena on Geonosis. To Mace, it feels as if the events are years apart, not mere months.

“Yes.” It dawned on Mace only late, when the ship was already little more than a wreckage in the sand. He needed the Mando’a element added to the equation to connect the dots.

Noone had thought about the possibility that a ten-year-old boy would return for revenge, even after witnessing his father be slain by the Jedi. By Mace.

“I heard that he was taken into custody by Master Plo,” Depa offers.  

“He was, as well as another bounty hunter. One was killed by Aurra Sing in the pirate’s hide-out. Sing, presumably, died when her starship crashed but her body wasn’t recovered for verification,” he recites the mission report.

She rests her hands on his shoulders. “Then what are you pondering about that is worth losing sleep over?”

Mace sighs and glares up at her but she just smiles mildly, eyes curling into half-moons.

“In the arena on Geonosis, all shatterpoints were pointing towards Dooku. It was foolish not to kill him. Instead, I chose to kill a comparably uninvolved man.”

Depa raises an eyebrow. “He tried to set you on fire. Then he proceeded to shoot at you. He could have killed you in an instant. He would have killed you. I would not exactly call that ‘uninvolved’.”

Mace huffs and shakes his head. “Details. He wasn’t relevant to the war effort. Not back then and he might have never become. Not as relevant as Dooku, anyways.”

“So, you regret not killing Dooku?” She inquires.

He considers her question. “I do not regret. Letting him live was the wrong thing to do,” he answers, finally.

“When did Dooku stop being the war’s shatterpoint?” Depa asks, curiosity shining through her calm demeanour.

Mace ponders on the question for a few moments. He has thought about this before. Many times, when the nights were stretching long without any prospect of rest.

For some time, he was strongly off the opinion, that with the deployment of the clone army, the war could have been carried on by the SIS leaders without a higher controlling party. Violence of such an extent is hard to stop.

His theory was proven wrong when Hondo Ohnaka’s gang captured Dooku and offered him to the Republic for a price. The shatterpoints were the same as on Geonosis, even through the transmission. The fact that the Jedi are highly trained and skilled and still failed again to secure the fallen Jedi is not a comforting thought.

“On Ryloth, I first became aware of it.” On Ryloth, Mace has felt the net of greed and hunger for power that lingered around Mar Tuuk and Wat Tambor. Even if Dooku had been slain during this very battle, the war would have continued under the dominion of a different leader. Maybe different but still fought out in the blood of millions of innocent people.

Depa lifts her hands and presses her fingertips against his temples, rubbing in slow circles. The action makes Mace chuckles softly.

“Do I look that bad?” He inquires.

“I must admit, you seem a little out of it. You rarely feel guilt, but right now it is rather prominent,” Depa says, carefully. Mace doesn’t mind her nosing around in his emotions too much. They have known each other for long enough, grown their bond over the years and decades.

“I irritates me to think that with killing his father, I pushed him towards a path of anger and darkness.”

“His situation is indeed rather unusual. Answering violence with more violence, however…” Depa drifts off at the end. She knows very well how the death of one’s parents can change the course of events.

“Boba Fett is a son of Mandalore. Seeking revenge for slain comrades is a central part in their culture. He probably thinks it is his duty,” Mace offers.

“Duty or not, he could always make a different choice. I am Chalactan and still I command people to fight in a war. You are Korun and a cat-person.” The last part is almost half-way to a tease, Mace can hear the smirk on her face.

“Right, Korunnai and cats. That is basically unheard off.” He rolls his eyes and turns his head to face her. “If it weren’t for your duties as a Jedi, you would never fight in a war.”

“I made a decision. My duty to the people of the galaxy outweighs the teachings of my people. At least until this war comes to an end.”

Mace knows that this decision had cost her a lot of energy.

Silence lingers between them, Mace lifts a hand to his face to rest it over one of hers.

“You might have influenced his path, but it would be wrong to pretend you are the only one at fault,” Depa lectures on.

Warmth rises in his chest and soothes the pain of bruises that linger over his ribs. Watching Depa grow into the Jedi Master she is today, knowledgeable and sensitive, is one of the biggest gifts in his life.

“Wise words, padawan mine.”

Depa leans forward to switch the holo projection off again. It bathes the room in darkness.

“Former padawan,” she corrects. “Come join me for some meditation?”

To say that Agen is angry is putting it mildly. He is furious.

He wishes he could have accompanied Kenobi, Skywalker and Master Gallia to the Saleucami sector to rescue Eeth, but he had been sent on his own mission just a few days prior. Mace had eventually informed him what happened to the other Zabrak.

Eeth is back on Coruscant now, dropped off by a medical ship. He is alive and at least that is something. On the other hand, Zabraks are incredibly hard to kill so alive can mean just about anything, from a concussion to body-cut-in-two, the span is wide. Agen was ‘alive’ before, with almost all of his ribs broken and a lung collapsing.

He paces the corridor in front of the Halls of Healing again.

He is also angry at Master Che because no matter how much he argues and promises to be quiet and give Eeth space, she won’t let him see him.

Steady steps pull him out of his head and away from the idea that he could go and meditate or do some lightsaber training and then return later to see if he has a better chance with Master Che.

“Master Kolar,” Mace greets him. “Did the Chief Healer kick you out?”

“Bold of you to assume she let me inside in the first place,” he answers. They rest their foreheads together for a brief moment. Mace isn’t a Zabrak, but he is just as much their pack as Master T’ra is and Tan used to be, so the human grew accustomed to their customs soon enough.

Agen is still agitated because Vokara Che disclosed that she needed to tend to her patient in a calm atmosphere. Eeth needs peace and quiet to start his recovery, and according to her, Agen is causing turmoil wherever he goes and especially in the Halls of Healing. Such things are reserved for the battlefield, he is a Jedi Master after all, he knows when to take a step back, thank you very much.

“Let us see if I can smuggle you inside with me.” Mace pulls away and interlocks their hands. Together they stride into the Halls of Healing. Agen grins lowly. Mace’s murder walk has certainly gotten him places, no matter how much he denies to have one.

They are barely through the door when Agen locks eyes with Master Che. The blue Twi’lek does not look amused in the slightest but her disapproving gaze neutralizes when she spots Mace.

“Master Windu. What brings you to my Halls at such a late hour?” It is not late at all, the sun over the skyline of Coruscant is barely setting. Still, Master Che’s cool tone emphasises that visitation hours have ended a while ago.

“Good evening, Master Che. We came to make sure Master Koth is on the way back to health. It is my duty, after all, to make sure my fellow Councillor is recovering well from their injuries.”

“And I assume you require Master Kolar for your emotional support.” She eyes their interlocked hands, unimpressed.

“Quite right.” Mace nods once, determined, like it is perfectly reasonable for the Master of the Order to drag someone else around with them for emotional support.

Agen spots Mace’s mild smile and has to direct his gaze to the floor in order to keep up his neutral expression. This is ridiculous. Suddenly, he feels like a padawan again, sneaking out with his friends at night to explore the levels of Coruscant that are closest to the Temple. His shoulders relax just a little.

The healer frowns and her mouth twitches lightly in displeasure. “His state is still fragile, so he needs absolute rest. If you agitate him in any way, I will have to remove you from the Halls of Healing. Understood?”

Mace nods. “We will be mindful.”

She redirects her gaze to Agen. “Master Kolar?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Master Che sighs and pins them down with her gaze for another moment before waving them on and quickly disappearing somewhere to turn to more serious matters.

“I can’t believe we just got away with that,” Agen mutters while they head down the many hallways.

“The perks of being a Council member, my friend.”

“The perks of being friends with one, indeed.”

Eeth’s room is located at the end of one of the hallways. Mace is about to knock but Agen stops him. “He’s probably asleep.”

Mace nods and steps to the side. “After you.”

Agen presses the door opener that makes the door slide open with a soft hiss. Together they carefully enter.

The room is dark, only a few slithers of light fall through the blinds and draw patterns of sunlight on the walls. The temperature is carefully regulated like in the rest of the Temple, but Agen still shudders when he steps inside.

Eeth is curled up on his side, face to the wall. His shoulders are slowly rising and falling with each slow breath. The heart monitor on the wall is active but since no healers are lingering around, Agen figures that he is through the worst of it.

The sharp, cleansing smell of Bacta hits Agen’s sensitive nose and rises to his head, making his vision blur for a second before he can blink the fog away.

He takes a few large steps to the bed before he sinks down beside Eeth. The blanket is covering his friend to the hips so Agen shuffles around a little until he can wrap his arms around his waist. The weight of the body in his hold grounds Agen. Eeth is still here, still alive and he can still grab and feel him.

T’ra used to tease them about having no concept of personal space. She probably still would but when they grew older, they stopped their habit of passing out huddled together in public. Both Agen and Eeth still like the close proximity.

Technically, they do have a concept of personal space. Said concept just involves a lot more hugs, bed sharing and foreheads bumps than the human average.

Mace halts for a moment, hesitates but when Eeth doesn’t so much as stir, he sits down at the foot end and stretches his legs out, leaning against the wall. He likes to keep his space and they let him.

“I wondered when you would come visit,” a soft voice murmurs against the pillow.

Agen lets out a deep chuckle and noses the skin where Eeth’s neck connects to his back. “I apologize, my friend. I had to wait for Master Windu to smuggle us inside.”

Eeth huffs but turns slowly, with a low pained breath, to bury his face into Agen’s shoulder. “Thank the Force you are finally here.”

“How are you feeling?” Agen murmurs.

Eeth shrugs softly and tilts his head into Agen’s neck. “I hadn’t hoped to see these walls again. No less am I glad to be back.”

Losing Eeth would have been… no small feat. If the time comes, Agen knows he will have to let go. Still, he appreciates every day he gets to live alongside his fellow Jedi and his friends.

It seems that Mace shares the sentiment since he carefully shuffles up to sit on Eeth’s other side. He gently rests his hand on their friend’s shoulder.

Eeth breathes deeply, stretches his muscles slowly and tucks on Agen’s hair, almost playfully.

“You have your hair up?” Eeth notes and Agen huffs in response. He only ties his hair up when he is stressed out of his mind, of course Eeth would notice.

Agen takes Eeth’s hands and gently traces his fingers over the bandages that are wrapped around his palms and fingers. There are red lightning markings that disappear into his sleeves, the skin around his wrists looking angry and inflamed.

Eeth tucks his hands under his chest and turns a little more, so he is buried between Agen and the mattress.

“I apologize, my friend,” Agen notes. He means it. If he could, he would have taken Eeth’s place. It wouldn’t have made a lot of difference for everyone around them, but Agen has been in the position of being tortured before, on Brentaal IV. He could have taken it.

Eeth’s horns scratch lightly against his cheek, his breath fanning over the skin of Agen’s neck. He stays quiet, says nothing, only listens to Agen’s hearts pumping blood through his body in tandem.

Agen uses their position to slowly rub his cheek against Eeth’s hair, making the everlasting scent of Bacta that clings to the other Zabrak finally disappear.

“Is the sun still up?” Eeth asks softly. Agen makes an affirmative noise. “It’s sunset. Would you like us to open the blinds?”

Eeth hums affirmatively. Agen looks up at Mace because he really does not want to move right now. The other Jedi shoots him a scrunched look but reaches out with the Force for the window controls.

The evening sun is setting in the direction of the window, its streams spilling into the room as soon as the blinds open. It bathes the room into a calming orange hue, softer than the lights on Iridonia.

Eeth exhales against Agen and rubs his face into his shoulder before he turns over with a sigh like a large, lazy loth-cat. There are bruises under Eeth’s jaw, large ones, stretching over his neck and jawbone, complemented by deep scratches that Agen knows stem from metal claws. Only now does he notice the exhausted whistling in Eeth’s breathing pattern.

Mace’s worry hits him just a second later, but the other man makes sure to catch and hide it before Eeth can perceive it too.

Eeth doesn’t seem to notice any of the negative emotion. All in all, he seems pretty out of it, so Agen just pulls his mental shields up and wraps them tightly around the three of them until Mace nudges him back with his own force presence. Slowly, he loosens his grip again.

Eeth purrs softly and Agen reciprocates the noise, letting the soft sound tumble from his lungs deliberately. The noise unravels something deep, tense in his shoulders, a certain fear that has been lingering there since his best friend got abducted. He knows he is being overprotective, but at the same time, he feels guilty for not being protective enough.

The tension in his spine unknits slowly. Eeth relaxes the same way in his arms, and it doesn’t take long until they have purred each other into relaxed states.

This happens sometimes, when they are both tired and comfortable. One of them starts purring, the other reciprocates and before they know it, they fall asleep somewhere.

Agen barely manages to stay awake, eyes growing heavy, but he forces himself awake and listens to the soft noises that fall from Eeth’s lips whenever he breathes out. He reciprocates them with deeper rumbles from his own chest.

“Sleep,” Mace whispers and slowly opens the band that holds Agen’s hair together. “I will watch over the two of you.”

Agen huffs because he doesn’t need a protector, nor a guard, and he should be the one guarding Eeth, but he also trusts Mace.

In addition to that, he is so tired. Aside from his meditations, rest hasn’t been coming easy these last few days.

Kit sighs when they finally reach the gunship pick-up spot on the windy plateau.

The sun burns in his sensitive eyes, and it feels like it is melting his skin from his body, making the exposed parts of his fingers prickle softly. For the hundredth time, he swears to himself that he will never accept an assignment to a desert planet again.

Even though his unit is specifically trained for scuba missions, sometimes a foreign task can’t be avoided, especially during times of war. The troopers were equally unamazed as Kit.

Monnk is standing by his side and, like the rest of the squadron, his shoulders a slightly slumped over. Kit can feel their exhaustion in the Force. All of them are overheated, walking through the desert sand with 20 pounds of gear each for a couple of hours.

Kit flashes Shark a grin when he notices the medic’s attention focused in his direction.

They board the LAAT/i and Kit is just a little jealous that he, as an amphibian, doesn’t posses the ability to sweat because once he steps onto the gunship, the heat that cooks under his skin doesn’t vanish.

The cooling systems are a little helpful but with the damaged stage of his skin, Kit knows he will have to find a nice, cool pool of water very soon. His eyes burn with the lack of moisture.

The temperature on this planet is almost thrice as high as the temperature he is most comfortable at.

Shark stands close by him, looming, like he has done since the beginning of the mission. The medic has an eye for identifying those who are most threatened by their current assignment and then finds more or less subtle ways to stay close to them.

His victim of choice, this time, seems to be Kit himself. He probably has guessed that the heat would be hardest to bear for the Nautolan Jedi.

“General,” Shark greets and nods his head. It’s a subtle way of communicating his worry. If Kit lets his composure slip now, the medic will know that something is wrong.

“Shark,” he returns quietly. He doesn’t want to spite his CMO, but they are almost out of this oven of a planet. He will be alright.

Once they return to the Venator, the squadron splits up quickly and after a silent exchange with Monnk, Kit quickly decides to delay the debriefing for a few hours. The commander’s curls are hanging limb over his forehead from the sweating he did under the helmet, and Kit has no intention to make him suffer more than he already did. He doesn’t imagine plastoid to be very heat-resistant.

Kit leaves the hangar into a different direction and makes his ways down the hallway quickly. The carefully regulated temperature of the Venator hits his burning skin and makes a bout of nausea rise to his head.

Moving has become tedious a while ago, but when he finally reaches the pool, he is convinced that another corridor would have been an impossible feat.

He kicks off his boots and removes both topcoats of his tunic before sitting down on the edge. Submerging his legs into the cool wetness has never felt this good before, he is sure.

Kit groans softly with relief and carefully slips underwater fully. For a moment, the water irritates his dry eyes, but the feeling disappears rather quickly.

The dry skin of his gills makes it a little hard to breathe underwater but Kit figures that, as long as he doesn’t exert himself right now, he will be alright. It is an unknown feeling, having his lungs operate better than his gills when he usually prefers to be underwater.

He paddles a few lazy circles and loops, spreads his fingers to inspect the damage to the delicate webbed skin between them. A few thin threads of blood float away in the water.

When he notices the red blinking attention light, his body has already cooled a good bit. Which doesn’t mean he feels quiet back to normal again, but it will have to do for now.

Kit reaches out with the Force to find both the Force signatures of Shark and Monnk. It nags on him a little because Monnk usually leaves after a few minutes if he doesn’t appear on the surface of the pool, figuring that he is busy at the given moment.

Shark on the other hand will wait until he resurfaces and if he doesn’t do so within the next few moments, the medic will probably think that Kit drowned and force someone into an unnecessary rescue mission.

Still, Kit appreciates the dedication, especially to his more species-specific needs.

Slowly, he kicks back up to the surface. His tentacles twitch lightly when he spots Monnk sitting on the edge of the pool, legs hanging into the water. Swimming with others is so much more fun, than swimming alone. He has missed the company in the pool since Nahdar has left to finish the last stretches of his apprenticeship by himself.

Shark is standing behind the commander, letting his eyes rake across the pool. Kit waves at them with a grin before he dives back into the water and slowly paddles over to the edge of the pool.

He surfaces again right next to Monnk but his SIC isn’t startled by that anymore. They have worked side-by-side long enough.

“Hello General. Shark is off the opinion that you are currently dying,” Monnk greets him cheerfully.

Shark rolls his eyes and huffs offendedly. “I am not. I was merely pointing out that letting you go for a swim unsupervised was not without certain risks.”

Kit hooks his arms over the edge and rests his head on top of them, letting the rest of his body float lazily in the water.

“I am not dying Shark. Merely reacclimating. I appreciate the thought, though.”

The medic looks a little grouchy but finally shrugs and sets his medic kit in the floor to sit down next to Monnk.

“Would you mind a quick scan? Just for my own peace of mind?” The medic asks.

“I’m all yours, Lieutenant.” Kit grins up at him but stays where he is. If it will help Shark sleep at night, he can bear a few minutes of hovering.

Shark returns the grin softly, seemingly pleased, and opens the med kit. The grin twists into a suspicious frown once he reads out the scanner results.

“Your body temperature is still slightly elevated.”

Shark takes Kit’s hands and inspects the damage to the webbed skin between his fingers, brushing his thumbs over the dehydrated skin.

“And? What’s my diagnosis?” Kit inquires, just a tad bit smug. Both the troopers are part of the command squad, they are quite used to his well-timed unseriousness at this point.

Shark pins him down with a tired glare.

“You’ll be okay. Maybe,” he notes dryly and tosses Kit a hydration pouch. Monnk snorts softly.