#fortunate few

“Eyes on me kid.”

The trooper half-covered in rubble gasped in a shaky breath and forced his eyes back open. His gaze wavered as he tried to focus on the face hovering above him.

“Are you…” the trooper coughed, the sound painful and wet. Blaze carefully wiped away the trail of blood trickling from the corner of his brother’s mouth and returned to cradling his head in his lap as Knockout, Cog, and Dart worked to free him from the remains of the wall.

The kid’s eyes were starting to drift closed again.

“Don’t try to speak, vod’ika,” he soothed, doing his best to project a sense of calm. “You’ll be alright, just keep your eyes on me.”

“You’re Relief Corps, aren’t you?”

". . . Is it over?" 

‘Noma,’ he said. Then, because he needed the reassurance. ‘You’re ok?’

A hint of a chuckle, a brush of chastisement for the rashness of his actions, but it didn’t linger long. ‘Thanks to you, my young padawan.’

His mind caught on the word.

‘You called me that, didn’t you? Out loud. I heard it.’

‘I did.’ There was a moment as they both considered what the implications of that might be. ‘I don’t regret it.’

‘It’s not a secret anymore, is it?’ he asked weakly.

In return he got not a word, but rather an image, a memory of the battlefield. Of himself – Maker, he barely recognised himself – in a whirlwind of jade green light, lightsabers moving almost faster than he could follow. He looked, he realised, like a Jedi, if you looked past the plastoid armour marking him as a clone of the GAR.

The Fortunate Few

A Clone Wars 'Relief Corps' AU

It was raining the day Blaze’s luck ran out.

Of course, torrential downpour was the norm on Kamino. The patter of water hitting the ground was familiar to every clone, whether they liked it or not. Usually, the constant sound got on Blaze’s nerves whenever he had to go outside of the main buildings of Tipoca city, but today he was on edge for an entirely different reason.

Two day ago, his newly assembled company had been separated from the rest of the 473rd and held back from their planned deployment. The only reason he’d been given was that they had a ‘special assignment’, which was apparently all his rank would grant him. Frankly, he'd been fortunate to get even that, typical cryptic long-necks. Blaze had no idea what sort of assignment called for only a single company, although that didn’t stop him from speculating.

He couldn’t wait to leave Kamino and get away from the watchful eyes of the long-necks so whatever it was, he hoped it was worth the delay.

CT-7962 woke to the sound of quick taps on the door to his pod.

“Psst, 62!”

He sighed and rubbed at groggy eyes. There was only one member of his batch that could feasibly be. He would have heard if Brick had woken, Zip would have been more direct, Blink wouldn’t have said anything.

“Go away 63, I’m trying to sleep.”

“This is going to be interesting,” he said as he strapped on the armour he had removed for their practice. “We’ve never actively worked with front-line troops before. Have you had any more information on what we can expect?”

“No,” Noma said, checking her datapad. “What reports we do have are all very high clearance levels too. I can’t access some of them.”

From the door, Orka was frowning. “I don’t like this, ma’am.”

“Neither do I.”

Noma glanced out of the window down at uninviting planet below with a shudder. Blaze finished shrugging into his gear and joined her.

“We’ve dealt with the unknown before,” he said, fighting off his own unease. “We’ll be fine.” Still, something was nagging at him. He turned to Orka in the doorway. “What was this place called again?”

Orka eyes flicked over towards the window, unease in his frame.

“Umbara, sir.”

Then the General’s head snapped up, tilting to the side as though listening for something and Blaze jumped at the motion, reaching for his DC-17s in an instinctual motion honed through years of training until it became muscle memory.

“General?” he asked.

Javes reached out to rest a hand on his shoulder and he didn’t even think to try and move as some of the tension drained away.

“Blaze,” she said, “I think there’s something alive out there.”

They hadn’t been running for very long, occasionally changing direction when the General seemed to sense something, when General Javes finally skidded to a stop beside one of the downed fighters, eyes closed and a frown on her face.

“General?”

“They’re here,” she said as the rest of the rescue party caught up with them. “We’re close.”

Whatever she had been doing with the Force it seemed it wasn’t good enough to pinpoint the trooper directly, but there were enough of them that they could conduct a search of the area without it having to be like finding a needle in a haystack.

“Alright men, spread out, we’re looking for a vod.”