Chapter Text
“Report! All units, report!”
Nothing.
No one answered Kix. Nothing but the ringing aftershock of shells. White spots clouded his vision, remnants of the blinding flash of bombs bursting their own position. Friendly fire. Except with bombs. Kix shouldn’t be stumbling over the rubble in the aftermath like a shiny who hadn’t earned their secret name. This was how Sith waged war – without mercy, without hesitation. Victory, the only goal. Kix was a rare veteran, he’d spent years fighting under Sith Generals. He knew what they were.
Kix found his feet well enough to jog through the remaining rubble, “All units. I need a search and rescue at my position.” People might still be alive, might still be trapped and simply unable to hear him. He’d had his helmet on, at least. If they didn’t.
If they didn’t...
“Copy...Clone Med...unavailable.” Polite nothings, even if half the message felt mumbled, fuzzy and too far away. He swallowed words around a throat dry as Korriban. Their position looked and sounded as lifeless as the Sith homeworld, but maybe that was just his recovering hearing.
He had to try.
“All units! If you’re alive report!”
A hand! Limp, gray where plastoid should’ve been shiny, but a hand. Kix leapt over boulders of what had once been buildings, stumbled when his ankle caught between two wedges but didn’t go down. Reached for the hand, flipped up his scanner searching for a hint of warmth.
Nothing.
“Come on,” Kix shoved his body against craggy pieces of duracrete, each big as a boulder. He shucked off the vambrace with practiced motions, pressed two fingers to the soft, vulnerable skin beneath, to feel with his own hands that life was truly gone from a brother. The scanners were of poor quality – most medical supplies were – and malfunctioned frequently.
The arm fell off the rubble, blood still pouring from where it had been attached to the shoulder joint. A roiling bout of nausea tore through Kix, but he was too experienced to give in. The force of the explosion must have ripped the man apart. Must’ve...Kix clawed into the rubble, even as he knew, that much blood meant an arterial wound and that meant. Three minutes, on the outside, if he was lucky. And the whole limb. Force if the whole limb was gone...
But Kix dug.
“Hello! Hey! Shiny, say something!”
He stopped when he saw the helmet. Transparasteel shattered like the glass it resembled, the protective dome caved in. And blood. More blood than a Clone should have in him. Slowly Kix let the last rock go, hiding the shiny from view. No saving him.
That was the way of war. Kix had fought under General Maul the first few months, him and Commander Savage when he was shiny himself and thought they suited their names. Until General Vader...replaced...General Maul, and taught Kix better the true nature of the Sith. Not possessiveness over the lives under his command, but power at any price. Especially Vader. The casualties told him enough. Victory. Always victory. But – Dark Depths of Mother Waters – the price.
“If anyone’s alive, please!”
Silence. Can’t convince himself its just his hearing. No matter how many rocks he moved, how many basements or shelters he searched, futilely, the silence remained overpowering. No footsteps. No voice save his own. Even his comm kept silent.
“Say something,” he whispered to dead air.
The reply was probably his imagination, the faint groaning of some last refuse in the aftershock. He should get back to the medical tent. Plenty of brothers fought for every fragile breath beneath that frail canvas. They needed every medic they could get. Every moment wasted was a moment another died or lost enough function to be slated for decommissioning. He could help them. Turned away.
Again, a weak groan.
A deeper horror seized his heart – what if he left a brother to die?
“Hang on! I’m a medic.”
A medic. As if that made him a miracle worker. Blasters and bombs (and Sith) had more power to take life than Kix would ever have to save it, even if he had all the bacta in the galaxy. He couldn’t even save one shiny too young for a secret name. Others kept tallies of their kills, but his weren’t in Separatist forces slain but Empire forces he failed to save.
“Hang on,” he pulled aside a slab of duracrete. Yes! A pocket of space and inside lay a crumpled form. His heart fell, but Kix rushed in, hoping against hope for a pulse of life.
The duracrete groaned in protest at even this movement. Not a stable pocket of space. Hopefully this patient didn’t have a broken spine. Kix switched on his headlight, pulled away some burnt, dark cloth and grasped for a wrist.
Life.
Weak. Sluggish but life was still pulsed beneath fragile skin. A wash of relief and adrenaline sent him to his knees. A pulse.
The wrist in his grasp was unarmored, he realized, The skin paler than normal, even for bloodloss. Not a brother, and the GAR wasn’t supposed to waste supplies or attention on civvies.
But, fighting death to save them was no different than fighting death to save a brother. And civilians wouldn’t be decommissioned. Not unless they were caught, but Commander Rex would understand.
“Hey, can you hear me. Do you know what hurts?” Kix raised his head, his light, patting the civvie’s shoulder. Definitely hurt. Dark brown robes grew darker with blood. Shrapnel maybe. Or worse. Kix’ headlamp illuminated a pretty face of age with himself, hair the darkest shade of brown except a flash of gold going gray and delicate features marred with wells of blood. A concussion?
He looked back down at the wounds and his headlamp glinted off something shiny tucked in the civvie’s belt. A weapon?
The pieces of a truly horrible puzzle clicked in Kix’ head. He froze, one hand still gripping the person’s wrist
Not a civvie.
Oh Dark Waters of the Lightless Trench not a civvie!
Kix scrambled back as though from a leviathan’s maw.
A Dragon of the Depths would be less dangerous. Kix had seen Maul in battle – impossibly swift and agile like an extension of his weapon, cleaving huge swaths of burning destruction through the foe untouched. Darth Vader, greater and more terrible still, a Force of Nature encased within the black armor he wore as shield and life support, more destructive than any bomb in their arsenal. And Kix still remembered a nugget of wisdom, overheard when Sith Master Darth Sidious brought Vader to heel.
“One on one, in a fair fight, a Jedi wins against a Sith.”
The most wanted man in the Galaxy was a Jedi. Mace Windu. They said, had Darth Vader not sided with Sidious in the onslaught, the Jedi would’ve...
Kix wasn’t a Sith Master. Or apprentice. He wasn’t even an ARC, just a bog-standard trooper with medical training.
And here, a Jedi!
Seconds passed to the impossibly loud thunder of Kix’ heart. Minutes passed but his head remained attached to his shoulders. No lightsaber cleaved his body in two or severed limbs with a careless swipe. The Jedi didn’t burst out of the crawlspace in a telekinetic storm of power or grasped for Kix’ own life-force to devour and empower his. Inside the darkness, Kix could hear the same hesitant, raspy breaths that drew him down in the hole of unstable shelter.
The Jedi surely knew Kix was there. They could sense emotions. Thoughts. Could read minds and Kix’ mind was a mess of blaring panic and horror beyond the clamor of his boots and armor. Every living thing within half a click knew Kix was here.
Not that anything remained alive. Except him.
And the Jedi.
Kix knew his duty. The clones were born and bred to bridge the gap between the dozens of Sith and thousands of Jedi. If a legion or a battalion or even a single clone stumbled upon a Jedi, they were to do their duty – even if it cost them their lives.
The Jedi was wounded. A clone could kill a wounded Jedi. The prime had killed wounded Jedi, was chosen for it.
Kix reached for his blaster.
He was a medic. The cold durasteel of the pistol-grade weapon a foreign thing compared to the delicate grip for a scalpel, for tweezers, for needle and thread. Kix found his calling in the finesse of healing, not the force of killing. All clones had to meet certain minimum standards, but he’d jumped on the medical track early as he could. Had barely any time between anatomy classes and first aid work to keep a minimum grade in shooting targets. As war began, his skill only further atrophied as his experience in medicine grew.
Kix pulled the weapon out with trembling hands.
He had never actually used the blaster before. Not like this. Not for its purpose. He’d shot blank silhouettes, hadn’t dared point the pistol at a living thing because you didn’t point at anything you didn’t want dead.
He’d seen enough death.
No telekinetic force crushed the weapon or blew it up or yanked it from sweaty hands. With shuddered breaths Kix dragged his feet back into the dark. The blaster felt made of lead. Was that the weight of the Force? Not enough to stop him from raising the weapon. He pointed the muzzle between tired dark eyes, right at a cut dripping blood over a black brow, trailing the sharp curve of one high cheekbone with tears of red.
The Jedi didn’t look like a legendary Knight, an impossibly powerful Force contained within flesh. Didn’t even look like a Sith – larger than life, surrounded by an aura of command, eyes blazing with fervor that saw worlds conquered and a galaxy brought to heel. No, the slumped person leaning against the rubble, streak of golden hair paling to gray looked up at him with an expression as war-weary and death-sickened as Kix’s own heart.
The weapon’s muzzle trembled.
Kix was a medic, his steady hands were his brothers’ lifeline. No matter how dire the situation, no matter how hopeless the fight, scalpel and needle had to remain still. His hands hadn’t trembled against the dead shiny’s. They didn’t tremble buried deep in the guts of a dying brother, fighting, fighting against the dying of the light. No tremor shook his fingers in the med-tent or on the battlefield.
Until now.
Pain-glazed eyes slid shut. A resigned slump drooped his head against his chest, against blood-darkened robes. No resistance, no blaze of lightsaber or use of Force mystics. The Jedi was just...letting him take the shot. The easiest shot he’d ever take.
Kix’s body rebelled. His stomach was a churning centrifuge of nausea, his breaths came sharp as punches, too fast and hard to get any air. His head swam. His ears filled with the overwhelming pulse of his own heart (of life) like the vicious crash of waves during a storm. The barrel of the blaster loomed like a massive ship’s canon before his eyes, the ominous gunmetal gray of the muzzle swallowing the fragile shape of the wounded man entirely.
Jedi weren’t people. They were incarnations of chaos. They destroyed the Empire, ripping her up from her roots. They felt nothing, as stoic as their hidden icy home of Illum. They preached no attachments, a passionless existence. A droid felt more than they.
That’s what everyone said.
“It’s not a person,” someone said hoarsely. That voice wasn’t Kix, didn’t belong to him. Those were a Moff’s words, a Sith’s words coming out of his mouth. Those who looked at the brothers Kix scrambled to save and saw only credits, calculated costs as lifeblood slipped away...
Tears dripped down Kix’s cheeks, darker with stubble. Their splashes over-loud in the silence of this dark sanctuary, like the sky was crying the fattest drops of rain.
He was a soldier, born and bred.
But, Kix chose to be a medic. He saved lives.
And here, a life.
Dying.
The Jedi was dying. Kix didn’t even have to squeeze the trigger, just wait until they cried their last red tear. A terrible invisible fist clenched around his heart. Was this the Force? Was the Jedi taking his life in turn, perhaps as the Sith did and rip out his life to preserve their own? But his heart still beat, still too loud, far too loud in the silence. But the silence was worse. The silence crept in as the Jedi’s breaths grew softer. Weaker. Kix’ feet rooted to the ground.
A step.
Kix took that step. A step loud enough for Vader to hear, as loudly as it shattered the encroaching silence. A step towards the most dangerous type of sentient in the Galaxy. Towards the foe they’d been born and bred to destroy. A foe who would slaughter them in turn.
Another.
Kix was a medic. He had lost lives, had seen those under his care – siblings and civvies alike – slip away. Too many battles with death ended with the final choking sounds of people not going softly and him covered in their lifeblood. Two lives becoming one.
Step.
But never through inaction. Never, ever through maliciousness. Kix had never killed, never taken a life. He never resented his brothers for doing so. That was their purpose. But
Not Kix’s purpose. He’d chosen. He was a medic and his fight was with death. The Jedi’s life was a feeble thing, fading away before his eyes. Death approached. And Kix was a healer. He couldn’t stand the sound of hitched breaths and do nothing. He couldn’t silence those soft puffs of life. He’d never squeezed a trigger or dropped a bomb. Never snuffed out a person. Not even through inaction had he taken a life. Always he had fought death to the bitter end – for brothers yes, and also for the civvies they weren’t allowed to help.
Damn the war! Damn their birth and breeding! Here was a person, hurt. Dying. Kix had the knowledge and skill to save him. This whole war was full of people hurt and dying. A personal, years-long battle between medics and death. Every life saved a victory. Too many victories snatched away – brothers who died, or worse those who lived but couldn’t rejoin the fight and...sent away to Kamino.
Crippled was dead. Their Generals made sure of that.
Kix was so, so tired of death. The war’s appetite for his brothers was an endless, monstrous thing that only grew larger the more it ate. The death and destruction wrought on friends, on foes, on random bystanders and little old ladies and screaming babies all caught in the middle of a Darth’s war. A clone’s fight.
He knelt. Within touching distance of a Force user and he knew how deadly that was, had seen other medics grabbed, screaming and fall lifeless from a Sith’s grip. Yet the Jedi didn’t grab. Kix didn’t feel the drag of cold knives through his soul and while his stomach still roiled, his nerves still trembled, he didn’t feel any worse than he did before getting within touching distance of the deadliest type of being in the galaxy. Kix didn’t even feel cold, kneeling beside the Jedi.
One eye opened. Their gazes met. Kix’s with more emotion than a human body should contain, the Jedi as calm and serene as the whispers said, but warmer.
Kix pried open the Jedi’s robes and the Jedi still did nothing. He felt no invisible pressure around his throat like Vader did, warning him no matter how many times Kix loyally healed him. The Jedi watched through half-drooped eyes, each breath more labored than the last and still. Didn’t. Take.
A familiar wound seared his chest. A lightsaber had caught the Jedi in one side. The heat alone enough to kill, the blade thrust with lethal depth. Then Vader had ordered this position bombed, adding the heat, shrapnel. The realization made Kix’s nerves worse because not only were they a Jedi but someone Vader had done his damnest to kill.
Kix knew he was a good medic. Became one of the best under Vader but
Every medic carried an emergency syringe containing an injection of a substance more precious than their very lives. Bacta. Despite the Empire’s efforts, the miracle cure had grown scarce during the Stark-Hyperspace war. Scarcer. But every medic was issued a single shot to be kept at all times. Enough bacta to heal almost any wound or ill if administered properly. Even enough to bring someone back from the brink of death. A miracle in a needle.
This issuance came with strict instructions. The shot was meant for Sith alone. If two Sith were so direly wounded that both were in need, the shot always went to the higher-ranked Sith.
Never another. The syringe’s contents were worth more than a medic’s life. Worth more than any other life they’d use it on. No matter a brother would die, the shots were never authorized for anyone else. No exceptions.
Kix’s life was so full of death.
Why he reached for the injection now, when death stayed his hand in the face of dying brothers, Kix couldn’t articulate. Why he emptied the precious liquid into a foe of all people when he hadn’t for so many friends, he couldn’t say. A Sith would kill any friend he used the precious bacta on and Kix himself. If they were generous, the killing stopped there.
The Sith were never known for their generosity.
Kix withdrew the needle. The Jedi mercifully stayed still, only shivering a little once Kix pulled the needle out. Color returned to the Jedi’s high cheekbones. The smell of cooked meat grew fainter. The miracle worker worked its miracle, for the lethal wounds lost their bite of death, the waxy face of the Jedi flushed once more with life. He pulled out the rest of his medkit.
Maybe, for once, someone Kix saved would live.
His hands stopped trembling.