separating feelings from emotions

Afir let the silence ring around her. It wasn't silence so much as a drastic reduction in noise. She envied the clones sometimes their sound-proofed helmets. Her ears throbbed from the echoing boom of blasters and cannons and buildings crashing to the ground - - rubble where once there was splendor and achievement.

Still, the noise of battle was preferable to what was left in its wake. The sounds of men - - most too stoic to cry out in pain - - gasping, groaning, breathing their last. The harsh breaths of those around her as they searched for the ones their HUDs said were still alive-trapped or motionless in the wake of the war's travel across this moon. Their calls as they reassured comrades that they weren't alone, weren't forgotten.

Afir grieved as she felt the life force ebbing from the man at her side. For clone or no, he was a man - - an individual known to her. He preferred dry rations to the canned, reconstituted gruel they'd been living on for days. He liked to sing and often did so in a robust voice. His smile was quick, his wit, too, and he lost both when the time came to get down and dirty. He was a warrior - - born and bred to it, created for it - - but she wondered what he'd have been if he'd been just another man, free to choose. What his calling would have been had his DNA not been replicated and mutated from that of a man who'd found his calling in killing.

Afir looked up as the voices came closer.

"Here!" she called. "Over here! Litter urgent!"

It brought them running, members of the Skywalker's squad and Kenobi's squad together. One of the latter hit his comm.

"We've got 'er, sir."

"Haston," she told them, still applying pressure to the wound, still envisioning the wound's gaping edges to constrict and heal, her hands disappearing into what had once been super-strong armor to where what had been a super-strong man and friend was bleeding out. His face was dark from the soot, his hair and the fine, white armor black from it. "I can't stop the bleeding," she confessed in a quiet voice as they rushed in.

She was quickly in the way as those with more skill for triage - - and more stomach for it - - worked over their own. A transport swooped in and he was lifted by those comrades, those brothers in arms, to be taken directly to the ship circling overhead.

Afir was left standing with a bevy of the white-clad warriors. As soon as the LAARTi was outbound most scattered again, searching out the places where their helmet displays told them friends waited. She turned to the one who stood slightly behind her and to the side.

"Thank you, Rex."

He nodded. "Luther was looking for you. General Skywalker hadn't heard from you. He was worried about losing General Yoda's favorite pet." He said it gently, smiled softly at her, trying to provoke a quick-biting retort. Her heart wasn't in it, though. She faced the man bearing the insignia of Kenobi's 212th instead.

"I'm fine. Please reassure the General that you've found me and that I'll be in to report shortly."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied. He turned to do so and Afir turned to Rex, who was removing his helmet.

"Are there more?" she asked.

He shook his head. "They're all on their way in now. The battlefield's clear."

She nodded, her face tight, and turned to survey what had once been a thriving artist's district. She'd been on this planet before. Had enjoyed her mission here, had enjoyed offering them membership to the senate and the protection of the jedi order. This was what that had led to. She'd been called back here because of her familiarity with the city. Because of her good relations with the population. And she'd destroyed their homes, their businesses, their dreams.

She sucked in a ragged breath and turned again, ready to trudge back to the command center. Only the sight of Haston's blood on the muddy ground brought her to a quick stop.

"If you're ready, ma'am?" Rex asked, reaching out a hand to encourage her. He'd served under her - - or, more accurately, beside her as another jedi's troops - - plenty of times before. Always he thought her too fragile for this work. Capable, yes. Dedicated and driven and dependable. But so much more as well. She didn't think of them as necessary losses. She couldn't weigh the cost in lives. Couldn't decide a course of action based on acceptable risk. So she'd never be the general that Kenobi and Skywalker were. She couldn't be. It wasn't in her to be. And he admired that greatly about her.

Now she nodded and moved to dash away the tears with the back of her fist.

Leaving a smear on the finely wrought cheek.

Blood, mud, whatever muck had been splattered over her as she'd battled side-by-side with his men...it turned his stomach to see it there and without thinking he quickly removed his glove to wipe it away with his own fingers.

"Here, now," he told her, offering a canteen so that she could splash her fingertips clean. He took one in his own hand, scrubbing at it himself as he trickled the water slowly over the stains. "That's better, isn't it?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes. She merely nodded and stepped away.

"Haston will be fine," he assured her. He was lying and they both knew it. If his helmet had been on he'd already have gotten word. "Let's get you back to General Kenobi so he knows that you really are whole. I wouldn't want General Skywalker to get in trouble."

"He knows that Obi-Wan and I are linked," she told him in a monotone. "We all would have felt it if one of us had gone down."

He nodded. He wasn't sure how the force worked but he knew that it did. Still, he gestured with one arm and they joined Luther for the long trudge back to their on-planet command center.