A/N: Obviously, I don't own Disney or the Star Wars universe.
CT-2846 isn't sure of anything when he wakes up. He is in a tent, in a bed, dirt floor, skin, clone, soldier, where, how, I wish... The words fly at random through his mind. Nothing makes sense.
There are numerous clones around him in various states of injury, some seemingly unconscious, some alive and fighting the clones bringing them in on stretchers. 2846 spots one clone being brought in with half his arm missing – in the arm's place is a bloodied stump; the clone is shrieking curse words and calling for…his gun? Screams from all corners of the tent fill the space. 2846 shakes his head, trying to clear his mind. The movement makes him dizzy. 2846 is afraid.
Where is his Kaminoan training instructor? She will know what is going on. Where is his batch? Why isn't he in his sleep tube in Tipoca City?
2846 feebly tries to push himself up using his arm, but a piercing pain shoots through his ribs and up his arm, forcing him to abandon the attempt. Grunting, 2846 lies down, but attempts again to rise after the pain fades. "Got to…find…" 2846 mutters to himself. Sweat beads his forehead as he tries to ignore the pain.
A harassed-looking clone – 2846 identifies him as a medic from the patch attached to his arm – hurries over, towing along a cart as he notices the confused clone's plight. "Relax," the unknown clone reassures 2846, pushing him down gently with one hand on the chest. 2846 lets the medic push him down, but he still tries to find out why he is here.
"Wh…" 2846 swallows and tries to talk again, his voice cracking. "What happened? Why am...I he…here?"
The clone medic smiles sadly at 2846 but doesn't say anything as he peels off 2846's bacta strips – more like bacta-soaked bandages, really – and replaces them. Wait...bacta strips? 2846 looks down cross-eyed, surprised. The clean strips are being wound around 2846's chest and torso, and across his ribs. Around his leg, too, and 2846 notices a cast encasing his left leg. What has happened? When the medic puts the dirty strips on the cart, 2846 notices that they are blood-soaked. His blood. 2846 looks away quickly.
"What happened?" 2846 tries again. "Where am I?"
The medic looks up, finally. The smile is no longer there, but the words are gentle. "You were injured in battle. This is a makeshift medical hospital on-planet. Severe burns, a broken leg. You were probably standing too close to a grenade when it went off, and you hit the ground too hard."
2846 swallows hard. Now that he has been given some information, he can remember a few disjointed memories. Being shipped out to a foreign planet. Excitement. Making friends – a clone called Debon. The first terror of being shot at. Debon falling beside him, a blaster bolt through the head, helmet blown off, glassy eyes and a smoking hole. The enemy. Droids. Fire and smoke. Then darkness.
"I see." The words are haunted and empty. 2846 stares at the tent roof, where two birds are perched, watching the goings-on below. 2846 wants to be those birds – able to fly away at will, away from this place of screams and fire and blaster bolts. Away from death. Quickly, 2846 pushes these thoughts down. Treason, he reminds himself. I am a soldier. I can handle this.
The medic regards 2846 for a few moments, gauging his mood. 2846 doesn't move. He is thinking about Debon and their quick, short friendship. About Debon's quick smile and easy laugh. There is no Debon left. 2846 closes his eyes, no longer certain about his ability to maintain his fear.
The sound of rolling wheels and footsteps tells 2846 that the medic has left him. 2846 hears someone – another medic, he thinks – say to the medic, "We need a bacta tank here. Some of these guys won't survive the week without one. And those evac lifts for the injured haven't been able to get through the atmosphere yet without being shot down. We're stuck down here." A quiet sound of agreement tinged with sadness from 2846's medic. The first clone continues. "Nerve, what about Bed 23? Does he need a tank?"
The medic that has just left 2846 – Nerve – answers. "No, I don't think so. He has burns and a broken leg, but it's nothing we haven't treated before. I can use bacta patches on his burns, and his leg's already been splinted and is on the mend. I expect a full recovery. At this point, it's all about time…unless there's infection." An ugly silence falls over the two medics. 2846 realizes with a jolt that they are talking about him, and he raises his head a little to watch them speak.
The first medic speaks again after a moment. "Yeah." Silence again, then the first medic asks, "What's the number, 16?"
Nerve. "No, last night we lost one more. 17 now." Nerve clears his throat once, then falls silent.
"I'm telling you, we need a cleaner place and more equipment. It's not just infection. Disease spreads around here faster than rumors in the legion. And I don't know how we're supposed to help this many wounded with the supplies we do have."
A sigh. "We're doing the best we can, Rel. Those evacs will get here eventually, I'm sure. And when they do, we'll be getting more supplies."
Rel's voice is angry. "Well, they better. At the pace we're using them and at the rate they're bringing in men, we're gonna run out of bacta patches; by the end of this week, we'll only have strips left. And the bacta patches that're remaining, I'm not sure if they're sterile. I think some of them are being tainted by the ash and smoke particles in the air. That's how these guys are getting infected."
Nerve's voice is sharp, almost scolding, in contrast to Rel's voice, which seems to be a mix of hopeless and fiery indignation. "That's impossible. Those patches are designed to prevent contamination from happening."
"Yeah, but from small amounts of particles. There was that argument in the beginning of the battle, remember? About where the hospital should be? I wanted it pushed back, but I was overruled because they can't carry the wounded that far back, and they needed as many men as possible. We're too close to the front line. Every time that enemy cannon fires, those bacta patches are being contaminated. We don't even have the equipment to heal these infections, 'cause we've never had to worry about this before."
"Bu–" Nerve is interrupted by a scream. The tent has been devoid of those soul-piercing screams for the past ten minutes, but now they are picking up again. Nerve sighs and says, "Bed 14. I've got it."
2846 closes his eyes and goes to sleep, allowing the darkness claim him again.
Fire and blood a blaster bolt through the head Debon lying there limp body smoke lifeless eyes screams cries contamination slow death torture stump of an arm bloody Debon oh god Debon why I'm going to die oh no please a droid standing over him threatening gun please don't mercy I don't want to die please oh no I don't WANT TO DIE NO DON'T SHOOT I DON'T WANT TO END UP LIKE DEBON PLEASE OH GOD OH GOD…
It seems that the only release of his pent-up emotion is to scream, so 2846 screams as long and hard as he can to get away from that droid and this war and Debon, until he wakes up and realizes that he is still terrified and Nerve is standing over him, shaking his shoulder, yelling at him to wake up.
"Trooper! Wake up, trooper!" Nerve is screaming in 2846's face. 2846 jerks awake, still screaming. His throat is hoarse now, but he doesn't stop. As he starts to recognize his surroundings, the scream peters out. Ragged breathing takes its place as 2846 starts to sob, feeling shattered. 2846 rolls over onto his side as he cries, and for once, the constant pain that plagues him feels good, because it means that he is still alive and he is not dying and the gun is not being pointed at him anymore and he might not end up like Debon. Oh God, please don't let me end up like Debon.
2846 has never believed in a god before, even though he has heard of them from whispers on Kamino. But he is willing to believe in one if it means he won't…No. He will. He is a soldier.
2846 can't stop crying. Nerve is silent as 2846 sobs, but he does nothing but sink on to 2846's bed and just be there, as if he has read 2846's mind and knows that all 2846 needs is someone to stay and be a solid wall of comfort, of understanding. 2846 is thankful beyond anything he has ever known for Nerve. When the tears finally stop and 2846 has spent all his energy, Nerve lays a hand on 2846's shoulder. "Okay?" Nerve asks quietly, watching his face carefully.
"Okay." 2846's voice is ragged. Nerve sits with the other clone in silence for a while, until a call from Rel on the opposite end of the tent catches the medic's attention.
"I have to go," Nerve says, standing up. 2846 acknowledges the farewell with a tired nod and watches Nerve leave.
2846 has been in the hospital for two weeks now, restlessly waiting for his body to heal. His burns have healed, but it is the broken leg that 2846 is waiting on. Each day he asks Nerve if it is healed, and each day Nerve smiles at 2846 and shakes his head. Nerve has, since the nightmare, become 2846's closest friend, and 2846 almost dreads the day that he will be separated from the medic and shipped to the front lines again. Almost. His genes, though, prevent him from staying still for so long, as he has been forced to do.
Something tells 2846 that Nerve considers him a good friend, and 2846 hopes for dear life that his instincts are right. In the GAR, in the life that clone troopers live, a friend – especially one like Nerve – makes it all bearable.
The hospital is straining its resources, and even though Nerve never tells 2846 so, 2846 can feel it. It is prevalent in the increasingly obvious worried wrinkles lining Nerve's forehead, in the tenseness of the medics' movements, in the dwindling meal sizes, in the way more patients arrive but less come out in anything other than a body bag. The contaminated bacta patches have become so big a problem that bacta patches and strips are no longer used. The medics are forced to use increasingly desperate tactics to heal their patients' wounds. At first, it isn't so bad – only minor changes to methods – but as time goes on, the changes become more and more drastic, until surgeries have started being performed where none would normally be needed.
The clone on the bed next to 2846 dies of his wounds three days after bacta patches stop being used. 2846 had befriended the clone and they had laughed together, but now the clone isn't going to be making jokes anymore. 2846 feels sick, and after the bed next to him has been filled and emptied a few times over, he is sick. The vomit bucket sits next to 2846's bed for a few days until Nerve has verified that 2846 is okay.
Nerve has become so tired lately that it is 2846 who has had to comfort him sometimes. 2846 knows he is not particularly skilled in this area – he had been trained to blast droids, not pat backs and whisper comforting words. But 2846 wants to repay the favor, for all the times Nerve has woken him from his nightmares and told him everything is okay, that 2846 is safe. (They both know this isn't true; 2846 knows it isn't true, and everytime Nerve says it, 2846 is reminded of Debon, but the words help him because they are the mother's embrace that he has never experienced.) Every time 2846 hears Nerve crying in the middle of the night, he gets up and hobbles over.
2846 has realized recently that he might die on this planet. There are a million ways how, but the most pressing one, to 2846, is through starvation. The food is running low, and there has not been a single evac lift carrying supplies that has made it to the surface.
When he tells Nerve about Debon (because he tells Nerve about everything now, out of fear that if he dies, nobody will know), he muses aloud that Debon may have been the lucky one. Nerve presses his lips together and tells 2846, "We're not dead yet", which 2846 knows to mean that they are almost there.
They are now limited to one ration bar a meal. Food is a treasured necessity that is in obviously short supply. The casualties are piling up, Nerve is more stressed out than ever, and not one supply ship has reached the hospital. 2846 can now count his ribs with little trouble, and he knows Nerve is even worse off, having to work on his feet all day to take care of the wounded.
The injured clone has already determined that if they run out of food and it is obvious that they will starve, he will shoot himself – he will not go down in such a way. Being blasted by a droid is acceptable, he thinks. Starvation is not. Nerve doesn't say anything when 2846 tells him about the plan, but the only time Nerve says anything to him for the rest of the day is to say good night. 2846 doesn't mention the plan again, but it is always on his mind.
The only thing that 2846 is truly certain about now is that he is not a shiny anymore. 2846 is no longer scared of the screams and death, and blaster bolts, and fire and smoke, because he sees them – embodied in his brothers – everyday. When 2846's leg grows strong enough to walk a little, he knows that while he is up, his bed is used by other injured brothers, and even occasionally as a surgery table.
2846 feels slightly unsettled, knowing that his bed has belonged to a hundred dead men.
2846 is hobbling around on crutches, trying to get his strength back, when the news comes. The first thing he sees is Nerve running towards him, and his first thought is that they have run out of food, and Nerve is going to help him with his suicide. However, when Nerve gets close enough, 2846 sees Nerve's smile. "What's happened?" 2846 calls out, smiling because Nerve is smiling. "Vod, they've beaten them! General Kenobi and Skywalker! The 501st and the 212th! They beat the Seppies last night! We're going to live!" And suddenly both of them are laughing and crying and hugging, not caring that they are in plain view, because it is such a miracle to be alive, to know they will be okay.
Such a miracle to have hope.
A/N: I took some liberties over the sciences of bacta patches... don't know if it turned out OK. Reviews and concrit are very much appreciated!