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Bronze had an idea of what a leave meant. He’d heard mentions of “leave” from shiny troopers fresh onto the Horribilis before they realized exactly how cruel Krell would be. The idea of getting into a gunship, not to arrive onto a battlefield and face death until Krell decided they’d endured enough, but to have the opportunity to just explore a planet… it twisted oddly in his gut. Not in the place where things that were dangerous twisted themselves up in his head, the place closer to where his tremors started.
“Leave” was an unknown. He’d never been much a fan of unknowns, and his time with the 311th had beaten that dislike into his skin.
But he couldn’t just refuse to go on leave. That option had been resoundingly denied – something about getting their sorry shebses off the damn ship so the cleaning droids could actually make some progress, or something.
So he stepped onto the lartie, grabbed a handhold with the rest of Epsilon squad, and tried to pay attention to them chattering around him about what they were planning to do around the excitement swirling in the air. His greys tugged at the scar at his ribs, harsher and stiffer than his blacks, and he wished Koho hadn't weaponized his eyes and pleading voice to chivvy him out of his armor in the bunkroom. The greys sat strangely on the muscle he’d built and he felt like if he stretched too far he’d pop a seam across his back. He focused on keeping his breathing slow, finally paying full attention to the chatter around him.
He heard Denal and Ridge planning to find a bar, Kix, Jesse, and Kameron planning to find something to eat, and he did not listen to someone (Hardcase) behind him planning to find contraband.
He just wanted to find somewhere quiet to wait to go back to the ship.
The gunship touched down light as a feather. “Get your shebses out of my lartie,” the pilot yelled back, “and I don’t want to see you for at least four hours. Don’t get arrested and don’t do anything the General wouldn’t do, Captain’s orders! This isn’t Corrie, so mind your karking manners!”
Everyone around him laughed, amusement bright in the air. Bronze forced a chuckle, feeling his greys tighten with him as he hunched his shoulders in. What did that even mean?
Bronze stepped out of the lartie onto hard-packed brown earth, sparsely covered with some kind of bluish vegetation that sprung up after he stepped on it. The lartie took off with a roar of jetwash and revealed the horizon spreading out around him endlessly, rolling hills of bluish scrub spotted with purple and red and green.
Not a single place to hide in case of an ambush. Not even a rock. He tried not to tense. They weren’t under attack and they wouldn’t be. This was leave.
The rest of Epsilon behind him had started moving toward the town that Bronze could see, nestled in a valley below their landing zone. “Cmon, Bronze!” Sergeant Singer yelled. “Time’s wasting, and I want a drink of something that wasn’t brewed next to an exhaust vent!”
Bronze huffed a laugh and followed them, letting the squad's good mood slowly seep into his and feeling the safety in the air. The horizon was far away, but he could see that nothing was coming. He could feel that nothing was coming. Not even a storm cloud.
The squad split as buildings started to rise out of the hillside, small shops and houses giving way to larger shops and places where natborns were eating and drinking and feeling so… normal. Bronze felt like he was going to shake out of his damned skin. Every glint of metal forced him to jump and the townspeople seemed to have a fascination with hanging bits of metal from their eaves. The clattering noise as they waved in the wind had his shoulders so tense he could feel his greys creak at the seams.
He managed to split off on his own with a quiet sign of ‘Need quiet’ and a murmured, “You guys have fun,” that creaked its way out of his throat. Ridge gave him a nod of understanding, and Bronze tried to give him a smile of thanks. He made his way through the town, following the sight of some kind of tall, gnarled tree over the rooftops. Probably a river system, definitely somewhere he could get away from the karking metal noisemakers.
He finally slipped into what had to be some kind of preserved area and walked as quietly as he could along the path. The noise and the normalcy of the town faded slowly as he went deeper, overtaken by the pulse of life in the trees and the animals around him. He breathed out slowly and the twists in his gut slowly unwound at the feeling of safety and security in the air. Yes, he could wait here for a few hours and meet back up with Epsilon on the way out. They understood he needed space sometimes, even if he couldn’t say why.
A rustle in the brush to the left of the path caught his eye, a flash of too-simple pain and frustration. He stood in the path for two seconds deliberating before he moved, steps light, in that direction. Kix had forced him to carry bacta for reasons he couldn’t pretend to understand but wasn’t going to argue, so he could help… whatever was in the brush.
He pushed aside a tangle of branches and came face to face with some kind of carnivore. The long snout, longer legs, and sharp teeth told him that much. The blue-green eyes burned with hunger and pain, and he could see it curled around a dusty purple forepaw. He sat there with the branches pulled aside and waited to see how it would react.
It didn’t.
He looked the animal over closer and recognized it from the pre-leave briefing packet – a kaiyot, native to the planet. Scavenger and hunter, usually found out on the plains, where their purple fur blended startlingly well with the native flora. Usually more willing to hide than fight.
The kaiyot lifted a lip to reveal two rows of teeth built to tear stiff meat from bone. Bronze hummed a single note gently and tried to make himself seem smaller. He wouldn’t hurt it.
He tried to shuffle a little closer, pulling one hand away to reach for the tube of bacta, and the kaiyot snarled with all of its teeth on display. They gleamed in what light penetrated the tree canopy. Bronze froze and hummed a little louder. He tried a shushing noise to calm it.
“Won’t hurt you, little thing,” he mumbled. “Safe, okay?”
The kaiyot’s pain surged and the frustration surged behind it. Bronze brought both of his hands forward in sight, slowly as he could. Like he was comforting a brother too deep in their own head. “Easy,” he soothed. “Trying to help. Help.”
The kaiyot sniffed and sneezed. Bronze nodded slowly and settled onto his heels, reaching back again for the bacta. The kaiyot lifted a lip, but didn’t snarl. He hoped that was a good sign.
“Smells bad,” he apologized lowly. “But it’ll heal. Heal.” He didn’t know why he was doing this. He didn’t know why the need to help this animal had seized him by the throat. But he was going to make sure this kaiyot was healthy enough to keep hunting. An injured hunter died. (Just like an injured vod– no, not in the 501st it was different- this wasn’t the time–)
He popped the tube’s cap and the kaiyot sneezed, and sneezed again, and grumbled. He felt his own disgust multiply. “I know,” he said quietly, his voice slowly getting stronger as he used it. “It’ll help, though.”
He shuffled closer, awkwardly squatting on his heels with the branches smacking onto his head. The kaiyot bristled, small spines evident in its fur, but didn’t move.
This close, he could see lines of paler fur. Scars. The kaiyot had so many – some obviously bites, others scratches and nicks and one ring around a hind leg. He felt the scar tissue under his eye pull as he squinted to try and figure out where the injury was.
He knew how much scars could hurt.
“Easy,” he murmured. “Help, I’m trying to help.” The kaiyot was shivering, in shock or fear or some other strong emotion. He couldn’t tell what caused it, the miasma around the two of them swirling with his own bad memories and the pain of the kaiyot into a storm that tried to tug him under.
He breathed in bacta-stink and reminded himself why he was here. He could help. He could heal and no one would know. He could save.
He finally located the injury – looked like something simple enough, a deep gouge in the meat of the kaiyot’s foreleg just above the elbow. He didn’t dare to guess what caused it, but remembered the wire of the fences surrounding the protected area anyway.
“You just wanted water and a place to hunt,” he murmured as he squeezed a generous amount of bacta onto his finger. “A place to be free.”
The kaiyot stiffened even more as he reached toward the injury, and he didn’t waste time in smoothing the bacta over the gouge. He didn’t want to push his luck – the danger had faded from the air, but he knew too well how easy it was to lash out.
He hummed quietly, happily, as he watched the injury slowly heal over. A small amount of pus and dirt was pushed out of the wound by the bacta to drip to the dirt. He came at the right time. The wound would heal.
He looked up from the wound to find the kaiyot staring at him. He stared back, quiet, humming a tuneless melody to fill the silence. The kaiyot looked down at its foreleg, nearly healed now, and licked at the edge of the bacta smear.
Bronze chuckled at the look of disgust on its face. He could agree with that assessment.
He stayed crouching where he was as the kaiyot slowly stood, as if not convinced it could. The foreleg took the kaiyot’s weight easily, even as it tested it carefully, leaning this way and that. Bronze watched the kaiyot watch him, content to let it set the tone. He still had two hours before he needed to be somewhere.
The kaiyot huffed and its tongue lolled out. The air didn’t quite sing of gratitude, but of good hunting and no pain. He smiled, the scars on his face pulling at the unfamiliar motion, to feel the lightness in the air. The kaiyot turned to walk away, toward where Bronze could barely hear water burbling.
Before it pushed through another patch of grass and out of sight, it turned back one more time, eyes bright. It made a noise, bright and tinkling and like a song he couldn’t hum the notes of, in the back of its throat.
And with that, the kaiyot walked away, pace easy, focused on good hunting and water and all the things a wild animal desires.
Bronze stayed crouching in that brush for a few minutes more, until he finally realized he could feel the seams at the crotch of his greys not only squeezing uncomfortably but threatening to pop. He shuffled back onto the path, just as empty as it had been when he first walked in, and stood up, groaning quietly at the stretch to nearly-locked muscles.
He checked his chrono – still an hour before the deadline. He sighed internally. Epsilon was probably wondering where he’d disappeared to – they tended to care. He still wasn’t really used to that. He decided to retrace his steps, go back into the town and brave the natborns and their attention and strange ideas of decoration.
As he stepped out of the open gate to the protected area, he heard the metal noises again. But this time it was almost familiar.
The kaiyot’s call echoed in his ears on all sides from the little ornaments. Even the flashes of them in the light didn’t set him off anymore – the tans and silvers of battledroids were uniformly missing. Instead, the metals flashed purple and green and blue.
The people here must love the kaiyot, he realized, for whatever reason. Maybe it was sacred to them, like the mythosaur to Mandalorians. Maybe they just identified with it. But they’d made images of it in their own way.
He took a breath, letting the noise wash over him. He felt the tension in his shoulders release, his greys finally settling to a somewhat-loose cling instead of a creaking grasp. He spotted the rest of Epsilon sitting outside some kind of shop that smelled of alcohol and some kind of spiced food and felt like contentment and full stomachs.
He saw them waving him over, Koho with a massive smile on his face and some kind of natborn food in his hand. Breathing out the last of his tension with a sigh, he began the short walk to where they were sitting. The kaiyot’s musical call echoed around him, and it felt like nothing he’d ever felt before.
He could get used to this “leave” thing.