Work Text:
“I am your commanding officer,” Jair wheezed, feeling something move deep in her chest that most definitely shouldn’t be and fighting back the wince of pain it caused. “Save the others, they’ll live.” It definitely didn’t feel like she would.
If Jair had been a meeker soldier, the snarl that came through Tithe's vocoder would have had her cowed in a second and a half. As it was, she just blinked at him and then held back a grunt as he wrenched at the clasps on her breastplate.
Hm. It wasn’t supposed to be concave. That could be bad.
“You may be my superior officer,” Tithe growled, “but I am the head kriffing medic, and if I tell you to live you will follow my damn orders, Commander. Understood?”
“Tithe,” she tried to say, his name ending in a whine as he finally got her breastplate free. The loss of pressure caused more pain than the pressure had, and he cursed again, this time in Huttese. She thought. Her ears were ringing.
He turned to look at her, and she could almost see through his visor to his dark eyes. She imagined they were stone-cold, but the tense line of his shoulders suggested that he could be progressing to wall-eyed. Shit, she thought, I’ve scared the medic. I’ve karked this right up.
“If I call Greel,” Tithe said, looking down at her torso, “If I call the kid to tend to the less-wounded vod’e here, will you let me try to save you?”
Jair blinked, pulling in a breath. It took more work than she thought it should. The edges of her vision showed spots.
Shit.
“’Kay,” she sighed through a breath. Those really were getting difficult.
“Commander?” she heard, as Tithe bent over her, his visor swallowing her vision. “Commander? Jair!” A click as he switched to all-comms. “Fuck dammit, this is Lieutenant Tithe, get me a medevac to these coordinates now! Greel, get your shebs over here!”
The purple crown of Tithe’s helmet and the purple stripes under his eyes dripped and smeared across her vision like the watercolors she’d watched a street vendor paint with once. The mourning grey around his visor seeped into the purple, making a beautiful lavender blotch, and she sighed. Breathing, she thought, I should be doing that. She felt out her diaphragm mentally, keeping her eyes on that lavender smear, bouncing around her vision.
It hurt, gods all, it hurt. Something wasn’t right with her chest, no sir.
The lavender swirl swung out of her field of view and she tried to follow it, but something was holding her neck straight. She whined, trying to shake the thing off. Why was she restrained? What had happened?
No, no, she would be good, Kote would vouch for her, she’d always cut her hair to regulation, please –
The lavender blotch swam back into view and solidified back into Tithe and she wheezed his name. “Let me–” she tried to say, tried to roll her head to follow him as he moved.
Tithe’s voice came to her as if from far away, “Sir, Jair, please stay still, I need my hands and Greel needs to help Dral, we need you to be still, alright? Can you do that?”
“Wh–“ she said, and Tithe cut her off before she could attempt any more.
“You need a medevac but I can’t rule out spinal injuries, so I need you to keep your head still until the stretcher gets here. Jair, can you do that?”
Something in his tone slithered right past her CC training into her memories, watching Jango watch her as she paced through a kata, all of her brothers following along around her. I’ll protect you as much as I can, Jango had said, not needing to explain who from, but my reach isn’t everywhere. I need you to conform for right now, Ja’ika. Can you do that? And she had, she still did, really, everything regulation-neat except for the eye-paint and the carving on her left breast.
Kark, her breastplate was gone.
She couldn’t breathe, it was gone, how would they know, she looked just like her brothers – how would they know –
“Jair!”
Tithe’s voice cut through.
She gasped for a breath. Failed. Gasped again, got enough air to live on.
“Good, vod, good, I’m sorry I can’t help you but your chest is a karking mess and I don’t want to press on anything in case I break it more. Please don’t make me do CPR, vod, breathe for me.”
Something was whining and her throat hurt. Her chest hurt. Everything hurt.
What was whining?
“Shh, vod, Jair, I can see the medevac, just over the ridge, we’ll get you on a stretcher and in the medbay in no time. Breathe for me. You know the cadence, let me count it out.” Tithe’s voice – the voice she knew, that every vod knew from the moment they could talk, the voice of home and family and clan – counted out a cadence in-two-three-four out-two-three-four and she tried to follow.
Was she what was whining?
A different, deeper whine resounded through her skull and she felt wind and airborne dust strafe across her face.
When had her bucket come off?
Tithe, above her, turned away and shouted for a stretcher, stat, and she tried to grab for his hand. Or leg. Any part she could reach really. She found something solid, plastoid or thigh. The purple-grey visor turned back to her, and she tried to say, “My breastplate, please get it,” but all she managed was “M… ‘plate, please–”
Tithe still seemed to understand. Bless him, Tithe understood. “I’ve got your cover, vod,” he reassured. “It’ll be with you the whole time. Not that anyone wouldn’t recognize you, Commander.”
“Sis-ter,” she managed through a laborious exhale. That ‘plate had the only reminder of who she was that she carried, and little gods she had conformed so well, hadn’t she? Look at her, begging to keep a concave breastplate on her karking stretcher so that everyone knew who she was. What would Jango say to her now?
Can you do that?
Jango’s scarred, lined face swam in her vision, shadows pulling in.
I don’t think I can anymore, sir, she tried to say, or maybe did say, or maybe only thought.
The lavender blur of Tithe’s visor faded into light mourning grey, faded into black.
She woke to white walls and the aftertaste of overripe fruit filling her mouth and nose.
Bacta. Medbay. Injured?
She tried to sit up to find that a bantha had sat on her chest at some point while she was unconscious and it hurt to try to move her torso.
Yes.
“Oh, good, Commander, you’re awake,” she heard. She turned her head – no restraints there, good, no spinal damage that wasn’t fixed by the bacta – to find Tithe sitting off to her left behind his desk, eternally piled high with casualty and injury reports. He stood to pace over to her. “How are you feeling?”
She tried to draw a deep breath to answer and winced. Something in her chest felt tender even still.
Tithe nodded, making a note on the datapad by her bed. “That will be your sternum, which, after your breastplate gave under the force, took the brunt of the karking mortar round that you let hit you.” Tithe took a deep breath and Jair refused to feel jealous of it as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You, Commander, are so incredibly lucky that the Seppies karked up the detonator on that mortar.”
If the mortar had been functional, there wouldn’t have been anything to save.
She had been lucky.
Tithe peered down at her chart on the datapad. His squint told a better story of how long he’d forced himself to be on duty than he would admit to. “The bacta and bone-knitters healed the worst of the damage, but it will be tender and more malleable for at least a week. I’m sorry, Commander, but I cannot authorize you wearing torso armor until I’m sure that your clavicles and sternum will be able to take the weight.”
Jair felt the blood drain from her face and her heartbeat pick up. No.
Tithe held up a hand. “Please, Commander, Jair – sister. Listen to what I’m saying. Hear me out.”
She croaked, “Okay,” through the knot and the slimy-bacta feeling in her throat. Tithe thumped himself on the head, held up a finger, and turned to fetch a cup. He handed it to her – ice chips. She took the cup in a shaky hand, but he had to offer her a chip to hold under her tongue and soothe the dry stickiness from her throat.
“Thank you. Alright. You have two options. One – light duty but you get out of the medbay, only without your torso armor. I reassess the healing of your sternum in three days to see if the bone and cartilage has strengthened enough to take the weight in that time. For those three days, you wear a badge or other identifier with your pronouns displayed. Two – light duty while in the medbay. I get a shiny to bring you all the paperwork I’m sure you’ve let pile up and you sit in this bed with your chart and identifiers on display. I reassess in two days, to account for the lack of strain bed rest would cause, to see if you can put on torso armor.”
“I…” Jair didn’t know. She didn’t want to stay in the karking medbay, in bed, for two days, but walking around without her armor on…
She wasn’t sure she could.
A head poked around the divider. Carver, by the two parallel lines under his right eye. “I, uh, might have something to help?” he offered awkwardly.
Tithe raised an eyebrow, and Carver stumbled forward. “I – sorry to interrupt and uh, for listening in Commander, Lieutenant, sirs, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, y’know, with the whole breastplate being the only way to show our pronouns and all. And I. Well. Here?” He held out a hand with something in it.
Tithe took it for Jair, since she was… stuck. Tithe humphed when he saw it, a small smile stretching the frown lines around his mouth. He held it out to her and she saw a 316th-purple pin, obviously hand-carved and painted plastoid with a magnet glued to the back and another magnet fastened to it to put inside her blacks to hold it in place, with the Aurebesh senth engraved and painted in bright yellow on it. A pronoun pin.
Why hadn’t anyone thought of that before?
Carver fumbled with his fingers. “I, uh, well. Dral was talking in the barracks before this all happened and mentioned that going without their breastplate was. Bad. So I kinda thought, why hasn’t anyone done anything about this?” He shrugged, stuffing his hands behind his back, shifting his weight. “I mean, maybe they have, I dunno, in other battalions? But here, you know. Yeah.”
Jair cleared her throat. “Thank you, Carver,” she managed, voice raspy. “It’s perfect.”
Carver ducked his head, failing to hide his smile or his blush. “Th-thank you, sir.”
She smiled at him. “Tithe, would you help me put it on?” she asked, turning to see Tithe still sporting a rare smile. “I’m a little stuck.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Can you sit up?” he asked, turning his focus to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Carver slipping back around the corner of the divider.
“Ah…somewhat?” she offered. “Definitely hurts, and I don’t want to try to push myself upright if my arms won’t hold me.”
“Thank you for your restraint, Commander,” Tithe said wryly, moving forward to help support her. “You’re ahead of most of the rest of our vod’e in that.”
“I do my best,” she said, stifling a groan as Tithe helped her sit up, one hand light on her shoulder and one supporting under her back. She managed to keep the cup of ice chips upright, but could offer little other help.
Tithe hummed, his hands not shaking a bit as he took most of her weight. Tightening her core ached up to her sternum, probably a side effect of the tenderness in the bone still healing. She could do it, but it felt like doing the hundred and first sit-up of the final set in a long exercise regimen.
With the hand no longer on her shoulder, Tithe pushed pillows behind her to support her back. His hands free, he helped her unseal her upper blacks so she could set the little pin in its place over the left side of her chest.
It sat in the corner of her eye, a little island of purple and yellow on the darkness of her blacks. She couldn’t even feel the weight.
Jair glanced at Tithe, who was ostensibly occupied with her chart, making more notes. He looked up, feeling her eyes on him, and said, “Since you’re still not able to take your own weight, my medical advice is one more day of required bed rest, followed by a reassessment. I’m still leery to let you wear torso armor at any time point sooner than three days from now, but I’d be willing to let you go back to your own bunk once you can lift yourself from prone to standing under your own power.” He raised an eyebrow. “Reasonable?”
Jair cleared her throat, wincing as it jarred her chest. “Very,” she rasped.
“And in the meantime,” he continued, “hydration and nutrition.”
Jair lifted the cup of ice chips, now more water than ice, and took a long sip. Her hand shook vaguely, but she could feel the weakness fading as she used the muscles that had sat limp.
Before Tithe could walk away, Jair realized she had one more important question – well, two. “Tithe,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, “how long?”
He looked down. “Three days,” he admitted. “Most of the other casualties we brought aboard are upright and mobile. You’re the last long-term medbay resident, Commander.”
She nodded. Not as long as she’d feared, but longer than she thought she’d get. “And how many… did we lose?” she asked, refusing to let her voice break.
Tithe sighed. “No more than we would have had you remained upright, Commander,” he admitted.
The non-answer said more than a number would have.
“The General?” she asked quietly, not sure she cared about the answer.
“Haven’t seen him,” Tithe said blithely, turning away. “If he got hit, he cared for it himself. More power to him, I say, and more bacta for me.”
Jair hummed her agreement and settled back into the pillows. Her new pin swam purple-yellow out of the corner of her eye, still new. Maybe eventually it would just be another part of herself that she ignored unless it changed.
I won’t conform anymore, sir, she thought. She found a datapad on the side table by her bed and picked it up, navigating to the restricted-access Holonet the vod’e had access to and looking up vids on how to grow out hair. She’d always like the braids she’d seen among some of her younger siblings. She could do a braid, couldn’t she?