Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The conference room was bright blue from the light of the holos.

General Windu – Master Windu, Aura corrected himself – had gathered everyone in the task force, across the galaxy. Quinlan was out on a shuttle, ready to go down and find Kenobi, wherever his captors were hiding him. Omega Squad and the Nulls had been pulled in already, and had tracked him to the Muunilinst system, so they were on comms from Kyrimorut. Mij was there, too, as were Healers Che and Eerin. They knew Kenobi was hurt. The three of them would be the ones instructing Aura what to do, if it came down to putting Kenobi in intensive care as they anticipated.

“I’ve got my troops waiting just off Dantooine,” Cody commented, standing next to Aura. “Skywalker is currently on his way here to provide backup, both military and medical, but he’s still on the Celanon Spur by Ord Mantell and we don’t anticipate the 501st arriving until well after we have General Kenobi back on board.”

Windu nodded. “I trust you’ll be able to manage until he can join you. As far as anyone knows, there aren’t more than a few dozen droids guarding Master Kenobi’s prison, though we may also be dealing with some Separatists once Master Vos gets down to the surface.”

“Do we have a timeline?” Aura asked, looking at Quinlan’s holo. “If Kenobi is already in critical condition, as we’re concerned he might be, we don’t have the twelve hours or more to get from Dantooine to Muunilinst. Even if we met halfway, we might be looking at being six hours too late.”

Vokara Che hesitated. “What medics do you have on board? Who do you have, that you could take on a shuttle now and make it to Muunilinst as soon as possible?”

“Bones, Helix, Rune, Mac, Fowler, and me,” Aura rattled off. “I’d rather leave either Bones or Helix, and Fowler’s not the most confident in emergencies even though they’re solid in medbay. If Skywalker’s troops were able to get here sooner, I’d love to pull Pulse and Garnet.”

“We can contact the 501st and ask them to come in Skywalker’s personal shuttle,” Quinlan pointed out. “I know he’s got a faster shuttle than the Resolute. It can probably cut a day off their time, from three days to two. That would let them be ready on the Negotiator by the time you’re back, most likely.”

“I’ll comm and ask him as soon as we’re done here,” Windu agreed. 

The planning session continued a bit longer, every detail of the recon being relayed to Quinlan to simplify his mission. Aura watched the Jedi, his Jedi, double check his gloves at least five times over as many minutes. It would be a mission pushing the limits of what Quinlan’s psychometry could put up with, almost guaranteed.

When the meeting finally ended, Kenobi’s status still unknown, Aura stayed in the conference room even without the blue light to let him see anything. Cody clapped him on the shoulder once, murmuring some comforting words, before going out onto the bridge to resume command in the absence of their General. Aura knew he had to. It didn’t change the fact that he wished his vod’ike could all be in a pile of pillows with him, keeping him comfortable until the mission could actually start.

But as Aura stood there in the dark, a new comm request appeared. He accepted it, smiling as Quinlan’s face appeared once again.

“Cyare,” he murmured.

“Aura. You sure you’re up to this?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Aura said drily. “You got spare gloves?”

“Two new pairs, plus the disposables you made me pack. I’m mostly just concerned that I’m gonna have to carry him out, and I can’t just bring a big enough blanket and hope I don’t touch him at any point. But I know I’m not going to have an easy time shielding, either.” Quinlan ran a hand through his locs, picking at one bead mindlessly. “If I don’t report back every few hours, I want you to wait for Skywalker before you come after me.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Even if I make it an order?” Quinlan asked softly.

“I’ll call medical over it,” Aura swore.

Quinlan dipped his head. “Then at least be careful. Let me know when you’re heading out with Rune and Mac, and whoever else you’re taking. I’m going to be heading into High Port as soon as you’re on your way, and from there I’ll head down and track Obi-Wan down.”

“You’ve gotta be careful, too,” Aura begged him. “You’re going to be all alone. You can’t even bribe the Muun. They have all the credits they need.”

“Oh, I’m not paying in credits. I’m paying in blackmail,” Quinlan promised, grinning in a way that made a chill go down Aura’s back.

“Then at least make sure you’ve got a backup plan.”

“I have three off the top of my head, only one of which involves leaving Obi-Wan behind. I’ll be okay.”

“And if you need the help before we can get back to the Negotiator? If you do end up in overload?”

“Then I’ll figure something out,” Quinlan insisted. “I didn’t want to tell Mace – he doesn’t know the Shadow status, right now – but Tholme’s already down on the surface, scouting and playing defense.”

“Of course he is,” Aura scoffed, balling his hands into fists to hide how tempted he was to reach out and touch the hologram. “Tell him I said hi, please. I miss him.”

“I will.” 

“I should go. I’ll let you know when we leave.”

Quinlan nodded, but hesitated, holding a hand up to do exactly what Aura had tried to resist. “Love you.”

“You, too,” Aura said, meeting Quinlan’s holographic fingers in the air with a tiny smile, waiting a few seconds before he pressed the button to end the call.

He stayed there for another minute or two, breathing carefully. He needed to make sure he was entirely ready for what was yet to come; for all that everyone else already had their plans, he was the on-site medical lead. He’d be doing a hell of a lot of work.

Then, he walked to medbay.

He checked his comm on the way; Garnet had already messaged to say that she and Pulse were on the way, in Skywalker’s fastest shuttle. A comm from Mij told him that if anything did go wrong, if they were captured or anything, the Nulls were threatening to go out and take care of things themselves.

As he stepped into medbay, Helix looked up from his spot at the desk. “We going?”

Aura nodded, slipping into the storage room and grabbing three birgaane, packed with all the trauma supplies they’d likely need, plus a ventilator unit and a carefully sorted crate of medications. “Is Mac around?”

“Helping Bones with a procedure. I can grab him, have Fowler step in,” Helix offered.

“Do it. We need to get moving and I want him along.”

Helix hurried off, giving Aura the chance to double-check the supply shelves. He didn’t have much in the way of Force sensitivity, definitely not enough to do many of the especially complicated tricks, but he could at least run his hand along a shelf with his eyes half-shut and get a feel for what he might still need. Indeed, he hesitated in front of one particular medication, and immediately grabbed a box, checking what it was.

Midiactin. Force-blockers.

Aura groaned, opening the med crate and shoving the box inside. He’d hoped Quinlan would be feeling well enough that he wouldn’t need to bring it, but the Force had told him otherwise. That was rarely a good sign. 

Hopefully Quinlan wouldn’t need it until after Kenobi was rescued.

The orbiting city above Muunilinst was stunning in the planet’s night.

Garnet and Pulse were still a day and a bit out; Aura, Helix, and Mac would be the only trustworthy medical professionals on hand for the first bit of the rescue, if Quinlan managed to extract Kenobi quickly. Aura had gotten an anonymous comm message as they arrived in High Port, confirming only that someone was on the trail ; he was pretty sure that was from Tholme, though how the Shadow had known their ship from all the way down on the planet’s surface was still a mystery.

Aura was at comms while Mac flew them in, landing in one of the Republic-controlled docks on the edge of the city. Some of the docks were definitely unsafe; the Muuns didn’t all love the Republic. But they didn’t plan to be long, so once they were safely docked, Aura released Helix and Mac to go explore the surrounding area while he prepped supplies to treat Kenobi as soon as Quinlan brought him up. Helix would keep Mac from going too far, he was sure, and there was always a chance Mac could find something useful. Aura didn’t have space in their small shuttle to set up a full intensive care bed based off of what they had on the Negotiator, no. But Mac could work miracles and fit more equipment in there than Aura could dream of.

As soon as the other two were out, he unfolded the cot that was against the wall, ensuring he had fluids ready to go, pain meds and broad spectrum antibiotics prepped so he could start them right away. Kenobi would need meds to prevent infection, no matter what his captors had done to him. The last time they’d been on Muunilinst, early in the war, the General had come down with a cold that took two months to go away.

The next step was to prep the trauma kit. Aura hated that step, always had; he didn’t like dealing with the kind of injuries that warranted that level of treatment. He much preferred dealing with the walking wounded, things his vode could survive with just the basic help he could give on the battlefield, setting a broken bone or injecting bacta to stop a bleed. Things like torture injuries, what Kenobi would probably be arriving with, were a reminder of Kamino, of what his vode had survived when the natborns weren’t able to protect them. 

But he set it up anyway. Every single thing Kenobi would need. Everything Garnet might need in surgery, if she arrived before they got back to the Negotiator. The ECG leads, the ventilator, the scanner set to check for brain damage. Aura would run a better, more thorough scan once the initial stuff was taken care of, and he could deal with things then.

He grabbed the crate of meds next, along with a roll of tape. Not all of the meds would be useful; he knew Kenobi’s biology and allergies well enough that he tossed anything unsafe into a bag, tying it shut with the tape and using a red marker to draw danger symbols. The rest of the meds got quick labels on them to make sure Mac didn’t have to remember the medication names Mij had never had time to teach him and Aura had barely started with. BP HIGH, BP LOW, BLEED, CLOT, and more labels like those, easy to identify and grab without needing Aura and Helix to constantly check in. 

As he finished up with the meds, his comm chimed, a quick triple-beep that he’d set for urgent messages after getting used to it on Mij’s comm on Kamino. Aura scrabbled across the metal floor, grabbing it and powering the screen on in time to see the message from Quinlan.

Got him. It’s bad. Tholme is helping. Gonna be a couple hours to safely get him up.

Aura cursed aloud, a long string of profanity leaving his mouth as he typed a message back. Bad as in surgery on the Negotiator or bad as in resus before you get up here?

The pause before a response appeared was telling.

Aura sighed, grabbing a hypo of cordrazine and the jacket Quinlan had given him the month before. If you don’t tell me how bad, I’m coming down.

Not currently desperate, the response came through. Waterboarded. Collapsed lung from the pressure. Breathing is osik. HR/BP are good. I need you to be ready to fix things, but we can get him up to you.

That was better than it could have been. And Tholme was with Quinlan. If anyone was going to be able to keep Aura’s Jedi from falling apart until there was more help available, it was the man’s own Master. That meant Aura would be able to focus on Kenobi, hand over the midiactin if it was needed, and keep everyone safe.

He hit the button on his comm that would summon Mac and Helix back to the ship, along with a short message entreating Quinlan and Tholme to hurry, then sat down and grabbed a pack of water. With that long left before Kenobi was due to arrive, it wasn’t worth working himself up. He could relax, or at least try to.

When Helix arrived a few minutes later, Aura knew any chance of relaxing was gone.

“Mac found a scrap yard,” the CMO explained, sitting against the wall with his hands over his face and a new backpack over one shoulder. “He’s bartering with his spending money. Got the supplies to change the bed out for a proper operating table, maybe half an hour to set up the parts. We don’t have to try to do procedures on the cot.”

Aura squeezed his eyes shut, carefully avoiding screaming. “Of course he did. Do we have what we need to sterilize it?”

“Yep. He sent me back with that. All the ingredients for it,” Helix said, sliding the backpack over to Aura. “He knows the recipe. Let him get back first.”

Aura decided he was just going to lean the bag against the cot and wait.

It wasn’t long before Mac arrived, riding on the back of a speeder with all the parts. “Help me get this in, Aura!”

“You got it in there, you can get it out,” Aura hollered, but he headed down the shuttle’s ramp nonetheless to drag the flat top piece inside. Mac made quick work of the rest, passing the driver of the speeder a credit chip and following Aura up.

“How do we set it up?” Helix asked, clearing the equipment off the cot. 

Mac dropped his supplies, looking around. “Easy way is grab a battery and weld –”

“Vetoed.”

“Aura, you’re no fun. In that case we use the bolts in this bag, attach everything like this. Here, I’ve got a quick diagram,” Mac said, pulling a sheet of flimsi from his pocket.

It was a simple setup, one Aura could figure out in moments. “And welding speeds this up,” he drawled.

“Makes it more stable,” Mac corrected. “In the long run, if we’re keeping this setup in here, I’m welding it for sure. But I can wait.”

“Let’s make sure Mij knows you’re doing this, first,” Aura requested.

“I will. But let’s get this together.”

Helix took the pieces of the base, Aura took the verticals, and Mac put the top braces together. It was the most complicated part, but he was also the fastest by far with aligning the various pieces to bolt them, a task Aura quickly found he hated. By the time he’d finished, Mac had grabbed the top surface with its grooves and plugs for the monitors, attaching it to his piece.

“Last step,” Mac said, grabbing the upright from Aura and doing a visual check. “That should do. This goes here, at least in theory …”

“What do you mean, in theory?” Helix asked, startled, as the rest of the table slotted into his base where it was anchored on the floor.

“Well, this isn’t exactly meant to work like this, you know? There’s no manual for turning random parts into an operating table.”

Aura buried his face in his hands. “Mac, you’re saying you designed this entire thing in the past little while.”

“Yes! We needed it,” Mac said simply, walking around. “Where’s the bag of disinfectant ingredients?”

“Over here,” Aura said, leaving one hand over his face while passing the backpack over with the other. “Did you really just spend your entire free budget?”

Mac didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, he said, “Mij promised me, if it was something like this, he’d pay me back. Same deal as he made with Quench.”

“That’ll do it,” Helix agreed, then paused as Aura’s comm rang off the urgent signal again. “That’s them, isn’t it?”

Aura grabbed the comm and checked. “Yeah, it is. From Tholme, I think.”

Just got up the skyhook. Turn your beacon on.

He showed the message to Mac, who raced to the cockpit to power on the ship and with it the emergency beacon. “Let’s mix the disinfectant,” he hollered, and Aura’s comm pinged again. “That’s the recipe. Got that one from Rav. It’s the same mix Jaster’s people used. Safe for metal, safe for skin, safe for bacta tanks in a pinch.”

“Of course it kriffing is,” Helix sighed, taking the comm and opening the backpack to reveal three bottles, one of them empty with units on the side. “Aura, I’ll get this. You get Tholme to give you Kenobi’s current vitals, and make sure Vos is stable.”

Aura nodded, waiting for Helix to memorize the recipe before taking his comm back. He sent the message off quickly, waiting for the response as Mac returned to help.

BP toward the low side, HR a bit high, breathing kriffed. Been pausing to breathe for him when we had time to. Needs intubated, but you’ll need the specialty gear.

Aura sighed, checking the supplies he’d brought with him. “Mac, got another one for you. Need to intubate the General, but only one lung until we get the other one repaired.”

“Child tube and ten minutes, and I’ll have it ready to go,” Mac promised, diving into the same bag Aura was standing over and pulling out the supplies he could make use of. 

Just as Aura had expected.

He sent a message back to definitely-secretly-Tholme, assuring him and Quin that things would be taken care of. Can either do the initial procedure ourselves or wait for Garnet, but no matter what he’ll be okay.

A couple minutes out now. Vor’e, came the response. Aura found himself entirely unsurprised that Tholme, Shadow that he was, happened to know enough Mando’a to casually toss it into conversations. 

He walked down the ramp, casually leaning against the side of it as he looked around, watching and waiting for the incoming Jedi. He knew the feel of Quinlan’s mind almost as well as he knew his own batchmates. When the group was just coming into sight down the row, Kenobi over Quinlan’s shoulders, Aura already knew it was them, and tapped the alert in dadita on the ship’s hull for his vode’s sakes.

As they grew closer, Aura walked to the group, intending to escort them the last few steps. But Tholme stopped in his tracks with his scarred eyebrow raised, as if he expected Aura to take his position.

Aura huffed. “I need all the damn hands I can get, and I’m pretty sure Vokara Che will never let you live it down if you refuse. Get your shebs on the ship. Sir.”

Tholme grinned, jogging to catch up. “Kenobi will need care right away. I don’t know if we’ll have the time to take off first.”

“We will if I set you two in the cockpit with orders to fly back to the Negotiator,” Aura pointed out.

“I need meds, too,” Quinlan whispered, just loud enough for Tholme and Aura to hear.

“Of course,” Aura said at once. “Grabbed midiactin in case you needed it. I’ve got plenty of sedatives, too, if you’d rather just sleep it off.”

Quinlan shot him a look. “Why –”

“Force told me to grab it.”

“Ah.”

Tholme’s grin was unsettling as he jogged up the ramp and past the other clones. “You both ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Helix said, shutting his eyes so he didn’t have to acknowledge the older Jedi. “Been prepping for Kenobi for quite a while now.”

“Fly slow,” Quinlan called out, in a tone that told Aura that Tholme was probably far too much like Skywalker in his piloting style. “Minimal shaking, please. I haven’t been able to check Obi-Wan over properly.”

Aura grimaced, lifting Kenobi’s weight off of Quinlan and putting him down on the operating table, easy-to-clean bracing added to hold him still. “Get him intubated. Quinlan, which lung is bad?”

“Left.” Quinlan was hesitating, waiting, even though Aura could feel Tholme starting the process of raising the ramp and heading back into hyperspace. “Can you spare a moment? I’m not quite at breakdown levels, but…”

“I don’t want you breaking down on me yet,” Aura said, grabbing the midiactin and tearing off three wrapped pills. “If you need more than that, I’m adding other meds. But that will at least take the edge off.”

Quinlan nodded, leaning in to give Aura a momentary kov’nyn – willingly touching Aura, knowing that he was stressed but trusting that he’d at least be making an effort to shield. The overload couldn’t be that bad, then. That was a weight off Aura that he hadn’t even realized was there.

“Let’s use the disinfectant to at least attempt a scrub,” he decided, pulling surgical gowns out of the trauma kit. “I’m getting him on antibiotics no matter what, but I also don’t want him to be getting any worse infections than he’s already dealing with.”

Mac stayed by Kenobi’s side, intubating him and setting up the ventilator and getting an IV in each arm while Aura and Bones did what they could to disinfect themselves. Once that was managed, Aura switched places with Mac, double-checking the younger medic’s work just in case, and confirming that Kenobi’s blood pressure was still dropping.

“We’re getting him scrubbed, and while that’s happening I’m running the scanner,” he said, grabbing it and quickly powering it on. “Let’s see how his brain’s doing.”

The scanner confirmed minor damage, similar to a concussion but more widespread, with no brain bleed to worry about. That alone meant Aura didn’t have to worry half as much about what was going on; any other internal bleed would be easier to treat.

“Going to get a chest tube in,” Helix said, returning to the table with Mac. “Aura, what are you thinking?”

“The odds this is a hemothorax are higher than I like,” he said, switching the scanner over to the relevant mode and waiting. “If this is tension, we might need to give things more care than we were planning on before Garnet gets here.”

“As soon as he’s stable, we’re calling Mij and the Halls,” Mac reminded them. “We can call Garnet and Pulse at the same time, make sure they know what they’re getting into. This is hardly the worst injury Garnet’s treated.”

“Point.” Aura pulled the chest tube supplies out of the sterile bag, giving them over to Helix just as the scanner beeped the warning that there was blood in Kenobi’s chest.

Of course.

“Getting the fluids going now,” Mac said, and all three of them quickly worked to stabilize Kenobi to whatever extent they could.

Aura just hoped it was enough.

Chapter Text

“Docking successful. We’ll be over in a couple minutes,” Garnet’s voice rang out over the ship’s comms.

Aura smiled. “You hear that, General? More help is here.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi was still unconscious, intubated, but the last sixteen hours at half their normal hyperdrive speed had given Aura, Mac, and Helix time to at least get him stable. Master Tholme – Master, because Aura was sure as hell not accusing that man of being in the military – was flying them, steady and slow, no turbulence at all. And Quinlan had just guided Pulse and Garnet in to dock with them via the emergency doors, which meant they finally had a trained trauma surgeon on board instead of just the generalist Helix was and the mishmash of training Aura and Mac had.

As Garnet stepped through the doors, hair already tied back into a tight bun, her eyes fell on Aura. “What are we looking at?”

Aura turned to Mac. “You want to give it a shot?”

“Hypovolemia secondary to left side hemothorax caused by waterboarding,” the younger clone began, slower than Aura but with plenty of confidence behind his words. “Intubation is limited to the right lung for safety. Scanner picked up diffuse hypoxic brain damage, very minor but still present, likely also due to the hemothorax and torture. We’ve drained what we could from his chest but Helix didn’t want to cut in until you arrived. Oxygen’s holding at 95 with vent and supplementation, just two liters. There’s some evidence of other trauma, swelling in his shoulders pointing to being held in a stress position at some point in the past few days. Antibiotics, saline, pain meds, sedatives.” Mac paused to breathe, thinking. “Anything I’m missing?”

“Consciousness when the sedatives aren’t running,” Garnet said, but she was already focused on Kenobi’s vitals where they were displayed on the pad mounted above Mac’s carefully built operating table. “If we haven’t lowered the sedatives in the past few hours –”

“About that,” Aura said quietly.

Garnet whirled around, giving him a knowing glare. “Who said not to check?”

“Mij, after the first test had Kenobi screaming in the Force and begging for his captors to get out of his brain.” Aura raised an eyebrow. “You sure you want to try again?”

“I need to know what we’ve got for activity, but that can wait if it’s that bad. Can have one of the Jedi check with way less fuss,” Garnet decided, thinking through all the options. “Pulse, you up to setting up more meds with Mac’s help?”

Pulse snorted, pressed up against the wall and clearly uncomfortable with how much like medbay the situation at hand was. “Switching saline out, getting a more specific antibiotic, adding blood pressure meds to encourage that along, numbing up the General’s chest so we can cut in.”

Garnet rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell Gilamar you cooperated for once.”

“Fine, fine. Mac, I’ve got the meds in Skywalker’s shuttle.”

Mac followed Pulse back over to the other shuttle, leaving the three more trained medics surrounding Kenobi. Aura took a deep breath, then gave Garnet a serious look. “Guessing you’ll want to re-scan and start the definitive measures?”

Garnet nodded, but she seemed hesitant. “Has he been going downhill still? Or can we wait until we reach the Negotiator?”

“We’re at least twelve hours out still,” Helix said with a grimace. “Last twelve hours have seen no change, but he’s still bleeding and we don’t have any compatible blood to transfuse.”

“I’m starting a bacta infusion, IO, to encourage more blood cell production,” Garnet said, sending the comm to Pulse so he could grab the supplies. “And yes, if we’re able to get things sterile enough, I want to get in there and stitch things up properly so he doesn’t lose any more blood. I don’t know what our best bet will be with his shoulders, but I may just leave that and let bacta take care of that once we’re on the Negotiator. If the pain meds are able to mask that well enough, it’ll be safer to wait.”

“Which means we’re just dealing with the one lung,” Helix said. “That’s not near as bad as it could be.”

“One lung and grabbing one of the Jedi,” Garnet corrected. “I still don’t want to keep the General too deeply sedated, if we have another choice.”

Aura sighed. “I’ll grab Quinlan. Adjust the meds, but be ready. He started screaming the moment he started to come out of it, last time.”

Quinlan and Tholme were in the cockpit, talking quietly. “Meds are mostly out of my system,” Quinlan noted as Aura stepped in. “Should be able to help, if you need it.”

“Just need somebody who’s used to Kenobi’s mind to check it over,” Aura agreed. “We’re lowering the sedative dose to check on him for a moment, and then we’ll get into surgery to repair that lung.”

“Go,” Tholme said with a smile. “I’ve got the helm.”

So Quinlan followed Aura back to where Kenobi lay, the sedatives already lowered enough that his face was twitching. “He’s panicking,” Quinlan said, just loud enough to hear over the monitors beeping. “They – some sort of mind control situation, while he was captive. His shoulders still hurt. He’s more coherent than he was last time, but he’s still screaming.”

Aura pulled his shields tighter.

“Can you let him know we’re going to fix things?” Garnet asked, obviously worried. “I know he can’t really consent when he’s this out of it –”

“I’m one of Obi-Wan’s medical backup people,” Quinlan assured her. “He needs the surgery. Do it, and I’ll …” He faltered, one hand reaching out and touching the side of Kenobi’s head, in between the various stickers and monitors. “He’s worried. Thinks we’re all going to hate him for … something. They must have made him hallucinate, feel like he was under mind control, while he was captive.”

Garnet hesitated. “Aura, you know the med interactions better than I do,” she admitted. “Can we throw any sort of antipsychotic into the mix? Without making things worse?”

“Not that he can tolerate,” Aura said. “We can ask his mindhealer later, once we’re back on the Negotiator. But sedatives will have to be enough for now.”

Garnet sighed. “Alright. General Vos, does he understand?”

“For a value of understand that factors in his current capacity, yes.” Quinlan pulled his hand away and gave Kenobi a long look. “I’m going to take a lower dose of midiactin and stay with Tholme for a bit. Maybe take a nap.” 

Aura brushed shoulders with his Jedi, kute against skin, to press a bit of comfort to him. “Sounds like a good idea. Talk things over later.”

He felt Quinlan push just a hint of relief back at him as the Jedi walked away.

“New meds are here,” Mac said from the emergency door. “Pulse is searching for the IO gun. Everything else is ready, and yes, Pulse is checking the list Havoc made of Stewjoni-safe meds for everything he pulls.”

“Good,” Aura and Helix said in sync. 

Garnet grinned. “Let’s get started. Mac, the emergency door should have settings to make a positive pressure field in here –”

“Already done,” Mac said. “I’ve got the airlock between the shuttles set to let me bring things over without getting things in here contaminated. I know how this works.”

“You rock. Let’s do this.”

As the other two began their scrub, Aura started the process of numbing Kenobi’s chest wall, tiny needles that would help the pain since it seemed Kenobi was fighting the meds. His vitals were osik, and whatever Aura could do to help the pain, he would.

“Your turn,” Garnet said, watching Aura finish the last injection of local anesthetic. “As soon as you’re ready, I’m cutting. There’s too much blood still coming out of there, looking at the tube.”

A knock on the emergency door caught Aura’s attention as he quickly tied his mask on and let Helix pour disinfectant over his hands again. Pulse held up the IO gun – loaded, ready to go – before putting it down on a shelf and walking away.

“New plan,” Aura said. “I’ll get the bacta infusion going, IO line in his sternum since things will be numbed anyway, and I’ll set that to a fast enough rate that we can get his blood cell count up before we’re on the Negotiator. You two start on repairs.”

“Understood,” Garnet said. She knew, Helix knew, that Aura had more experience with securing intraosseous lines than either of them would ever want to have. They could take care of everything else – the scans had shown how small the actual injury was, just in a spot that bled like kriff. 

Aura grabbed the IO gun from the airlock, off the shelf Pulse had put it down on. He double-checked it, then sighed, walking over to Kenobi and lining it up.

The cracking thud was still as startling as it had been the first time Ruus had shown him how it worked.

But it meant he could start the bacta infusion into Kenobi’s marrow, which would speed up the rate of red blood cell production at least tenfold. That was as good a chance as he could get at recovering quickly.

“That’s the bleed. Let’s get that clamped,” Garnet murmured as Aura stepped back and adjusted the infusion rate. “That’ll be a couple minutes to fix, maybe resect that bit of lung just to simplify things…”

“I’m following your lead,” Helix said. “Whatever you think will work best. I’ve been running on what advice Mij can send from halfway across the galaxy.”

Aura offered his hands, taking hold of the clamp so Helix could soak up more of the blood. “Mij said to tell you he misses you,” he added, watching closely as Garnet stitched things up and applied bacta where it was needed. “Wants to pull you to Kyrimorut for more training, if Skywalker can spare you.”

Garnet visibly smiled, even under her mask. “I’ll send him a comm. I want the extra time learning, and I can ask Commander Tano to convince Skywalker instead of just going straight to him. Even better if I bring back supplies so Pulse can give her another set of lessons in triage and advanced life support. The Commander gets bored far too easily.”

Aura couldn’t hold back his laugh, but it faded quickly when he felt Kenobi start to fight the meds again, his mind lashing out with a mental scream. “General, I’ve got you. You’re safe. We’re stitching you up. I’m going to up your sedatives, alright? We aren’t angry. You’re just fighting the torture. We just need you to relax and let us finish.”

“I’m going to finish up here,” Garnet added, instantly understanding what had happened despite her own Force-blindness. “You’ll be able to breathe on your own as soon as I have this taken care of. The torture was bad, General, very bad. I’m happy to have you back so you’re not dealing with it anymore.”

Kenobi seemed to relax minutely. For the moment, that was all Aura could hope for.

Chapter Text

Kenobi was still alive when they reached the Negotiator, which Aura counted as a success.

“His body’s still not producing as much blood as I would like, and I’m pretty sure there’s a bleed in one of his shoulders still,” Garnet grumbled, pushing the gurney down the hall from the shuttle bay where they’d landed. “I want to start a transfusion up as soon as it’s viable, whole blood, and run labs while that’s going. We can get a quick scan of his lung, but I’m honestly more worried about his shoulders and his mental state at this point.”

Aura nodded, walking alongside the gurney with one hand touching General Kenobi’s face lightly. “He’s going to need a while. I don’t honestly know what he went through, before we got him out.”

“Enough,” Quinlan said, on Kenobi’s other side. “He went through enough.”

They were quiet for the rest of the walk, Garnet having already relayed the key points of the General’s condition to Rune and Bones when they reached the shuttle bay. Aura knew the General would be headed into what passed for intensive care on board the Negotiator, likely to receive multiple units of blood on top of everything else, and quite possibly going into surgery for his shoulders within a few hours. It was a lot. The torture had done a lot. Aura just hoped they were finally getting ahead of things.

As they got to medbay, Kenobi flinched, as if he knew where they were despite his heavy sedation. Quinlan flinched, too, pulling his hand away. “Don’t know if we can leave him on these meds. Something’s making the flashbacks worse. He’s gonna start lashing out, and if I’m not here –”

“Midiactin,” Aura said firmly, already regretting not having taken a vial of it with them to give Kenobi on the way back. “I’m going to start him on a low dose, just enough to keep him from hitting everyone around. And once we have that, and his shoulders are checked out, I think we should start letting him up some.”

Rune nodded, peeling away from the group without a word to grab a vial of the Force inhibitor. Bones led the way to what had basically become the General’s default room in medbay, more cushioning and softer lighting to help him relax. It typically didn’t do very much, still being in medbay and all, but Aura had hope that it might at least make a slight difference this time.

Getting Kenobi transferred to the hospital bed was … festive. But with as many medics as would fit in the room, they managed to get him over without pulling on any of the wires or tubes attached to him, and as far as Aura could tell, without disturbing the ventilator itself at all. Almost as soon as he was settled, Rune appeared with the midiactin drawn up, and Aura held his breath as she injected it into the General’s IV line.

The pressure he’d been pushing at everyone in the room went away almost immediately.

“I don’t want to leave him without a sense of the Force for any longer than we have to,” Aura said firmly, looking around at the other medics. “If it comes down to it, I’ll pull rank and route us to Coruscant to get him a mindhealer. But for now, I want him checked over and stabilized the rest of the way, and once that’s done I want to get a proper neuro check done. That means we’re taking away the sedatives, possibly once and for all.”

“And if he’s … not there?” Quinlan asked quietly from his spot by the door.

Aura took a deep breath. “Then I route us to Coruscant anyway to see what the Healers and the other Masters can pull off.”

Quinlan dipped his head in acknowledgment.

Things moved quickly, after that. Helix arrived with the larger portable scanner, confirming that the bleed in Kenobi’s shoulder was tiny and close enough to stopping thanks to the infused bacta that Rune declared it not worth her time before leaving the room. Garnet rolled her eyes, but Aura knew she liked the younger surgeon just fine when it meant she didn’t have to do particularly messy vascular repairs herself.

The clear scan meant that they were good to start weaning Kenobi off the vent, of course. They had the four most experienced surgeons on board in the same room, Aura and Bones and Helix and Garnet. If anything went wrong, they could take care of it. So Aura watched as Helix adjusted the meds, as Bones adjusted the vent, as Kenobi took a much deeper breath than the ones he’d been managing just after the rescue.

“Progress,” Garnet murmured, looking at Aura from the other side of the bed. 

“Indeed,” he responded, relaxing enough to smile slightly. Quinlan put a hand out to offer a hug – robes covering his skin, so he wouldn’t end up overwhelmed again – and Aura happily stepped in for the contact comfort.

For all that they had made sure Kenobi was safe, it was still stressful over the next few minutes as the General started to wake up, visibly panicking despite everything Aura and the others tried to do. The easiest solution, it turned out, was to take the ventilator away entirely and extubate him. Pretty much the moment Aura put the oxygen tubing under his nose in its stead, Kenobi stopped trying to fight his way upright and out of bed, letting the soft mattress support him as it was made to while everyone explained where he was and what was going on.

“Is there anything I can bring, anything that would help?” Quinlan asked, leaning over so Kenobi could see him while flat in bed.

“Color,” the General answered, voice croaky and faint but there nonetheless. “They – they had me in a white room, Quin. I couldn’t think. All there was … it was bright, and it hurt.”

“We can fix that,” Aura said at once, and Helix hurried out to grab one of the colored lamps they kept on hand in case they needed to distract an ad who got onto the battlefield. “Anything else, General? Noise, some ice to suck on?”

“Blankets,” Kenobi admitted quietly, and Garnet hurried to the corner with its warmer.

As she spread the first blanket over his body, the second folded at his feet, she asked, “General, would you mind letting us know what they did, just so we can do our best to avoid hitting any other triggers?”

Kenobi shuddered. “Put me in a white room, white walls, bright lights. Waterboarded me. Drugged me, some sort of … I don’t even know what. But I know what psychosis feels like. Must be mostly out of my system now, but I was dissociating for almost the entire time I was there.” He paused, then asked quietly, “Did you … try to wake me, on the shuttle?”

“Yes, sir,” Aura answered. “You reached out in the Force, so we could tell you were still in there, just hurting.”

“I didn’t want to lose you,” Quinlan admitted, offering his hand to Kenobi. “Kept wishing I could get you back right then and there, but it wasn’t safe yet. Had to let the meds work their way out of your system, and get you through surgery and all that.”

“How bad?” Kenobi asked. Aura could tell he was already getting tired, and that honestly wasn’t a surprise.

Garnet sighed. “Hemothorax, one lung bleeding into your chest. I took care of that, and it shouldn’t be a problem. Your shoulders were injured, too. I didn’t bother trying to fix them. They’re just about healed already, thanks to the bacta. That was an IO infusion, so your sternum is going to be sore for a few days. We’ve got antibiotics going, you’ll be in medbay or at least confined in quarters for a few days, but you’ll be alright on most counts.”

Kenobi raised an eyebrow. “Most?”

“General, there were some signs of potential brain damage,” Aura said, catching Kenobi’s attention. “Hypoxia, specifically. We don’t know yet what the symptoms will be, or if you’ll notice any effects at all, but it could have made the psychosis worse. If you notice anything, I need you to tell one of us, alright?”

Kenobi nodded slightly, squeezing his eyes shut as Helix appeared with the colored lamp. “Bones, Aura, we’ve got a new trauma case we might need you on.”

“I’m not going until I’ve debriefed with Mij and Vokara,” Aura said firmly. “Bones, go. Garnet, if you want in?”

“Yeah, I can deal with one more case before I need a break,” Garnet answered. “I’ll comm Pulse, see if he and Mac can come help to keep an eye on Kenobi. And I know you’ve been awake longer than I have, Aura. Pulse and I traded off on the way. You need to rest.”

“Lek, alright. I’ll debrief, and then I’ll sleep. Quin, you think you’ve got him for a few minutes, until Pulse and Mac get here?”

Quinlan nodded, giving Aura one more hug. “Go ahead. It won’t be the first time I sat watch for him.”

Aura smiled, following the others out of the room as Quinlan pulled a chair to the bedside. He headed to his office instead of going to scrub, pinging Mij and Vokara to let them know he was making the comm call.

They both sent back confirmation by the time he had settled into his seat, so he set everything up and pressed the button.

“Kenobi’s alright,” he said as soon as they were both there.

“Oh, good,” Vokara breathed, running one hand over her face. “I saw the scan results and feared the worst.”

“I would’ve commed sooner if I could,” Aura apologized. “Quinlan’s in with him right now. His lung is fine, his shoulders are mostly healed from bacta, and the traces of brain damage haven’t made a massive impact, from what I’ve seen so far. I’ll run a better eval tomorrow, if nobody else does in the meantime. But right now, my biggest concern is the PTSD side of things, because he was apparently dosed with something psychotic, and his history with that kind of thing isn’t good.”

“No, it isn’t,” Vokara agreed as Mij hissed. “Can you route to Coruscant? Is that worth doing yet?”

“I’d rather see how he’s doing tomorrow,” Aura said. “He’s going to want to push through it, I know. And I won’t pull rank if it’s something we can handle here, maybe with a change in meds. But anything past that and we’ll be headed to Coruscant at top speed, don’t worry.”

Mij gave Aura a piercing look. “There’s a battle coming, isn’t there? Something’s holding you all out there.”

Aura huffed. “Yes, ba’vodu. Master Tholme gave us some intel. Odds are, we’re going to have another battle on Muunilinst, sometime soon. The Resolute is already on the way. General Skywalker is … not thrilled that he can’t come to be with General Kenobi, but Quinlan being here is good enough for the moment. And unless I give the order to bring us to Coruscant, we’re going to be heading to Muunilinst, too.”

“Is Master Tholme–”

“Vokara, do you honestly think he’s still here?” Aura asked.

Vokara burst out laughing. “So he did leave the instant he could.”

“His ship’s still on Muunilinst, so he took Skywalker’s shuttle back over,” Aura explained. “With any luck, he’ll arrive before the battle starts, and he can help with recon.”

Mij sighed. “I think that’s all we can hope for. Keep Kenobi out of the battle, won’t you? I don’t want to be dealing with this again for as long as possible.”

“Lek, Mij.” Aura smiled for an instant, then yawned, the weight of what he’d done to keep Kenobi safe finally weighing on him. “Think I should go to bed.”

“Go,” Vokara said. “I’ll keep an eye on scans as they get uploaded. He’ll be alright.”

Aura shut down the comms, opting to curl up in the blanket nest on the floor of his office instead of going all the way to his bunk. He didn’t think anyone would need him. But he might need them, and he wasn’t going to make himself harder to find.

Indeed, after a few minutes of tossing and turning, Quinlan knocked on the door and opened it, stepping in and shutting off the light. Wordlessly, he took his boots off, then untied Aura’s own and placed them alongside the first pair. He laid down next to Aura, putting one arm out.

Aura burrowed in, and within moments, he was asleep.