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Considering his last really concrete memory was of leading a hilltop charge of supercommandos, Pre was somewhat surprised to find himself in the tiny ancillary Nite Owls’ tent back on Zanbar, on a pallet piled with what seemed like every blanket and fur that wasn’t in immediate use and his entire midsection swathed in bandages that smelled strongly of bacta.
A quiet voice singing and the sound of scratching coming from nearby made him turn his head to the side to find the source. Bo-Katan, sitting cross-legged next to a floor lamp that bathed her in soft golden light, was using her pocket vibroblade to scrape a stick into what looked like a tiny figure of a female warrior and humming an old Concordian nursery song under her breath.
All things considered, it wasn’t a bad sight to wake up to.
“Bo-Katan…?” he croaked - fek, but his throat felt more parched than the Tusken uplands. And oh, his head was *pounding*.
She looked down to where he lay on the pallet, and smiled; still working on her carving.
“Hey, sleeping beauty. You’ve only been down and out for about forty-eight hours-”
She was cut off by a sudden fit of dry coughing and pained gasps in between.
“Oh jeez. Here, have some of this,” she handed him her water canteen, which he accepted eagerly and downed greedily.
Bo-Katan shrugged.
“Sure, go ahead and take the whole thing- seriously, I really don’t blame you. Your voice’s gotta be shot from all the shouting on during the raid. Also you screamed something horrible while we were ah, helping you.”
Pre remembered more and more as he drank. Of course, the battle - the one over the two sun-bathed inner worlds that the remnants of the Kaiku and Ty'ven clans had contested them for so fiercely over the past few months.
“The clans…the battle?”
“Won, decisively so,” Bo-Katan replied, simply.
“Thanks to your relentless pursuit of those hutuuns through the highlands, and blowing up their stronghold. The good news is, pretty much the entire Zanbar system is Kyrt'sad territory, firmly now. Tyvens and Kaikus are all but wiped out, the few remainders swore allegiance to us on the Darksaber.
“The bad news is, you almost got cut in half by an exploding starship wing right when the fight was getting thick. Hack and Chop got most of the big chunks of shrapnel out, but really you’ve got my dainty fingers to thank for the lack of little pieces leftover - and Tal-Sarad’s sewing skills for the needlework holding your guts in,” she gestured with the small carving-blade to the mess of bandages he wore around his stomach and hips.
“Thanks for that,” Pre grunted, voice now somewhat more smoothed and throat feeling less like it'd had a steel file rammed down it. Tossing the empty can to the side, he glanced up at the open skylight flap, frowning when he saw nothing but stars overhead.
“What time is it, anyhow? S'dark out.”
“It's little after two in the morning, actually. I’m only awake because I’m bored as hell - and full of caf and stims. And to make sure you don’t do anything really stupid, like - ”
Pre interrupted her with a yawn, and on reflex stretched his arms up over his head - and couldn’t hold back the swears as pain like a brand shot through his body. He doubled over on his side, which only made it somehow *worse*.
“- like stretch when your entire left side’s being held together with bacta patches and string,” she sighed, but her next snarky reply died in her throat when she saw a fresh burst of scarlet bloom across the blue-white bacta wraps.
“Fierfek,” she dropped her handiwork and scrambled for the box marked with the red cross at the foot of the pallet, and pulled out a wad of bacta-wraps, a tiny vibroblade and a rather over-large stimshot. She carefully sliced through Pre’s old bandages, peeling the blood-sodden ones away from the gash on his side. She let out her breath in a rush of relief.
“Whew. Well, you didn’t rip the stitches but you’re still bleeding - again, a bit. I’m gonna take the old one off, clean it as best I can, and slap some new bacta on it. So um, sit up and uh, try hold still as best you can till' the stim hits…”
Pre didn’t flinch when the needle was stabbed into his neck, nor did he look down as Bo-Katan worked on wiping and re-bandaging his wound as the cool numbness of the stimshot flowed through his veins and his eyelids began to droop again. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Bo-Katan’s face - not out of fear of the sight of the his own injury - but becasue she seemed strangely agitated, afraid even. She was no stranger to gory wounds, on herself or others but something about this seemed to upset her more than normal - surely she would’ve told him if he was dying from it?
“There, all done,” she finished tying off the last bandage, "try not to rip this one open, will you?“
”Lek, dala'alor,” he saluted half-heartedly, feeling a fresh wave of drowsiness as he lay back down.
“Mir'sheb,” Bo-Katan rolled her eyes, but bent down to leave a quick kiss on his lips. Her face became sad and serious for a moment once more.
“You know I worried that we’d lost you before we got you to the medbay,” she said, quietly, stroking her hand over his close-cropped hair. “I was…well, I was really scared. I’m really happy you survived this one.”
“Y'know it’ll take more than an exploding ship to take me down, Bon'ika,” Pre murmured, smiling lazily, leaning into her hand as she cupped the side of his face.
“And I know you’re not going to die, not this time and not this way. But only if you get some rest,” she pressed a kiss to his forehead, before getting up and resuming her work. Pre for once did just as he was told, and soon drifted off into a drug-hazed slumber, once more to the sounds of a blade scraping on wood and Bo-Katan’s quiet singing.