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The forest was burning.
Thirteen stood and watched, the brilliant flames painting the night sky with golds and oranges and casting deep shadows over his blackened armor.
There were others still in there, dozens trapped between the walls of fire and fallen trees. But General Krell was already ordering them to move once more, away from the growing, ravenous disaster. To him they were good as dead, and there was no sense wasting resources on the possibility of survivors.
Meat droids were, and always will be, expendable.
The others were already following after the General, unable to do anything against his word. It was to do as he said or be left behind to die by Separatist hands, the fire, starvation, or the wild animals that would soon be ravenous from the loss of food sources of their own. There had been two so far as he stood there who’d ran back into the flames, screaming for batchmates that would never answer them again.
No one went after them.
Thirteen had been trained all his life for terrible things. He’d been slated for black ops, which included many rounds of torture he had to endure to their satisfaction. He’d been a medic, which meant training under the most evil person on Kamino, and that was including all the Kaminoans combined. He learned how to lock up every emotion and bury it deep within- out of sight and out of mind, where not even the light of day could touch it. No one would know what he felt, what he thought, his quiet wishes and prayers. He was the perfect droid wrapped in flesh and bone, directed through dozens of missions already where natborn blood soaked his hands and worlds left scrambling at the deaths of their leaders.
A silent killer, Thirteen was. A soulless husk.
Yet… he never felt so… powerless before. Helpless.
His brothers of this battalion he’d found himself a part of weren’t made for this sort of agony. Thirteen wanted to bundle them up and tuck them in where no one could see them either, protect them within his ribs and take the pain for them. Thirteen was specialized for hardships, but these brothers… they were meant for kinder Generals, the ones whispered about in reports from up and down the warfront. The ones who fought alongside them and defended them and treated them with kindness.
A better General would have waited before setting the world ablaze.
A better medic would have ran in to save as many as he could.
Thirteen turned away from the fire, the heat already winning against the thermal regulation of his kit and causing sweat to bead down his neck. The General was already up over the next hill, his barked orders near muted over the crackling roar of the fire. The survivors were straggling after him, some with noticeable limps and stumbling steps that made something small in his heart ache.
The injured were always the first to fall. The first to be thrown to the front lines.
There was a tiny meep.
Thirteen paused mid-step, head tilting as he listened. Instinct told him he hadn’t misheard, and another heartbeat of tuning out the flames and the tumbling of ashened trees, was the quietest little rustle of parched grass.
He didn’t know what had come over him. Curiosity? A sense of overwhelming guilt? Whatever it may be, Thirteen found himself approaching near the edges of the fire, kneeling down against the embers to scoop up a small form out of the ashes.
It fit perfectly into the palm of his hand, rolled up into a trembling, dirty little ball of singed fluff. The fires had turned its fur to the color of soot, its long tail curled protectively over its slender little snout. He could see it, one day, becoming long and sleek, a strange cross between feline and the mink he’d seen on his last solo black-ops mission. But this one was young- too young to be left on its own, with every inch of it trembling and heartbeat a hummingbird against his palm even through the thick synthleather of his gauntlet.
He shouldn’t keep it. The General would kill it and him if he ever found it on his ship. But it was far too young and small to survive on its own here, and Thirteen has lost over four hundred men so far and many more will follow before they were let free of this planet. He couldn’t help a single brother, but…
Careful as he could, Thirteen tucked the tiny creature into his ammo pouch, placing a hand against the side of the pouch to feel the sturdy walls of synthleather protecting his little ward before he finally turned away from the fires for good, trekking up the hillside to rejoin the unit.
If he could not save his brothers, then he will save this little one.
It was all he could do.