Chapter Text
Boil was in the command tent, just about to go off-shift, when the comm call came in from Captain Rex. In a dull voice he had never heard from the younger trooper, Rex reported that there had been a friendly fire incident, with two killed in action, three wounded, a set up by the other Jedi General Pong Krell.
“Thank you Captain.” Kenobi said, his voice sharp and tight. “May I speak with Lieutenant Waxer?”
There was a beat of silence, a moment too long, and Boil felt his knees go weak.
“No sir.” Rex said. Boil choked on a scream and crumpled. He heard no more of Rex’s words, hands catching him before he hit the chipboard floor that they had set up over the soft Umbaran mud, the mud that Waxer had died for.
“Easy vod.” Cody said, close, his arms wrapped around Boil, both of them kneeling on the board, his voice rumbling through their chest plates, “we don’t know he’s dead. He could be one of the injured.”
It was a hope Cody, ever pragmatic, rarely offered, especially in the face of such things as the death of a vod.
Boil didn’t want it.
There was a gentle, ungloved hand on the back of his uncovered neck. The General.
“I will go, and I will deal with Pong Krell, and I will find out what Rex has not yet told me.” He said, and his voice was soft, but something in Boil’s subconscious mind screamed that there was a danger in that tone, that if he was Pong Krell, or even Captain Rex, still green enough, and shaken enough, to have not given a full report on the state of the troopers of the 212th that were in his vicinity.
“Yes sir.” Boil rasped. He couldn’t scream or cry, not in front of the CO, not on the battlefield, not in the command tent.
“I will have your answers.” He said, and it sounded like a vow. “This world clouds the senses, and I like it little.”
Words passed between Cody and Kenobi over Boil’s head, and then Boil was being handed off to Helix, who took him, one of Boil’s arms slung over his shoulder, to the medtent and sat him down to fold bandages and sort medical supplies, the kind of work that would keep his hands busy and make him not feel useless as he spiralled into grief, without placing too much on him.
He appreciated it, for all that it gave him too much time to think, because if he’d just been left to go off-shift he’d probably be wandering, aimless, through the camp, a blaster bolt of grief loosed without target.