not a miracle needed
wc: 940
notes: another 15-minute sprint, tho this one grew legs and ended up being more like 25 minutes lol. first foray into coday bingo !
summary:
Well, Cody wasn’t going to argue with his superior. He had better things to do. The artillery shell that had taken out the crumbling brick wall he’d been using for cover was—
“Thank the Force,” Kenobi said. Cody found himself being lifted like a recalcitrant tooka and settled onto a gurney. He made to get up again and Kenobi easily pinned him with a hand to the center of his chest.
cross-posted to ao3
“Hey, hey, hey,” a strident voice said. It was much too loud and right next to Cody’s ear. He would have batted at it but his hands had become cold and leaden weights, and his eyelids weren’t responding to any of his commands. He did not panic, because Marshal Commanders did not panic.
“I’m fine,” Cody said. He wasn’t sure if the words ever made it past his tongue. It felt too big for his mouth, all dry and fuzzy.
A warm—burning, really—thumb peeled back one of his eyelids. Cody made another token protest, wincing in the harsh sunlight that blinded him for one heady moment.
“—requesting medevac at—” the too-loud voice that had jarred Cody from his cold and slightly dim wool-gathering was General Kenobi. His General Kenobi. A thrill of something—alarm, panic, and a weighty and fang-filled feeling that pulled at the pit of his stomach—shot through him. The shock of emotion and subsequent adrenaline was enough for him to jerk into motion, heaving himself up onto one elbow and then the other. What went through him next was considerably less pleasant. If he’d had anything left in him, he would have sicked up all over the General’s no-longer shining leather boots.
“Force preserve every little—” Kenobi bit himself off and wrapped an arm around Cody’s shoulders. “Stubborn,” he hissed against Cody’s temple.
The air was thick with smoke. Choked with it, really. Cody shook his head to clear it and then patiently blinked away the resulting black spots in his vision.
“Yes, you are,” Kenobi insisted, evidently taking the motion as some kind of refusal. He pressed the palm of his hand to the side of Cody’s face, mopping at the scalding heat that sheeted down his temple and left a wash of crimson all down his spaulder.
Well, Cody wasn’t going to argue with his superior. He had better things to do. The artillery shell that had taken out the crumbling brick wall he’d been using for cover was—
“Thank the Force,” Kenobi said. Cody found himself being lifted like a recalcitrant tooka and settled onto a gurney. He made to get up again and Kenobi easily pinned him with a hand to the center of his chest. “We took the southerly quarter and are waiting upon reinforcements for the city center. The Separatists are dug in and have taken civilian hostages—there’s nothing more to do here. Not yet.”
With great reluctance, Cody let himself be strapped to the gurney. Howl and one of his minions were saying something in rapid-fire shorthand, some kind of code a CMO—he strongly suspected Howl himself—had invented to make medbay instruction faster. In war, time was more precious than blood.
“You’ll be alright,” Kenobi said. He kept his hand over the side of Cody’s face until Howl pried his fingers away. Cody let the dizziness wash over him in waves. It threatened and receded in time with the black spotting his vision. His chin tipped toward his chest without conscious input and his breathing seemed too loud and ragged in his own ears.
“You will be alright,” Howl confirmed briskly, doing something on Cody’s far side while his subordinate did something by Cody’s boots. They were moving at a fast clip now but Kenobi still had a hand on the side of Cody’s gurney. He was doing—something. Cody wasn’t sure what but the wrinkle between his brows was a dead giveaway. “Won’t even get a matching scar to even out your face. How many fingers, Commander?”
“Three,” Cody grunted out. Whatever Howl was doing had somehow eased the swelling in his mouth. He must have bitten his tongue: it was still hot and swollen but it no longer filled his mouth and turned his words to mush.
“What’s your serial?”
“CC-2224.” Cody blinked one eye closed and then the other. The blood clotting the side of his face had been cleaned away at some point. Fuzziness receded in a great wave and stayed away this time. In its place a tide of searing pain swam up through his bones to make the palms of his hands prickle and the backs of his knees sweat.
“Duty calls.” Kenobi’s hand founds its way to the two square inches of Cody’s skin—just between spaulder and the strap of his chestplate where his body glove had torn or singed away in the blast—and gave him a firm squeeze. He looked redolent of sunlight, the golden near-dusk haloing him in brass and picking out every one of his flyaways in warm light. “Don’t try and stand up again, hm?”
Before Cody could reply, the General was bounding off and barking orders into the comm unit affixed to his vambrace.
“Arsehole,” Howl said. He managed to make it sound admiring. Somehow. “He’s right though, Commander. You got a nasty concussion, going to need stitches for your arm and leg, dislocated a shoulder when you landed, and I don’t even want to think about the state of your lungs. Congratulations, sir. You’ve narrowly missed getting tanked.”
“Never gonna catch on, Lieutenant,” Cody rasped. Howl gave him a little pshaw of skepticism in reply.
“You’ve no whimsy in your bucket, Commander,” Howl told him.
“Left it all in the vat.” Cody let a chuckle escape him and instantly regretted it. Howl patted his shoulder in sympathy, pretended to start a countdown, and stuck a needle in the crook of Cody’s elbow.
The darkness rose up in the wake of the pain, the exhaustion, the vertigo. Cody was out like a light before he knew it.
76 notes
·
View notes
Juno Steel is trusting, often to his own folly, and Peter Nureyev is hopeful, often to his own folly.
Juno Steel believes in people, something which he tries to fight in seasons 1 and 2 and yet causes him pain again and again throughout his life, because despite his cynical persona, he’s quick to trust others. (This becomes less of a problem for him when he surrounds himself with people who don’t use his trust against him, but we still see this trait hurt him in seasons 3 and 4 when it comes to Sasha Wire.)
Peter Nureyev, however, believes in dreams. This gives him an admirable air of optimism, and it also gives him a determination to achieve his dreams, which often benefits him and gives him the strength to keep going. However, Nureyev’s steadfast belief in his dreams becomes a problem when he refuses to accept the reality in front of him, so accustomed to relying on his hope to get him through difficult situations. And that is exactly what is happening right now, and what has happened to him several times before.
37 notes
·
View notes