Chapter Text
Blank shouldn't be surprised by how bad Werlaara’s pain can get.
No, really, they shouldn’t. Not three months into their stay here, not when Werlaara has latched onto them like a limpet, not when they’ve seen the nasty scars across his knuckles and the stumps of amputated fingers in repeated, intimately close detail between meals in the mess and shared pieces of contraband candy and that one impossible to forget time, less than a week in, when he was holding his own face to stem the bleeding from the nose they had broken.
But it did surprise them. It does. Blank would dare anyone to look at him like this for the first time — slumped in a cot near the least used entrance, IV filled with some of the diluted-but-good shit still hooked into a vein in his left elbow — and not feel a little bit fucking taken aback. He wasn’t wearing a uniform or even a bodysuit when Blank came in at the top of their shift to Flick inserting the IV and he still isn’t now, briefs and undershirt the kind of uneven white that matches a lot of the medics’ actual uniforms. He doesn’t even have shoes on.
“You know,” Boom-Boom says, “he isn’t gonna get better faster if you stare at him.”
Blank turns back around again and tries reading the inventory a little harder.
“Trust me, I’ve tried before.” Boom-Boom doesn’t take the hint — he just leans his elbows on the nearest crate pushed up against the wall, one of many that have miraculously appeared all across the medbay while they sit above Anaxes. Blank really can’t believe nobody could think of anywhere else to put them; it’s not like there are at least a dozen empty hangers waiting around for someone to remember them or something. “Whisper could do it, but the rest of us just don’t have the willpower magic like that really takes.”
“Whisper?”
“Yeah,” Boom-Boom says. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who that was.”
Blank kicks the side of his shin and thoroughly enjoys his pained yelp. “I know who that was.”
“What do you know?”
Blank finally looks up. Boom-Boom looks— they think tired is honestly the only way to really describe it. Worn out, maybe. Drained. They aren’t sure exactly how long Echo was in surgery, both two days ago before he was put in the tank and late yesterday after at least twelve hours spent soaking like everyone and their clone was whispering about when Blank took up eavesdropping, but they know it was long. It can’t have been a relaxed theater either time, either, not with the intensity of his issues and the last minute prep that went into everything. That’s one of the things they don’t envy about those clones who ended up finding specialties.
“I…” Blank starts, then hesitates. What do they know? “Not much. Just that he was Triple’s batcher. He doesn’t really talk about him.”
“He stopped talking at all for a few weeks after he died,” Boom-Boom says. Even Hazard hadn’t told them that much about his silence — maybe this asshole wandering over wasn’t the worst thing after all. “Even after he did start talking again, he was way worse than when you came in. Anything else?”
“No.”
“He had tooka stripes.” A finger traces curved lines down each side of Boom-Boom’s face, first left, then right, all the way from the apple of his cheek to the line of his jaw. “Not black ink, but a dark blue that looked close enough to seem more like old ink than any other color unless you actually looked close. Triple didn’t do them, but he did fill in a missing bit when Whisper got a little scar that nicked one.
“Why?” Blank asks. “Not the shape, the color.”
Boom-Boom shrugs, before hopping up to sit on the edge of the crate and running an absent hand over the bright green stubble that makes his head look more like a flare than something actually normal and cool. Blank has to stop themself from trying to push him off — he just grins when they scowl instead, unbothered in a way that has slowly begun to bother Blank less and less.
“Not sure,” he says. “I bet Triple knows, though. Or Sentil. Or Keep Up.”
“He and Keep Up were close?”
“Basically best friends, after Triple. I think they’re from the same batch, just not batchers — which I can say with complete confidence because they definitely fucked once or twice, ask anyone in here.”
“I did not need to know that,” Blank mutters. It doesn’t bother them, though, not beyond a little childish jealousy where their own fuzzy loss of libido is concerned. “You’re the fucking worst.”
“Yeah, Keep Up makes sure I never forget it.”
“What, that he likes the underside of his old CMO’s cod?”
Boom-Boom snorts, shaking his head, something about his posture stiffening and relaxing all at once for who even fucking knows why. “That I’m the worst. I think he still considers the fucking a secret.”
“But— you said ask anyone.”
“It’s mostly hearsay,” he admits. He’s swinging his feet back and forth now, the rubbery heels of his boots bouncing off the crate’s protective siding, and he looks more relaxed than Blank thinks they’ve felt in the week since their new posting over Anaxes was revealed. “Sentil swore she heard them and it kinda spiraled from there.”
“There’s no fucking way either of them moaned uniquely enough for her to figure that out,” Blank protests, keeping their voice down despite their rising tone and tempo. “Where the fuck would she have even heard them moan enough to compare it?!”
Boom-Boom’s grin stretches wider. It’s weird, though — he looks almost sheepish, like he wants to say something he shouldn’t. Unless it’s that Sentil was personally involved, Blank can’t imagine what the hell that sheepish look could actually be for — maybe they don’t want to, considering they’re already digging deep into the sex life of their new battalion’s old CMO, but they’ve never exactly been the vod most known for keeping their nose out of things.
“He had a presence,” Boom-Boom says, looking a little misty eyed despite his casual air. There’s so much weight to the word it’s almost like he means to say something else entirely. “It was hard to miss him, even when you didn’t necessarily want to, so when Sentil said she knew it was him we all believed her.”
“He had a presence,” Blank repeats, as dubiously as they can manage.
Boom-Boom nods. “He was— a force of nature, even as quiet and calm as he was when things were slow. When he raised his voice it basically curved around corners, you could always hear him no matter where you were or what you were doing, and every time someone couldn’t stop screaming all he had to do was come over and put his hands on their shoulders and breathe with them and talk to them and eventually — not every time, but most of them — they would finally calm down.”
Blank thinks back to Triple’s little flimsi bird. They never asked him about it, completely forgot as the weeks flew by in a unique, 442nd branded mix of boredom and excitement and sometimes-overwhelming change, but they think they will now. Just to check. Just to see. Because if they’re right, then it explains a feeling they never quite understood but also never really thought about, way back when they picked it up and carefully breathed.
It’s fucking crazy, though, they won’t even pretend it’s anything else, but they think maybe they get what Boom-Boom is really saying — what he really means. Even if they shouldn’t. Even if there shouldn’t be anything to fucking get about it in the first place.
“And how— how did he die?”
Boom-Boom breathes in deep, but doesn’t turn the question down. “We set up a Rooms” — RMSU, Republic Mobile Surgical Unit, the second best thing a battlefield can have after our own medic asses — “in the middle of a city the Seppies had been trying to overrun for a while. He came down with General Tevol, just like normal, commanding and helping and planning. Then the Seppies sent down a bomb.”
If Blank came here as the shiny everyone had been calling them, maybe they would say that they can’t do that. They know better, though. Of course Seppies don’t care about the rules the Republic made.
“How did the General get out?”
“Whisper.” Boom-Boom doesn’t look happy about his answer. He looks severely unhappy about it, actually. Blank feels the same fucking way. “He realized what was coming before she did, raised the alarm, put everything he had into completely clearing house. He was caught in the blast — she wasn’t.”
“Everyone else?”
“Everyone who was close enough to Tevol survived. A few clones died from shrapnel between plates or not getting far enough from the impact in time. The civilians got the worst of it.”
“Fuck.”
Boom-Boom just nods.
“You know,” he says, subdued in a way that’s so completely unlike him, “he didn’t die from the bomb itself. The Rooms killed him — support beam straight through his cuirass and out the other side that embedded itself in the dirt behind him. He was still halfway upright when the dust settled.”
Blank does the stomach churning calculations in their head — the force needed, the proximity to get it. “He should’ve, though, shouldn’t he? Have died from— something else?”
“Yeah. He should’ve.”
The silence that falls between them is heavy like a bomb. Blank feels ill, not in a truly concerning, immediate exit sort of way but in a way that takes that unsteady feeling they get every time death becomes their immediate reality and takes it up a notch, forces them to really sit with it even when they would really, really rather not. Boom-Boom quietly excuses himself when another medic calls his name, slipping off the crate and landing softly despite the tough soles of his shoes — something about Echo, no surprises there.
Blank watches him leave with far too many thoughts swirling through their skull.
When Boom-Boom finds Blank again a few hours later, he somehow looks twice as tired as he did before. He gives them a smile, though, just like he always does, and hovers at the edge of their vision while they finish double checking the cart they just finished restocking. It’s a quiet shift for this floor — Keep Up has been in and out of Sentil’s office all day but whenever he is out on the floor he seems halfway bored out of his mind, opening and closing things on his wristcomm with the sort of restless energy he can put to work just fine whenever they actually have shit to do. After their Boom-Boom assisted revelations earlier Blank has been watching him with about a dozen new questions on the tip of their tongue, but they figure they should at least wait until his shift is over to insinuate that they know he fucked someone they never met.
Or maybe not — maybe it would distract him from his excruciating boredom.
“What’s that thinking face for?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Blank says, pointedly rounding the cart until their back is to Boom-Boom. They know it won’t scare him off — nothing ever does, as far as they can tell, and if something ever actually did it probably wouldn’t be them.
“I would.” He says it just as primly as they did if not more so, the shifting sound of fabric on fabric behind them making Blank wonder if he’s crossing his ankles or his arms. “I need to know if I should make myself scarce or if I should eavesdrop.”
“If you eavesdrop Keep Up will notice, he’ll make you go lie down or something, and then you’ll just be stuck making yourself scarce anyway — but this time under pain of disappointment.”
“Do I really look that bad or are you just saying that because he knows everything?”
Blank turns to face him. His arms are crossed, the sleeves of his white medic’s jacket pulled taut around his biceps, and his head is cocked a little, tilted in curiosity.
“You look like shit,” they admit. “I thought you already looked bad earlier, but then you disappeared and came back looking like you stayed up for another two days straight.”
“Sith hells,” Boom-Boom mutters, dragging a hand over his face. “Sounds about right. Thanks, I guess. I’ll make myself scarce if you start stalking him — just promise me you’ll spill later, okay?”
“Okay.”
Boom-Boom turns to go, letting out a breath and shaking out his arms. Blank’s hand shoots out before he can get too far, though, grabbing his elbow and refusing to let go, and he turns right back around again looking just as surprised as Blank feels — they don’t touch the other medics like this. Not when they can help it. Not here.
They still find their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth when they open it to speak. They aren’t sure if it’s the surprise of what they just did or the warmth coming through his sleeve, but whatever it is took hold fast and strong, rooting them to the floor, making them need a soft reboot even as they lean forward slightly like he’s a magnet and they are too.
“What is it?”
“Echo,” Blank finally gets out. Their hand won’t move or maybe they don’t want it to, and either way Boom-Boom isn’t taking matters into his own hands so it must be fine that they’re touching him. “He, uh—”
Boom-Boom softens not unlike ice reaching its melting point, slow and then suddenly all at once. “I know,” he murmurs, stepping a little closer — not so close Blank will shy away like they have multiple times in the past, but just enough so that their arm can bend comfortably between them. “It’s a lot.”
Blank swallows. They purse their lips firmly, their teeth immediately finding the bottom one to clamp down on. They nod, stilted and mute.
“He’ll be okay,” they say — don’t ask, because they don’t know if they can handle being told no right now. They need to hear anything but no.
“I hope so.” It’s quiet and it’s gentle and most importantly it sounds honest, not some empty promise no one will ever be able to keep. “It’s still too early to say for sure. But he’ll live either way, and if he isn’t okay then we’ll make him okay. We’ll figure it out, alright?”
“Alright. Could I— if I wanted to take some shifts in the tank room that would be your call, right?”
“Keep Up’s,” Boom-Boom corrects, sounding way more amused than he probably should. “I’m not your boss.”
“But you’re—”
“Yeah, and so are you.”
Blank thinks their jaw might dislocate if it drops any further. “That motherfucker.”
“You didn’t know?” Boom-Boom looks a little concerned now.
“I thought,” Blank grits out, caught somewhere between disgust and delight, “that it was temporary.”
“Oh.” He snorts, the grin taking over his face echoing somewhere behind their heart’s back wall, and pats the hand that’s still hooked around his elbow but hanging much looser now. “We don’t have the turnover rate for temporary roles. If Keep Up puts you somewhere, he wants to keep you there.”
“He and I are having a chat, then.”
“Go easy on him,” Boom-Boom suggests, giving their hand another pat before finally removing it and stepping away to leave with a grin that could cut glass. “We can’t go too rough on our softshell brothers.”
It’s only then that it clicks why their interaction had seemed a little different, both before and after his hours long disappearance. They had said something, caught up in the drama and the gossip, that had made him understand all at once — or at least confirmed what he had probably already known. The reason why they look like this, why they listen to the orders that aren’t meant for anyone but the medics in plastoid, probably the reason behind a whole lot of other things they do besides.
What had it been? He likes the underside of his CMO’s cod?
Dammit.
Fucking dammit.