Karking Dagobah. Neyo wants to hit this whole fucking planet with a fucking fleetload of ship-to-grounds. He hopes a drought comes around and dries up every wet spot on this gods-forsaken stinking bog.
This was supposed to be a simple smash-and-grab. Neyo would be back on the ship by now, dry and cool and not being attacked by flies, if it hadn’t been for a particularly lucky clanker taking out their shuttle. Now, he’s marching through the marsh in the thirty degree heat with sweat running down his ass crack and his General harping on about the local flora and fauna.
Oh, and a fucking shiny.
He’s trying to be easy on Zap, he really is, but the kid is making it difficult. He keeps alternating between sucking up to Windu, falling behind, and trying to talk with Neyo.
Gods, his head hurts. And his face is oddly numb, come to think of it, skin stretched tight under his helmet like he’s got a matching set of black eyes.
Ah. Windu’s looking back at him. “Sorry, General, what did you say?”
Windu frowns at him, an odd furrow between his brows. Neyo almost recognizes it, but the heat’s making him stupid, and the thought slips away before he can grab it. “I was just saying that we’re nearing the drop site, Commander. We should be boarding the shuttle in about ten minutes.”
Neyo nods and his headache bounces back and forth, hitting his eyes and ricocheting off the top of his head. “Understood, General.”
“Sir,” Zap says, clambering over a log to pull up even with Neyo. “Are you alright? You don’t sound good.”
Neyo takes a deliberate breath, speaks as calmly as he can manage. “I’m fine, Private,” he says. “Just a bit warm.”
That gets a laugh out of Zap, tides the kid over long enough to keep him quiet until they break out into the small clearing they’ll be gathered from. This, Neyo reflects, testing the integrity of the mossy ground with his toe, is probably the best Dagobah has to offer. Semi-solid ground, a reprieve from trees, a dearth of vines, small critters, and other infuriating things… It could almost be called livable.
Neyo would spend a bit more time cataloguing exactly what he hates about this planet for the sole purpose of annoying the shit out of Bacara later, but a sudden stab of pain, straight up from his neck to the top of his head, scatters his thoughts. He grits his teeth against the swell of nausea it brings in its wake.
Okay, maybe he’s getting sick.
Neyo picks his head up with the intent of relaying this information to Windu, but when he does, he finds both General and Private fixing him with concerned looks. When did the kid take his helmet off? Neyo asks him, but just gets an increasingly concerned look in response.
“Commander, I’m going to take your helmet off.” Windu reaches out to him and Neyo recoils, suddenly unable to parse past from present, Jedi from Priest, but his hands are clumsy and swollen and he can’t stop the General from taking his bucket off. Windu’s face goes stern. “Zap, comm air support and tell them double time.”
“Yessir.”
“General,” Neyo croaks, “think I might be sick.”
Another spike of pain comes, quicker than the last, and the tingling doubles down, spreads across his whole body, and then—
...
..
.
“Commander? Commander, I need you to stay with me.”
“...Doing great, Neyo, just keep hanging on…”
“...Losing him, General! I’m losing…”
“Okay, verd’ika, it’s okay…”
“....Stay with me, Commander….”
“Hey, di’kut.”
“Mmn?” Quickly on the heels of consciousness comes awareness, and with it, the familiar hot spike of adrenaline and panic and a lifetime of readiness held down by the syrup-slow heaviness wrapping his bones. Breathe. One, two, you’re not dying. Three, four, behave like a human. Five, six, ready for duty. “...’Cara?”
Or not.
Gods, he feels like he’s been hit by a speeder.
“Yeah, it’s me, vod.” A hand finds Neyo’s and it takes everything in him not to squeeze until it breaks. Bacara wouldn’t let him, anyway. “You with me?”
“Hmm.” Neyo’s mouth is sticky with the same thing that’s making his muscles slow and his lips feel too uncoordinated for words. “Mwithya,” he manages. He pries his eyes open and finds that much of the world is blurry and oddly tilted in a way that feels like negative g’s. He closes them again.
Bacara’s hand runs up his arm. Without his armor or blacks, Neyo can feel the calluses catch on his scars. His hand is warm. Neyo is cold beneath the tingly numbness. “Good. You feel alright?”
Neyo frowns clumsily, scoffs. “Du’ass.”
Bacara laughs, really laughs, and Neyo is conscious enough to wish he was more conscious. “Fair. Well, you don’t seem braindead, so I think Sprinkles will forgive me for letting you sleep again.”
Neyo’s already heading that way.
—can’t find the exit water coming up the walls higherhigherhigher crushing him it should weigh this much—
—Priest’s yelling at him again Neyo turns to walk away turns back it’s Faie saying the same things it’s Bacara swinging at him he can’t run legs hurt he’s falling—
—hot hot hot hot he’s burning and his fingers are falling off faster than he can put them back on—
— stop it stop hurting me I did what you asked don’t know what you want can’t—
“Ah, shit. Neyo? Hey, Neyo, can you hear me?”
“...Burning up…”
“...PICC line, get some antibiotics in him…”
—dead dead dead dead everyone he can find is dead but he can’t find all of them—
—’which do you want cadet none isn’t an answer’—
—no no go back I’m looking for—
—steps back and he’s falling—
Someone’s rubbing gentle circles into Neyo’s arm, around and around and around in warm loops. Neyo can’t feel his own body.
Behind him, there’s a rumbling purr of a hum that usually means Bacara. Neyo leans back into him, too exhausted and achy and cold to think twice.
The purr returns. “Ney’ika,” Bacara says, and it’s a statement.
“G’hh.” Not what Neyo was going for, but the only noise his body will let him make.
“I’ve got you. Go back to sleep.”
“...’Kay.”
Once, a few months back, Neyo was forced to eject from a transport with a damaged parachute. He’d gone tumbling through the air, end over end over end, parachute wrapping around him like a straightjacket, until a vod in a jetpack had caught him and brought him to ground. He’d barely managed to get free of the parachute and rip his helmet off before he was vomiting on the poor bastard who’d grabbed him. He was so dizzy he’d fallen straight on his ass as soon as the kid let him go.
As disoriented as he’d been then, this is worse.
He’s pretty sure LARTYs are walking across the floor of his skull and his mouth is the sort of dry that tastes like a month of hangovers. More than that, his skin crawls with an odd tightness and he’s hot and cold all at once.
He’s in medbay. How long has he been in medbay? He has the feeling that this is not his first time waking up, but he can’t be certain. He remembers Dagobah, remembers shouting, remembers pain, but what…?
“Neyo,” a soft, hoarse voice says. “You actually awake this time?”
Neyo tries to turn his head, but it’s more of an organized flop. Bacara, curled up like an oversized tooka on the chair next to his bed. In the half-dim medbay nightcycle, he looks awful. “Yeah,” Neyo responds.
Bacara hums. He reaches for Neyo, smooth and slow and over-exaggerated, and places a cool, dry palm on his forehead. “You’re cooler than you were. Still feverish, though.”
Neyo swallows, trying to work some saliva back into his mouth. “How bad?”
Bacara scoffs, leaning back in his seat. “Which part? The seizures, the part where you coded during the seizures, the infection, or the 40.2C fever?”
Neyo winces. “Oh.”
Bacara’s smirk softens around the edges, and the hand that was on his forehead comes to rest at the crook of his neck. It’s nice, takes away some of the ache, so Neyo allows it. For now. “Yeah. Scared the living hell out of poor Zap.”
Oh. Right. The shiny. “‘S good for him,” Neyo offers. “Gets him broken in.”
“Right,” he drawls. “Windu had to talk the poor kid down from the ledge while you were in triage. Don’t think he’s ever watched someone jig on the line before.”
“First time for everything.” Neyo doesn’t remember his first time with that particular experience. Too young or too vague or locked up behind that wall in his head, the one Windu’s always frowning at, the one his kid’s kid called a ‘split, for you-Neyo and for other-Neyo.’
(Caleb is never meeting other-Neyo. Neyo has made sure of that many times over.)
Bacara snorts. On Neyo’s shoulder, his thumb moves back and forth, seemingly unconscious save for the stutters in tempo, the little jerks that let Neyo know Bacara has chosen this line and is walking it very, very carefully.
Neyo hates this.
“Neyo,” Bacara says into the sudden silence. “Hey, di’kut, don’t go away on me.” The rubbing stops and Bacara squeezes his shoulder. “We’ve got a few more hours until Sprinkles comes and checks on you.” Neyo blinks at the non-sequitur, but then Bacara’s taking his hand away and unfurling himself from the chair and climbing into bed with Neyo.
“Hey,” Neyo protests. “Hey, you have your own bunk. This one’s mine.”
Bacara ignores him, finding a way to settle against his side that doesn’t jostle the PICC line in the crook of Neyo’s elbow. The little shit ends up half-on top of him like they’re kids again, and Neyo accepts his fate, shifting until he’s comfortable and throwing his leg over Bacara’s knee.
“This bed is warmer,” Bacara says into his neck.
“Wow, I wonder why.”
“Crazy, I know.” Bacara hums.
Neyo buries his face in Bacara’s hair, rubbing his cheek against his head and nosing him. “I hate you.”
“Stop fucking nuzzling me, you over-grown wild animal.”
Neyo’s too tired to keep it up, anyway.