Chapter Text
Prioritize. Adapt. Overcome.
Those words kept repeating in his head. Most critical injuries first. If there’s no bacta, just use a cloth bandage. Make sure everyone makes it out alive.
Stitch was having a hell of a day.
As a medic, he’d seen some gruesome shit – limbs torn off, bones sticking out, patients choking on their own blood… you name it, Stitch had seen it all.
But the utter chaos of having this many patients was almost too much to handle. There weren’t enough beds, there weren’t enough medics. Not enough of any medical supplies either. Not enough of anything.
They were underequipped to begin with, let alone for them to face such a crisis.
“Stitch! We have a major chest trauma coming in! ETA in five!”
That was Lifeline, who had taken charge of patient transportation and organizing everything. He was doing his best, but he had his work cut out for him.
“Copy that!” Stitch yelled back without even turning to him. He was currently elbow-deep in a patient’s abdomen.
The trooper needed surgery, but that wasn’t available at the moment. Both operation rooms were fully booked with patients just as critical as him, if not more.
Stitch cursed under his breath. There was no end in sight.
The blaster fire sounded oddly distant, even as he stood right in the middle of it.
Something warm trickled down his face. His ears were ringing.
“- eral!”
Someone was yelling at him.
“- you alright?”
Cody, he pieced together. Cody was yelling at him.
“- ral! General!”
The ringing died down. Finally.
Obi-Wan blinked. He was sitting on the ground. How did he end up here? And why did Cody sound so worried?
“Sir, are you alright?” the commander practically screamed in his face.
Oh, dear, when did he get so close?
The Jedi looked into Cody’s eyes, trying to focus on the man before him. But Cody’s face was blurry. And he wasn’t sure which Cody was the real one.
He blinked again, harder this time. That did very little to help clear his vision. But it was something.
“Cody?” he spoke, confused.
“Yes, sir, it’s me”, the commander confirmed. “How do you feel? You took a pretty bad hit.”
He was hit?
They were on the battlefield, he registered. He’d probably hit his head.
“You’re bleeding”, stated Cody, grimacing. “Can you stand? We need to move.”
Obi-Wan nodded.
Slowly but surely, with a lot of support from Cody, he did manage to get his feet under him. When Cody let go of him, he swayed, but stayed upright somehow.
“What’s our situation?” he asked his commander, trying to ignore how dizzy he felt.
“Pretty bad, sir”, Cody replied. “If those reinforcements don’t arrive soon, we’ll be crushed.” It was a brutally honest response. But that’s how war was. There was no sugarcoating it.
“Casualty report?”
“In the hundreds, I’m afraid”, Cody informed. “The medics are completely overrun, and they don’t have enough supplies.”
Obi-Wan held back a curse. As soon as all this adrenaline wore off, he’d feel the losses. It was never easy to lose a trooper, let alone hundreds.
Force, he hated this war.
But right now he needed to focus. He needed to hold the line until their promised reinforcements arrived. He needed to be a general.
The annoying throbbing in his head wasn’t going to stop him.
All of the patients couldn’t even be transported. There was literally no space left.
Stitch and Pin went down to treat the others. All they had was some bacta patches, a sutures kit and a whole lot of bandage rolls.
It soon became apparent that those supplies weren’t going to be nearly enough.
Prioritize. Adapt. Overcome.
Stitch sighed. “Let’s do triage”, he suggested. “Tag everyone, black, red, yellow and green.”
“I suppose that’s something”, muttered Pin, already digging through his bag for the tags.
Stitch knew it wasn’t much, but it might help them sort out the chaos. He slid on his helmet, which he rarely ever used, usually staying behind the lines.
Nodding to each other one last time, the two medics parted ways. They could cover more ground that way.
It didn’t take long for Stitch to find a body. A trooper he didn’t recognize. But he was still a brother of his, so it hurt to put the black tag on him.
Dragging himself on, he found another trooper, who appeared alive. He was breathing.
Stitch kneeled down beside him for an assessment. The trooper was unconscious, but definitely alive. His injuries were not serious – some lacerations and a dislocated shoulder.
He tagged him yellow.
As he edged closer to the heat of battle, he found more and more troopers. Some of them were helping the ones too injured to move.
One of them noticed the medic approaching. “Stitch! Over here!” he yelled, leaning over another trooper who was bleeding profusely.
Stitch jogged over. “I can’t do much, but I’ll bandage it”, he grunted. As he got to work, he noticed blood on the other trooper’s armor. “Are you injured?”
The trooper shook his head. “No, it’s not my blood.”
“Alright, take one of those green tags and put it around your neck”, he instructed. “And give me a red one.”
He was handed the tag, and he laid it over the injured trooper’s chest, too afraid to move his neck. It’s not like the tag was going to fall off.
The bandages he wrapped around the other helped to slow down the bleeding, but it was a temporary solution. Stitch could bet on the trooper needing surgery later. There would be internal injuries with how deep the wound was.
“I need to move on”, he told the green-tagged trooper. “Will you stay with him?”
The other nodded. “Of course.”
Stitch would’ve preferred to stay with the patient, but he had hundreds of others to take care of.
Yellow, yellow, red, green, yellow, green, black, green, green, yellow.
He made his way deeper into the chaos. The ground shook occasionally, and blaster fire blocked out almost all other noise.
Force, he was going to have a backache tomorrow from all this grouching down.
An explosion to his left threw him off his feet and covered him in dirt. But he knew he was lucky to walk it off with a simple bruise on his hip where he fell.
Green, yellow, green, green, yellow, red, yellow, green, yellow, red, red, green.
He had to use the rest of the bandages on one of the red tags. All he could give to the rest were some bacta patches. Those wouldn’t do much for larger wounds.
Yellow, yellow, green, green, green, yellow, green, green, red, yellow, green.
Alright, that was everyone, right?
Every trooper he saw had a tag around their neck.
Every trooper, that is.
He was still missing a commander and a general.
Sighing, Stitch closed his med kit and stood up from beside the latest red tag. He needed to get to the very front line.
“Fall back!”
Or not.
They were being overrun. Wasn’t there supposed to be reinforcements on the way? Where the kriff were they?
Well, at least he wouldn’t have to find Cody and Kenobi. That had been the commander’s voice calling for a retreat.
And where Cody was, Kenobi wasn’t far behind.
Just as expected, Stitch found them both by following the sound of Cody’s voice. They were standing beside a makeshift table, which was actually just a big supply box. There was a holo map and an ongoing transmission going on.
On the other end of the call was General Plo Koon, who was hopefully almost here.
“We won’t last much longer”, admitted Kenobi. “We’ve already lost so many.”
“We’re pushing our ship to its limits”, said the other Jedi. “It’ll take no more than 10 minutes from now.”
Oh boy, was Stitch glad to hear that.
“Good, we can hold the line until then”, replied Kenobi. And with that, he cut off the transmission and turned to Cody.
“After this is over, I’ll make sure to get us at least a week of shore leave”, he sighed. “Everyone’s going to need time to recover.”
“Yeah, and we’ll need to stop by Kamino to pick up a couple new batches of shinies”, said Cody, crossing his arms.
Stitch decided this was the right moment to approach them.
“Commander, General”, he greeted, making his presence known. “I’ve been doing triage down here, and I can give you a report on casualties.”
Kenobi nodded. “Go ahead.”
Stitch began listing, first the deaths, then red tags, yellow, and finally green. He grimaced as he read out loud the total death count – 237. It was the worst of any of their battles so far.
And there were a lot of injuries too. Over half of them had been injured moderate to serious.
Cody and the general weren’t happy to receive the news either. But Stitch wasn’t done yet, and they weren’t going to like the other thing he had to say either.
Better just get it over with.
“I also need to tag you both. Please give me a truthful report of your condition.”
It took a minute, but Cody did speak up. “I might’ve broken my wrist, but I’m fine”, he said.
After scanning the commander quickly with his eyes, Stitch determined he was most likely being truthful, and not hiding any other injuries.
“Alright, thank you”, muttered Stitch, digging through his bag for a green tag. A broken wrist could wait in this situation. It just needed to be wrapped tightly.
He handed him the tag, assuming he knew what to do with it. Cody put it around his neck as he was supposed to.
Then the medic turned to the general. “Sir, your turn”, he stated firmly.
“I hit my head, but it wasn’t bad”, Kenobi replied. “I feel fine.”
Knowing the Jedi, Stitch knew he was probably understating it. In the very least, a CT scan was in order. But it couldn’t be too serious, seeing how he was conscious and coherent.
Yellow tag it was.
The general accepted it with a simple nod. “I better see you in medical later to get that checked, sir”, Stitch warned.
Kenobi cracked a smile. “Of course, dear.”
Stitch resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he turned away. But he was soon preoccupied with tagging four other troopers he’d missed earlier.
Yellow, green, green, green.
Good, no more serious injuries. They had enough to deal with.
Then he heard a whooshing noise from above.
Wait. Was that…?
Gunships. Reinforcements. Rescue.
Stitch could’ve collapsed from relief alone. It was over. No more injuries, no more deaths.
There would still be absolute chaos waiting for him back on the Negotiator, but he tried not to think about that yet.
Cheers erupted all around as the first reinforcements landed. The new, fresh troops ran straight into the fight, determined to protect their brothers.
The 212th would’ve, in any other situation, charged with them. But right now, they all just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. And Stitch didn’t think anyone could blame them for it.
With their fellow battalion providing cover, they packed up their makeshift camp and called for their own gunships to pick them up.
The general organized it so that the red tags were transported first, then yellow, then green. But of course, he didn’t include himself in the yellow tags, despite having one visibly hanging around his neck.
Stitch decided to let it slide for now.
As soon as the medic was on board the Negotiator again, he rushed right back to the med bay. It was still packed with patients, but it seemed at least a little bit calmer.
But with the red tags being brought in, the pace picked up again. Two of them were rushed into surgery right away.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t fit all of the yellow tags in yet. Stitch told them to return to their quarters and have a friend stay with them. It made sure that if any of them got worse, their friend could call for help. It was good enough a solution.
Stitch didn’t even realize he was covered in dirt until Lifeline pointed it out. He was ordered to wash up before returning.
He practically ran back to his quarters, stripped off his armor, grabbed a towel and ran to the showers. Nobody was there – everyone was either in med bay or already back at work.
The soap slipped from his hand, which made him curse out loud. Scrubbing and then rinsing, he didn’t give much attention to how thoroughly he washed himself. He just needed to be clean enough to be allowed back in medical.
Back at his quarters, he slipped on his medical uniform and quickly dried what little hair he had.
And then he was running again.
Lifeline finally let him return to work, and Stitch didn’t waste a second. Soon enough, he was gloved and masked, twisting Gearshift’s knee back in place.
It might have been two hours or six, he wasn’t sure, but it finally seemed like everyone would make it. All their patients were stable, and they were finally taking in yellow tags.
Stitch could finally take a moment to breathe.
But it didn’t take long for his peace to break. Lifeline ran past him, clutching a med kit. He looked worried, concerningly so.
“What happened?” demanded Stitch, straightening up.
Lifeline stopped to look at him. The worry in his eyes was evident. He hesitated for a moment before he spoke.
“Commander called. The general collapsed.”
Of course he kriffing did.