Star Wars the Clone Wars - One shots

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When Skywalker's hurt, Rex takes care of his worried Padawan.

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"This could be a while." Rex said to Hunter, remembering Kix having the same conversation with him multiple times when it was the General in Wrecker's position, and Ahsoka was hovering nearby. "Why don't you take Omega topside and get some air?"

It had become a subconscious reflex to look out for his General's Padawan every time he ended up in the medbay. Rex was speaking from experience when he suggested Hunter took Omega away.

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The underground bunker was bustling with activity.

It was sweaty and loud, so many bodies clustered into a small space making it feel difficult to breathe. Rex couldn't wear his helmet down into the dimly lit caverns, the scraping of plastoid as he pushed through the crowds of blue and gold painted troopers making him grit his teeth.

Medbay, medbay, where are you?

He felt sorry for the poor sods who built these tunnels some centuries ago. From what he gathered in the briefing, the underground base was built to protect the natives from the horrific windstorms that would demolish their cities on the surface, and sometimes, they'd spend up to a year in the cramped confines.

The Republic forces had been here for less than a month, with the 501st only having arrived as reinforcements six days ago, and Rex was thoroughly done with living underground.

The tunnels were rather brilliant, twisting and weaving, leading to hollowed domes that had been turned into briefing rooms, comm stations, barracks, and even an armoury since the Republic had moved into it as a temporary base whilst trying to subdue the Separatist forces.

The room that Rex was looking for was just ahead, the red logo above the entryway and wails from inside marking his destination.

The inside of the makeshift medbay felt more stuffed than the rest of the base, as injured troopers were packed in like tinned fish, waiting to be seen by the overwhelmed and understaffed medical team. The six medics across the 501st and 212th simply couldn't cope.

Kix had the hardest job. He was in triage, moving from one trooper to the next to decide who would be treated first, and who would have to wait.

The injuries weren't minor by any means. Hell, Rex could see at least ten limbs hanging off and someone's intestines being held by their brother as they waited for treatment. He winced, the battle hadn't been kind to his men, nor Cody's.

"Down the end," Kix said when he noticed him standing awkwardly in the entrance, pointing down the alley of temporary cubicles that had been set up with rails and curtains. "Any word of an evac?"

Rex's wince turned into a grimace, "Comms are down."

Kix rolled her eyes, palpating a soldier's knee in the process, "Classic."

They would need at least some gunships for medical evacuation soon, even if there was a high risk of them being shot down before they made it to the surface. The number of wounded men was too much for the medics to handle, so much so that the ones who desperately needed treatment were having to wait.

A few of the men who were waiting for triage had been sitting too still for Rex's liking. Some bodies had already been covered with white sheets; the medics simply too busy to spare the time to move corpses away.

Rex walked down the aisle, blocking out the cries of men having their wounds treated. Above the groans of pain, he heard medics sympathetically say that they had run out of pain relief, and the best they could give was bacta, which Rex knew was running low too. Their resources were as depleted as the medical staff themselves.