The nightcrawlers were decent enough to help you get Anakin and Obi-Wan onto the stretchers, and then led you back out to the edge of their village to their docking bay. They didn't have many ships, but that didn't make you feel bad for taking one of them.
"This one should be big enough for you," the head nightcrawler said, ushering the stretchers inside. You urged Ahsoka in after them, telling her you'd be with her in a moment. She desperately needed some bacta-- they all did-- but you doubt there was any in the medbox you demanded they give you.
"Lightsabers," you held your hand out for them. The crawler motioned another one over, and they reached into a sack around its spindly waist to retrieve Obi-Wan's saber, then Anakin's and then Ahsoka's two hilts. It dropped them into your arms, and you fell forward with the weight.
A lot heavier than you expected.
"You promise we will be left alone by your people?" the crawler asked Padmé, and she nodded.
"We will forgive you for your mistakes and stay off of your moon," she said. "But if we hear word that you've captured any more Jedi..."
"We will not."
"Good. We'll be off then."
You followed Padmé onto the ship now, flanked by Artoo. You both scraped the chalky white moondust off your shoes as you watched the door slide closed, cutting the Nightcrawlers from view. As soon as you were alone, Padmé deflated like a balloon.
"I'm sorry you had to do that," you told her sincerely. "If I had anything to give them, I would have."
She looked up and shook her head, trying to smile a little bit but failing. It barely reached her eyes. "It was worth it to get out of there alive. If I have to choose between the necklace or your lives, I will always choose you guys."
You hated how grateful you were for her suddenly. How, for some reason, you couldn't feel an ounce of the hatred you used to feel before. Padmé had deduced you to a shell of yourself for weeks, and her actions resulted in Sabé's death; but today she made up for it a little bit.
You were all alive and free because of her.
You nodded, the corner of your lip twitching up the slightest bit. It felt odd, trying to smile at her now after everything she'd done, but that look in her eyes-- the one of fierce protectiveness and loyalty-- you'd missed it. This was the Padmé you knew and loved.
"Come on, I think you should take a look at everyone now," she said, tilting her head to the door. You pressed the button to open it, the door hissing as you took in the sad sight before you.
Somehow, all three Jedi were out for the count, and you and Padmé were completely fine. In the future, you would laugh about this. But first, you had to make sure they would live long enough to see a future.
You dumped the lightsabers off on a small counter built into the wall, and then opened the medbox to scan what you had to work with. There was quite a bit in there, but just like you'd guessed-- no bacta.
Tossing some ice packs and painkillers to Padmé, you instructed her to take care of Ahsoka while you got to work on Anakin. He was definitely the worst off out of all of them.
He was lying on his back now, face up on the stretcher that the crawlers had set on the floor. You knelt by his side, wincing at the pain in your bruised knees, and steadying yourself for a moment with a hand on the floor. Then you got to work.
The most obvious place to start was his head. It was coated in dried blood, all originating from the gash on his face that had reopened, and little smaller cuts on his forehead and jaw. You were a little glad he was still knocked out because you knew the stinging of your cleaning agent would hurt him if he was awake, but it needed to be done to clear his face of blood. After inspecting the gash to see if it had gotten any worse, you began applying little butterfly bandages in certain places to make sure the skin stayed together and heals.
His face had healed pretty quickly before, and you hoped it would happen like that again. You hated to think it might hurt him to smile or talk or anything.
As you were doing this, you studied him continuously for signs of consciousness. You weren't there to see how hard he'd been hit or crashed, and where exactly, so you weren't even sure how bad the damage was internally. You wished you had a scanner onboard to see.
If he was bleeding internally... especially in his brain... there was a good chance he would never wake up.
Fortunately, there wasn't any heavy bruising on his face, so that calmed your nerves a little bit. But you wouldn't really be able to tell until you got him some real medical technology.
You were just moving away from his face and deciding the best way to go about the rest of him, stumped on how to remove all of his Jedi clothes, when you were relieved to see the first signs of life.
He woke up slowly— first with a wrinkle of his eyebrows, and then with a twitch of his hand. His face crumpled a bit more, and then he moaned softly as the aches and pains of his injuries filtered into his consciousness.
His eyes blinked open, clouded and dazed, and clearly in pain. He tried to sit up anyway.
"Don't," you warned, urging him back down with a hand to his chest. He winced even at that, and you felt bad but it was important that he didn't move even an inch until you knew what was going on under his tabards.
Your eyes softened at the little huff he let out, too beat up to try again. His own found you under heavy lids, and you wondered seriously how the hell he was still so breathtaking even holding on by a hair like this.
"You..." he lifted an arm to your face, and it was the metal one so you let him. It took a moment before you realized he wasn't going to say anything else.
He was surprised, and shocked, and more than a little disturbed. The last time he had seen you, you were walking away on the bridge with Padmè.
"How are you...?"
Your gaze fell to the side, just now realizing. He would be furious, but there was no hiding it. Not with Padmè also here.
"I uh... snuck onto Ahsoka's ship. Padmè and I both. I'm sorry—" you were cut off by his groan, louder now, but not from the physical kind of pain.
"Seriously? And why would you think that was a good idea?" He began pushing himself up more insistently now, and you reached to push him back down but stopped. It would do more harm than good to force him.
"Anakin, can we talk about this later-- I really need you to lie back down. You might have broken bones or internal bleeding..."
"I don't," he grimaced as he finally sat up fully, one hand propping him up on the stretcher and his other immediately going to undo his belt with one hand.
Your face flooded with heat watching him do it so expertly, gloved fingers pulling nimbly at the leather and then yanking the whole thing off, shucking it to the side.
The whole thing took only a second, but he didn't stop there. He went for his tabards next, and then the cloth underneath, shrugging it off and dumping it to the side, exposing his bare skin in all its glory.
Well... not so glorified now. His muscles were taught, clenched with pain as he looked down and inspected his own body. Once golden-tan skin was now littered with deep black and blue bruises, patches of purple and red in some places all around his chest and abdomen, only interrupted by little gashes surrounded by dried blood here and there.
Most worrying was the long, deep laceration spanning all the way down and across his chest to his ribcage on his left side. He frowned and touched the skin experimentally, flinching slightly at the pain.
"It's not too bad," he deduced, eyes falling to the medbox by your legs. "Hand me a bandaid."
"A bandaid?" you pulled on a new pair of rubber gloves. "You're insane. Sit back and let me do this."
You were still gawking at the sheer extent of his injuries. How he could even move with his skin pooling with blood like this-- especially the laceration.
It had definitely come from the crash-- you were all too familiar with the way metal could cut away human flesh with ease. This looked exactly like it, although there were mercifully no metal bits embedded in it, but you still needed to see how deep it had gone.
"You talk to all your patients like this?" he grumbled, settling his gloved hand on the stretcher too when you knocked it out of the way.
"No. Just the ones that purposefully crash their ship into another one to--"
"What? Save their lives?"
He had you beat there. Still, it didn't make it any less reckless and stupid.
"If I had known you were on that ship..." he turned his head, the muscle in his jaw bunching up as he clenched it.
Yeah, he was pissed at you.
You kept quiet as you dabbed his cuts with cleaning agent, skirting carefully around the edges of the deeper laceration. Cleaning away the blood only exposed more bruises.
"They rigged one of the frigates to explode," Anakin said, turning back to look at you. Those blue eyes were on your face now, intense and probing, but you couldn't meet them. "Right in the center of the battlefield. I only realized it a second after comming Ahsoka, but by that point..."
It was too late.
You thought back to the way the droids inside the command centers were scrambling around the computers. They were trying to get away from the explosion-- now you knew. But without a figurehead directing them, they tumbled over each other and failed.
General Grievous and Count Dooku were absent, not wanting to be caught in the blast. But they must have hired the pirates to launch the attack, ordering the frigates to stay back but present as a lure to get the clone armies to come out and fight. If it had just been the pirates, they would have hyper-speeded away.
An ingenious plan-- you would have guessed it was Admiral Trench behind the idea, if Anakin hadn't already killed him.
But now everything made a lot more sense. The way everyone was caught off guard by the blast except for the droids, who were too stupid to flee anyway. And how Anakin was the only one to come flying out of the flames directly toward you, still cloaked in invisibility but probably guessing through the force your location so that he could knock you out of the freeze-ray and away from the explosion.
You wondered how many of the clones hadn't been so lucky.
"Y/n, if you had died--" he was growing angrier, working himself up thinking like that. The amount of times he'd had to save you was growing ridiculous, and it scared him to think that one of these times he was bound to fail.
"I'm not the one dying right now," you reminded him quietly, patting the open skin of his laceration. Guilt bubbled up in your chest-- he was sitting here all broken and bloody because of the sacrifice he made to free Ahsoka's ship, unknowingly saving you and Padmé too.
His jaw ticked again. "I'm not dying, either."
"Not that we know of. Until we get a scanner on you, anything could be going on internally."
"Nothing's going on. I'd be able to feel it."
"Are you sure?" you weren't familiar with a lot of Jedi powers, but maybe this was one of them. "Do you feel any dizziness? Confusion? Numbness? Unnatural pain? Tingling? Nause--"
He held a hand up for you to stop. "No, no, no. Cut it out."
You sat back on your heels, busying yourself by digging through the medbox for more supplies and deciding on when would be a good time to tell him he needs stitches.
"How about you," his voice was gentler, mostly disappointed in your carelessness now. "You crash landed here, right? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, Obi-Wan used his ship to break our fall."
"Really?" He cocked an eyebrow and peered over your shoulder at Obi-Wan's passed out form. "Obi-Wan did that?"
"He has a broken arm for proof."
"And he always tells me I'm the reckless one," he rolled his eyes, and then found Ahsoka and Padmé on the other side of the room. "How's Snips?"
"Bruised and beaten up, but that's all I'm pretty sure. Those nightcrawlers really did a number on her and Obi-Wan, though."
"Those who?"
Had he really been unconscious the whole time? He must have crashed harder than you'd thought. You would have to test for a concussion immediately after this.
"Nevermind. Do you want me to give you stitches now, or would you rather we wait until we get to Coruscant?"
"I trust you," he leaned back on his forearms more comfortably, giving you free reign of his toned abdomen. You wished you had him in this position in a different context, especially when this was the first time you were exploring his body, but there would be a time for that later if you were lucky.
You were glad he was letting you do this, anyway. The longer the laceration stayed open, the more it was vulnerable to becoming infected.
You handed him some painkillers and a water pouch from the box, and watched as he took them both, a little concerned that he didn't refuse them like you thought he would. He must be in more pain than you realize.
Hopefully the pills would ease it though, at least a little bit.
Setting all your supplies on a clean towel next to you, you began unwrapping and sanitizing all of the tools, then his skin again. His eyes never left you once as you pulled on new gloves and then doused those in cleaning agent too, never too careful. It made you a little nervous.
You expected him to look hesitant, afraid even, but it was the opposite. He looked bored.
"Tell me if it hurts too much," you warned him, readying the needle at the first part of his skin.
"Don't worry about it. This is nothing compared to when I lost my arm."
You blinked, flicking your gaze to the glove by his side, stomach sinking with guilt. The thought of him in that much pain... so much that you digging a needle into his skin over and over didn't bother him...
Suddenly you wanted to protect him from all the pain in the world. To never let anything touch him ever again.
Maybe that's how he felt about you-- why he got so frustrated every time you got yourself into trouble. He was always angry and worried, less for your sake and more for his.
He couldn't stop the way he felt about you, couldn't help but feel each blow that met your skin, each tear and burn and bruise and lash, on his own body but ten times harder.
He wanted to protect you from everything, even if it was impossible, because it hurt him to see you in pain more than it hurt you to actually experience it.
Shaking your head, you dismissed the thoughts and steadied your hand, lined up the edged of the wound. The first prick of the needle into the skin slid in easily, and you used the needle driver to catch it on the other side, wrap it around a couple times, and then pull.
The first knot done, you slid down a quarter of an inch to right below his chest to begin the second. You tried to make it as quick as possible, but Anakin didn't even so much as flinch. Instead he shifted his weight onto one arm carefully, and began tweaking with his com.
It went on like that for a while, you piercing and twisting and pulling the thread into his skin, and him speaking hushed and a little hurriedly into his com. He contacted the Resolute first, and thankfully Rex answered.
They discussed the damages and casualties, and you were glad to have something to focus on other than that difficult conversation. His voice grew strained when he heard the number of all the clones that had died, and quickly moved on to grab the ships coordinates.
The Council was waiting to hear from him and Obi-Wan, so he contacted them next.
That was an interesting conversation that you were amused to listen in on. Yoda spoke first, expressing his condolences for the unexpected attack and the losses that came with it. Then Master Windu butt in, demanding to know where he was and why he wasn't with his ship.
And then Anakin had to explain that he had been caught in the blast, and he and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka all crashed on the moon. But now they were heading back to the Resolute--
He was cut off multiple times by Windu, who bounced from 'How did you not catch onto the bomb beforehand?' to 'What is the status of Senator Amidala?' Anakin's eyes resisted looking at her, not about to give away that fact that she had also been caught in the explosion and crash landed, too.
"The Senator is fine," Pamdé looked up at the sound of her name across the room. "She's safe onboard the ship, still on course for Sypris."
"Good. You'll follow her there."
"But we're supposed to come back to--"
"Young Skywalker, you will go to Sypris and make sure Senator Amidala arrives there safely. The Senatorial Ball is a hotspot for attacks from all across the galaxy-- be on guard the whole time. I want you all back alive and in one piece."
"A vacation, think of it as," Yoda piped up to soften the demand. "Great losses, you've experienced. A break, you deserve."
Anakin sighed when the call cut off. You tied off the last stitch and then unwrapped a couple bandages, fitting them onto the long cut over the thread.
"Is this a bad thing?" you noted his irritated expression. "You'll get a chance to heal up."
"Yeah, it's fine."
It didn't sound fine.
"Really-- what's the matter?"
He chewed on the insides of his cheeks, focusing on your hands as they smoothed the bandages over. "It's just that... I wanted to get to work on another starfighter. The upgrades and everything."
Of course.
Now that his beloved interceptor was a pile of metal back on that moon, it made sense that he'd want to get to work crafting a new one right away. You were mostly amused by this, but also a little sympathetic. He had spent so long tweaking the last one, making it better and faster and stronger than the rest-- his ships were his babies, and now he was like a childless father.
"Well, guess what?" you knew exactly what would make him feel better. Thinking back to just before the attack, when you and Padmé had been talking in her room together...
"What."
"Padmé happens to have a big fancy house in Sypris," you sing-songed, snapping your bloody gloves off. "And it just so happens that she's offered it to us the entire time we're there."
He cocked his head to the side.
"And why would she do that?"'
"Because she owes me." you flattened a look at him. His eyes remained narrowed.
"So are you two...?"
"Getting there. I think. I don't know."
He just looked confused now, shaking his head. It reminded you that you'd need to check for that concussion soon.
Pulling his com back up to his face, he called Rex back and informed him of the change of plans. He was to head back to Coruscant and regroup with the 501st and get repairs on the Resolute, while the rest of you were heading to Sypris with the Senator.
"Take the longer route," he commanded. "And make it seem like Amidala was always onboard."
"Copy that, General."
You wondered how many times Rex had kept things hidden on behalf of Anakin. He had taken his orders way too smoothly for this to be a one-time thing.
"Alright," he reached for the dark brown robes he usually wears underneath the leather, pulling it over his shoulders seeing as how it was the least damaged out of all of his clothes. "Show me to the cockpit. Who's been flying this thing, anyway?"