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It was warm.Hell didn’t think it was supposed to be warm, not like this; warmth on his skin instead of against it, broken by something swaying above his body. There was something soft-hard underneath him and something against him, and when he opened his eyes he stared up at a blue, blue sky, impossible and endless like Kamino’s. He’d not seen a single thing like it on Coruscant; once you’d seen a true sky, you could tell when presented with a fake. There were plants around him, matte gold and impossible, too, weren’t they, under a sky like this? He’d seen them before, or something similar, under the grow-lights of the agricultural level not far below the top. A grain, right? What was he doing laying amongst the grain?What was he doing laying down, was the better question. Still, he didn’t move as he took stock of himself.He hurt, which was to be expected after almost a year of Coruscant, but the pain was different. Off center, somehow. Older. Especially the sucking chest wound that had killed him. It had definitely killed him, hadn’t it? There wouldn’t be any way to recover from that, not without serious reconstruction and time in a bacta tank they didn’t have and he wouldn’t be able to get to, down this deep. But that one didn’t hurt much at all, more like a phantom, and he took a testing breath, shallow at first and then deeper, and finally he reached up with both hands to check for the injury that made the rest pale in comparison and found just flesh. Knitted together, raised under his touch, but flesh.Hell had no idea how long he laid there, pressing his fingers against keratin tissue, tracing the edges of the injury. He should be dead. Absolutely, no contest. But.."It’s nice, isn’t it?"Hell jolted, shooting upright all at once. There was another person here. When had that happened--?Another person who shared-- well, most of his face. The edges of an awful burn scar around his throat, where the helmet would have sealed. Tongues of scarring over his chin and cheeks, barely missing his ears. Which was good, because honestly the ears were so terribly fragile--"I’m sorry, what.. what’s nice about it?"He looked familiar, the other clone, in a way most didn’t. Hell swept his gaze down, looking for identifying marks that would prove what his brain was telling him. A pilot’s wing tattoo on his shoulder, with sharp, angled lines that was a fighter pilot. Serving stripes: 212 orange and grey-blue, the Shadow Squadron’s personal appellation. Further down his arm, the wing-and-red chevron pattern that matched Hell’s own, pilot-and-medic in a repeating pattern, done with a sterilized hypo and synthesized ink made in Trainer Gilamar’s lab for this express purpose.Hell’s name and number against his breastbone, right under the phosphorescent numbers that identified himself. That matched Hell’s, too."It’s calm," Matchstick grinned up at him. "No storm anywhere. A good thing to wake up to. Even better that there’s no mud to get on us--"Matchstick is on a mission. Hell is dead in the high-mid plates. Hell is dead and Matchstick is on a mission--The phantom pains twinge when he throws himself into Matchstick’s arms, but what does it matter now that they’re both dead?He buries himself there and pretends the sun isn’t shining; if there’s rain, there aren’t any tears.
