#haedrathi

[reality-warp]

Auri Madraan Jedi Padawan Healer

A familiar dark-skinned woman with a blaster rifle was standing on the ramp, laying down cover fire over their heads as they ran, shouting at them to get onboard. The Mantis was already moving upwards, its landing gear stowing as the take off thrusters fired.

Cal reached the ramp a second before Auri did, leaping up and turning back to make sure she was still there. If he hadn’t she might not have made it. It had been a long time since she’d made a Force jump, and she fumbled the landing, almost slipping straight off the rain-slick ramp. Cal’s hand shot out and seized hers just in time, pulling her steady, the tiniest smirk appearing on his lips.

Then something searing hot and moving too fast to be a normal blaster bolt caught her right in the small of the back.

Auri heard more than felt something shatter against her back, the force of it sending her staggering forward straight into Cal’s chest. He caught her by the shoulders before she could fall, and while she could see him saying her name, asking her where she’d been hit, she couldn’t hear anything. Darkness began to quickly creep in at the corners of her eyes, and for a second she thought maybe her contact lenses were malfunctioning.

Then the pain set in.

Dozens of tiny points of liquid fire exploding all across her back. She could feel the trickle of blood beginning to run, soaking through her hospital scrubs. And just as she blacked out entirely, she realised what had just happened.

She’d been shot by a sniper.

[reality-warp]

Remedial Biomancy - Part 2/5 Cal

“It’s not working, kid.”

“Give it a second.”

“Come on, don’t you think they’d have changed them by now?”

Cal was about to toss another come back from where he was sprawled on his back under the comms panel, but the distraction of exchanging barbs with Greez made his finger slip on the wires he was connecting. A small shower of sparks exploded from the circuits, almost singing his eyebrows off. He swore, the stolen Imperial de-scrambler he was trying to install almost slipping clean out of his hands.

“Let him focus, Greez,” Cere chided, but Cal could hear her amused smile even if he couldn’t see it. Greez grumbled in reply, much like he’d been doing for the past half hour.

“I’m just sayin’. Those codes have been in circulation for over two months. What are the chances they’re still good?”

“The last ones we used worked well enough,” Merrin chipped in, sounding both baffled and faintly amused by Greez’s worry. She was sat on the floor beside Cal’s legs with BD-1 at her side, handing him the tools he needed as he worked.

“The last ones we used were only to intercept medical supplies,” Greez gripped back, jerking a thumb over one shoulder at the stacks of empty crates crowding the lounge. There was barely enough space to get through to the galley from the cockpit. “And assuming they aren’t bogus and lead the Empire straight to us, why is all this tinkering with my ship necessary?"

“Because these ones are supposed to be much higher level, the kind only the Admirals and Inquisitors can use. Even with the right codes to receive the transmissions, you need an Imperial de-scrambler to decode the messages as they come in,” Cere explained patiently.

“Otherwise, you get nothing but this,” Cal added, tapping the underside of the comms station with a screwdriver for emphasis. For the past five minutes it had been giving off nothing but a grating static noise like a badly tuned radio, and it was beginning to get on all their nerves.

BD-1 gave a trill of questioning bleeps, and Cal could see the frown appearing on Merrin’s face without seeing to look.

“What is he saying? Something about attack plans?” The former Nightsister was still learning Binary, and some of the droids lightning-fast chatter still went over her head.

“He’s asking why we don’t give the codes and de-scrambler directly to the Rebellion so they can use it for attack plans,” Cal translated for her, holding the soldering iron in his teeth for a second as he let the two wires cool and fuse together.

Merrin made a noise of comprehension and shifted to look at Cere.

“It is a fair question.”

Cere exhaled as if just thinking of the question was exhausting.

“We could. But if these codes got into someone like Saw Gerrera's hands, he’d just use them to strike at their weapons factories, their shipyards. Not free civilians, slaves, or use them to get supplies to starving cities who’ve been blockaded.”

Difficult as it was for him to wrestle with sometimes, Cal had already had this discussion with Cere when he’d found/stolen the de-scrambler from an imperial camp, and he knew what she was saying made sense. For the past month the crew of the Mantis had taken up something of a smuggling role within the Rebellion, and they’d been almost frighteningly effective at it. Several of the rebel leaders who’d met Cal had wanted him to fight alongside them in their ongoing skirmishes, but none of them could deny that their people needed food and supplies far more right now than they needed a single recently knighted Jedi—even one capable of as much as he apparently was.

They were just better suited to supporting than frontline fighting, and as much as Greez hated to admit it, the Mantis was turning out to be the perfect emergency supply runner. The small luxury yacht’s paint job had changed enough times to make it difficult to recognise and was just flashy enough that anyone who didn’t know her reputation would never guess she was carrying an ex-Jedi, a former Padawan, a Nightsister of Dathomir, and a Latero gambler who was still wanted by the Haxion Brood — let alone stolen cargo.

Merrin was quiet for a brief moment, then she made a small noise of understanding.

“I think I see. You’re saying if your Rebellion uses this information for grand battle plans, and the Empire finds out they have access to their high-level communications…

“We’ll all lose a massive tactical advantage, yeah,” Cal finished for her from under the comms panel. Cere made a soft sound of regretful agreement.

“We can share the information we gather with the Rebellion, help them get an advantage. But we can do a lot more ongoing good with this in smaller ways than grand attacks and battles.”

Greez made a sputtering noise.

“What so we’re heroes now? Saving the Galaxy on our lonesome, one yacht full of food crates at a time?”

“Better that than we knowingly leave a blockaded colony to starve,” Cal said, his thoughts coming out through his mouth on pure instinct. He couldn’t see her, but he could feel the approval radiating from Cere at those words. Greez scoffed, slapping the armrest of his chair lightly.

“Come on, kid. Even if you’re right, and even with all their bureaucratic red tape holding the Imps back, there’s just no way they’re gonna fall for the stolen-clearance-codes gambit a second ti—.”

Cal connected the last wire to the de-scrambler, and the mess of static coming through the comms instantly cleared out to the crisp, clear sound of Binary. BD-1 made a series of celebratory chirps as Cal shimmied out from under the comms panel to throw Greez a cheerful smirk.

“What did I tell you?”

Greez tisked and waved him off with two of his four hands.

“Alright, alright, no one likes a wiseass, kid."

Cere waved at them all to be quiet as she listened to the incoming transmission, running the lightning-fast Binary through a translator and reading the results as they appeared on the screen. Cal sensed the change in her before he saw the expression on her face shift from focused, to confused, to outright worried.

“What is it?” He asked instantly, clambering up off the floor. “Another outbound shipment?”

“Of a sort,” Cere admitted, looking suddenly even more uneasy as she kept reading. There wasn’t much that spooked Cere these days, not since everything they’d been through on Nur. The look instantly set Cal’s instincts on edge.

“More supplies?” He guessed hopefully.

“Food?” Merrin offered.

“Credits?” Greez sounded maybe a bit more hopeful than he should have. Cere gave their pilot an exasperated look and shook her head.

“None. It’s a formal transmission from the Lothal mining operation directly to the Inquisitorius.”

All of them blinked in shock at that. It had only been a few months since Cal and Cere had effectively blown up, flooded, and sank the last Inquisitors headquarters, and while they’d know that wouldn’t be the end of the operation, Cal hadn’t expected them to recover quite so quickly.

But that wasn’t the main reason he could feel ice forming in his blood…

“Why is a Lothal mining settlement calling the Inquisitorius?” He heard himself ask, not sure if he was ready to hear the answer. Cere grimaced.

“They’re sending a Purge Trooper squad to the settlement hospital. The Head Medic there has personally requested an investigation of his staff,” she answered, glancing up at him from the screen with a grim look. “He believes there’s a Force-sensitive in hiding out there.”

The longing Cal had been trying to suppress for the past five years reared its head inside him, trying to shove its way to the surface. He gently but firmly pushed it down, refusing to let that hope overpower his judgement again, no matter how much he wanted to believe it could be true. That there might really be other survivors like him and Cere out there…

“Does it say who this Head Medic thinks it is? Or why?” Merrin asked, peering curiously at the console over Cere’s shoulder.

BD-1 buzzed and bleeped excitedly from where he’d hopped up on the back of Cere’s chair, not needing the translator to understand the rapid-fire message.

“One of the junior medics. He thinks it’s either a human man called Lyle Tavian or a haedrathi woman called Rinna D’Lai,” Cal easily translated the little droids Binary into Basic. “The Head Medic thinks one of them used the Force to heal a dying kid.”

“It’s the woman,” Cere said without a traced of hesitation, her tone gone stony. They all eyed her warily. 

“How do you know?” Merrin asked.

Cere exhaled headily, muting the message and turning to face them properly, her expression still grim.

“Because I recognise that last name. Rinna D’Lai was haedrathi nurse I met a couple of years after the Purge. She helped hide me from the Empire.”

Cal felt a sudden, unexpected stab of pain deep in his chest.

He’d only ever known one other haedrathi. 

She’d been a healer too, or at least training to be one. She’d also been his best friend when they’d been younglings growing up in the Temple. He hadn’t thought of her in a long time, still couldn’t bear to think her name. And much as he’d once hoped of one day finding her alive out there along with survivors from the Jedi Council, he’d spent the past few years slowly coming to painful terms with the fact that it would never happen.

She was gone, just like everyone else in the Order.

Still, the sudden memory of their last conversation was a sharp, familiar ache that hadn’t lessened even after five years. One he didn’t need right now. So he pushed it away, promising that someday soon he’d deal with the grief for his old friend the same way he’d dealt with his guilt for Master Tapal’s death.

“She was one of the people who helped hide me after my escape from the Inquisitorius,” Cere was explaining. “I have little doubt she’s the one they’re after.”

“If she is a friend of yours, then we should find her,” Merrin said when no one else medially spoke up. She stood and nudged gently past Cal who’d gone quiet for a moment with the sudden stab of memories, bringing up the holo-map of the sector on the navigation console. Merrin had been practically glued to it since he’d first showed her how it worked a few weeks ago, spending hours soaking in all the information she could about how truly massive the Galaxy really was beyond Dathomir.

“Lothal is not far from our current location,” she said, magnifying and highlighting the distance through the nearest hyperspace lanes. “Six hours away.”

Cal pulled himself back to the present with an effort of will and turned to look at Cere again.

“She’s right. If we head there now we could get there before the Purge Troopers do.”

Cere opened her mouth to answer, but Greez—ever the voice of self-preserving caution—got there first.

“Come on, seriously? I thought you just said we’d be using these codes for supply running? Now we’re thinking of launching a full-on rescue mission from Purge Troopers?”

Cal shrugged, his lip turning up with a lopsided smirk.

“It’s not like it would be the craziest thing we’ve done. It’s not even the craziest thing we’ve done this month.”

Greez gave him a halfhearted glare.

“That is not reassuring.”

“Regardless,” Cere interrupted them, the frown still not falling from her face. She leaned forward on her knees, glancing around at them all meaningfully. “There’s just one problem in all this. The real Rinna D’Lai I knew is dead, and she has been dead for over four years.”

This time all of them stopped to just stare at her blankly, including BD-1.

“Ok, someone want to explain? Because I’m totally lost now,” Greez grumbled, throwing up all four of his hands.

“I am also somewhat confused,” Merrin agreed, her brow pinched in a frown.

“Rinna D’Lai died four years ago on Felucia. Or at least the one I knew did,” Cere explained. “She was killed in a transport crash between stations. I saw her ship go down, and there were absolutely no survivors.”

“Maybe someone with the same name?” Greez suggested, but Cere was already shaking her head.

“I don’t think so. Haedrathi are uncommon outside their home system to begin with, and their naming conventions are very strict. No two ever have the same at a time. Whoever is down there, it’s not the same woman I knew.”

Cal saw what she was getting at.

“You think someone stole her identity and is using it to hide from the Empire,” he said, not making it a question.

That certainly explained the expression on Cere’s face, lost somewhere between suspicion, sadness and anger. She didn’t answer for a long moment, clearly reliving a memory from long ago. She only looked up again when Cal reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Cere, it could still be someone who needs our help,” he pointed out, trying to think this through rationally, but unable to deny how badly he hoped it was someone else like them down there. “And if the Inquisitors are being sent after her, she’s definitely in danger even if she doesn’t turn out to be a Force-sensitive. We should at least try and help.”

Cere considered this for only a moment before nodding and getting up from her chair.

“Agreed. The Rinna I knew was no Force adept, but there’s a good chance whoever is using her name now might well be. And I’d very much like to know who they are, and why they’re using my dead friend’s identity.”

“Hold on, hold on, just one second,” Greez mimed pull on the brakes with two hands while holding up the other two in a stop gesture. “Assuming you’re right about all this, and there is a Force-sensitive damsel in distress or something hiding out down there. How are we supposed to get in and out of an Imperial settlement hospital with a potential fugitive completely unnoticed?”

The question hung in the air or a painfully long second as they all glanced at each other, clearly hoping someone else had a plan.

No one did.

But then Cal’s gaze suddenly caught on the stacks of empty medical supply crates cluttering up the living area—the ones from their last delivery for Mari on Kashyyyk.

That lopsided smirk reappeared as he turned back to face Cere.

“I’ve got an idea.” 

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

[reality-warp]

A/N: So I finished Jedi: Fallen Order and sweet God it was way better and more emotional than I was prepared for. And then before I knew it my mind starting rolling out this idea before I could slam on the brakes. What else is new?

With work stress, difficult physiotherapy, and seasonal affective disorder all kicking my butt right now, theres no way in hell I’m going to have the time or enegry to turn this idea into an acctual polished fic. But after the idea refusing to leave me alone several weeks I decided I just needed to sit down and get the beginning out of my system.

Not my best work by a long shot, but it’s been so good to finally get writing again after a year of struggling.

Set post-game, this follows crew of the Mantis as they start their search for others who survived Order 66, and opens with the POV of one ex-Jedi Healers padawan (alien OC) hiding out in a hospital on Lothal...

Remedial Biomancy - Part 1/5 Auri

The first thing all padawans learned when they apprenticed as healers in the Jedi Temple was that your hands were always going to be the bloodiest.

Bloodier than any knights. Bloodier than any murderer. And if you chose the path of healing, you were going to be living up close and personal with suffering, pain, and not always be able to help. It was not a job for the faint of heart, or for the thin-skinned. But Auri Madraan doubted even Master Sayf, the man who’d taught her everything she knew about the horrors and wonders of being a Jedi Healer, would have been able to remain stoic in the face of all this. 

Bodybags lined the room.

Dozens of them lined up in neat rows stretching from one end of the cold storeroom to the other. Twenty-six men. Fifteen women. Forty-one in total. She knew because it had been her job to count, scan and evaluate each one of them. She’d already finished the details of the last entry on her datapad, and now she just found herself staring into the cold room, struck hollow by the stark emptiness of it against her senses.

The absolute silence of life in a room so crowded.

“Medic Rinna,” The tinny voice of her droid assistant using her fake name broke through her daze, floating over from after making his final scan. “I believe that was the last one. Shall I transmit the results directly to Head Medic Jorran?”

Auri shook her head, both in reply and attempting to pull herself together, rubbing her tired eyes and tapping the save function on her datapad. She’d been awake for well over thirty-two hours and desperately needed to sleep. But this was something she always made herself do every time there was a death.

Master Sayf had always said one should never let lost life become something that felt normal…

“No, that’s ok PANN. I’ll deliver it myself,” she answered, her voice a bit crackly from hours of not speaking.

Her Prognosis Analytic Neural Network droid—more commonly referred to as PANN—bobbed in the air where he hovered, amber optical sensors flickering over her face. She could feel him resisting the urge to share how high her cortisol levels were, and that she would start to become dangerously inefficient if she stayed awake much longer. But even if she were already tucked up in her tiny room in the hospital staff quarters, she doubted she would have been able to shut her eyes for the thoughts and images burning through her mind.

There had been another tunnel collapse in the Lothal mines a day ago, and the men and women now lined up on the floor of the hospital basement were the only ones lucky enough to have been close to the entrance for their bodies to be dug out. The initial evaluations of the first-aiders and Auri’s reports both read suffocation and crush syndrome as the cause of death—no need for full autopsies or further investigation. That was what Head Medic Jorran had made clear what he expected to see, and consequences to anyone who thought otherwise.

But Auri knew differently.

She knew the truth of what had killed these people. She’d known the moment she’d touched a hand to the brow of one of the young men, the story of his broken body unfolding out before her like a story in black bruises and shattered bone.

They hadn’t died from lack of oxygen, they’d been killed when a toxin in the earth they’d been mining had been released as a gas. The Imperial mining operation running the dig had realised what had happened as their workers began dropping, and they had quickly collapsed one of the tunnels in an effort to both cover it up and stop the gas from escaping.

No one else knew. And if her Imperial loyalist boss had his way, no one else ever would.

Only her.

The thought made her want to be sick. She might have done just that were it not for the whooshing sound of the elevator doors opening just behind her, the sounds of footfalls on the metal floor.

“Hey Rinna, I hoped I’d find you down here—” Lyle, her co-worker and fellow junior medic broke off halfway through his sentence behind her, clearly noticing the contents of the room for the first time. She heard the air leave him in a single stunned rush, like someone had jabbed him in the solar plexus. “Maker, I’d heard it was bad, but this…”

Auri didn’t answer or turn to look at him.

Lyle was another recent emergency employee of the short-staffed Lothal capital hospital. He was human, blonde, good looking, and unfortunately just enough aware of it for it to be utterly confused by her disinterest. They’d been working the same shifts for the past two months, and Auri wasn’t sure why, but he had started developing what a charitable person would have called a fondness for her. An uncharitable person would have called it annoying. Her polite but repeated rejections only seemed to urge him on, and he always seemed to turn up when she most wanted to be alone…

This was definitely one of those times.

“You ok?” He asked her earnestly, coming up and placing a too-familiar hand on her shoulder, apparently completely unaware what a stupid question it was.

No, she wanted to say. To scream.

To yell that nothing about this was ok.

That she hadn’t been ok for the past five years.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied, clipping her datapad back onto her belt and turning past him towards the elevator. She refused to look back at him or the forty-one bodybags filled with people who would never have their truths heard.

Who would never get justice.

She stabbed the button for the top floor without waiting, and Lyle quickly dashed after her, slipping in just in time and almost getting his scrubs caught in the door. A significant part of her really wished they’d cut him off before he could get inside.

“Rinna,” he started, once again reaching to touch her shoulder, but clearly thought better of it this time when she shifted away. “You sure you’re alright? You covered a triple shift today, and you look kinda… well, paler than usual.”

Something halfway between a laugh and a snort escaped her before she could stop it.

Ex-Jedi padawan Auri Madraan was a haedrathi, an uncommon near-human species from the Haedra system whose only real biological difference to humans was that they’d evolved in underground caverns, which meant their bodies didn’t process vitamin D in the same way. The result was naturally pasty skin, snow-white hair, and eyes so sensitive to light that they had to be covered by protective black contact lenses near constantly to prevent blindness.

She was likely the palest being on this entire damned planet.

How this guy had managed to become a medic, she had to wonder sometimes…

“I’m fine, Lyle. Just tired. And doing autopsy scans of tunnel collapse victims isn’t high on my list of favourite things…” she trailed off into the silence of the elevator, the only noises breaking the tension the whooshing of the passing floors. 

She sighed heavily, rubbing her eyes again. She had been working herself harder than normal, but focus and eventual exhaustion seemed to be the only way to keep her thoughts and nightmares at bay lately. It was clearly taking its toll on her temper—and for all his dogged determination to get her to swoon over him like the other nurses did, Lyle was only being kind. 

“Sorry. Yes, I’m ok. Anyway, what are you doing down here? Didn’t you finish half an hour ago?” She asked more gently this time.

Lyle scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck as the elevator continued its rapid ascent, and even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could feel his gaze running over her.

“You’re going to deliver those reports in person, right? I thought I could keep you company on the way to Jorran’s office, if you like. Give you an excuse to get out of the quickly.” he offered, an almost painful note of hope in his voice. “Look, I’ve been meaning to ask if you’d like to spend more time together? Like, maybe… as a date?”

Auri only managed to restrain her sigh by virtue of the fact that at least he’d managed to wait until they were out of the room full of dead bodies before trying to officially ask her out. If he hadn’t, her training might have failed her entirely, and she’d have simply brained him with her datapad and left him down there. 

She was saved from shooting him down by her droid rounding on her, a distinctly disapproving note in its metallic voice.

“Medic Rinna, I really must insist you engage in at least one REM sleep cycle as soon as possible. Your cortisol levels are impractically high, and—”

“Yes, thank you PANN,” she interrupted the fussing droid, cutting him off before he could launch into a full-blown lecture. “I’ll get some sleep as soon as I’ve delivered the reports. Why don’t you both go on to the dorms and get plugged in to charge for the night.”

“But—” PANN and Lyle started at the same time.

“I’ll be five minutes max. No need for an escort,” she cut them both off, deliberately not meeting Lyle gaze. The elevator came to a stop at their floor, the doors whooshed open and Auri quickly stepped out before either of them could try and stop her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lyle looked crestfallen, but PANN just grumbled, immediately floating away back towards the staff quarters at the other end of the building.

She’d tried tinkering with the little medical droids AI processor a few years ago before arriving on Lothal in an effort to improve his analytical speed, but it had somehow affected his personality algorithms too. Now instead of being a clinically detached medical encyclopaedia, he fussed when her stress levels got too high and chipped in with sarcastic commentary whenever she least needed it, and she had no idea how to fix it. It was like having a nagging metallic nursemaid following her around every day. She’d found herself cursing the fact that she’d never taken any programming courses back during her training; but metal, chips and circuit boards had never been her area of expertise…

Cal had always been way better with that stuff anyway.

The sound of his name, even inside her own head was enough to send a lance of pain through her chest. She buried it quickly before it could show on her face, forcing a small, weak smile into its place.

“Thanks for offering, Lyle. But I’d rather just get this done and go to bed. I’ll see you for the next shift,” she said over her shoulder.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled, failing to hide his disappointment as she strode off. “Night, Rinna.”

Auri started making her way towards the Head Medic’s office on the far side of the building, but instead of heading there directly, she turned down another hallway and made a detour towards the recovery wards.

There was someone more important she needed to see first…

Three minutes later she was swiping her ID card to enter the paediatric wing, the smallest but also most colourfully painted section of the hospital by far. The wards weren’t particularly big, only four beds to a room, and at this time of night, all the kids in them were fast asleep. The one Auri entered was at the end of the long, brightly painted hallway, and it was the only one with just a single kid curled up on his own inside.

“Rinna?” The boy mumbled, hearing the door sliding open as she entered, turning over to peer sleepily at her from under the blankets. It hadn’t been safe for Auri to use her real name in five years, but the smile the little boy gave her as he saw her was always just enough to ease the ache of missing it.

The kid coiled under the hospital blankets with bio-monitor patches all over his chest was human, small even for his years, with dark hair, coppery tanned skin, vivid blue eyes, and an infectious grin in the rare moments when he was feeling ok. His entire family had been living on Lothal since the days of the Republic, and the day he’d first come to the ward a week ago and met Auri, he’d excitedly told her that he loved haedrathi pop music, was a crack shot with a slingshot, and was going to be a pilot one day.

The name on the bed chart read: BRIDGER, EZRA.

“Hey little soldier,” she smiled at him, this time a genuine one, quietly shutting the door behind her. “I just came to check up on you before my shift ends. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Ezra lied, trying to sit up. “I don’t even think I’ll even need my meds tonight.”

Auri gave him a sceptical look, eyeing his shaky arms struggling to support him, and the low blood oxygen level reading on his bio-monitor.

It turned out the same toxins that had killed the workers in the mines had been leaking into the water supply a couple of weeks before, and Ezra had got a heaping dose before his parents realised what was wrong. Now it was wreaking havoc on his organs, the toxin fiendishly difficult to purge, especially for smaller children whose body mass was less than an adult. Ezra was barely six, short and skinny as a rail, and he was getting sicker by the day, even with the treatments and Auri’s regular help during their checkups.

Still, he was a fighter, and stubborn as a Loth-cat. Especially when it came to foul-tasting meds.

She placed a hand on one hip, trying not to smile.

“Oh really?”

Ezra scowled determinedly, but on his young round face, it was closer to a pout.

“Really!”

She raising a brow theatrically at him.

“Then I supposed you won't need this either?”

The kids face lit up as she pulled a little album stack out of her pocket and held it up—an innocent little palm-sized chip that stored sound data and could be plugged into any system or droid to play music. She’d managed to find one of the bands he’d mentioned while complaining how boring and quiet it was in the ward on his own, and she’d promised to bring it during her next visit.

She waved the album stack in front of him before setting it pointedly on the side table.

“Meds first, then music.”

Ezra pouted at her again, but dropped his little shoulders in defeat.

“Urgh, fine,” he grumbled.

Auri couldn’t help but smile sadly to herself as she opened the medication compartment on his bedside table, and began measuring out his prescribed dose of immune boosters. A nurse or med-droid would have been round later to give him his nightly meds, but they were so short-staffed at the moment that they likely wouldn’t have finally got to him until late at night. The kid was already struggling with his condition so much, she didn’t see any need to keep wake him once he finally managed to get some rest.

And she would have been lying if she said she hadn’t wanted to visit the one person in this hospital she actually enjoyed spending time with.

Once she’d double-checked the measurements, she pressed the little measuring cup into his hands and poured him a glass of water to wash it down with. Ezra took it without complaint but pulled a face as he gulped it down.

“Urgh! Why does it have to taste so bad?”

“That’s how you know it’s good for you,” she teased, setting the cup aside and handing the glass of water over. He took it gratefully as Auri pulled a pressure band out of the side table and wrapped it carefully around his skinny arm. “Just going to quickly check your blood pressure too, then you’re all done.”

In truth, she didn’t really need the band to check his blood pressure, but it gave the excuse she needed to get close enough to use her Biomancy.

She’d had the ability for as long as she could remember—a rare talent even among the Force sensitives that let her sense and read a persons life force through direct contact. It meant she’d effectively been able to tell when a person was healthy or sick since she was a child, and after years of training in the Jedi Houses of Healing she was now able to pinpoint and identify the cause of almost any pain or illness with a single touch.

Or in Ezra’s case, it allowed her to sense every part of his body that was struggling most against the poison in his system, and do what little she could during her checkup visits to help him. She’d added specific toxin absorbers into his daily meds to try and help take the pressure off his kidneys, used tiny amounts of Force biomanipulation to boost his white blood cell count, but to be honest there wasn’t an awful lot left she could do. Pretty soon the only thing she’d be able to do was numb his pain receptors so he could sleep comfortably. She hadn’t even been able to think about how she’d break the news to his parents that he was unlikely to ever fully recover…

Frustration and regret roiled deep in her chest as she read his bio-signs, seeing barely any improvement since she’d checked the day before. If only she could just do what she’d been trained for years by Master Sayf to do. To reach out with the Force and help heal the actual source of the problem, not just clumsily try to manage the symptoms. To be the healer she’d worked so hard to become since she’d first walked into the Jedi Temple at two years old.

But it was a different Galaxy now.

She’d only been on Lothal six months. If she cracked now, used her true power and took the risk of being found out, at best she’d have to flee. Start all over again.

At worst she’d be found by Purge Troopers and executed on the spot.

“Hey, Rinna,” Ezra asked abruptly, pulling her out of her morbid thoughts.

“Mmm?” She answered, pretending to check the pressure monitor before releasing the air and removing it from his arm. He pointed at a spot around her collarbone.

“What is that?”

For a second she didn’t know what he was looking at. Then she saw that he was pointing at the cord she wore around her throat. It must have crept up without her noticing, and was now barely peeking out over the neckline of her scrubs. She shrugged it back under the grey-green cloth a bit too quickly to be subtle.

“It’s nothing, little soldier. Nothing important.”

“I always see you wearing it, every time you visit,” he pressed, a tiny pout appearing again. “None of the other nurses or doctors ever wear any jewellery. How come you do?”

“Because this isn’t jewellery,” she answered automatically, then mentally kicked herself for it. Ezra just kept looking at her expectantly, and she knew instinctively he wasn’t going to let it go. So with a sigh, and against her better judgement, she pulled it out just enough for him to see the small jade green stone bound at the end. “It’s called a kyber crystal.”

Ezra’s vivid blue eyes went wide in wonder.

“Isn’t that what’d in Jedi lightsabers?” He breathed.

“They use to be. But not anymore,” she murmured, quickly tucking the cord back beneath her shirt. “It’s just a silly trinket. But one that you have to keep a real secret, ok? I’m not supposed to have it, and I’ll get in a lot of trouble if you tell anyone.”

He gave her a solemn look and a slow nod, his dark hair flopping adorably.

“I won’t tell.”

“Swear?”

He drew an X over his chest.

“Swear.”

Auri tried to regard him seriously but eventually smiled, unable to stop herself. He was a starry-eyed kid, but he was also the most honest and genuine person in this place.

“Good. Now let’s get you tucked in. Your folks will be in to visit tomorrow morning and you don’t want to sleep through it.”

He nodded, coughing a little as he pulled the covers up to his chin again, peeking out and giving her and the album stack on the side table another hopeful look.

“Can you put the music on?”

Auri rolled her eyes with a smile, but nodded, bopping him lightly on the nose with the stack.

“Ok, but only on the lowest volume.”

She got up from the cot and started plugging the stack into the small radio near the door. Ezra coughed again, a bit harder this time. And then a strange noise came from him; a kind of gasping wheeze that quickly became a throaty cough, like he was struggling to catch his breath. Auri turned instinctively, feeling the pull of something wrong through her senses, only to see the colour had suddenly drained almost from Ezra’s round cheeks, leaving him a sickly grey colour.

“Ezra? What’s wrong?” She asked, dread creeping into her chest.

“R-Rinna…” he mumbled, sitting up and swaying dangerously on his cot, “I d-don’t feel good…”

He slumped sideways, almost falling out of the bed entirely. Auri shot across the room and caught him by the shoulders just in time. She tried to sit him up again, but he’d gone almost entirely limp, eyes rolling back in his head.

“Ezra? Ezra!"

He didn’t respond. Only continued to wheeze out breaths that were far more laboured than they should be.

Not wasting a second Auri rolled up his sleeve and touched her entire hand to his upper arm. That one solid point of contact brought a fresh flood of sensations, and she instantly understood, the breath slipping out of her in horror.

“Oh no…”

She could feel the frantic flutter of his pulse through her senses like a hummingbirds wings. Feel the pain of his insides and every laboured breath as if it were her own. The toxin had finally found its way into his heart, and the shock of it was causing the organ to beat wildly out of control.

Not wasting a breath, she yanked back the sheet and laid him out flat on the cot, tilting his head back to open his airway. He was so small it barely took even her any effort to lift him, his little form not even taking up half the space on the cot.

“Keep fighting hard as you can, little soldier,” she whispered, pulling out a syringe and a vial of cardiac stabiliser from the nearby emergency cart. She didn’t realise her hands were trembling until it took her three tries to get it filled correctly.

If this didn’t work…

She returned to his side, sliding the needle into his bicep and depressed the plunger, keeping a hand firmly on his arm and letting her Biomancy monitor his response better than any of the equipment around her could.

But…

“No, no come on, please…” she cursed under her breath, dread beginning to turn to panic.

It wasn’t working. She’d managed to slow his pulse and calm his adrenaline with the stabilising drugs, but it wasn’t enough. His heart was still beating out of rhythm and getting quickly worse. If that poison stayed in his body any longer she knew it was going to destroy his heart beyond any hope of repair…

The sight of those bodybags filling the room downstairs invaded her mind again. The image of one more of them, slightly smaller than the others—

No.

The thought rang through her head with the long dead voice of her master, and the panic in her chest stilled into sudden, familiar calm as she looked down at Ezra again. This time with all the years of lessons and practice she’d gone through to get here rushing in to fill the void.

To heal a hurt, you must first understand the hurt, padawan.

To ease the pain, you must know that pain.

She could still feel the poison lingering in him through her senses, could feel the damage it was doing through the contact. She also knew it wasn’t going to be enough to just remove some of it. Every last drop he’d managed to accumulate by drinking that contaminated water had to be pulled out if she was going to save him now.

So, taking one of his small, tanned hands in her considerably paler ones, Auri reached a hand out to hover over his chest, stretching out with the Force. It was like flexing an aching muscle that had long gone unused, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to do it. 

But then, her thoughts brushed up against a cluster of something cold and foreign. Something that wasn’t supposed to be there—a knot of wrongness caught up in the complex weave of life that made up all of Ezra.

She reached out further, and her mind stumbled over another. And another. And then another. Feeling the pressure building in her own head with the concentration, she forced herself to focus harder, latching her will onto all those knots of wrongness until she could feel every molecule of the poison scraping against her thoughts—a million pinpoints on a map laid out in the shape of the boy before her.

Then, as gentle as she could, Auri began to pull on all those pinpoints of wrongness.

If anyone had been watching, it might have looked at first like the young haedrathi medic was simply praying over the kid, one hand holding his while the other hovered over his chest. But then, ever so slowly, what looked like tiny beads of pale orange sweat began to appear all over the boy’s clammy skin. At first they were almost unnoticeable, but quickly they grew, forming together into bigger drops that began to slowly rise off him entirely, floating in dozens of perfect spheres up into the air.

She didn’t stop until all of those droplets had risen off Ezra’s clammy skin, and only when every last bit had left him did she shift her hand slightly, condensing them all into a single floating sphere the size of a large marble in the air.

Her head beginning to ache with the strain, Auri automatically reached a hand towards the side cart at the edge of the room, and a test tube flew into her grip as if pulled by a magnet. Sweat began to bead on her own brow as she guided the floating ball of poison into the glass before finally releasing her focus. The pale orange liquid fell straight into the container as if someone had finally turned the gravity back on, and Auri felt her hands trembling as she quickly stoppered it.

Her perception of the rest of the room flooded back in as she pulled in a few steadying breaths, if someone had turned the volume back on for the rest of the world…

Only then did she hear a noise come from directly behind her.

Auri whirled to face it, her head spinning and heart pounding as she automatically shoved the test-tube full of poison into her back pocket. Lyle was stood in the open doorway to the ward, a confused look on his face. For a horrible moment, she thought he’d seen everything, his gaze flickering in bewilderment between her, the boy on the cot, and the empty syringe of cardiac stabilisers on the side table. But the look softened to worry as he saw the expression on her face.

“Rinna, what happened? Is he ok?”

She was saved from trying to flat out lying when Ezra groaned. She turned back to him to see the boy’s vivid blue eyes flickering open as he began to regain consciousness.

“R-Rinna?” He rasped, and she immediately knelt next to him, gently stroking his messy hair back from his face.

“It’s ok. You’re ok, little soldier. You just had a bad spell,” she assured, calmly as she could despite her own racing heartbeat. He coughed a bit and she helped him take a few more gulps of water before gently laying him back down on the pillows. “Try to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning, I promise.”

He was out barely ten seconds later, the exhaustion of having the poison forcibly purged from his body taking its toll.

But at least now he would live.

Auri covered him in an extra blanket from one of the other beds, and set the bio-monitoring system to alert her if there was any change to his vitals. Then, once she was sure he was as comfortable and safe as she could possibly leave him, she turned back to face a concerned-looking Lyle. He was gazing at her like he was desperate to somehow comfort her, but had no idea what to do or say to help.

“What happened?” He asked quietly the moment they were both outside.

“His heart, it started going tachy right after I gave him his meds. I barely got the stabilisers into him in time…”

It wasn’t a complete lie, but she still hated the taste of it on her tongue. Lyle glanced down at her still trembling hands, and once again she could see him barely resisted the urge to try and take hold of one.

“You’ve done everything you can,” he told her, not realising the truth of those words. “But you really should sleep now too, Rinna.”

She nodded, glancing back at the door to Ezra’s room once more before turning back to Lyle.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said quietly. He looked at her in confusion, and she gave an anaemic smile that she couldn’t quite make reach her eyes. “Would you mind walking me to Jorran’s office after all?”

It took him a second to process what she’d said, but once he did he nodded vigorously.

“S-sure! Yeah, of course.”

Auri followed her colleague down the hallway, falling into an exhausted step beside him. But not before quietly pulling the test tube of poison out of her back pocket and dropping it quietly into a nearby biohazard bin.

Much as she hated to admit it, PANN and Lyle were both right—she really did need all the sleep she could get tonight.

Tomorrow she was going to have to start planning her escape from Lothal.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5