#oh and also my research poster for my thesis is due today isn't that sexy

[trixree]

Wolffe enters the medbay and then immediately wishes he hadn’t. It has been an exceptionally long ten-day of post-campaign administrative work which has culminated in the most evil of all evils: a migraine. All Wolffe wants in this cruel, cruel galaxy is a bed upon which to rest his weary head and some sithdamn medication. Full citizenship and rights for the Vode? Forget it, just bring him some fucking phenergan and call it a day. It’s not like he’d be able to tell the difference at this point.

But instead of the sweet embrace of a sedating anti-nausea hypo, Wolffe has been given this shit-fest on a plate.

“What am I looking at,” he says after a beat. There is an important distinction to be made between “saying” and “asking” and this distinction is that when one asks for something, there is a general acceptance that the thing one is requesting might not happen. However, if Wolffe’s statement continues to go unanswered, the air in this room will boil with his fury and everyone will suffocate and die.

“Nothing,” Diotima lies. She makes no effort to conceal the fifteen pounds of beastie in her arms.

The gray behemoth of a tooka opens its wide and monstrous mouth to grumble and croak a sound that could be considered a meow, if only by the hard of hearing and-or deaf. It is a sound that drags itself across sandpaper, throws itself upon the craggy rocks of a troubled shore, and dances with Grievous' ongoing case of mechanical bronchitis.

“Hush, Pea,” Diotima soothes, petting the dreaded creature.

“Pee?” Wolffe repeats.

“Pea,” Diotima says. Wolffe somehow gets the feeling that they are saying different words. “Can I help you, Commander?”

Diotima’s patients are frozen in silent fear, eyes volleying back and forth between Commander, tooka, and medic as if watching a very high-stakes holoball tournament.

“Explain the animal,” Wolffe starts.

The throbbing in his eyes intensifies the longer that he remains without answers. The migraine now has a name and its name is Diotima.

He’d thought it was a pretentious name for a clone, but never would have said as such or even indicated that he thought so, given how meaningful it was for his medic. She’d settled on the fact that she was a she before graduation from flash-trainings to full-fledged Cadet-hood, but her name was a much longer process.

She’d picked “Diotima” from an ancient philosophy text that she’d—somehow—gotten ahold of the ‘net. Allegedly—and it is alleged, because Wolffe has many more important things to do with his time than search up the damn thing to confirm—the piece of writing is a collection of speeches by a bunch of drunk ancient Jedi at a houseparty; all men. Eventually a woman arrives, also a Jedi, and “delivers the most badass speech in the whole fuckin’ thing, vod.” Diotima—their Diotima, not the centuries-old Jedi one—claimed that it was only fitting that her name reflect the fact that she is “a beacon of hope amongst men”.

(Most of the battalion calls her Dio.)

“Pea is our therapy animal. Research shows that proximity to domesticated animals improves recovery after traumatic injury or experience,” Diotima recites imperiously.

“Pee?” Wolffe repeats, again, because why? Why would she name it that?

Diotima narrows her eyes and says, “Deputy Pea.”

“Deputy?”

She turns away from him, haughty, and Wolffe watches as Piss-the-tooka perches all fifteen pounds of its fluff atop Diotima’s shoulders and begins to knead gently at her scrubs with its disconcertingly bird-like feet. It also fixes him with a haughty look of disdain.

“Well, you rejected my request for promotion—”

“You tried to promote a tooka?” Wolffe never approves a request for promotion for a trooper he does not personally know. It makes sense, that he’d reject a promotion filed for anyone named Pee even if he wasn’t aware that they were an animal.

“—so instead of lieutenant, we had to settle for deputy of medical.”

Wolffe exchanges a bewildered look with the other medic on duty, Hack, who shrugs in a “what can you do?” sort of motion. And then, like the traitor he is, Hack offers: “the Deputy does help. She’s good for morale.”

Wolffe looks back to the animal and her wretched keeper. “Does the general know about this?” he asks.

If the general knows and hasn’t done anything, then it has been officially approved by someone higher up on the food chain and it can no longer be Wolffe's problem. As a general rule, the Wolfpack is a small enough squadron that either Wolffe or General Plo knows everything that there is to know, from gossip to stowaway critters. Wolffe’s ignorance about this matter indicates that it likely bears General Plo’s stamp of approval.

Diotima grins, shark-like. “The general procured her, Sir.”

Of course. Of fucking course he did.

“How does the deputy fair against migraines?” he grouses.

Hack makes an offended noise at the implication that the neatly-ordered, animal-infested medbay is the cause of Wolffe’s pain. Wolffe does not care enough to correct him. Let them think they are responsible for the nauseating, temple-throbbing pulse of pain in his skull. Maybe it will motivate them to be less awful.

Diotima snaps her fingers rapidly in the direction of an empty medbed, each snap increasing in violence the longer it takes Wolffe to comply. Begrudgingly, he does, but he only removes his upper plates in a stand against everything that has occurred here today. On his own ship, no less. Wolffe would expect such chaos from under Bly or Cody’s noses, but never his own.

“Rate your pain, one to ten,” Diotima prompts him.

Deputy Piss unspools from Diotima’s shoulders, leisurely hopping to the bed and sniffing at Wolffe’s waist as if considering whether it suits her napping needs.

“Fuck you,” Wolffe answers Diotima and the tooka.

“You’re getting an IV.” She snaps her gloves in punctuation. “Budge over, Pea,” she coos, decidedly sweeter with the tooka.

“Pee?” Wolffe asks, because really.

“Pea.”

“I feel like we are saying different words, Dio.”

“I neither confirm nor deny. Give me your veins.”