#xaishen

[themedicwhomeeps]

Coming Home

APOTHECARY'S PERSONAL LOG BEGIN AUDIO PLAYBACK My time on Nar Shaddaa was ... less fruitful than I would have liked. I think at least some of it was the lab facilities - it wasn't as though there weren't any at the Palace but unfortunately it was far more outfitted for spice production than anything biomedical, and there were only so many modifications I could request to the room I was using. I'll have to keep sharing notes with Xaishen over comms and working from our new residence in the Nexus rift. I haven't had much time to come to terms with the loss of Albrect IV. I mean, I was there when we finally evacuated, and fought to allow the last of the evacuation to take place, but ... there were so many other things on my mind that any consideration of what it meant went by the wayside. Then, of course, I was subsuming it in labwork and cookery and the minutiae of life on Nar Shaddaa. Now I'm here, trying to get used to where everything I can't 'see' is all over again. I suppose now is as good a time as any to take stock. Home never really meant much, in terms of a 'place'. I didn't remember the homestead on Dantooine particularly well. I couldn't consider the lodgings I shared with my master 'home' - I don't recall, but I don't imagine that sort of bonding with my surroundings was particularly encouraged at the time. I don't have a ship to call home the way Ahri and Alti do. The monastery on Albrecht IV was the first place that I was allowed and indeed encouraged to consider home. I resisted that for a very long time, and maybe I should have continued to do so. It being gone wouldn't be such a blow if I didn't think of it as home. Still, I'll get used to the new place. It's not as though it lacks for most of what made the Rest home. Medbay is more or less the same as it was at the Rest. There's been lab space set aside. Aranar tells me that he and Srina'idash and some of the marines arranged for the bistro to be set up on site. Rilus and I have quarters, which he was kind enough to unpack. Muffin is settled well in the menagerie. Most of the circumstances that made the Rest home are there. Perhaps the move just highlights how much things have changed. Aurrin's still missing. So is Mychae - I have a feeling she may have gone after him, but as no direct word has come to anyone about it, I am not about to make that hypothesis a matter of public record. Sedryn is with his family. Sheenah hasn't been seen in quite some time. Caer is sick. Raiyden and Tomuraan are more or less permanently on Nar Shaddaa until she's well. Reiner, Kal-dur, Sylvanne, Yuloru, Katrai, Zai ... so many moved on to other things. Kot is dead. We have new faces and we don't lack for allies, but ... I miss my friends. Even the ones who weren't strictly friendly. It's not ideal, but I suppose the galaxy never is. Change happens, and we adapt to meet its challenges, even - maybe especially - when it's sad. There are other new things. Title - I am no longer 'apothecary', precisely. I am a healer of the Order of the Silver Star now. What I do hasn't changed, but apparently the groupings of the Marran needed to change in response to various shifts in ... I'm not really sure. Either way, by whatever name I'm called, I still work in medbay and the lab. So it's not a change that means a great deal to me. It's just one more illustration of the shift that life has taken. There have been many. I've been with the Marran for such a long time now. Given how much of my memory is gone, it feels like most of my life. The changes this time has wrought ... I never would have foreseen this, I don't think. Friends, family, padawan, foster, lover, home ... life. I wasn't meant to have these things, and yet I do. So while losing the Rest is sad, maybe that's a good thing - not that it's lost, but that I care enough to feel a pang at its loss. That I miss people. I know Caer often says that Jedi are about bottling up their emotions, but that's not quite accurate. We just don't let them rule us. So I won't let the sadness rule me. That's fairly easy; it comes with joys of its own to balance it. I had a home. I will make another in this new place. There will be people with whom I can share it. Now hopefully I can find the bistro and my new lab space without tripping on another staircase. I should summon Muffin. This is why Paetra Greystorm bought Muffin for me, I imagine. Transport is so much easier when one's mode of transport can see in ways one can't.

[themedicwhomeeps]

Team Efforts

Nar Shaddaa hadn't changed, but Jallira had since the last time she'd been on the so-called 'smuggler's moon'. Her first encounter with the Marran as a social group, and the days wandering with Sedryn in part to experience life and in part to see if Proteus' hunters could be lured out of hiding ... they seemed like things that happened a lifetime ago. In a very real way, they were. The last place she'd expected to be working, even short-term, was a Nar Shaddaa brothel. But there she was, mostly by virtue of Estherian stubbornness. No one had received any sufficient answers for what was wrong with Caer or what was going on with Daedalus - not from Raiyden, not from Xaishen, certainly not from Caer and not even from Lyrae'a. So she'd asked Aranar'aliit to take her to Nar Shaddaa and serve as her backup while she prodded answers out of someone. It was the first time she had consciously and deliberately 'called in a favour' from anyone, and she'd chosen Aranar largely because the biggest danger to her was the apparent Cookery Cultists, and that was entirely Aranar's fault. He'd started the 'religion'; he could protect her from the brunt of it. Certain things weren't entirely adding up about what she'd found when she'd finally pried coordinates out of a tired Raiyden (and the fact that she'd had to point-blank tell him she was en route to get a specific location just confirmed she had done the right thing). Why put Caer in carbonite freezing when they could have put her in cryostasis, which was generally safer and easier on the system? Well, perhaps Vaulk hadn't had the technology - but Raiyden knew that cryo-freeze technology was available on Kantherion's ship. Or if he didn't, Jallira did, and if he or anyone had just told her... Then there was the crystal in which Caer's consciousness was suspended. She wasn't sure why Caer's awareness had to be separated from her body; that struck her as hugely dangerous when all that was truly required was a maintenance of brain function and an induced coma. People survived in cryofreeze for generations without having to have their very selves jammed into another vessel. Or perhaps they were hoping that if Caer's body died of the poison, they could put Caer's awareness in another form? But whose? And would shunting someone out of their own body so that she could live be something Caer wanted, or could live with, if it came to that? That was not a conversation Jallira planned to have with Vaulk. He was not Jedi, he was not Marran and he was definitely not interested in any morality beyond keeping his business interests running relatively smoothly and having vengeance on those who tortured 'his girls'. Jallira had tried to talk him into accepting Marran aid at least enough to share information with them, but Vaulk was concerned that he would be denied his revenge. The Archon was not going to be pleased about the situation either, particularly the lengths to which she'd had to go to get full disclosure on the matter - Jallira quite clearly felt another, "Hi, my name's Ihlrath and I happen to run this bitch" coming on. As to Vaulk's attitude of 'stay out of my way while I revenge myself on the man who tortures my people because I am going to do horrible things of which your Marran wouldn't approve' ... she'd let the Arbiters to whom she'd delivered that report take the matter to the Archon. Her priority, as per usual, was saving a life - in this case, Caer's. It wasn't precisely a simple task, either. Jallira had known that Xaishen liked discovering and inventing horrific poisons so that he could find the cures for them ... but the problem was that he hadn't found cures for the batches that Daedalus had apparently found. The notes Xaishen gave her involved several poisons, Xaishen wasn't sure which one and she couldn't do further tests to verify the specific poison without taking Caer out of carbonite, which could kill her. Then again, it didn't matter overmuch; she wasn't planning on approaching a cure for a Sith alchemical poison the same way Xaishen would. Her cures for this sort of thing tended to involve what Alasha had once called 'Marran alchemy'; while biochemistry was largely involved, so were the basic properties of the Flames. It was also difficult to work through in a private room in a brothel, however opulent the place was. Her room was not a lab facility by any stretch, she could ask for the equipment she needed but making it fit anywhere was a trial, and she had to expend a great deal of energy keeping her empathy walls up against the constant roil of lust in the immediate vicinity. On some level that was alright, because focus on work was a good way of blocking out the empathic resonance of the place, but it also meant backsliding in terms of reasonable breaks. She tried, but mostly for Xaishen and Raiyden; she couldn't rest in this place, so she focused on the care and feeding of whoever happened to be handy as a further distraction. When she allowed herself to admit it, she missed the Marran already. Her sisters and Rilus of course, but also Nyomi's stoic pragmatism in the face of ridiculous circumstances, Alasha's not-quite-teasing methods of getting her to take her own advice in terms of rest breaks, the well-meaning (if bewildering) teasing of most of the rest of the Marran. Lieutenant Sortek even managed to include reasonable advice in amongst the innuendo. She very much wanted to request that the Archon turn up and have words with Vaulk so maybe they could work together and see to what was truly important about this in the long term - stopping Daedalus before anyone else got hurt. And Oz ... she would not have her padawan here yet, particularly not with the temptations Vaulk might offer, but she missed him as well. There was something calming about teaching, Jallira found. She missed her team. In her own small arena, Jallira could work well enough without them, but in terms of the big picture ... she needed them. She couldn't afford to think about the big picture, though. She was here to save a life - the life of a friend and sister in all but blood, no matter what problems they were having in their friendship, but Jallira couldn't let that affect her judgement. She was here to save a life. Anything else that got thrown her way, she'd deal with as best she could. And she wouldn't use her backup-calling panic button until she was sure it was needed.

[themedicwhomeeps]

Determination

The dream was the same - the icy cavern, the sense of looking for something, darkness (and Darkness) ahead of her but the sense that it was changing, that it could change. That it could be redeemed, or at least destroyed, if she could find it... The coughing woke her up again. Once the worst of the fit had passed, Jallira sighed and sat up, rubbing her temples under the veil she wore. She stopped sharing a bed with Rilus two days ago; like any good battlefield surgeon, he could sleep through anything except the sound of medical distress, and given he was taking at least some of her medbay shifts, he needed the sleep. There'd been an argument about who got the couch, which Jallira won because of the two of them, she was the one small enough to stretch out full-length on a three-seater sofa. So she sat with her head in her hands, trying to reassemble her walls against the empathic resonance of the monastery around her and taking stock. Breathing hurt. Worse, breathing was difficult, and less and less effective every day. Solid food, already hard to digest because of the fungus in her stomach lining, was now impossible; she couldn't get a mouthful down through the build-up in her oesophagus without choking. She'd been managing for the last day or two with two intravenous infusions of sucrose and nutrients in the course of a day, but that was not going to keep her going for long. She had perhaps three more days before she was stuck in a bed in medbay, and after that... Xaishen and Raiyden are all but killing themselves working on this cure. Raiyden and Tomuraan both went into the minds of Sith looking for answers. Alasha came within an inch of psychometrically reading a corpse with all attendant risks if it meant a cure. There was guilt associated with those thoughts, but there was also a grim determination. Yes, she worried about them all - those who took the field and took woundings or worse for even a chance at information, those who worked themselves as ragged as she used to as a matter of course for the means to save her life, the others who worried themselves to unhealthy degrees over her condition. Still, beyond her own worry for them all in the face of her potential death, there was determination. Whatever her feelings about herself, however unsure she was that she was worth this effort, they thought so. That was an honour and blessing, and it was about time she accepted that, if nothing else. She couldn't promise to be better at taking praise, or to never question the esteem in which people held her, or that she would be anything less than surprised if people insisted that some Darth was working this hard just to gain her as an apprentice... ...but nerf it, the least she could do for those who had such faith in her was to make sure the risks and sacrifices they were making on her behalf were not in vain. She would give thanks for their efforts the only way she knew how; by not nerfing dying on them. Vision or nightmare, the constantly recurring dream could wait. Instead of dwelling on it, she got up, cooked a quick but hearty breakfast to be delivered to Xaishen's lab and Rilus' bedside, and then returned to the sofa. They were right about one thing, all of them; she needed to rest if she was going to get through this, and she might yet have a role to play in her own cure before it was all over. Besides, if she persisted in pushing herself too hard, Jai-din seemed quite keen to launch her into space, the thought of which filled her with dread and a determination to not let it happen. If that meant uncharacteristic resting, so be it.

[themedicwhomeeps]

Reasons

Without even the chronometer to tell her, Jallira knew that she had slept far, far too long. It was there in the stiffness of her limbs, mostly - though the fact that she was sprawled on the little med-cot at the corner of her lab accounted for some of that. It wasn't the comfiest spot in the world to sleep, particularly not for any period of time. Even rolling over took effort, but she managed and tapped the button on the little desktop chrono she kept beside the med-cot to switch it to audio mode. She couldn't see the display but she wanted to know how long she'd been out. The answer brought on a wince - a little over twenty-six hours. She hadn't had anything specific planned at the bistro, thankfully, but had that been the case, E-3 (technically designated ME-3P by its creator, but Jallira refused to call her helper-droid 'Meep' even if Mychae insisted that 'not enough pets or helpers are named after sound effects' and Alti agreed with her) would have at least woken her up. The situation was getting more than a little untenable. Breathing hurt. The cough was productive of sputum more often than not - and it generally contained at least traces of her own blood. She was tired a great deal of the time. She was a little worried at what her blood tests and scan readings would show at this point. Raiyden and Sergeant Vrodrik insisted that the fungus was, despite all her precautions, slowly spreading. She didn't really want to know what it was using for the energy to grow, however slowly. Even so, she gave some thought to the problem as she sat up and ran her fingers through her hair to comb out the tangles. Given her state of fatigue, the mould had probably changed just enough to allow it to survive on Force-energy that wasn't specifically Dark Side. It wasn't an outlandish theory, as theories went, inconvenient as it was. Life finds a way. The problem was that so much else was already going on. The Archon's dire predictions about a return of the Icelings; Sarrni's halfbreed abominations had been hard enough to deal with. A quick perusal of her in-box showed an all-Marran memorandum from Arbiter Rozees that indicated another problem was rearing its head as regards the four ... individuals they'd found at the Nexus. Xaishen and Raiyden had their own problems concerning Xaishen's brother, Darth Daedalus. Sheenah and Keadan was another matter that required a great deal of attention. With all that to be taken into consideration, her own situation didn't seem remotely as important. The thought of Sheenah brought a quiet sigh, followed by a not-so-quiet cough. Apparently it disconcerted her friend that she could take pain and the prospect of her own death with such calm. Jallira hadn't known what to say to that. What was there to say to anyone who didn't understand or share her views on that; how to get anyone to understand her reasoning? Jallira had no desire to return to the Force; she wasn't interested in hastening that particular journey. But at the end of the day, that was all it was - a journey. Pain was to be endured. Death was not to be feared. Whatever else changed in her, Jallira did not want to lose sight of those things. They had served her well. Besides, she had everyone else to worry on her behalf. Worse yet, they gave reasons; explained why she might constitute a priority. Some of them could be refuted, at least a little - the bit about losing a healer of her skill being a particularly strong blow to the Marran, for example. There was Raiyden for the Force-healing, Xaishen for the biochemistry ... not to mention Corporal Harridin and Sergeant Vrodrik in terms of straightforward non-Force healing. The Marran could do without her if they had to. Arbiter Rozees, on the other hand ... his remark was harder to dismiss. Some of the things she had done with the Flames were unique; the cure for Master Othone's illness, the vaccine for the variant rakghoul plague, the Aegis. Of course, the Sith currently making her life a nerfing misery probably didn't know about all of that, or even most of it, and the Marran had done without those methods before... Still, Jallira was more or less forced to accept that she had made a difference. Possibly enough to be worth saving even by her own stringent criteria for self-judgement. That did not, however, mean that she had to encourage the fuss and worry. Jallira stood up, stretched, rolled her shoulders to work out the sleep-induced stiffness and then left the lab to find a shower. Let her comrades think that she'd been up all night working again. It would explain the remaining fatigue, at least, and her silence on comms the previous night. Of course, she couldn't lie worth nerf, but that didn't mean she couldn't keep silent and let people draw the most likely conclusion regarding her reasons for locking herself in her lab for an extended period. It was what she did. And tonight is Mandalorian Night at the Bistro, she reminded herself. Shower, then prepare for Force-healing my sinuses every ten minutes...

[themedicwhomeeps]

Occupational Hazards

APOTHECARY'S PERSONAL LOG BEGIN AUDIO PLAYBACK *racking, chesty-sounding coughing fit* ...nerf. I try to do that as little as possible in company. It sounds nerfing horrible and ... well, mostly, I don't want anyone to worry. I can feel them worrying, some more than others. Mae ... I generally have to tamp the Force-bond with Mae down a little these days, more so than usual. Just because the worry mixes with the guilt she still carries with her over the incident with the datacron and it ... gets a bit much. Though I have to say that I am ... somewhat glad that she is not medically minded. Too many of those close to me are these days. Xaishen is the biggest surprise in that regard, in point of fact. Not that he is an unfeeling person in any respect; just ... part of it is that I hadn't thought he considered me close enough to merit that sort of concern and part of it is the effort he expends to show only a very specific face to those around him. I imagine that largely comes from a lifetime among the Sith; the former Imperial agent, Srina'idash, is apparently much the same. Different masks worn to protect one's self, same principle. And I am obfuscating again. Xaishen, Raiyden, Rilus ... the others are worried on the general principle of 'biohazards are bad and you don't sound well', but those three know what the scans actually mean. Of course, none of this was helped by an impromptu dunk in a freezing lake the other day, and compounded further by my inability to swim; accidentally inhaling a lungful of ice-cold lake is not exactly beneficial when one's lung capacity is reduced. The Archon was not best pleased when the full extent of my condition was made known to him. It ... I was trying to tell him; just-- *racking, chesty cough* *ahem* I did try to tell him but unfortunately the conversation forcibly turned towards other matters mid-explanation so the fact that I had actually been exposed to this biohazard somehow ... got lost. My own fault, largely - it is not as if I made a particular effort to call attention to the matter. I am trying to get better at that, and at least I did ensure that at least two arbiters were aware of the situation as well as the medical staff. All the same, the Archon was not best pleased, though it was more concern than anything else. I was told that the loss of my medical skills would be a blow to everyone. I ... have examined my reaction to that statement and my conclusion is as follows: I am concerned that people will place their faith in me and I will in some way let them down, and I am still on some level convinced that I am not supposed to be noticed or acknowledged for anything I do. So I work particularly hard to ensure that I do not let anyone down - likely harder than I should in terms of my health - and yet I do not want to be indispensable. Or indeed noticed much at all. At least I am somewhat better at that. I just ... know that while there is no death in the abstract, returning to the Force does not precisely allow me to continue my duties as Apothecary. Besides, people keep insisting that I need a vacation and then tell me that I am so sorely needed and logic dictates that somewhere in there is ... a juxtaposition that I truly need to figure out. *somewhat quieter chesty cough* I am on half-shifts in medbay and we are currently in the process of trying to come up with a method of purging my lungs. The methods I have looked into so far have proved ineffective, though they have led to innovations in the treatment of other ailments, but there are other methods I am looking into. Raiyden and Xaishen are also investigating this, and there is the potential for going to Tython to see what the healers there have to say. Though I doubt it will be that simple. Sith don't tend to send things that can be even moderately easily cured with Force-healing if they want to hurt someone, and if they hadn't wanted to hurt someone, they would not have specifically sent a sample that can get past standard biofilters. Xaishen is concerned that it may spread elsewhere in my body. So far I have seen no evidence of that, but of course I'd much rather not on a first-hand symptomatic level. We are still working out a projective model of how this might spread if allowed to do so, but ... much as I dislike saying it, more samples of that nerfing fungus - not just the spores in my own system, but the actual fungus itself - would be very useful at this point. But even if this Darth was likely to send more, official policy is now that any anonymous gifts are to be spaced prior to delivery. Everyone else, at least, is doing moderately well. Arbiter Alasha is adjusting to her 'soul-bond' to the Archon, though obviously some of the sensory enhancements are taking some getting used to. Also there is a splinter sect of Garhoon who are not best pleased with the decision made - apparently they are prejudiced against humans - and there have been attempts on her life. Xaishen is also having difficulties in that his brother is framing him for crimes against sentients and multiple counts of murder by poisoning and the Council wants to detain him ... though at least Arbiter Nyomi will explain matters to them. Politics in the Nebula are becoming more unstable, with King Priam apparently trying to breed extinct dragons and a very angry individual kidnapping a relative of Queen Menalee's ... hence the unfortunate near-drowning the other day ... and something about the Horsemen-- *coughing fit* I cannot. Afford. To be sick right now.