OOM: The Healer

[iprotectyou]

The raiders came with a small army. Baze wasn't quite sure what had happened until it was over. A visiting Jedi, Taza Madowki, fought for the Guardians, lightsaber flashing. Baze fought for the kyber, staff swinging. Chirrut fought for...

Oh, Force. Chirrut. Chirrut was injured.

Now, Baze is curled up next to his prone friend on the stones of the courtyard, trembling. Baze shouts at him, pleading, and Chirrut struggles to keep his eyes open, to keep his grip tight on the larger man's hand. The smaller man coughs up more blood.

The Jedi touches Baze on a cold shoulder, and he barely even feels it. He glances up at her, only to see her pink lips moving, but hears no words. She moves to Chirrut next.

Comments

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut grimaces at the iron-bitter taste of blood. He would ask if he's actually on fire if he could catch his breath properly, his wounds burn with a bizarre inescapable icy flame. He's having trouble remembering his training, remembering how it is that those proficient can ignore pain as inconsequential. The Force is as solid as quicksand in this moment, unreliable and fleeting.

Except around her.

She is solid, dragging the Force's influence with her, and he recoils as best he can... which isn't very well at all.

[iprotectyou]

Baze thinks his friend is squirming because he's in pain, and holds him all the tighter.

"Ssh, ssh, Chirrut," Baze croaks, tears flooding his voice.

"Let me help," the Jedi says, and this time, Baze hears her. He realizes with a start that he knows her--she's the Jedi who rejected Chirrut those two decades ago.

He bares his teeth at her, but she has already placed her hands on Chirrut and started calling on the Force.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut screams. The Force's nature changes entirely under the Jedi's influence. Instead of the Force's song, the one he's known all his life, it is her voice he hears, her demands, her desires. This power is foreign, and overwhelming.

Chirrut panics, and lashes out as best he can, vicious and desperate.

[iprotectyou]

The Jedi ignores his efforts. There's a grinding sound as misaligned bones reset, snapping back into place. Torn arteries close, bruises lift, and skin knits back together. She narrows her eyes, pouring the Force into his battered body.

"What are you doing? Stop!" Baze shouts, trying to push her away. She may as well be composed of stone.

[idontneedluck]

He practically levitates away from the Jedi's grasp once his injuries reduce to the point that he can move, and her focus on him begins to wane. He's back up on his feet and trying to make his escape as soon as he can. It's... a lot of a mess. His connection to the Force is in tatters, along with his focus. The people swarming into the square to provide aid are practically invisible to him.

Well, invisible until he smacks into them, winding himself. The Jedi tsks, fastidiously.

[iprotectyou]

"Calm down, whatever your name is," the Jedi demands, rising from her crouch. The technician Chirrut ran into snatches his arms.

Baze snarls at the Jedi, prompting a curt, "Be silent. I have healed your friend."

"We didn't want your help!" Baze growls, standing. He crosses to Chirrut and holds the larger Guardian's hands up in a placating gesture he knows his friend can't see. "Easy, Chirrut. She won't hurt you anymore."

[idontneedluck]

"Baze? Baze. Baze." Chirrut clings, fiercely. His panic is drawing stares - from cohorts, from those they train. Chirrut might be reckless at times, and a gleeful joker, but he is not given to panic. He wants to defend Baze, he wants to hide behind him, he wants to run. But at least with his hands on Baze he has an anchor in a sea of chaos.

[iprotectyou]

Baze immediately wraps his arms around Chirrut, embracing him fiercely and scowling at the onlookers--including the Jedi. The larger Guardian whispers platitudes in Chirrut's ear, repeating himself over and over. I'm here. You're safe now. I'm sorry.

The Jedi tucks her hands into her voluminous sleeves. A hush descends on the crowd as Master Sheotar arrives, looking like she'd just stepped off a battlefield, staff at the ready and her eyes blazing. Despite her anger, despite being spattered with blood, she has not one hair out of place.

"What happened?" Master Sheotar demands, and everyone present striaghtens their shoulders.

Everyone, that is, except the Jedi. "I healed him," she says, her voice calm and neutral.

"And you didn't take into consideration his Force sensitivity?" Master Sheotar says, her voice pitched dangerously low.

"I didn't think it was relevant," the Jedi says, shrugging.

"It is," Master Sheotar says, grounding her staff.

Baze watches the exchange between the two powerful women, and represses a shudder. He would not like to see a fight between them.

[idontneedluck]

"I am well." There is fear in Chirrut's voice as he lies, holding himself rigidly as he steps away from Baze, towards Master Sheotar. "I am well, ma'am. It..."

He swallows, tense, bracing himself against the blow he suspects is coming. The Jedi's heavy weight in the Force is one of the only clear things in his senses.

[iprotectyou]

Master Sheotar glares at him, but does not strike him. "Get yourself to the infirmary, Imwe."

Baze takes that as his cue to cup Chirrut's elbow and steer him away from the Jedi.

Master Sheotar's voice can be heard ringing across the courtyard. "There will be an inquest."

"An inquest?" the Jedi replies. Baze can almost hear the arched brow. "Surely you can't be serious."

Master Sheotar's response is lost to the stones as Baze enters the temple with Chirrut, intent on trekking to the infirmary with him. "Are you all right, my friend?" Baze says gently, rubbing Chirrut's back.

[idontneedluck]

"No." Baze gets the truth, automatically, and quickly. Chirrut is clinging again, leaning heavily against Baze and revising his 'grabby starfish' impression. "Don't let go, I can't..." Can't anything, his senses in tatters and unreliable.

[iprotectyou]

Baze is tempted to carry his friend, but he's not that injured, not anymore, and Chirrut's damnable pride would suffer. Baze clings to him anyway, hobbled as he stalks down the halls to the infirmary.

The infirmary is in chaos. The sole bacta tank is occupied, and the oberworked technicians flit about from patient to patient, harried and hurried. Baze finds an out-of-the-way corner to tuck Chirrut into, in between the machines which constantly hum and click away. The larger Guardian chafes the smaller one's arms.

"Are you in any pain?" Baze asks, trying to leash his temper and keep the anger from bleeding into his voice.

[idontneedluck]

"No, I'm not... she dealt with that." Chirrut reports tersely, "Baze, I can't..." Hot panic tears at the calm he's trying to enforce. He can hear the machines and their mechanical hum, and the flurry of movement in the room... but he couldn't say where anyone was, the dimensions of the room. He can smell blood and bacta and machine oil and a dozen other things, but their order is muddled, confused. He relies on touch, grasping Baze's robes, feeling the heat of him under his fingers.

And the Force...

Oh the Force.

Away from the Jedi, he cannot sense it at all.

[iprotectyou]

Baze embraces his friend again, cupping the back of his head. The larger Guardian wishes beyond hope that he could drive away everything bothering the smaller one, that Baze's presence would be an anchor for him, the eye of the storm.

"What? What can't you do?" Baze says, rubbing Chirrut's back. "Let me help you."

[idontneedluck]

"Everything is just... I..." He clings desperately, panic ratcheting up the pitch of his voice.

"Alright, Guardian Imwe, lets see what you've done to yourself this time." The technician, familiar with Imwe and his injuries, someone who has spent enough time in Chirrut's personal space to automatically be considered safe.

Chirrut recoils hard enough to slam back against the wall, sucking in a startled breath.

"Baze?"

[iprotectyou]

Baze approaches his panicked friend cautiously, as if he's a wounded animal--which he sort of is. The larger Guardian takes the smaller one's hand in his own, dragging his thumbs across Chirrut's palm.

"It's Farki, the infirmary tech," Baze says, trying for a soothing tone of voice. "You remember Farki, don't you?"

Farki raises her furred hands. "I don't want to cause him any trouble."

[idontneedluck]

He could bristle, but right now he deeply does not want to fight with Baze.

"Yes, I know Farki, I just... didn't realize she was there. I'm.. fine. Getting a headache, but otherwise fine." He avows, ignoring the blood staining his robes and assuming everyone else will too.

[iprotectyou]

"I'd still like to scan you, Imwe. You're all bloody," Farki says, brandishing the handheld scanner she had tucked under her arm.

"Let her scan you," Baze urges. "If you truly are fine, she'll tell us so, and then we can go back to our rooms for tea."

[idontneedluck]

"Fine." Chirrut should let go of Baze entirely, but he keeps a hand looped around Baze's wrist, his fingers firm against Baze's pulse. "I will hold you to that."

[iprotectyou]

Baze's pulse is rapid, ratcheted up with the panic he's been feeling over the last half hour. He draws a breath through his nose, willing himself calm. He'd pray to the Force, but that seems like a bad idea at the moment, for some reason.

Farki runs the scanner over Chirrut's head and body, and whistles. "It looks like you're in late-stage recovery. There's a lot of bruising, and you'll probably feel some residual pain later when you've calmed down, but other than that, you're okay. Get out of here, Imwe, there are patients worse off than you."

Baze takes Chirrut's hand and drags him out of the infirmary. The pair stops by the deserted kitchens, where Baze starts preparing a pot of tea, while still holding on to his friend.

"I'm sorry," Baze says, once the kettle's on the burner. "I should have stopped her."

[idontneedluck]

"No!" Chirrut barks, half startling out of his seat in panic. "Don't go after her, she..." He doesn't want to even think about Baze going through that, the sense of self disappearing under a wave of power that should be so familiar, but was so painfully, coldly foreign.

[iprotectyou]

Baze cups Chirrut's cheek, and presses a kiss to his brow.

"I'm not going after her," Baze says, gently chafing his friend's arms. "I'm staying right here with you. I promised we'd have tea, remember? You need to hold me to that. Stay with me."

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut huffs, but doesn't argue - he knows what Baze said, he just... knows Baze is unhappy about the whole thing. He doesn't want that unhappiness to turn into something more protective, more disastrous.

But he sits. And stays.

He'd pray, but that void-space where the Force should be, tenuous or not, is frightening. He'll leave it alone, for now.

Instead he taps on the countertop with his fingernails, trying to track the sound, to bring the world back. It's distracting, at least.

[iprotectyou]

Baze reluctantly leaves Chirrut in his chair, agitated because he is. The larger Guardian packs loose tea leaves into the metal balls used for steeping, and finds two earthenware cups in the cabinets. The kettle whistles, and he pours the hot water over the balls in the mugs.

The process of tea brewing is usually calming and centering, a meditative practice, but Baze is too keyed up to let the peace sink into his skin, his lungs, his bones. He stalks around the kitchen, pacing off the boundaries between the counters, burning off restless energy.

Eventually, he presses Chirrut's teacup into his hand. "They don't have sapir this time of year. I'm sorry."

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut has a better idea of where he is, though really it's more because of tracking Baze's pacing and memory of the kitchens than any great recovery in his equilibrium. He drinks his tea slowly, hesitant to use the arm he knows full well was broken not long ago. It's weird and unsettling and he has this bizarre feeling that he ought to be grateful for it, though he cannot summon up more than 'vaguely tolerant'.

"It is still good. You made enough for yourself?"