A/N: Many, many thanks to prisoner24601 and rimwalker for helping to co-write this monster. I had a ball with this.


For Atton Rand, the day began like any other. Through the film of sand and sleep, he pried his eyes open, shot an ugly glance at the figure face down beside him on the mattress, shot another at the empty liquor bottles on the floor and ran to the refresher just in time to heave out his insides.

One day he'd learn, but that day had obviously not been the night before and was unlikely to be any of the following days in the near future. Atton stayed huddled on the floor for a long while, his forehead pressed against the cold ceramic tiles and he contemplated his own death. At that moment, dying seemed preferable to the waves of nausea that rolled over him.

Nico Kor-Vas, unsurprisingly, managed to sleep through it all.

As soon as Atton was confident that he wouldn't start retching the moment he began to move, he crawled back to bed and was disappointed that he lacked the energy to kick Kor-Vas' unmoving form to the ground. In retrospect, maybe Atton should have been concerned over the other man being so still, but it was Kor-Vas and death seemed to be the better fate when compared to making love to the porcelain goddess.

So Atton closed his eyes again and he slept. When he woke, he knew he was actually dreaming because of how disjointed he felt. A world filled with a haze of cigarra smoke and surrounded by red glowing eyes. Atton swore at them as his legs went numb and he was pretty sure that those strange, sing-songy decibels were actually mocking words that those machines chose to respond to him with.

While wondering just what the hell he could have eaten that would've prompted such a nightmare, Atton lashed out with his arms and screamed. More droid gibberish followed and he felt a red hot pinprick straight into his abdomen. The worst part was that the more he struggled, the more he could feel his insides tearing.

So he called them all assholes. He called their mothers assholes. He threatened to relieve himself on their fathers' faces. That one seemed to get some laughter, at any rate.

Just as Atton reached the point of considering begging, he felt a firm pressure on his backside and unceremoniously did a face plant onto the carpet. Cigarra smoke bit into his nostrils and he still felt like puking. Kor-Vas' foot resting on his shoulder was also doing little for his mood.

"Well, good morning to you, too," Atton grumbled. "It's great to see you so well rested."

Kor-Vas' heel dug into his shoulder as the other man shifted to an almost sitting position on the edge of the bed. "You look even shittier than normal," the Jedi Exile observed as he fumbled for his cigarras.

Atton groaned. "I think it might've been a mistake to mix Tatooine sunrises with that mint stuff. Or all that vodka."

With his legs still kicked over the side of the bed, Kor-Vas leaned back onto the mattress with his elbows. He appeared vaguely disinterested as he took a drag of his cigarra. "That's what you get for drinking stuff that comes with a paper umbrella. Serves you right."

"But those umbrellas look so pretty in your hair, doll face." Atton shoved Kor-Vas' foot aside and pushed himself up. He didn't feel much like moving. He didn't feel much like anything, come to think of it.

Atton pulled himself back onto the mattress and proceeded to bury his head with a pillow after a gruff, "frack off" was spat in Nico's direction. The former general didn't seem too deeply affected and the only sign that Kor-Vas had left was that the ever present cloud of cigarra smoke had dispersed. Atton closed his eyes and vainly attempted to deny reality.

What he had initially assumed to be a hangover inevitably turned into food poisoning, inevitably turned into a long, drawn out battle with the flu. Weeks passed and Atton began to wonder if his initial death wish was slowly being fulfilled. His dreams were colored by nothing but the memory of red droid eyes and for all he slept, he was only rewarded with nausea and exhaustion.

If Kor-Vas was concerned, he hid it well behind a veil of perpetual annoyance. But that was just the way Kor-Vas was. Supply the man with cigarras and cheap women, and he could decimate the Mandalorians. It was just that when there were no wars to make use of his positive traits that he reverted to the womanizing, chain-smoking borderline alcoholic that Atton would snidely insist was an absolute pleasure to deal with. Atton found himself quickly demoted from the other man's bed to the couch in the spare room.

It could have been worse. It could always get worse. Worse, apparently decided to show up in the form of a protruding lump in his abdomen that appeared to be growing. Cancer. Great. So that Kor-Vas asshole who could go through an entire carton of cigarras on a good day was the picture perfect image of health while Atton was the one with weird tumors in his body? The will of the Force could kiss his ass.

So Atton sat on the edge of the couch, a syringe dripping with kolto clutched in his hand. Like hell he was going to show the Disciple this; he'd rather go to an actual doctor. His only other options were to ask Kor-Vas for some Jedi healing, which sounded laughable at best or to self treat with kolto injections followed by a shot of juma.

Atton tried to ignore the stumbling he heard a room over as he clenched the syringe between his teeth and pushed his shirt up while fumbling for the bottle of juma. Kor-Vas had better have been alone. If Atton was expected to be able to smile pretty for some space tramp the Exile dragged in, everyone was going to be sadly disappointed.

The Exile frowned at Atton as he half strutted, half stumbled into the room. "Damn. Do some crunches or something to get rid of that flab."

"Real funny," Atton snapped. He poked at his gut with a finger. "Does this look normal to you? I'm going to stab myself full of kolto, drink a bottle and hope I'm still breathing tomorrow."

The Exile cocked his head to the side as his eyes narrowed and then got really, really wide. Atton was pretty sure that he'd never seen that expression on Nico's face before.

"That's... You've..." Nico shook his head before finally spitting it out. "That's just not possible."

Atton gave the other man a smile, stretched and fake. He did a little flourish with the syringe. "What is it? A tumor filled with candy?"

It was almost hysterical how freakishly round the Exile's eyes grew as disgust twisted his features. "That's wrong, man. That's so fracking wrong!"

"Tell me about it," Atton muttered as he injected the kolto directly into the lump. "With all the things you put into your body, you'd think it'd be you and not me."

"No you don't freaking understand. Kolto's not going to help, you idiot." Kor-Vas backed away a couple of steps and bumped into the wall. "That's not a tumor. That's a kid!"

Atton glanced down at the empty syringe still sticking out of his gut. He looked back up at Nico's contorted face, and then Atton doubled over and cackled hysterically.

Nico fumbled at the wall with a hand and backed even further away. "I'm not joking. That's a kid. I don't know how, but you're pregnant."

"Kiss my ass," Atton chuckled. "How drunk are you?"

"Not drunk enough." The Exile moved over to one of the storage crates filled with juma, his eyes never leaving Atton's abdomen, even as he fished one of the bottles out of the crate, popped the cork and took a long, hard swallow.

Atton reached for a bottle of his own. "Seeing as that can't happen, you're going to have to excuse me while I assume you've completely snapped."

"I know that it can't happen. But leave it to an asshole like you to make the impossible, possible." He frowned at Atton's bottle, and with a wave of his hand sent the bottle spinning through the air and crashing into the wall.

Well, that was a waste of twelve credits. Atton sucked air in through his teeth and pulled a face. "What do want me to do, Kor-Vas? Pee on a stick?"

Kor-Vas pointed towards the refresher. "Get your ass in there, right now and find out for sure."

Atton offered the other man an obscene gesture as he tossed the syringe on the ground and fumbled for the console to the refresher's console. Last time he'd checked, glitterstim didn't give a body hallucinations. Well, those kinds of hallucinations, anyway.

Leave it to Kor-Vas to have a pregnancy test waiting in the refresher. It was part of a two pack tucked away next to an economy sized box of condoms. The package was already torn open and one of the tests was missing, presumably used during one of those occasional false alarms.

The crap Atton had to do for people. Kor-Vas had better remember this. It wasn't just any random day that a grown man would be dangling a pregnancy test over the refresher, attempting not to urinate on his fingers.

Then again, Atton wasn't exactly expecting to come face to face with a little, blue plus sign on the screen, either.

Of all the things they had done together, the Mass Shadow Generator, sweeping up bits and pieces of Darth Sion, having a one-handed, geriatric sociopath kick the crap out of them, this had to be the most ludicrous. It was insane. It couldn't be possible.

Atton's mouth twisted. That drunk hack was fracking with him. Atton found a plunger leaned up against the refresher bowl and gave it a test swing.

When he stormed out of the refresher he found Kor-Vas right where he'd left him. The Exile was putting quite the dent in that bottle of juma. Atton's mouth twisted. He rolled back his shoulder and put his entire weight into cracking Kor-Vas upside the head with the plunger.

"You think this is some kind of joke, huh?" Atton demanded.

It must have caught Kor-vas completely off guard. The Exile flew off the crate and slammed into the wall behind him. The juma bottle clattered to the floor as Kor-vas just sat there for a second, blinking up at Atton. And then the former general snarled and launched himself at Atton, his fist connecting with Atton's nose.

"What the frack was that for?" he demanded.

"I'm going to kill you," Atton explained, ignoring the warmth of blood beginning to ooze from a nostril. "And then I'm going to kill myself. Because that makes perfect sense."

"Me? What the hell do I have to do with any of this?" He pointed a finger at Atton. "You're the freak that got knocked up."

"Oh, for the love of frack, you were the last person, I mean if this isn't your fault then-- Shit! This is some kind of STD, right?"

Kor-Vas uttered a harsh bark of a laugh. "Oh no. You're not pinning this shit on me. That thing cannot possibly be my spawn. This is all you, sweetheart."

Atton pushed the plunger handle against the other man's throat. "It takes two, baby."

Pressure gathered on Atton's body and then he went soaring across the room, it felt like the air literally popped out of his lungs as he was flung into the far wall. "No freaking way. There has to have been someone else you fracked between now and then."

Atton laughed. "Why does it even matter? I mean, seriously." He peeled himself off the wall and coughed. "Where's this kid supposed to come out of? My ass? I don't think so. Get this thing out of me. Now."

"What the hell do you expect me to do about this? Do I look like a freaking doctor to you? Go talk to Disciple, because I need to get drunk. Really drunk."

"Right, fine." Something in Atton's lower back cracked as he stood up and stretched. "Just so long as we agree this is all your fault."

The Exile fished a cigarra out of his robe. "Frack no. I take no responsibility for this unless you get some DNA proof. That's what I tell all the girls that claim me as their baby's daddy."

"Great. I hate you." Atton grabbed his jacket and tried to stretch it around his expanding midsection. It was going to be interesting to explain just why exactly, he needed an Obstetrician.