AN: Next one! Apologies, it is a wee bit late at night, and my brain may still be a bit addled by cold, so any mistakes, please forgive on the abovementioned grounds.
Kaome - Don't you worry, I've already written some of the really cool stuff that happens in the future ... I want to get to it just as much as you guys want to read it!
Cyrbind - Those were Doc's thoughts exactly. Veterinary trauma care is entirely applicable to human trauma care, though with a few key differences.
Ox King - I will emphasise that this is, indeed, entirely self-gratification fanfiction. I'm just pleased there are other people who also want to see the same thing :D
As always, major props go out to Beloved-Stranger! She laughs at my awful ideas. Which usually become reality.
I own nothing you recognise. Also, this is hot off the (cold addled, sleep deprived) brain and un-betad!
Fallen angel
Lost your wings
Can't find your way back home
They worked through the night and well into the next morning, kept going by Rec's constant to-ing and fro-ing with coffee. Zenith had, at some stage during the night, stopped hovering over Magd and was now slouched against the doorframe, arms crossed and scowling. Rec's head had long since slumped forwards, snoozing as he stood against the wall. It was an impressive skill, and involved locking his knees in just the right way that he wouldn't fall over. The temptation to push him was nearly overwhelming, but Doc resisted it nonetheless.
Mainly because he was just so damn impressed with the work Magd had done. She was just now putting the last plaster over a blaster wound on the arm of one of their late-comers. Pax, whose leg she had repaired earlier, was awake and eating with vigour. Doc had been delighted and surprised when he'd scanned the leg. He had shown her the bone-cutters and files, but didn't quite know how to explain them. Clearly she knew more than he gave her credit for, because that was the smoothest bone-end he had ever seen, and there was plenty enough tissue covering the end that there would be no issues healing, and certainly none attaching a robotic leg. He was even impressed she'd thought to end the leg above the knee, instead of trying to preserve what of the knee she could. It was so much easier dealing with a robotic joint than trying to support a damaged natural joint.
Even Nox was awake, although he was on some serious drugs for the pain. He also wasn't allowed to move. Not that he really wanted to. He was more occupied with the kaleidoscope of colours on the ceiling, and the description thereof, which also served to keep Pax entertained.
The last move-able patient left, thanking Magd as he did so. She nodded in response and smiled her dead-tired smile. Her hair was a mess, escaping her tightly scraped tail to stick out at all angles, and her face was ashen.
Doc snapped his gloves off and dropped them into the incinerator on his way up to Magd. He smiled as he grasped her by her shoulders. "Magd, go to bed," he said slowly, his hands trailing down her arms to grip the edges of her gloves. They came off easily, her relieved smile warming him. Then he shooed her off. She nodded, waved, and headed for the door.
Zenith, that glowering tail-headed twit of a Twi'lek, stepped across the doorway and narrowed his eyes at Magd. She stopped and growled at him. Actually pulled her gums back from her teeth and growled so deeply in her throat Doc came to the conclusion that she must be related to a bloody Nexu. Zenith didn't move. So instead she did something Doc did not expect, certainly not from someone of her slight stature.
She swung her fist, hard, at Zenith's head. He collected her fist with his hand, but her knee was already moving upwards. It connected with such force it lifted Zenith by a good few centimetres. Doc's own delicates winced in sympathy but, really … he had been begging to be hit, though maybe hitting him there had been a slight overreaction.
It was still effective. Zenith's entire face crumpled inwards as his body did, and he fell forwards with a barely audible groan. Magd took one look at him crumpled on the floor, said something in her language that sounded suitably desperate, burst into tears, and ran out the door. Rec awoke to see his ward dashing out the door and Doc rushing towards a very prone, green Twi'lek currently clutching the area between his legs. With a gulp and a glance at Zenith's predicament, clearly weighting up whether or not his future at the resistance was worth that agony, Rec ran out the door after her.
Doc loaded up an injector with a painkiller vial and shoved it into Zenith's neck. "I can't say I don't blame her," he said conversationally as he hauled the much larger man onto the nearest bed. "She's just spent the last eighteen hours fixing up your men and you won't let her go to her own bed. Shame on you." Zenith's teeth ground together loud enough for Doc to hear as he went to get the ice pack and a mild anti-inflammatory vial.
"...Imperial..." the Twi'lek gasped out.
"Absolute havrap shit," Doc snapped. "She is no such thing. Poor woman can't even speak Galactic." Zenith managed a half laugh without groaning. The painkillers must be working.
"She's got you good."
"Listen you bantha-brained idiot, she's the reason why a lot of your men are well on their way to recovery, and if she hadn't been tending to Tiddy when his lung collapsed, he'd have been another one to add to your list!" He was angry, no, he was outright furious, not to mention way too tired to be dealing with this shit. "I let you hover and get in the way earlier because getting you out of the way would have taken too much time away from our patients at a critical stage. They are now either out of the ward or stable enough that I can argue with you, or sedate you if I get too fed up, which you're incredibly luck I haven't already done."
Zenith's jaw twitched as he glowered up from his foetal position on the bed.
"When Rec brings her back, you're going to apologise to her – I don't care that she can't understand your words, she'll understand the tone – and then she's going to her own bed to sleep, just like she had been this past week, and you are going to stay here and not follow her like you have Rec doing, and then I am going to go to bed." Doc, finally losing the energy to yell, slumped onto his bed-side stool. "Now put this on your bits for ten minutes," he said as he threw the icepack onto the bed. He then whipped the injector out, shoved it against Zenith's neck, and depressed trigger. The vial drained almost instantly.
The Twi'lek rolled onto his back and tentatively pressed the ice-pack over his crotch, hissing in pain even through the painkillers.
"She kicks well," Doc commented. "Or rather, she knows how to use her knee. It looked pointy." Zenith glowered at him in response. "Throws a good punch, too." The glower deepened until he could barely see the glints of purple eyes beneath green brows.
There was silence for a few minutes, hardly companionable, and it was hardly silence as Nox was still describing what he was seeing on the ceiling in a floating voice, but neither Doc nor Zenith made a noise. Then, in the middle of a particularly interesting description of a kind of yellowy-orangey-green that couldn't possibly exist, Doc realised just how much time had actually passed.
"You do realise if Magd has run off and gotten lost, I'm going to send you out to find her." Zenith grunted in response and the peace continued.
Bugger him, bugger them, fuckbugger them ALL! Magd fumed, feet carrying her far, far away from that horrible little place on this shitty rock in who-the-fuck-knows-where land. The tears that burst out from her after kicking that horrible green person in the balls still clung to her cheeks and clouded her eyes. Good, she thought, I won't have to see all the disgusting things here. Her feet took her over brown-green grass, around rocks, and through valleys until her lungs gasped for air and her side throbbed to make her stop and rest.
Her knees refused to hold her up, now that she had stopped, and she slid down the rock she had leaned herself against until her backside was on the floor and her legs splayed in front of her. She forced herself to breathe, slowly, in and out in deep belly breaths, despite her lungs' screams of 'GIVE ME MORE'. Her side felt like it was on fire. She really shouldn't have done all that running. Wouldn't surprise her if she'd torn a stitch or two. Such a stupid thing to do.
And now she was lost. Over tired, puffy eyed, exhausted from running, in considerable pain, and lost on some weird planet with who knew what kinds of wildlife. Tears pricked her eyes again and she sniffled. Bugger it ALL! She let out a quiet wail of exhaustion crossed with despair. The thought that someone would come and find her was dismissed before it even began.
Well, you silly bitch, there's no helping it now, she coached. It's time for you to get on your feet and hope your directionally-impaired ass can backtrack back to that bloody base. With ground teeth and somewhat more even breath, Magd clambered to her feet. One foot in front of another, she slowly made her way back up the valley she had come down, side throbbing with every step.
She had barely made it out of the valley when she heard a plaintive cry. Every veterinarian instinct she possessed cried out at once, and she lurched towards it. There it was again, around this boulder, behind those bushes … Magd stumbled nearly head-first into the well-gored carcass of what looked like a dog crossed with a bull. The cries were coming from a single pup, trying desperately to suckle from its mothers' gouged stomach and crying when it could find nothing.
Stepping around the body, she knelt down to inspect the pup. She ran her hands over its body, feeling for breaks or surface wounds, and finding none. A small blessing, perhaps. She scooped the little thing up and into her arms and immediately it quietened, pressing itself closer into the new warmth. Cradling it so its horn-less head tucked under her chin, Madg left the death and found her way back to the path. Now she had two reasons to find the base. The second reason, however, made her more determined, made her grit her teeth and drive her legs faster. Bugger her directional impairment, she was going to find her way back, and she was going to do it the first time.
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