Aric was up early, and decided to get a head start on that Hutt trace. He snuggled Maura to him until she opened those honey colored eyes, and whispered to her that he was going in early. She nodded, kissing his nose, and fell back to sleep. In only a few minutes he was heading out, the speeder making the only sounds in the grey early dawn. He approached the office, noting that he'd never gotten the outside lighting done the way he'd wanted, and made a mental note to fix that. He didn't drive into the multipurpose door, he elected instead to park out front, and readied his magnetic key. He never got a chance to use it, though. As he approached the door, his senses picked up someone, something crouched in the doorway, trying to get the lock spliced.
As he stepped off the speeder bike the shadowed figure stood and slashed at him with a vibroblade. Aric got in a punch that made his attacker stumble backward and drop the blade, then a kick to his body. The attacker doubled over, but Aric didn't see the blaster until it discharged into his hip. Limping, he threw himself at the black figure, wrestling the blaster away and picking up the blade, which he used to try and disable the attacker. The hooded figure spun and pushed the blade into Aric, who was now in desperate trouble. The man started to run, but Aric stopped him with three blaster bolts to the head, just before he passed out.
Miriah found him there, about an hour after the attack, barely breathing and unconscious, blood everywhere. She overcame her initial shock to get a call to Corso, telling him to come quickly. They had a compact medbay underground here, but there was no way she could get the Cathar into a kolto tank alone. She sat with him, holding him, talking quietly to him, but he was in shock. While she waited the few minutes until Corso got there, she called Mags.
"Mags, come quickly if you can to the office. Aric's hurt, bad, I just found him. He's in shock. I'll get him inside and in a tank as quickly as I can but…."
"I'm on the way, do what you can."
She saw Corso zooming over the grass then, and together they got the injured man inside the office building and down the elevator to the medbay. Corso set about filling the kolto tank while Miriah started working on the deep abdominal wound, where most of the blood had come from. She was shaking her head, muttering to herself, trying to pack kolto gauze into the gaping wound. She had blood replacement infusing to him, and when she prodded too deep, she heard him groan. Responsive to deep pain stimulus, she thought, so his nervous system is intact. She looked up at Corso, who nodded to her and crossed to the gurney. Together they stripped his clothes, already stiff with blood, and lifted him into the tank. Corso held him up while Miriah fitted the mask on his face, making sure the seal was tight, and they lowered him into the healing fluid.
When he was stable and immersed, Miriah felt herself falling, caught only by Corso, who'd been watching her pallor grow. He put her in a nearby chair to go answer the door for Magdalane. The rushed down the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator. When Mags saw the extent of the wounds, she blanched, then recovered her center and stepped up to the tank. Her aura grew and grew, and while she was working nothing moved, not even her sister. It was when Mags had been in the healing trance for about an hour when they heard Maura enter upstairs.
Miriah looked at Corso, her eyes wide and her mouth open. Maura! Corso ran up the stairs, and Miriah could hear him speaking to her and then her scream of "NO!" He brought a sobbing Maura down, holding her against him. She didn't try to talk, just sobbed against Corso's chest, Miriah holding her hand. Mags never let up, and after almost three hours of healing trance, her aura started to slowly recede.
"Nice work, Mir," her sister smiled at her, speaking softly. "I really had to look to see where you'd used the kolto on him at first. Maura, he'll be fine. Let's leave him in the tank for a few more hours though, just to help with the scarring. I saw another person outside, I'm assuming he's dead, but I didn't stop to check."
Maura found her voice then. "Mags, Miriah, Corso, you guys.." she sobbed again, then pulled herself back, "Mir, if you hadn't found him, he'd be gone." Magdalane agreed, noting the huge blood loss Aric had experienced.
"Damn it, Aric, why did you come in early?" Maura sat, exhausted from the emotions, while Corso and Miriah picked up the packaging and assorted trash from Miriah's work on the injured man. Miriah looked down at her own clothes, almost as bloody as the ones she'd cut off Aric, and stripped, rummaging in a gear bag before heading to the small shower off the medbay. Corso found her there, swearing as the warm water flowed over her.
"Miriah, love, are you going to be okay? I need to go tell the local constable about the body outside." He stood there, wondering if she heard him, when she told him to go ahead, she was fine. Fine, right, he thought. None of us are fine right now. He put his hand over the shower door and she squeezed it. When he got upstairs and took a step outside, he stopped at the blood pool they'd pulled Aric from and saw the vibroblade off to the side. They'd taken a blaster out of the Cathar's hand, which accounted for the fatal injuries to the unknown man lying a few yards away. Corso stayed out there until the constable drove up, telling him what he knew.
"Sounds like self defense to me, Mr. Riggs. Just tell Mr. Jorgan to get in touch in the next few days, don't expect any problem here though." The constable told Corso he sure enjoyed the ronto the department had been given as part of their donations to the town, and drove off, leaving a couple of droids to haul the dead man back to their facility.
Maura was sitting beside the tank holding her husband, a blank look on her face, her eyes still swollen and red. Her sisters were beside her, but all was silent. Maura looked up when Corso entered, as small smile on her face. "Thank you, all of you, for saving him." She felt the tears slide down her face again, and she turned away.
Miriah spoke then, "Maura, you need to go tell the kids that their dad has been hurt. You know Calleigh won't handle it well when we get him home hurt and she didn't know." Maura nodded, but didn't move. After a few minutes, Corso stood.
"I'll go talk to them, but I'll come back here to help get him in the speeder to take him home this evening." Maura stood and hugged him, and Miriah walked him out. When they were at his speeder, she hugged him fiercely, the wind whipping her hair around in a close approximation of her emotions.
"Be careful, love, please," she begged him, and he knew she was fighting tears herself. He kissed her, told her to be sure and reengage the security system, and was off. He wasn't looking forward to talking to the twins, but he knew if he could stay calm, they'd do better with it. He rehearsed what he'd say during the two minute ride, but when he saw them playing outside, his rehearsal was forgotten.
Calleigh ran to him, always wanting a hug, but Colin had to be called over. When he had them together, he simply told them their Daddy had tried to stop a bad man from breaking into the office and had gotten hurt. Calleigh cried, as he knew she would, and Colin wanted to know if his dad had beaten the bad man. When he left, Calleigh was getting ready to be a nurse, and Colin was sitting on the top of the step outside with a toy blaster. It hurt his heart to see them upset, but he was glad he'd done it.
Miriah had sent Magdalane home to be with her baby, knowing she was tired from the healing. Maura hadn't moved from beside the kolto tank when Miriah heard Coros upstairs. She rose to meet him on the stairs. She led him up back up to the break area, to put together something for Maura to eat.
"Devin is fine, Akaavi is with him. She did a sweep around the house when he was napping, she said she saw nothing out of the ordinary." She sighed, putting cookies and a sandwich on a plate to take downstairs. "I think it's time to hire a security detail for the office."
He nodded, they'd talked about this several times, given the sensitive nature of their work. He placed the call while she tried to get Maura to eat, and before too much longer they pulled Aric out of the kolto tank. Corso watched while Miriah calculated the dosage of the stim she then injected into Aric's arm, and helped keep him still when he regained consciousness.
Aric blinked rapidly, clearing his head of the sedative Miriah had given him, and looked around wildly until he saw Maura at his side. She had unshed tears in her eyes and it made him ache to know he'd worried her. Once Miriah was satisfied he was alert, she and Corso walked away to give them a little privacy.
Aric slowly pulled Maura's head onto his chest and let her cry, stroking her hair, until she realized the pressure was causing him pain. She looked into his green eyes, seeing her familiar mate, and gently kissed him. "I'm okay, you know, hon. I killed the guy, had to, he took three bolts in the head." She nodded, affirming his words.
"You did. You almost died too. If anybody but Miriah had found you, we wouldn't be having this conversation." Maura sniffed, "Magdalane came through too."
Aric looked at her then, surprised. "I thought that was a dream. I saw Mags, talked to her about what had happened and that I was afraid I was going to die out there. She reassured me that I would live and that you were waiting for me. Was that a soul link?" Maura nodded, knowing that would be the only way he was still alive. "Wow," was all he could think of to say. He tried to sit up, but since his major wound was abdominal and still healing, he was too stiff and lay back. Maura put her hand on his shoulder and he grabbed it, holding it there.
Miriah and Corso joined them then, and Miriah told them Corso had called for security guards. Maura nodded, but Aric started to protest. Miriah shut him up with a look.
"I saw your guts today, Aric, and when I say that I literally mean I saw your guts outside of your body. You don't get a vote." She turned, and went back up the stairs. Corso watched her, saw her withdrawing into herself, getting ready for a fight, he thought.
Aric saw it, too. "She's pissed off. A little at me, a lot at whoever was behind this. I'm sorry, Corso, please don't let Spitfire go off on her own with this."
"You know I won't, and she won't leave Devin. I'll talk to her tonight, when she's had a little time to process." He heard her walking around upstairs, and heard the door. Felix and Mags were there to check on Aric. He went upstairs to greet them.
"Thanks, Mags for this morning, and glad to see you, Felix. We'll get him to the elevator shortly, then home. Can you follow and help me get him upstairs?"
"Of course, glad to. He's awake?" Felix asked.
Miriah nodded, and turned to walk away, saying nothing. Mags followed her, feeling her anger and fear. "Mir, you can't just take off and handle this, you have people to help you. Don't do this, to yourself or to your family. Devin really needs you."
Miriah turned and snapped, "And that's why I'm not airborne right now, in flight to Hutta. I had my hands inside my brother in law this morning and now I have to just sit on them!" She hurled a caffa mug at the wall, gaining some satisfaction from hearing it shatter, then collapsed at her desk. Mags looked up as Corso walked to her, and Mags knew she was leaving her sister in hands that knew how to handle this mood.
He did know, he thought, this was coming. He could see it in how she carefully schooled her face to show no emotion, her walk that assured her that her blaster was on her hip. He couldn't blame her, he was angry too, but when she got mad she wanted to shoot something or someone. Some people got louder the madder they got, but not Miriah. She was most angry when she said nothing. She was saying nothing now, sitting with her head down, her hand clenched in fists in her lap. She jumped when he touched her shoulder, and looked up at him with that perfectly set face.
"I know you're beyond mad. I get it. But we have to keep our cool here, not tip our hand to whoever thinks they know how we'll react." She nodded, but he could tell she wasn't convinced. He sighed, "Let's get Aric home and settled, then get home ourselves." She ignored the hand he offered her and stood, walking with that hip swinging gait, Grace bouncing on her thigh.
They got Aric home and up the stairs relatively easily, the Cathar metabolism healing quickly. Calleigh was predictably clingy, but saw that her beloved daddy was still the same daddy, and calmed. Miriah offered to have the twins over, but Aric really wanted them near him. Corso could understand that. Miriah still wasn't saying much, and he thought that seeing Calleigh in distress would break the mood she was in, but it didn't.
They made it home, her face never moving from that set blandness. She walked in the house and immediately did a thorough walkaround inside, looking for loose windows or other access points. He just let her go, knowing to argue would be pointless. She took Devin, fed him, smiled at his silly grins and coos, and never let the mask drop. When they'd gotten through the evening and Devin was having his last bottle, Corso looked in at them. Dev finished his bottle and Miriah put him on her shoulder, waiting on the required burp. He saw his son gently put his hand on his mother's face, and say, very softly, "Mama." That was the icebreaker. She smiled and the tears fell, as Devin snuggled into her neck and patted her shoulder.
