Here ya go, folks. This one took longer to write than I thought (the outside distractions are amazing when you're unemployed).
Any-who, this is a really important chapter since there's a lot of info and some very important events happen.
Summary: See previous installments, please.
Disclaimer: The OCs in this story, the hospital, the animals, and the plot are mine. Nothing else. PLEASE do not use any of them or repost this story anywhere else or use the words within this story for your own purposes – if you'd like to repost it somewhere, ask permission. I work hard on this and it's my creation. Please treat it and me with respect.
There aren't any real warnings in this chapter.
I hope you all enjoy it. Thank you to those who have left reviews and I look forward to the ones I get next.
…no flames please!
Read, enjoy, review everyone!
Happy Writing,
~Eliana
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"Good morning, Ahsoka," the doctor greeted when she entered the room the next morning, pleased to see the young girl sitting up in her bed with the aid of her pillows and slowly munching on the food in front of her.
There was no steam rising from the dish (every possibility of injury, even a burnt tongue, had to be ruled out) but the woman could immediately tell – without looking –that it wasn't thimiar on her plate. Allergic reactions to the animal's meat were common amongst younglings and thus it wasn't served on a normal basis.
"Good morning," the other replied quietly, her voice incredibly scratchy and hoarse compared to the adult's – but at least she could speak (and a hidden joy came into both of their minds when they realized just how fluent she had become once again).
"How are you feeling?" Tocarra asked as she put her clipboard on the bedside table and began to write down some of the vitals that the machine read.
"Little better," the padawan told her, allowing the woman to grasp her wrist to take her pulse.
"Well that's good news," the doctor told her happily when the number of suitable seconds passed and she released the thin appendage and wrote down the number, sparing her patient a smile and crossing to the medical cabinets across the way, "Has Donavan been in to change out the thermometer this morning?"
Ahsoka nodded when the woman turned her head back and nibbled on a piece of scrambled egg that sat on her plate idly, obviously not too terribly interested in the food but too hungry to let it go to waste.
"Good, good," Tocarra murmured to herself, grabbing a handful of individually-wrapped gauze pads and some rubbing alcohol before placing them on a medical tray and rooting around for something else.
"How is he?"
"Pardon?" the woman returned to the unexpected question, turning around to meet the gaze of the worn-out looking Jedi-apprentice.
"The other padawan," Ahsoka clarified, swallowing a bit to clear her throat, "How is he?"
The elder Togrutan opened her mouth as if she was going to speak but, after a moment, it snapped shut and her lips pursed together when she turned back to her task. It was a few seconds later when she crossed the expanse of the room with the tray, setting it down with a metal clink on the bedside table next to her clipboard that she opened her mouth to reply.
"Djibourdi isn't…isn't doing well," she tried to pick her words carefully, glancing at the child, "He isn't reacting the way you are to this treatment and he's too scared to talk to us."
"He doesn't eat."
Ahsoka received a blank look in return. The adult's mind tried to fully grasp the concept that somehow this child knew something that the medical staff had kept on the down-low for almost a week – and before she could ask, the padawan clarified:
"I see them carry the plates of food to and from that room. They never look different," she whispered quietly, looking down at her plate of half-eaten food, "He doesn't eat."
Her voice cracked in complaint to the sudden extreme usage and she bowed her head, surprising the woman who stood next to her bed when she sucked in a shuddering breath.
"Ahsoka…Ahsoka, listen to me," the doctor spoke, reaching over the plastic walls to place a light red hand on the back of a pale, tan one over one of the IV insertion sites, "I need you to listen and try to understand something, child."
She waited until the girl looked back at her before she spoke, trying to keep her voice low so it didn't carry.
"I'm no Jedi. I will be the first to admit that," Tocarra told her, "But even as a doctor, there's one thing that I've had to learn over the years – and as cruel and painful as it is, you have to know this to make it in life."
Ahsoka took a long breath and watched her, meeting the blue eyes that watched her closely.
"You cannot – you simply cannot undo every wrong in the world, child. No one can."
When the girl didn't reply and looked away, she kept on.
"Sometimes people… they lose what hope they have left."
"Then we need to give him hope," Ahsoka suddenly said fiercely, looking back up into the doctor's face with a gaze of determination.
"Ahsoka-"
"Please. Tocarra… I want to meet him."
The elder sighed, trying to persuade her against it.
"Ahsoka, you're not even strong enough to sit up straight on your own. You can barely lift your arm to your head-"
"And that's all the strength I need," the padawan told her with a pleading look, "Look, I know…"
She swallowed deeply and looked away.
"I know that I'm not in a good spot right now and if I'm… no one should die alone."
That was the last thing Tocarra had expected to hear from such a young person and she found herself speechless, trying to piece together the words to say against it before she finally gave a long breath of defeat. If the girl was that determined on it than so be it. The only harm it could cause was an hour or two of lost bed rest and a little string-pulling on Tocarra's part... blast her – the girl was making her soft!
"All right, I tell you what," the doctor pondered, "I'm going to go and find Eddy and the others and go ahead and get both of your Laizis for this morning done… and after dialysis if he's strong enough I'll try and arrange for a hover-chair for you so you can go see him, all right?"
She held up a finger to silence the girl when she went to speak, gesturing to the food.
"But in return, you have to eat all of that. Deal?"
"Deal!" was the happy reply and Ahsoka started nibbling on the eggs again as the doctor retrieved her clipboard and headed out of the room, shaking her head as she made a beeline to the destination that she had absolutely dreaded all evening the day before: the comm room.
It was obvious that no one else had a clue what was going on with these two children and, being their legal guardians, the Jedi Council had every right to know what was happening. Jedi or no, there was no force in the world that would get her to completely change out of her medical attire and into dress clothes just to talk to them.
"It's a defect," she explained to the holographic council not long later, her own holoprojector coming to life when she hit the power button.
When it was on she quickly uploaded the image of a generic Togrutan child's body and zeroed in on one of its legs, zoomed in again to the bone, and one more time to the bone marrow itself.
"This particular disease is incredibly rare – a genetic defect that has been carried for thousands of years in the Togrutan bloodlines. It's more than a double-recessive quality: it's a hardly existing one. The disease itself starts in the bone marrow of any bone in the body-"
She gestured to the screen which had pulled up the image of bone marrow cells.
"The child is born with the defect and a rare few ever have this develop into what it is for Ahsoka and Djibourdi – but when it does it progresses so rapidly that it's incredibly difficult to destroy. One infected cell will break into the membrane of the next, sharing the defect with it and infecting it as well."
The hologram produced a pointed cell that bounced in the imaginary bone marrow before slamming into another, one of its sharp ends stabbing into the victim before the once-circular cell copied the shape of its attacker.
"From there they infect thousands of cells within an hour before latching onto produced blood cells and traveling into the blood stream to every corner of the body."
The hologram showed just that, zooming out and showing the holographic body changing shape.
"Because of the nature of these cells the body doesn't recognize them as an enemy – no immune response is ever taken against them and, in a nutshell, the body doesn't understand that it's under attack by its own soldiers. The infected cells move to every micrometer of the body and begin to eliminate anything that they can, usually beginning with stored fat cells. The exact reason why that is still remains a mystery, but what we do know is that the infection has five distinct stages."
Tocarra shut the hologram off before bringing up another that showed a great number of holo-documents and pictures obviously from a long time ago, along with another diagram of a young Togrutan body laid out in anatomical position.
"I've done my research since my last encounter with this disease fourteen years ago – many of the doctors before me had the great wisdom to record everything that they saw and discovered and from that collection I've been able to gather this…"
The Council and the other Jedi present all immediately focused on the screen displayed before them, watching the documents disappear and the holo-body grow to be the predominant image.
"Stage one," Tocarra began, zooming the screen in toward the bone again, "infestation of the host's cells, both bone marrow and blood. There are hardly any symptoms besides a possibly headache or two as the chemical balance in the bloodstream is disrupted."
She raised a skilled hand to zoom the image back out to view the outside of the body, pointing out the computer-created sores and bruises that had been created.
"Stage two: creation of sores and blood clots in response to the overwhelming presence of a body chemical called priozone. It's only found in Togrutans and accompanies hemoglobin in coloring the body's blood cells. The level of priozone in the actual bloodstream itself is naturally low but with the infected cells lysing at points, it releases the acidic chemical into the tissues and results in the skin sores."
All eyes watched one of the pointed cells on the screen explode, releasing a cloud of odd liquid before the puddle rose to the projected skin and created the skin sore. Anakin pursed his lips together harshly enough to force the blood out of them in order to keep himself still and quiet as he watched it all happen.
"Stage three," the doctor continued, either oblivious to his plight or choosing not to draw attention to him, "The breakdown of body fat due to lack of free cells. Once the entire body has been infected the cells take twice the energy they normally would, causing the body to begin to use its emergency stores of energy too quickly to replace. The low body temperature stems from this – though the reason isn't entirely clear what causes it."
The body on the hollow screen thinned down considerably as the computer calculated what it would look like through the ravage nature of the disease. No one moved (noticeably at least – only Plo Koon himself noticed his own fingers tighten where they were bridged together in front of him).
"I have reason to believe that this is the stage young Ahsoka's in," Tocarra told them, once again moving the projected body and zooming into a group of muscles on its arm, "Next is stage four, the breakdown of muscle tissue for protein energy due to the lack of body fat stores. This is called rhabdomyolysis and, when it occurs, muscles are broken down into their amino-acid building blocks and burned for energy. This releases a product called myoglobin that can cause kidney damage and other side effects – I have physical proof that this is where Djibourdi is. We have made many efforts to rebuild his muscles but they're breaking down faster than we can repair them."
The muscle group on the screen slowly thinned out, releasing the holographic amino acids that disappeared from view. With a sigh Tocarra completely turned off the projector, clasping her hands in front of her as she continued to speak.
"Last comes the fifth and final stage… cell oxidation and, inevitably, death," she told them as calmly as she could, "There's no warning for it – the oxidation of cells can cause organ failure, heart disease, diabetes, seizures, brain problems, aneurisms – the list never ends. Our only hope is to stop this before it reaches that point."
"And that is where your treatment begins?" Mace Windu questioned from his seat to which he received a nod.
"Although there's really no rhyme or reason to it, we found in several cases past that Laizis actually bonds to the infected cells and can be removed through dialysis. If enough of the drone cells are removed from the blood stream, immunity finally takes over and destroys the remaining hostile cells – or that's what we observed with the previous cases at least."
"'What you observed'?" Anakin quoted, drawing all eyes both solid and holographic to him, some of them giving him disciplinary looks in return for his blurted statement, "You mean that this may not actually work?"
He unfolded his arms and curled his fists tightly, hardly noticing Obiwan's protective step toward the doctor to guard her incase Anakin turned into the flying ball of death he could transform into at the drop of a hat.
"In context, yes Master Skywalker," Tocarra responded without a hitch and stared him down in turn, "There's a very good reason that my field declares what we do as 'practice'. Every living thing is different and there's no generic cure that will work on every single living being in a population. The Chosen themselves were like this in their own right and it can be seen in their descendants."
"'The Chosen'?" it was Obiwan's turn to question as he turned to the doctor but before she could speak the holographic Master Ti did, her voice resembling more of a chiming bell than a serious rumble of thunder.
"It is said among my people that all Force-sensitive members of our race originated from one of nine original sensitives – you may only be a Jedi or Force-sensitive if you descend directly from one of the original nine Chosen warriors," she told them all as if she were telling a story to the crèche younglings, "It is a legend."
"A legend made flesh and blood," Tocarra lightly argued, "Out of the one hundred total recorded cases of Endrati, all of the victims can have their mitochondrial DNA traced back to one of four different females. The Chosen legend tells of four females and five male originals – but it seems that, based on the evidence, only the females carried the Endrati gene. Djibourdi and Ahsoka both had a DNA test done on the blood samples I collected and both of them were linked to a single female ancestor in common."
Whether or not this information made any sense to those present was a mystery, but based on the looks on their faces Tocarra had the hope that they at least had the knowledge to understand what she was trying to tell them. One obviously did as Yoda chose to speak, his small fingers twitching over his hold on his staff.
"Intriguing, this is," the wise one murmured, twitching one ear, "Mean you do what I understand?"
"Indeed, Master Jedi," the doctor smiled at him before she chose to translate for the others, "both of these younglings can trace their origins back to a single common ancestor. They both have four of nine Togrutan alleles in common. This means that Djibourdi and Ahsoka, however incredibly distantly, are biologically related."
She looked into each of their eyes separately.
"That's one way to find out that you have a distantly-related baby brother."
She almost laughed at the look on Anakin's face.
"If they live through this, that'll be one story they can share for a while."
A beeper suddenly went off and the doctor lifted her left arm to peer at the chrono-wrist clock strapped to it before lowering the limb again and bowing, stating simply:
"Please forgive me but I must attend to Djibourdi and Ahsoka now. If you have any questions fell free to relay them to me."
With that she strut out of the room, white lab coat billowing behind her with a flurry of sound that marked her exit. The remaining Jedi watched the door close behind her before resuming their conversation.
Every nurse could tell that Tocarra was hardly in the mood for small talk as she gathered the supplies for the children's treatments, steeling herself against Djibourdi's weak glare and Ahsoka's almost bored huff of breath through the Laizis and both of their half-hearted complaints during the dialysis. In the back of her mind she found it rather amusing that, while she was pressing the hypodermic needle into their femoral arteries, they hardly let out a single sound and both chose to fall back into sleep – the differences between them almost fully disappeared when they were this calm.
Three hours after the dreaded meeting the comm. Room was still closed to which she brushed off as she set up the hover chair with Donavan's help. If those people preferred to talk about it rather that actually doing something that was fine – that just meant less people were in her way.
With Donavan at the controls she led both him and the chair into Ahsoka's room where the girl was now giddily awake, obviously excited at what she knew was going on. She was more than willing to allow them to remove the wires attached to her chest and the heating pads from her stomach (that she wasn't so happy about, but the reward far overrode any momentary unhappiness she felt).
"Alright now, child," the doctor told her as she transferred the IV bags from their stands onto two hooks attached to the chair, "Donny and I are going to move you onto this chair now – we'll get your blankets and the poof ball in a moment, alright?"
"Alright," was the response and Donavan moved to the side of the bed, letting the weakened padawan to slip her arm around his neck over his lekku.
Tocarra carefully grabbed around her patient's legs, meeting the man's eyes.
"On lift, Donny. One, two, three, lift…"
They lifted together and Ahsoka was airborne in two pairs of arms before being placed in the hover chair where the blankets were rearranged so her arms remained above them but the rest of her body was covered. 'Fuzzy' was collected from the bedside table and plopped into the girl's lap who dug her fingers into the fur, watching the two adults with eager eyes as they rearranged themselves and turned the chair around. Several nurses snuck into the room with fresh sheets which they began to use rather quickly as the other trio left the room and crossed the hall.
Donavan guided the chair into Djibourdi's room with ease, gently joking with the girl who returned his enthusiasm readily before her eyes caught the sight before her. Eddy sat crouched on the floor with his side to her and, when he saw her, gave her a genuine smile before turning to the hidden figure on the bed. The adult's arm had wound itself around the lump under the covers and his other hand was out of view but by the vibrations that Ahsoka picked up it sounded like he was stroking something.
It wasn't until Donavan stopped the chair next to Eddy did Ahsoka see Djibourdi for the first time, and that first time had her heart almost tearing itself into shreds at the immensely apprehensive look that the sharp golden eyes fixed her with. Eddy moved himself to pull his arm from around the boy and reached over to grab one of Ahsoka's hands, his eyes still on the boy shaking with uncertainty under the covers. Donavan and Tocarra were quick to vanish, leaving the two younglings and Eddy alone to try and make this work.
"Dji?" Eddy called out tenderly after a moment, drawing the trembling golden eyes into his own cerulean ones before he continued stroking one little head tail in reassurance, "This is Ahsoka."
He gave a strong squeeze to one of the girl's hand which was returned, Ahsoka understanding exactly what he was doing. If Djibourdi saw that Eddy reacted the same way to Ahsoka as he did to himself, maybe he would reach out as well.
"She would like to be your friend," the medical officer told the younger child calmly before looking to Ahsoka to get Djibourdi to look too, "and she's really nice, Dji."
However subtle it was the shaking in the younger body finally stopped and Eddy took it as the sign to make his next move and maneuvered the hover chair into his spot before letting go of both children and speaking calmly as he planted his hands on Ahsoka's shoulders from behind the chair.
"I'm going to be right outside," he told them, "but I want you two to be nice, alright? If you need anything be sure to holler."
He seemed to speak that more to Ahsoka than Djibourdi and tightened his grip ever-so-slightly to which she gave him a crooked smile and watched him leave, the mechanical door sliding gently shut behind him. Not wanting the other padawan to become more agitated with the silence Ahsoka turned back around and began to speak, trying to not be like her master and keep her voice soft.
"Hi, Djibourdi. I'm Ahsoka," she told him with a smile, noticing the gaze he had completely glued to the drained sores on her arms. He stayed laying on his side where he had started but she was worried at the flash of distress that floated through his eyes when he took in her own pale skin, open sores, and shaking arms that were so much like his own.
As if completely knowing what had caught his attention she lifted her arm toward her head slowly, looking over it before giving him a weak try at a smile.
"Yeah… not pretty."
She saw his own arm move incrementally slowly from under his covers and tried to decipher what he was saying as the sharp eyes shot from his arm to hers, golden irises trembling with a sudden realization – and then she had her own.
"I know," she told him, drawing his attention back to her face, "we're a lot alike, huh?"
He only blinked in return – but to her own amazement she almost heard the words he was trying to speak to her. He agreed and almost seemed…apologetic for her having to go through this.
"It's not your fault," she whispered to him, eyeing the bruised cheekbone he sported but choosing not to comment just yet, "There's nothing anyone could do to stop this. But… I'd like… I mean, if you want…I'd like to be your friend."
He almost looked shocked at her admittance and shrunk back a bit when she weakly lifted a pale hand toward him, the other holding onto the stuffed canine in her lap as she lowered her own head, trying to make herself seem as small as she could to get him a bit calmer. With baited breath she held her hand there for the better part of a minute and was ready to lower it back to her lap when he suddenly began to lift his own arm to reach toward hers. Ahsoka froze herself where she was and held her breath as his fingers stopped mere millimeters from her own where they twitched in uncertainty.
And then, slowly – ever so slowly – they finally made contact, Djibourdi's fingers gently forcing her own outward until they were palm-to-palm, looking like two sides of a mirror.
A rush of things suddenly charged into Ahsoka's mind and she tensed, her vision being taken over by images and feelings that she wasn't familiar with.
"Get up!" was the yell as pain rocked young lungs with biting oxygen, tears slipping from straining eyes into dried ground.
"Confused, young one?" the librarian's voice asked as her hand fell on a thin shoulder, only to be rewarded with a rather violent jump away.
"Is there something you need to speak about, child?" came a gentle question to which the small head shook the negative so violently that a headache was imminent afterward.
"You talk, you die."
And then water – ice water that was biting and numbing and clawing and then there were hands…hands squeezing the very life out of the terrified body and then darknessand –
Ahsoka I'm scared.
The unexpected voice cut through the grey-backed memories and Ahsoka felt herself return to the present, finding Djibourdi staring at their connected hands before hesitantly seeking out her eyes, his own misted with stubborn tears.
…that was Djibourdi's voice, the shock came to the other padawan and she felt her lower lip tremble when she sucked in another breath, moving her hand to firmly cocoon his and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
"…that's okay, Djibourdi," she heard herself whisper, "Because I'm scared too."
Half an hour later marked booted footsteps down the hall, Anakin and Tocarra both appearing together at the beginning of the hallway and making a beeline for Eddy who sat perched on a stool outside Djibourdi's room. He was fiddling with some sort of device in his hand and didn't look up when they finally stopped, letting his superior tilt her head in curiosity at the silence before she spoke.
"…it's awful quiet in there," she told him to which he finally looked up with a bright grin, chuckling heartily before returning to his task momentarily.
"What?" Anakin questioned and stopped dead when the other man raised a finger to his lips to gesture silence before calmly jerking his head toward the door, "Quietly. Take a look."
Both the Jedi and the doctor did, sharing a view through the plastic that served as a window. Both felt smiles creep onto their faces and Tocarra couldn't help but let out a happy chuckle of her own as they watched the two children sleep, Djibourdi snuggled into the weak embrace that Ahsoka offered with one arm where she was leaned over the bed. Her chin rested atop his head and they both had a hold of the fuzzy stuffed canine that rested between them – both were so far into sleep that Eddy found only one way to describe them.
"They're zonked," he told the other two with a grin, "and I think Ahsoka is snoring."
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There we go. Hope you all enjoyed it and hope to hear from you all!
Happy Writing,
~Eliana
