A/N: This isn't a numbering mistake. Set was done again, because I wanted to explore an AU for Nichos Mar and Cray Mingla.

Week 9 (09.01.06) (UDC 1) - Nichos Marr and Cray Mingla

41. rebirth

She cautiously approached the chair in which he sat after they'd taken the Ssi-Ruuvi machinery away, not knowing what to expect. Not saying a word, she kneeled next to him and looked into his eyes. She saw him in there, looking back at her... "Nichos?"

Slowly, silently, he leaned forward until his forehead was touching hers. She shivered at the coolness of it, not having expected him to feel any different. "Cray."

It didn't hit her until later that she couldn't feel him through the Force the way she had before. What that meant, she would not know for a long while.

42. scars

Every day, she came to his room and sat with him for hours. He'd noticed that when he woke up to find her there, she was always reading a datapad or sheef of flimsy. He'd asked her once what the reading material was, and Cray had played it off and told him to think nothing of it. He knew what she was doing, though... trying not to talk about what was happening.

It was when she wanted a perfect mold of his hands, right down to the scars, that he began to suspect something else.

43. disease

It was during his forth week in the hospital, when he could no longer stand on his own, that a nurse and a doctor came into his room and told him something that changed everything. There was a cure. A cure for Quanotts Syndrome where there hadn't been one before, they said. A team of medical research scientists had spent years looking for a way and finally had a breakthrough.

The news was so shocking that he could only sit there and listen as they explained it three times. In the end, Nichos had only one response... "Yes."

44. agony

Every cell seemed to burn as he laid very still in his hospital bed, afraid that if he moved so much as his pinky that the agony would intensify. If this was a cure, he didn't want to know what the alternative was. They had begun administering the cure three days ago, and this was hopefully the last round. Hopefully.

He saw Cray hovering at his beside out of the corner of his eye, for once without a datapad in her hand, and wanted to say something. Anything... wait. He could. Beloved?

"Hush," she told him softly as she gently took his hand in hers. "Rest now. I'm here."

45. healing

When next he woke, Nichos had to blink in befuddlement. The pain was gone, and though he still felt very weak, he really did feel better. He glanced around to find that Cray was still there, dozing in a chair. She began to stir, their eyes met, and she smiled back at him.

He wanted to ask her why she had taken a molding of his hands, but that did not matter now. "Where's your datapad?"

Cray smiled. "Master Skywalker liberated me of it yesterday. Seemed to think I was studying too much..."

"Should I work on getting it back for you?"

"No." Carefully, she joined him on the bed. "He was right."