A.N. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! Each one of your reviews makes my day and puts a smile on my face :) I hope this chapter continues to entertain... it's the longest one yet!

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Now...

Of course, Garen received no response from the injured man, and could only wonder at the answer to his question. With nothing left to do while he gave the powders time to work, he moved to the last piece of armor he had not yet removed. He'd left the man's helmet for last for a reason he couldn't identify, but he knew it needed to come off now so that he could check the other man's head for injuries; he was concerned about head trauma, given that the man had not moved at all, despite the painful ministrations Garen had been providing.

He reached for the helmet, gripping it on either side, prepared to lift it off, when the child's three clawed hand landed gently on top of his own.

Garen frowned at the child and picked it up, turning to set it down behind him so that it wouldn't be in the way. When he turned back to reach for the helmet again, the child was already there, right beside its father's head.

Narrowing his eyes, he tried reaching for the helmet again, but once more, the young one placed its tiny hand on top of his. Of course, he could have knocked the child aside and lifted the helmet anyway, but he did not want to upset the child any more than it already was.

"You're in my way," he scolded gently, picking up the child again and this time setting it in a box that it could just peek out of. He knew it wouldn't prevent the child from getting out, but hoped it would slow it down long enough for it to remain out of the way.

He turned back to the wounded man and reached for the helmet again, this time unobstructed by the child. He tried to ease it up and off the man's head gently, but it wouldn't budge. Not an inch.

"Huh," he voiced in puzzlement.

He repositioned himself at the man's head so that he had a better grip and pulled the helmet towards him, but all he managed was to shift the man's entire body slightly.

Flummoxed, he gently released the helmet and in doing so, caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He quickly glanced at the box he'd placed the child in, thinking it was trying to escape, but while it had hiked itself up enough so that one eye and ear were peering over the rim and an arm was extended out towards him, the movement he saw was just the child lowering its hand.

He waited a moment, to make sure the kid didn't continue to try to get out of the box, but when it made no further move, he turned back to the helmet and tried pulling it off again. He even felt underneath to make sure there wasn't a strap or a release he was missing, but he could not get it to budge. And again, when he stopped trying, a flicker of movement caught his eye and he saw the child lowering its hand and blinking at him.

An impossible thought crossed his mind and he narrowed his eyes. This time, he kept his eyes on the child as he reached for the helmet. And as his hands made contact with the metal, the child's hand came up, waiting. When he removed his hands from the helmet without trying to move it, the child's hand lowered.

No way.

He did not understand what was happening. Because what he thought might be happening couldn't be possible.

One last time, he reached for the helmet, eyes on the tiny being that seemed so helpless, and the child's arm came up as well. This time, he tried pulling the helmet off, and saw the child's three claws close, its eyes slide shut, and its face wrinkle further as it huffed in exertion. The helmet did not move.

When Garen stopped, the child visibly relaxed and opened its eyes, blinking slowly, eyelids at half mast, as if it was exhausted.

"Okay, kid, message received," he told it gently, backing away from the man's head to emphasize to the kid that he wasn't going to try again. He still did not quite understand what had just happening, but he did understand that the kid did not want him removing the man's mask.

The child blinked slowly and heaved itself up, teetering forward and just managing to plop out of the box and onto the floor, whereupon it crawled over to its father and sat by his side with a small sigh.

Well, if the man has a head injury, I guess we'll hope it's not a bad one. Because there's no way I'm going up against that little tyrant.

He crouched on the man's right side, best positioned to handle what was to come next.

Dear Ancient Ones, please let me be able to save him. The bleeding was stopped for now, giving the illusion that the man would be okay. But the moment Garen began stitching internally—for it would not be a simple, superficial fix—the powder would no longer be effective and the bleeding would start again, and with it, the clock. And the man had already lost so much blood… Garen didn't know if he would be fast enough, or if he would have to watch the man bleed out right beneath his hands.

But he had to try. He picked up his needle and steeled himself. Please don't wake up for this. He rested his right hand on the man's abdomen, just below the worst of the wounds, and felt the man flinch.

Garen sucked in a breath and glanced at the still helmet-clad head of the man, which remained unchanged. "Sir?" he called questioningly.

No answer.

He shifted onto his knees, moving towards the man's head and peering down as if he could get a glimpse through the visor to ascertain whether the man's eyes were open.

Which was foolish, for it meant that the vision the man must have seen when his eyes did, in fact, open, was some stranger crouching over him.

There was no additional indication that the man was awake until Garen was suddenly flat on his back with a knife to his throat.

When his mind had a chance to catch up with what had happened, he realized that the man's first action had been to snatch the child sitting by his left arm and thrust it to the side, away from danger, and in the same moment grab the front of Garen's shirt, using it to pull himself up into a half kneeling position and pull Garen flat to the floor on his back, flipping their positions. Where the knife had come from, Garen had no idea.

"Please, no!" he shouted, hands by the side of his face, palms open in a universal 'don't hurt me' gesture. "I'm only trying to help!"

The man's breathing rasped as he stared at Garen, but his mask gave nothing away.

Since he wasn't dead yet, Garen thought he should use the opportunity to try and explain, and perhaps give himself a chance to remain not dead. "My name is Garen. Your ch-child came and f-found me," he stammered, gesturing at the young one who now peered out at him from behind the man's bent leg. "At first I th-thought it was lost," stop stammering, Garen! he admonished himself, and took a deep breath to try and calm his racing heart, "but then it led me back here where I found you and decided to help," he finished lamely.

After a moment, the man's grip on the front of his shirt and the pressure from the knife started to ease, which Garen took as a good sign. He started to sit up as the man began to rock backwards.

"Please, let me help you," he begged, reaching slowly towards the man and grasping either side of his shoulders as the strength and adrenaline finally went out of him and he sat heavily. Keeping his grip on the man, Garen carefully eased him down onto his back.

The man's labored breaths were fast and almost painful to the ear, enhanced and distorted as they were through the modulator. And his voice when he spoke was strained. "Wh-why… why are you helping me?"

It was such a simple question with such a simple answer, but admitting, Well, because your kid is adorable and I hope a good judge of character, didn't seem like something he wanted to say aloud. "Well, because if someone found me bleeding to death, I hope they'd do the same," he replied, but his eyes betrayed him and flicked to the little child, who tottered around towards the man's shoulder.

The helmet shifted slightly, indicating that the man had followed his gaze, and a quiet huff echoed out. "Yeah, you have that effect on people, don't you," he murmured quietly to the creature, clearly not addressing Garen.

The child chattered happily and patted the man's arm.

The man raised his hand towards the kid, who immediately seized a single finger in its small grasp, still chirping and patting his upper arm.

"It's okay, it's going to be okay," the man murmured, and Garen felt like he had to look away in order to offer them the illusion of privacy. And, well, if he wiped a bit of moisture from his eyes, he wasn't ashamed to admit it. Seeing their tenderness for one another and how each tried to comfort the other… it moved him beyond words.

The helmet shifted again, and Garen guessed the man was once again looking at him.

"Thank you."

"I haven't done anything yet, really," he cautioned, "just bought you some time, but…" he trailed off, unsure what to say. But now I might be about to kill you?

The mask of the helmet remained unchanged, but Garen got the sense that the man had picked up on his unspoken words.

"Whatever you have to do, do it," the man declared, granting permission and also forgiveness… for whatever happened.

Garen hesitated. "I've some experience with this—out here you either learn to stitch yourself up or the person you're with, or you don't make it—so I can say with confidence that it's going to hurt like hell, and I need you to be as still as possible. You're going to start bleeding plenty heavily once I get to work, without you twitching so I cut something I shouldn't and make you lose blood you can't afford to. I was hoping you'd still be unconscious; it would have been easier that way."

Garen didn't quite hear the man's response, maybe something about, 'it's never easy,' but then the man's words grew louder. "In m-my med pack," he gestured with the hand not currently wrapped in a three clawed grip, "there's a small blood supply, and a lo-local you can give, but not m-much else."

Garen perked up at the news of the blood supply. Maybe we can actually do this… But frowned when the second part of what the man had said sunk in. "A local is hardly going make a dent in what you feel," Garen told him frankly.

"It'll have to be enough," the man wheezed.

Since he was right, as they had no other option, Garen searched through the storage compartment the man had pointed to, and retrieved the pack as instructed. As the man had said, its supplies were limited—depleted, more like it—and other than the blood and the local, Garen found very little of use. There was what he thought might be a cauterizer that he briefly considered, before dismissing it. A lot more finesse would be necessary than what the cauterizer could provide.

He injected the local into the area around the wounds, and, in order to give it a moment to kick in, then worked on setting up the line to the blood supply; it was a small amount, but better than nothing. He hung the bag from the ladder, then hesitated. The man understood his uncertainty and he solved his quandary for him, by gently extracting his left hand from the child's grasp and offering it to Garen. Garen sat and carefully removed the man's glove, then deftly slid the line into one of the veins on the back of the man's hand, securing it in place.

And then it was time. He shifted back to the man's right side, picked up his needle, and took a breath to steady himself.

The child, meanwhile, looked from the wounds, to the needle poised in Garen's hands, and lastly to the man's hidden face. Making a silent decision, it carefully crawled up onto the man's chest, just beneath his chin, and sat there, hands pressed to the helmet's visor, as if blocking his view of what Garen was doing would block the pain.

Garen thought the weight of the child might not be good for the man's breathing, but the man made no move to dislodge the child and his breathing didn't get any worse—though it was terrible to begin with—so Garen decided not to say anything.

Instead, he once more placed his right hand below the worst of the wounds, and was lowering the needle when a new voice, low and cold, stopped him.

"Whoever the hell you are, step away from my friend."

Garen froze, then very slowly turned his head in order to see a woman standing at the top of the ramp, tension and anger evident in the set of her jaw, a blaster pointed directly at him.

"Cara," the man spoke up from Garen's left, voice strained and thin, but loud enough to carry to the new figure.

When the man's voice reached her ears, the woman's stance did not soften, nor did the blaster lower. But her eyes widened and flicked past Garen and towards the fallen figure, and it was in that moment that Garen realized that until she'd heard his voice, she'd thought her friend was dead. That Garen was just a scavenger stripping him of any belongings of worth.

The woman took in a breath and started to form a word, perhaps a name, before her eyes snapped back to Garen and he saw her mouth shape a different one. "Mando? You're alive?"

"Cara," the man—Mando? Odd…—replied, "you can put down your we-weapon. This is Garen… he's here to help."

The woman who'd been identified as Cara eyed Garen warily, but apparently trusted the man enough to lower her blaster… slowly. Only once it was pointed at the ground could Garen breathe again, which he did rapidly, while the woman stepped farther into the bay area and knelt across from Garen. She reached out with a hand as if to touch the face of the man's mask, before she changed trajectories and ruffled the top of the child's head fondly, eliciting several protesting squeaks. "How'd you know I was holding a weapon? You can't even see around this lump."

A huff echoed through the modulator. "With you, I figured it was a pretty good guess."

She pursed her lips and scanned his body for wounds, frowning at what she saw. "What the hell happened?"

"Tell you later? I'd like to get o-on with it before the local wears off."

Cara turned her gaze to Garen, looking for further explanation.

Garen very much did not want to be the one to inform this warrior of her friend's dire state, but he knew it would be unfair to force Mando to do it; though the man's voice remained surprisingly clear except for the occasional stutter, it was also weighed down with pain and fatigue, and he didn't need to be wasting energy explaining something Garen easily could… not when he needed all of his energy focused on staying alive.

Therefore, it fell to Garen to share the bad news. "He has several severe stab wounds to his abdomen that caused him to lose a lot of blood. I've bought him time, but that's it," he informed her honestly, sparing the details as they didn't have time for them. "The damage is extensive and if…" he stopped, considered, and changed what he'd been about to say. "And I need to use the time we've bought—which is rapidly running out—to get in there surgically and do some damage control."

He watched the lines around her eyes tighten at the news; while he hadn't said much, she could tell what he hadn't said. She sucked in a breath, but gave no other indication of distress. Her strength was impressive; were Garen in her position, with someone he cared for as much as the pair clearly cared for each other, he knew he would not have the calm or strength she possessed.

"You have experience with this?" she queried, and Garen understood what she was actually asking: How likely is it that he won't make it?

"I'm not a medical specialist nor a surgeon," he clarified, "but yes, I have some experience." But not enough! he screamed internally, suddenly uncomfortable with just how much pressure was on his shoulders. A thought occurred to him. "Did you bring any supplies with you? More blood, or a sedative perhaps?" he asked hopefully.

She shook her head in regret, eyes tracking down to look at the man's visor. "I didn't have anything at hand and didn't think there was time."

Garen shuddered to realize that, if the child hadn't found him and brought him here, she would have been right; the man would have been dead by the time she got here, devoid of life and lying within the cavernous darkness of a silent ship, which echoed only with the grieving wails of a child.

"Right, well… I'm going to try to stitch the wounds closed, and I need him to stay perfectly still in order to have a chance to do that. But it's going to hurt like—" he stopped himself. Both of these people were warriors, no strangers to the roaring agony that came with their way of life. He did not need to describe it to them when they no doubt already had more experience with it than he did. "It's going to hurt and he says he can hold still, but the only thing I could give him was a local…" he trailed off, unable to keep the doubt from creeping into his voice.

"You need a way to hold him still?" A little hope sparked in her eyes. "That shouldn't be a problem, ay, kid?" she addressed the little green one.

"N-no." The man shook his head ever so slightly. "Kid's tapped out. Already helped as much as possible. O-only awake through sheer stubbornness."

And just like that the spark died, though she kept her tone light when she teased, "And I wonder where that stubbornness comes from." She turned serious again. "But that does make things more complicated."

"Cara," the man murmured softly. "I can ha-handle it."

She shook her head vehemently. "This isn't some stupid macho moment where you have to be strong, Mando," she hissed. "You're about to have someone root around on your insides; you shouldn't even have to 'handle' that!"

"That's not what this is," the man disagreed. "It's the only—I can handle it." He left the, It's the only chance I have. I have to be able to handle it, unsaid, but it hung in the air.

"You could hold him down?" Garen offered the woman. "If you hold him down, we might be able to do this."

It did nothing to make the woman feel better, Garen could see. Of course it didn't. He'd just offered to her that she could hold her friend down while they put him through hell and inflicted indescribable agony. And he could see in the desperate look in her eyes that it was the last thing she wanted to do, but then her shoulders slumped and she nodded as she realized it was their only option. "Okay. We're wasting time."

"Just be careful of his ribs," Garen warned, hoping to avoid injuring the man further in their quest to save him. "He has a few broken ones."

She glared at the man as she shifted into position, as if he'd deliberately injured himself just to make her worry. "Dammit, Mando, you don't do anything by halves," she grumbled. Draping her torso across his upper chest, leaving Garen room to work and the child undisturbed, but keeping most of her weight in her elbows so as not to press down on his ribs, she picked up his right hand and held it tight. "Guess we'll be able to finish that arm wrestling match this time," she commented, trying for levity as the hint of a wry grin on her face cracked through the tension and concern.

Her words meant nothing to Garen, but a quiet huff of amusement echoed from the man.

As she stretched her left leg down and tangled it with the man's own left leg, avoiding the gash but attempting to pin him down, she continued, "In all seriousness, Mando, you know this is going to hurt like hell. So, when that time comes, I want you to squeeze my hand for all your worth, okay? To quote you, 'I can take it.'"

His only response was to tighten his grip.

They began.

In the end, Cara's careful positioning proved unnecessary, but their joined hands proved to be everything. While Garen worked, Cara braced, and the child cooed softly, the man barely moved a muscle. Sweat began pouring off him and his breathing grew more labored, but save for a twitch here or there, he did not stir. His hand, though, closed tightly around Cara's. Though her fingers turned white and she grit her teeth, she did not pull away; she squeezed back just as hard, as if she could hold him there, tethered to the world through the sheer force of their hands' embrace.

Garen worked as quickly as he could, aware of how much blood was soaking into his knees and how very little blood there was left that the man could afford to lose, with the small amount in the med supply rapidly running out.

Eventually, as time seemed to drag on, Cara began uttering a quiet plea, over and over. "Pass out, Mando, just pass out, you idiot. Pass out… Pass out. Please. You don't have to stay awake; you can let go. Just pass out. It's okay." Over, and over, and over.

And finally, he did. From one breath to the next, the man's body went slack, so abruptly that Cara immediately sat up and reached for the man's neck frantically, checking for a pulse.

A moment later she sighed in relief. "He's still alive, just passed out."

"Figures," Garen croaked. He quickly cleared his throat, surprised at how rough his voice was, as if it were he, and not the man he was working on, who had been holding back screams of pain. "I'm almost done."

She snorted in agreement. "Figures."

After another minute, Garen finally tied the last stitch and sat back. His hands were slick with blood and the floor beneath him was covered in it. The damage inside had been less than he feared, as if by some miracle the wound had already started to heal, and he'd repaired what internal damage he could, but now could do no more. The rest was up to Mando, but whether he had enough strength left to fight, Garen didn't know. He hoped so, though.

"That's it, that's all I can do."

Cara sat back as well. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," he cautioned. "I repaired what I could, but he's not safe. The biggest danger now is the amount of blood he lost, because I don't have anything to replenish it with beyond that supply he had that just ran out," he gestured at the now empty bag, "and he lost more than should be… I honestly don't know how he's still alive... or if he'll stay that way. And even if he makes it past the blood loss, if infection sets in," he hesitated before admitting, "I seriously doubt his body's ability to combat that right now."

She nodded her understanding. "I don't expect you to be a miracle worker—though getting him this far was a miracle in and of itself—but you've done more than I could have hoped for. When I got his distress signal, I knew it was bad—really bad—and it took me too long to get here and I didn't know if I'd be able to do anything…" She paused, dropping her eyes, but not before Garen saw the remembered pain and fear reflected in them. "And… I didn't think I'd find him alive when I arrived," she admitted quietly, before picking her chin back up and meeting his gaze with eyes full of determination and gratitude. "But you changed that. You've given him a chance, and I cannot thank you enough for it."

Garen had no words to respond to her kindness with, all he could do was nod.

"Now," she clapped her hands together and rose to her feet, briskness and purpose slipping into place to chase away the worry and fear. "We need to get him warm and dry, and that's not gonna happen where he is now."

She moved to a side compartment and pulled out several blankets. "I know he probably shouldn't be moved much, but if we slide him onto one of these, it would at least get him off the metal floor and we could pull him away from all… that," she gestured at the blood and armor strewn around his current position.

"I think we can manage that," Garen agreed.

They stretched one of the blankets out on the man's left side, but then were faced with the quandary of what to do with the child. Because the little one had passed out when its father had, and its head now rested on the face of the helmet as the man continued to slumber, his pained breaths slowly rattling through the helmet's modulator, reverberating through the ship and filling it with a comforting sound, for it promised that he was still alive. Cara solved their dilemma by gently scooping the kid up, hitting a button on the wall of the ship to open a compartment Garen hadn't noticed before, and placing the sleeping bundle on a small bunk inside.

With the child moved, they very carefully shifted the unconscious patient onto the blanket, leaving all of his armor—save his helmet—behind, and gently dragged it across the floor, away from the chaos of their makeshift med bay. It left streaks of blood across the ship's floor, but Garen imagined that didn't even register as an issue at the present moment.

When they got the man to a distance that felt far enough away, they stopped, and silence echoed throughout the ship as the sound of the blanket dragging over the floor died. Garen sighed in relief, appreciating the peace the quiet brought with it in the wake of the ordeal they'd just been through.

That is, until Cara's uncertain tone broke the silence. "Wait, do you hear that?" she asked quizzically.

Garen frowned, unsure what she could be hearing when the ship was silent… until he heard Cara suck in a sharp breath and he realized with dawning horror what was wrong: the ship was silent.