Whumptober No. 11 "911, WHAT'S YOUR EMERGENCY?"
Sloppy Bandages | Self-Done First Aid | Makeshift Splint

Warning: This is another gory one. Lots of body horror and stuff. Also, plenty of unintentional medical malpractice because this author doesn't know enough about medical procedures to write them properly. In general, it's dark. You've been warned.

Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy!

The sharp buzz of static on Luke's comlink woke him up.

"Skywalker! Skywalker, we need you in the hangar now, Skywalker! We are suffering heavy losses—"

"I'm on my way to reinforce, sir," Luke responded, throwing on his boots and striding towards to hangar. He was there in record time. Even if he was no longer Commander of Rogue Squadron, he responded as though he was. "What threat—"

He stopped. The hangar had been converted into a medbay. His flightsuit was useless; he hadn't sensed or heard of any commotion outside the ship because they weren't under attack. Instead, they'd cleared out the ships to have space for…

He swallowed.

"They came in just now." General Rieekan met him at the entrance, which was good, because Luke was still half asleep and wasn't convinced that he'd be able to figure this out on his own.

"What happened?"

"A mission gone wrong," he said tightly.

"How wrong?" But he figured that was classified, and Rieekan knew that his exclamation was just for show. "Do you need pilots? If you need to transport wounded—"

"We don't need pilots, Skywalker. We need healers."

Luke furrowed his brow. "I'm not a medic, sir."

"I didn't say we needed a medic—though we do. Skywalker, if we're gonna save some of these people's lives, we'd need more than a medic. We'd need a miracle."

"Then—"

"You're training to be a Jedi," he interrupted. "I fought in the Clone Wars—I was young, but I was in a volunteer unit, and I saw Jedi healers work. They can use the Force to speed along the body's natural healing. I need you to do the same on these men."

Luke swallowed.

The Force is strong with you, young Skywalker. But you are not a Jedi yet.

"I don't know how, sir," he whispered. The Force was vast, bright and dark alike, and he had no idea how to shape it. What it wanted him to shape it for. And if he failed—

There were enough people around here telling him that he was like Vader.

"You've healed yourself. Leia told me—desperate times, desperate measures, all that."

"Yeah, but that's instinct, my body already heals itself. I don't know how to heal other people."

"Didn't you receive Jedi training during your leave period?"

"We mostly focused on combat skills." And making soup. And vague philosophy that Luke really wished Yoda had been clearer about, because not only was it useless in this situation, for saving lives, but he still had no idea what to make of it.

What to make of how he and his father fit into it.

"Skywalker, you are the best chance we've got," Rieekan said firmly. The white-clad medics flitting around the hangar moved again, onto the next victim in need of help; there was a cry, a sympathetic hiss, and Luke winced. Someone… someone died. "If you can't save them, this whole team dies."

"You're expecting them to," Luke realised, horror dawning on them.

"They're good men, Skywalker. And they might have just saved all our lives." He shook his head. "I hate to lose them. We've lost enough people already."

Luke swallowed. They had.

"Will you do it?"

Luke couldn't have possibly said no. He brushed past Rieekan, reported to one of the medics, received the sterile mask, gloves, and overcoat to change into, and then he made his way through the sea of bodies, into uncharted waters.

"I don't— I don't know much about the human body," he muttered to the nearest medic, who gave him a tight smile. "Or any other bodies. Is there a right way they should be stitched up?"

"Half of them are bleeding from dozen shrapnel wounds caused by their own bomb, Skywalker. So long as you close them up, you're fine."

Somehow, Luke doubted that, but he knelt next to the nearest patient. They looked dead. He felt for a pulse—it was weak, but there, and their presence flickered in the Force as he did. Still hope, then. He scanned their body for injuries: one deep, deep wound in their stomach. He furrowed his brow, closed his eyes, and focused.

There was their stomach. It… in his mind's eye, he didn't think it had actually been penetrated by the shrapnel. He slowly retreated from that area, pulling on the Force and throwing it towards him, the energy of life and new growth. Under his gloved hands, cells leapt and danced, multiplied like rabbits. He dragged the tissues together—layer… by layer… by layer…

"Stars," the medic said over his shoulder.

Luke ignored her. He kept trying: closed the wound and left no trace it had ever been there, fresh skin blooming over it.

"You actually did it," the medic got out. "You were right, General. He did it."

Rieekan let out a breath. "The next person, Skywalker," he ordered, then added, "please."

The medic, still staring at the fresh, clean skin he'd coaxed into existence, took him by the elbow and hurried him along to a patient who had already been seen to. They were gasping for breath from lungs lacerated with shrapnel and burn wounds: a tube ran through their nose and bacta dripped into their chest cavity from the sloppy, rushed bandages they'd been given, but they clearly had almost no time left to live.

The moment Luke crouched next to them, the healing power of the Force still seeping from him like sweat or heat, the edges of the wounds fluttered and started to shrink.

Over his shoulder, the medic cursed. "No, don't close it over the damage—close the damage from the bottom up."

He did. He closed his eyes, held out his hands—not touching the patient, not wanting to cause them pain, but close enough that it helped him focus—and felt through the injured lungs, the fistfuls of blood spurting into them. The damaged bronchi, alveoli, the mind-numbingly complex structure of the human body this detailed, this important.

Slowly, the cells multiplied. Slowly, a wall of tissue grew, closed the gaps, teasing the metal shards out again. The lungs grew over. The ribs re-aligned, nudging themselves back into place and growing to accommodate for where they'd shattered, fusing back together. Muscle and tendons peeled over them like they were being vacuum packed, then skin unrolled over them, hairs springing from it like grass.

"It's a miracle," the medic breathed. Breathed as the soldier started breathing again: deep, shocked, pained breaths, gulping in the oxygen they'd almost never tasted again.

There were grins all around. Someone said, "You did it, Skywalker," and Luke found it in himself to grin as well. He moved on.

This one had had a shattered leg, the shrapnel severing the artery in his thigh and drenching everyone in his vicinity with bright, vicious blood. The wound had been hastily tied with a tourniquet, his leg splinted, but blood still saturated the cheery white of the bandage and the splint was crooked at best. He panted in pain, forced himself to keep breathing through it, even as he watched with horror his lifeblood drain away.

That energy was spilling from Luke, now. The person beside them—a woman with a gash in her torso—started healing over before he even looked at her, before he even put his hands on the man with the injured leg. But he focused on him, closed his hand into a fist, and the wound closed with it, artery springing back into position even as Luke blinked, the blood abruptly vanishing.

The man kept panting but stared at Luke like he was a god. "The leg?" he asked, almost not daring to ask, it seemed.

Luke put his hands on it, the medic's hands covering his to guide him. Another medic—they were following him around like geese now, the ones who could be spared—removed the splint. Together, they braced the leg into position—the man screamed—and Luke shot new growth into that bone. It fused back into one.

Healed enough for the man to fling himself at his feet, it seemed, slipping in the mess left behind of his own blood, and prostrate himself in front of Luke. "Thank you," he sobbed, and there was adoration in his eyes when he looked up at Luke. "Thank you, thank you—"

"Next one, Skywalker." A medic came up to lead the man away. All his healed patients were gone, staff cleaning the mess in their wake to prevent further contamination.

The woman with the gash in her torso was standing up, so Luke skipped her, even as she gave him a small smile. Someone else came: a head wound, bleeding thoroughly. Luke reached out to place his right hand on their forehead—

His hand, his prosthetic hand, crackled and spasmed. He jerked it back with a gasp.

"What is it?" the medic fussed. "Are they going to—"

"No," Luke said, flexing his hand. It responded slowly than usual. A faint but intense pain was starting to glow just below his elbow. "It's my hand—never mind." He put his other had on their wound; their skull slotted together again, skin growing back, hair sprouting under his fingers until he was gripping a chunk of it, thick and lustrous.

He let go and kept moving. Another person. Another. Despite the bloodiness of all of this, his chest was alight with fervour. Every smile, every relieved sob, every thank you, thank you, thank you… Rieekan was right. The rewards had outweighed the risks.

The Force had felt so dark and empty for so long. It was a legacy he shared with his father; he wanted to share nothing with his father. But this was something worth having. This was something he could help people with. Something that was wholly good.

The medic next to him was openly grinning. She looked bolstered, her skin aglow even under the splattered blood, colour coming back to her cheeks. When she directed him to the next patient, they had already healed; his power, his light, his strength radiated out from him and into their veins, healing them before he needed to touch them. As he went, more people around him just got up off their stretchers and walked away, marvelling at their renewed bodies. Joy suffused the air.

He closed the hole in someone's throat. He stopped the infection in someone's flesh. He extracted the shrapnel in someone's gut. It was so right. It was so easy.

When he reached for a patient whose arm had nearly snapped in two, his own arm refused to respond. He frowned—the look of concern broke the joyful bubble the medic was in; she immediately flocked to his side—and tried to flex his fingers. Touched it with his other hand.

It fell off.

He gaped. The prosthetic looked so unassuming on the floor; disturbing, even, in the context of such a bloodbath. He stared at the stump of his arm, where they'd had to operate to attach it in the first place.

Rieekan had come right over the moment he realised what was happening. It was him who said in a low, reverent tone, "It's healing."

Muscle and skin were indeed bubbling at the end of Luke's missing arm. He could feel the hard, unyielding bone growing back slightly slower, piercing through the tent of flesh to hold it erect.

"I should stop," Luke said, suddenly afraid. "This could…"

"You're healing," the medic said, staring at him. "Don't stop now, Skywalker. Do you know what this could do?"

"Anything," he said, fear in his voice. A deep sense of foreboding had settled in his stomach.

"Anything," she agreed breathlessly. "Keep going. You've already saved so many lives today. You can't stop now."

"I don't know what this is, Skywalker, but I'm not letting it go," Rieekan said. "Anyone who stands near you feels like they're young again." The wrinkles on Rieekan's face were started to vanish, his slight limp fading as he followed Luke along the line. "Keep going. You're doing good."

You're doing good.

After months of snide remarks about strange Jedi, the words were addictive. He reached for the patient again and healed them in one flick of his finger. The bone at the end of his right arm was growing longer and longer. This gift was erasing the permanent marks that Bespin had left on him, body and soul.

Another person. It wasn't until they were healed and kissed his healing hand, tears in his eyes, that he really looked at it. The muscle and skin had coalesced into some sort of hand at the end; at the very least, it was a fleshy sack of tendons and bones. He couldn't move it beyond dropping it at his side once they were gone and turning his back instantly because… because…

"Something's wrong," he murmured. "I need to stop."

"Stop? Skywalker, there's only five people left—"

"Exactly, they can get standard medical care, but something is wrong…" His limbs were heavy. His hand was so, so heavy, and he understood why when he looked down at it again.

It had not stopped growing.

The flesh of his arm expanded and thickened. The bone kept going, piercing through the end, twisting where it met resistance, growing in too many directions. The tendons wrapped around it and were strained to bursting; fireworks of pain flashed through him as they snapped, then regrew, then snapped, then regrew. His fingers, five—no, ten—no, twenty of them, grew in wide, round stumps, then kept going, keratin forming nails as long as claws…

The entire right side of his body was weighed down. He had a mace for an arm. The medic looked down and screamed.

Luke was haemorrhaging healing energy. The energy to bolster cells, to inspire new growth. Everything was growing.

"Get back," he said hoarsely. There was a lump in his throat. Metaphorically or literally? He didn't know. "Get back, you've been next to me this whole time—"

It was like his panic was the last straw. She reached for her neck, where Luke could sense flesh growing, flesh that had been growing in her body this whole time, metastasizing more and more with every second. She gasped, breaths coming frantically, spluttered like Vader himself had her in a chokehold.

Vader didn't have her in a chokehold. Luke did. Her body dropped like a stone.

"Skywalker?" Rieekan barked, his concern for her—and for Luke, which made him want to sob—lancing through the Force and striking him like lightning. He strode towards them again. "Skywalker, your arm, what's—"

"Get back!" he shouted. "I don't want you hurt too." The patients, the patients he'd already healed… they'd left the room, right? They must be out of this effect, right?

He lumbered away from Rieekan when he didn't obey his plea, towards the scattered patients. Five left. Five left, half-dead and dying. His arm was too heavy to lift, his limbs were too heavy, and his realisation of what he was doing made the sheer effort this was—channelling the Force so finely and for so long—utterly exhausting. He stumbled to the floor in the middle of them and tried to stop. He tried to cut himself off from the Force.

He failed.

Instead, he curled up into a ball, hoisting his mace-arm over his head to block out the sound of his own screaming. The Force was so loud, his fear amplified back at him, the constant life and death and regrowth around him deafening. He sensed all the bustle of the hangar stop; sensed people staying at the edges. Good. Good, stay away from him. Everything was so loud. Everyone would get hurt.

It took a long time to quiet down again. But eventually, that booming energy faded; the veins of his power bled dry, and they no longer floated in a bloodbath.

Instead, when Luke lifted his head, he lay curled up in a forest.

It was a living forest. The patients around him were still living, their hearts, mangled and bloated though they were, still beating. He looked around, pulse pounding in his throat. And in the exposed artery that had grown on his new right hand. It was a tiny tick, tick, tick in the corner of his vision that tracked his panic. But for a long time, it seemed to be the only thing that moved.

Because when Luke lifted his head to see the twisted cage of living bone that had grown from the red, pulsating, shapeless bodies around him, his view of the outside rebellion obscured by bursts of hair growing in random, gruesome places, everything was utterly still.