A/N: Okay, the story's gonna get really hurtcomfort from here on out. Sorry for those of you who wanted more gore, and stuff, but that part's done. If you want Darth Maul torture, go write it yourself.
It had, in all probability, been many hours since she had last awoken. Anamaria felt anything but to want to get up, though. In truth, she felt more like drinking arsenic, and spontaneously combusting than showing her face to her friends. Little wonder. She knew that getting up, and perhaps distracting the memory of her dead master would be a healthy activity, however.
Kalaskein was still in need of her care, as well.
Hn... it was funny how she was starting to think of him as Kalaskein now, and not Darth Maul. He WAS a mortal being, after all.
Anamaria hoisted herself from the coverall, and sat with her dark legs dangling from the side of her bed. Just like she used to do when she was little... so long ago... Just a vivid memory, now. A memory of unquenchable suffering, and humiliation that she had not understood as a child. Humiliation of giving her body to a man she never knew in her life.
At the naive age of seven...
No. No more. Not that. She needed to concentrate on matters at hand. For all she knew, Obi-Wan had probably thrown the poor sith into the storage chamber. Anamaria smiled slightly at the thought. Oh well... such was their lot.
Pushing the memory of Vespasian's face from her mind, she accomplished the same task with the bed.
It was a strange feeling... being hot and cold at the same time. The entire area surrounding him was doused into disrepair, and yet he felt too hot to even move. Oh, and bury the thought of opening his eyes. Something sticky, and crusted locked them together, denser than mud, and blood combined.. Nevertheless, he channeled what strength he could into that area, and violently forced them open.
By the council, he wished he hadn't.
Light poured like an unwanted waterfall over everything in the room, and that meant EVERYTHING. Corners were bathed in its unwanted essence, and even the void of space outside looked white. Darth Maul immediately groaned, and shut his throbbing eyes, tossing his aching head to the left in a vain attempt to be rid of this maddening torture... Wait.
Torture?
Immediately, his eyes snapped back open, and he cried out in agony. Geez! How idiotic could he get?! Finding the brightness too much, now, he sat up, and felt his ribs push together. That was enough. He tossed back into his laying position, and, lo and behold, his pounding head slammed into the back wall. Darth Maul let a sharp yelp of pain, and sat very still in that awkward position; aching and hurting and quite ready to die.
Cold, gentle hands touched his shoulders, and the Sith flinched out of instinct, straining to keep away from what he knew was coming. The hands were persistent, though, and gently eased him at his own comfortable pace back onto the bed. Something cool, wet, and soft pressed against his brow.
"Nggh..." He groaned.
"You're welcome." A voice replied. He knew that voice. Somewhere in the confines of his dark mind, he remembered that voice. A girl... A white girl...
"Y-You... I... know... you..." He rasped. A paroxysm of coughs halted his speech, and again, his obviously broken costae ground together like rocks.
"Shh... hey, easy there... Don't talk right now." Her voice was soothing, and mellow, and he obeyed. Something hard pressed against his lips, and the girl's voice invaded his ears again.
"Drink." It was water.
Darth Maul, again, obeyed silently, and sipped the liquid slowly. It glided down his raw throat, and into his empty stomach, surprising him so suddenly, that he began to choke, and clutched what was left of his abdomen tightly. Cramp. Cramp. CRAMP. The bile rose into his throat, burning it mercilessly. Hands lifted his upper body, and he began to heave violently into what seemed to be a bucket of sorts. God, how many times had this happened...?
The soft, wet, and cold thing moved down the back of his neck, and he shivered convulsively at the touch. Oh yes... THIS was great. Here he was, blind, beaten, and broken, and CODDLED no less. Har har. Warm, squishy lovey-dovey feelings for a poor, pathetic Sith. He growled viciously, but in his weakened state, it sounded more like a cute purr. The girl chuckled sweetly, and dabbed his sweating skin with the utmost care.
"I expected this much. You threw up most of the Living Water, too. Do you remember when you last ate?" Her voice was gentle, and she spoke slowly in comforting tones. Maul, in some twisted, psychotic need to please her, thought long and hard about that question. Hm... well, a week ago, the guards gave him some maggoty bread... Didn't even touch it. About a month ago, he stopped eating altogether... Just water...
"I'm guessing that they didn't treat you too well in there..." Her tone now was pitying, and she eased him back down onto the pillow. Dammit! He hadn't even realized he had been talking!
"You... Y-You..." His voice was failing.
"Shh... you need to rest," The girl whispered, laying that dab-blasted freaky wet thing on his forehead again. No! He didn't need to rest! He needed to escape! No more coddling! No more-
What the-?
A voice drifted into his ears; soft, mellow, and comforting. The hum of a simple tune he recognized from so long ago... A name came to mind, yet distant... A Jedi... No! No, not a Jedi; a Padawan... Prison... Death... The Whelp...
"Whelp!!" He cried, completely forgetting about the pain, and shot up with his sleep-deprived eyes wide open. He was quite surprised to find the room dimmed to a comfortable level, and the familiar face of the white-haired girl staring wide-eyed before him. Then, the agony began.
It first, unsurprisingly, began with his ribs. The searing fire of overuse, and abuse flared to life, and when he gasped heavily, his back (which, as you know, is pretty much skinless) seared in uncontrollable agony. Barely formed scabs tore apart with the undesired movement, and the Sith scarcely contained a shriek of pain as he fell back on his bony arms.
Anamaria, for the third time in thirty minutes, grasped his shoulders tightly, and, inch by scant inch, relieved him of his struggle. He hissed with a clenched jaw as his tender, and just-healing skin came in contact with the soft surface of his bed. She noticed this, and changed his overall position just so, until he was laying comfortably on his side.
Now, staring at his bare back, the padawan saw the full extent of what Raphael had so brutally attempted to accomplish. There was not one inch of skin that was unmarred by his cruel whips, and most of those awful welts were inflamed, or clogged with dirt. Anamaria stared gravely, and rather sadly, for these wounds she would have to clean as well.
"You... You came... back... f-for... me..."
The padawan lifted her head, surprised, and found those disturbing, yet amazing eyes staring halfway into her own. Maul's face was a bitter contortion of raging pain, and hurt, but his voice, mellow, and deep, spoke differently. Anamaria gave him a gentle smile, and removed the bottle of alcohol from her medicine case. "Of course I came back for you... I would never leave you to die there..."
He began to respire deeply, his gently curved waist rising, and falling with each breath taken. It seemed almost as if the injured Sith was preparing to speak once more, and yet, his weak body would not allow it. Anamaria addressed his tense shoulders, and ran her hand gently down his unscathed torso. His skin was so soft... like touching fine silk. His breath hitched as she touched a rather nasty bruise, and he tensed once more. By any maker, he must have been suffering from one nasty virus, or else he would have been halfway across the room, snarling and spitting with everything he had left.
Anamaria frowned sadly, not in the least prepared to do this. Her training with medical procedures was heavily limited, and, as such, she barely had but a clue as to how to continue with his other, much more grievous wounds. The most she could do now was clean out the visible cuts, and hope that Obi-Wan was hurrying at top speed to Coruscant.
'Alright,' she thought, 'his back... eh... probably hurts... should see to that quickly. Needs water... dehydrated to the point of shriveling up like a prune... heh... no! Get back on track!' Carefully, she placed a hand on his eyelid, and lifted it, checking his pupils. 'Dilating... high fever...' The padawan spied a small stream of blood trickling down his chin, 'internal bleeding... strange... pneumonia? No... he's not coughing...'
Relaxing for a moment, she puzzled over this curious circumstance while her patient tried his best to seem loose, and unaware. In truth, his nonexistent muscles were contracting, and expanding in an extremely painful manner, and every time they loosened, he felt another wave of sweat perspire from his body. Really, it was rather uncomfortable.
Anamaria, her eyes drawn and dark, chose an old, but sterile cloth from her medicine case, and soaked it thoroughly with her bottle of pure Therusinnian alcohol. The Sith was still asleep, breathing raspily, but breathing nonetheless. It was good enough for her. She pressed the dressing against a particularly deep shoulder wound, and he jerked sharply in pain, immediately aroused from his restless sleep. The girl quietly apologized, running her free hand down his unmarred skin in a soothing gesture.
Almost instantly the cut began to bubble, trapping dirt and other various anomalies in its killing embrace. Anamaria turned the cloth over, and wiped away the excess solution. Again, she addressed another cut near his waistline, and Maul could not stifle a hiss as the medicinal drink burned away the accumulated infection. His fingers curled around the bloodied sheets, and wrung themselves until his knuckles turned white with pressure. He could barely contain his cries of agony, piled up against the instinct to move, and the additional pain caused by his broken leg wasn't making things any better.
But the last infectious wound she handled was just too much. It was a deep gash, running from the curve in his stomach to his upper right shoulder, caused by Raphael's knife after another hopeless torture session. It was, by far, the worst external injury he had received aside from his crushed limb. He could not stifle a gut-churning moan as it was gently swabbed with the solution, but when Anamaria was forced to push down deeper to remove all of the dirt, he was sure that his cries of agony could have reached the recesses of outer space.
As soon as she was done, Maul felt thoroughly humiliated. That was the first time he had ever screamed while being doctored, and it made him feel hopelessly miserable and worthless. Screaming was a sign of abasement, and weakness among the Sith, and for their masters it was humiliating. He, like the others, was broken out of the habit by excruciating training, and healed with the most painful methods possible. Pain, like the force, became a Sith's ally.
He listened, heart still pounding, chest still heaving, as Anamaria moved about the small room, replacing, and removing various items with quick precision, and was back at his side in less than a minute. She was smiling in that gentle manner, her azure eyes bright with pride as she placed a cool hand on his cheek.
"That was very brave of you..." Was all she said before she began to softly wrap his torso.
Darth Maul did not reply.
A/N: Yeah, you all are probably like, "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN, YOU IDIOTIC WRITER?!" Well, it all began when our computer crashed. It took, like, a freaking month before the hardware guys finally fixed it, and then my mother decided that we were going to get high-speed internet for the stupid laptop, so I've basically been cut off from since May of last spring. Plus, school has started and I've been busy drawing fanart for my worthless website (which, by the way, should hopefully be up by December). NEVER FEAR, THOUGH!!! I HAVE NOT NEGLECTED MY DUTIES AS AN AUTHORESS, AND THE NEXT CHAPTER OF "MY LONELY" SHOULD BE DONE BY NOVEMBER!!! WAHEY!