MT-5927 had been on Baudere for almost a year, when Kylo Ren staggered into the medic wing of the Citadel with the body of a mostly dead girl flung over his shoulder. He dropped the limp form on the nearest gurney, took a few more steps, and then collapsed to his knees, panting.

The medic's first reaction had been to attend to the Knight himself. Kylo Ren was, after all, the highest ranking member of the First Order on site, and even an untrained eye could see that he was in bad shape.

MT-5927's eyes were not untrained, and therefore did not miss the shallow, rapid breathing, the pallor of his skin, or even the ragged and filthy condition of his superior's clothing. He immediately brought water for the man, and when Kylo reached out take the cup and accidentally knocked it from his hand, the medic suspected that his body might be shutting down from over-exertion.

He snatched the vitals probe from the desk, and dropped down beside the dark figure to begin administering aid, when all the air was sucked from the room.

MT-5927 tried to gasp, his hands moving immediately to his throat, but found instead that his body had frozen. In the same instant, he was flung across the room like a used-up sterishot. His body crashed against the wall, knocking over a tray of bloodprobes.

Kylo, meanwhile, had climbed to his feet, leaning heavily against the girl's gurney to support himself. MT-5927 had made an error in judgement. He had approached his superior without permission, and in doing so, had silently acknowledged the Knight's weakened condition. He had enough experience with Kylo's temper to stay where he was on the floor. A second error in judgement might cost him his life.

"This girl… there is infection," the Knight struggled to speak through labored breaths. "If she dies… so will you."

MT-5927 was on his feet before Kylo finished speaking. He had received that threat before. It had come from the mouth of General Hux after Kylo Ren had himself been dropped onto a gurney in front of him, bleeding and unconscious.

The medic assessed the girl as he approached. It was difficult to tell if she was still breathing. Her body was slender to the point of being bony. Her skin appeared dry and her eyes slightly sunken, but just as he reached her side, her entire body spasmed—proving there was life there still.

Dehydration… Malnourishment… Fever… Convulsions… and that was before he had even located the wound. Another few seconds scanning her and he noted the shredded boot secured to her foot with linen wrappings.

He hastily pressed the call button, which quickly summoned the post's two surgical droids—an out-dated 2-1B, and a modified DD-13.

"Deedee, Remove the patient's left boot, so we can get a better look at the injury. Two-one, I'll need a vitals check," he ordered.

The two droids immediately moved into action—the DD unit clamped down on the girl's jerking leg, and used its surgi-laser to burn a precise incision down the boot, while two-one secured her flailing arm and swiftly inserted a needle probe.

"Species identified: Corellian… female… aged approximately nineteen years," two-one reported. "Body temperature exceeds average Corellian range by seven points. Heart rate exceeds average Corellian range by—"

The droid's report was interrupted by MT-5927 gagging. With the removal of the boot, the horrible stench of advanced infection filled the room. The smell of rotting meat and dead body was strong enough to cause even Kylo Ren to blanch.

Through watering eyes, MT-5927 watched as the DD-13 peeled away bandages wet with pus, to reveal a raw angry gash across the girl's heel. The foot had swollen to twice its normal size and dead tissue around the wound had already blackened.

"That foot will have to come off," MT-5927 affirmed, though everyone present certainly realized it. He reached for the overhead surgical light and positioned it above the gurney as he spoke, switching it on as DD-13 began transitioning its appendage to surgical mode.

The bright light appeared to have caused a response in the girl. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, as she tried to turn her face away, and then her arm came up to swat at something they couldn't see. Two-one moved quickly to secure that appendage as well—but this only served to frustrate the patient more. She grimaced and struggled against her bonds. Her lips moved, and as the medic moved in to catch her words, he was halted by the deep voice of Kylo Ren.

"You will not remove her foot. I want her whole," the Knight commanded.

MT-5927 opened his mouth to argue—the infection was too far gone! Her starved body was in no condition to fight off anything, and it wasn't as though they had anything like a bacta tank on this far-flung outpost. It was madness to expect him to save both her and her foot, and against standard protocol besides. He'd seen amputations occur with patients of far better prognosis aboard the Finalizer. With prosthetics as advanced as they were these days, it was far more cost effective to lop of an appendage and replace it with a standard robotic limb—the medical unit bought them in bulk.

He wisely decided not to voice his dissent. Kylo Ren would realize all of this already, of course. As a member of the First Order and a battle-hardened warrior, he should have known to remove her foot himself. One swing of his light saber would have brought it off while instantly cauterizing the arteries. Yet he chose to carry her until his own body almost gave out— suggesting a strange relationship between the knight and the rough-looking girl.

"Two-one, I need an update on stock. How many units of bacta do we have on-hand?" MT-5927 snapped.

"Three units, sir."

"Do we have any body temperature regulators?"

"None, sir."

"Fine. Give her a shot of Ficol—enough to knock her out. Follow that with a unit of Bacta. DeeDee, we'll need to burn out the dead tissue… now, NOW! Let's go, you old bucket of bolts!" the Medic ordered.

The girl's lips moved again.

"Be still. You're safe now. Try not to move," MT-5927 warned her. There was little chance she heard or understood his words, they were spoken more for the benefit of Kylo Ren, whose eyes followed his every movement and whose tense, stiff posture reminded him of a predator about to strike.

Her lips moved without stopping, and at last the medic could make out a few of the words they formed. Two to be exact:

Kylo Ren.

She said his name over and over, and even bound, her hand moved to reach for something… or someone. She was delirious, certainly, but the Knight himself was behaving strangely—careful never to look at the girl or her wound, focusing his attention on the medic instead. His tension perhaps came not from a desire to attack. Perhaps it was fear. This girl's life must somehow be extremely valuable to the First Order.

"Am I talking to myself, Two-one? Ficol, now!" MT-5927 demanded.

The droid was probably calculating the exact amount required for the body mass of a Corellian suffering from dehydration and malnourishment, but at the sound of his voice, Two-one's probe jerked forward and stabbed the girl's leg. DeeDee extended its surgi-laser, and in instant later, the smell of burning flesh almost overpowered the odor of rot.

The girl's body shuddered violently as she opened her mouth in a soundless scream.

"More Ficol! MORE FICOL!" MT-5927 yelled.

Kylo Ren was faster than the droid. He shoved two-one roughly aside, and extended a hand above her forehead. She immediately went limp.

For a moment, there was only the sound of the DD-13's surgi-laser burning through the dead tissue. The Knight still held one hand above the girl's face, his fingers close enough to almost touch her forehed. When he realized the medic was staring at him, he hastily withdrew his hand and turned away.

"If she dies… you die," Kylo Ren repeated, and with that, he strode quickly away.

Three days and two more injections of Bacta had brought vast improvements to the wound, though the girl herself had never regained full consciousness. There were times when she spoke in delirium, and at those times, MT-5927 listened attentively, curious to discover who she was and what the First Order would use her for, but the bit and pieces of the one-sided conversations he could make-out relayed little of value. She spoke to her mother once, and assured her master that she was coming several times, but most often she called out for Kylo Ren—though she never said why.

The Knight had haunted the sick bay over the past few days—a silent specter who stood impassively in the corner of the girl's room, vanishing almost as soon as MT-5927 noticed him. The mask he always wore seemed to have disappeared, or at least he did not wear it when he visited her.

Of course MT-5927 had seen Kylo Ren without his mask before.

He often thought about that day—there was little else to do on Baudere besides think. Had he known that day that he would have been exiled to the darkest corner of the galaxy, perhaps his decisions would have been different… or perhaps not. He was honest enough to admit that he was not a brave man.

Twenty years of training under the First Order had not taught him bravery, nor had it ingrained the unquestioning loyalty in him that it had in his fellow stormtroopers. He was the veteran of countless re-education sessions- one couldn't say that Captain Phasma hadn't tried her best, but when it became clear that no amount of training or torture could mold him into a First Order Stormtrooper, he was quickly reassigned to the Medical Unit. The First Order was, after all, anything but wasteful of its resources.

The Medical Unit had been a comfortable fit for him. There was no one shooting at him, for starters, and he never had to skip meals. In his leisure hours aboard the Finalizer, he could always find a trooper in the common rooms who might be up for a game of Holo-chess or a hand of Death Star Bluff.

The work was less than demanding as well. The droids handled patching up most of the Stormtroopers. Human medics were, in most cases, only at the disposal of the commanding officers. Droids made decisions based on algorithms, and could not be swayed by screams of discomfort or threats. If a trooper was too badly damaged, a droid's assistance might be a quick, painless death. Of course the officers of the First Order usually only went into a battle once it appeared that victory was imminent, and therefore suffered very few injuries. Medics, however, still had their uses, and one of those was discretion. MT-5927 couldn't count the number of times he'd been approached by a shame-faced officer, just back from leave, who mumbled something about burning pains in their nether regions, and had then asked for a steri-shot or two—off the record, of course.

Then came the defection of FN-2187, and with that, the foundation of half-truths and justifications the medic had built his life on began to crumble. It had never happened before, not that he knew of anyway. A Stormtrooper who had not only deserted, but joined the Resistance to fight against the First Order? That was madness, surely!

Yet the idea of leaving the First Order stayed with him. He often found himself imagining different scenarios whereby this might be achieved—usually these day dreams involved him blasting through a wall of white-clad troopers with a gorgeous, scantily-clad Resistance fighter at his side. There were several problems with this dream. The first being that many of those troopers were his friends and acquaintances. The second was a shortage of gorgeous, scantily-clad, Resistance prisoners, and the third… well, he was not a brave man after all.

He had been asleep in his bunk at the time Starkiller Base had been destroyed, and awoke to the wail of the siren signaling the approach of ships bearing the wounded. He'd made it to sick bay just as the first survivors were rushed in. There weren't many. There weren't many at all, and he soon learned the reason why. The time between the evacuation order and the planet's implosion was only minutes. The First Order had lost almost every trooper stationed on Starkiller.

Not Captain Phasma though, and not General Hux, and certainly not Kylo Ren. That was the first time MT-5927 saw the Knight's face, the day he was carried in by General Hux's private guard, and dropped unceremoniously on the gurney before him. The lightsaber wound which ran the length of his face, seemed even more pronounced against the sickly pallor of his skin.

"If he dies," General Hux informed him, "So do you."

When DD-13 burned away the cloth from his torso, 5927 flinched. It wasn't just the gaping hole in the man's side, his chest, and as the medic later discovered, back and arms were covered in scars.

DeeDee's outdated catalogue of battle wounds came in handy that day. 5927 had never seen a bowcaster wound before. The hole in Kylo's side had been made when a bowcaster shot a metal quarrel encased in plasma energy directly through him—it was amazing that the man had lived, and continued fighting by the look of him.

He did, however recognize wounds made by a lightsaber, though he knew not to ask questions. Among the officers of the First Order, Kylo Ren was known as the Jedi Killer.

The Knight had healed slowly, even submerged in a Bacta Tank, and when at last he had regained his mobility, he'd immediately boarded a command shuttle at the behest of the Supreme Leader, and gone to Baudere, and as he was not at that time fully healed, MT-5927 had been ordered to accompany him.

A year had passed. An entire year on the dark planet with no orders and no company save for DD-13. His assignment had officially changed at some point from the care of Kylo Ren to the medic assigned to the Citadel on Baudere, but it made little difference. The acolytes never required his services. They were ambitious when it came time to prove their worth before the Knights of Ren, each hoping to advance to the position of apprentice. In that quest, they maimed and murdered one another with a regularity that was almost comical, but never acknowledged that such things happened to themselves or others. To seek medical care would mean official documentation of such incidents and no one wanted that.

And so, MT-5927 slept a great deal, and thought, and played cards with DD-13, and thought some more. The girl was his first case since Kylo Ren.

On the third day since her arrival in his empty sick bay, he awoke early, and felt something almost like anticipation. Perhaps her fever had subsided during the night. Perhaps she would be awake. Perhaps she would feel like talking.

He dressed quickly, and opted to forgo breakfast too check the status of his patient, but did take the time to access the morning reports. It was with no small amount of interest that he noted the departure of a certain commanding officer from the base. His curiosity piqued, he hurried into the corridor. He had almost reached the sick bay when he ran into several acolytes in the hallway. The door to Kylo Ren's private quarters was flung wide, and he could see acolytes inside as well. They appeared to be working at removing the wreckage of what was once furniture from his rooms. As they carried out the still smoking pieces of a small table, MT-5927 winced. He had seen Kylo Ren's anger before. Something had set him off.

When he continued on his way, his steps were much quicker.

The girl was awake.

He paused in the doorway for a moment, taking in the sight of her small frame seated on the floor in a position of meditation. Her eyes were closed.

"DD-13," he called. "The patient is awake. Bring food… water… bring something."

The girl did not open her eyes at the sound of his voice. MT-5927 cleared his throat loudly as he crossed the floor to her.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice guarded.

"MT-5927. I'm a medic—the medic here on Baudere. What is your name? Where are you from? Can you remember what happened to you?"

She opened her eyes at last, and one eyebrow quirked upward as though suspicious of his many questions. He would have to do a better job of pacing himself.

'Your name?" he asked again, making an attempt at a friendly smile.

"Where is he?" she asked, ignoring his question completely.

MT-5927 knew without asking what 'he' the girl was referring to. By the tone of her voice, he inferred that the Knight and this girl were not on good terms.

"Gone. Kylo Ren left on a mission sometime during the night. You're safe here… for now."

"If you want me to feel safe here, perhaps you might return my weapon," she said.

"I'm not… well, I'm certainly not authorized to do that," he explained.

DD-13 fortunately chose that moment to arrive with a tray of food, and 5927 seized the opportunity to change the subject.

"I'm afraid that light fare is all we can offer you at this time. Your body shows signs of long term malnourishment and I think it would be best if you stuck to liquids and soft foods for the time being. If you handle that well, we can certainly add meat and other more substantial nourishment. I've brought you a broth to start."

"How do I know it isn't drugged?" she asked.

5927 scratched at his head thoughtfully.

"Well, I haven't been given any orders to drug you—not that I could even if I was ordered to. We're terribly under-supplied here. We've run through our entire stock of Bacta treating you, and we don't even have standard equipment like body-temperature regulators. I wouldn't know where I' even find the sort of drugs you're talking about," he admitted.

She studied him as he spoke, and her expression slowly melted from outright suspicion to reluctant acceptance.

"Where did he go?" she asked, "Kylo Ren, I mean. What missions has he been sent on?"

"I can't answer that."

"You mean you won't answer it."

"No. I mean I can't. I'm not important enough to be told things like that. In fact, I'm probably the least important Stormtrooper in the entire history of the First Order."

She smirked at this, and then shook her head, and gave a short wary laugh.

"I'm Rey," she said, "Nice to meet you, I think."

"MT-5927," he said reaching out to shake her hand, "and this is DD-13."

"You don't look like a Stormtrooper,' she decided.

"It's the armor, isn't it? I don't have the armor, so it's hard to believe, but technically, I am still a Stormtrooper. Medics are still part of the ranks, we just don't wear the armor. What's your rank?"

"I don't have one," she shrugged, "but if I did, I don't think I would rank very high."

"Are you a Resistance Fighter?" he asked. He could feel his cheeks burn at his own audacity.

"I suppose I am."

"Why are you here? What happened? Were you captured? Were you trying to assassinate Kylo Ren?"

She stared levelly back at him, and he realized at once that she had no reason to trust him, and would not be answering any of his questions. Disappointed, he sat down in the chair beside her bed, and stared back.

"Can I at least hope that you know how to play Holo-chess or Death Star Bluff?" he asked.

She smirked at this.

"I might," she admitted.