It totally slipped my mind that Wednesday was the day i usually post chapters of this. So here we go a little late. We begin with the events of the previous chapter from another point of view. Because, of course, Nya couldn't get away with such a thing without some sort of reaction.

When they'd arrived at the brothel, Leon's redheaded look-a-like was ready for him. She smiled from the doorway of one of the downstairs rooms and beaconed to him. Of course he had to make sure the captain was alright first. He had planned on doing something to celebrate her birthday. Aye, he remembered the date even if no one else did. However, before he could trust himself not to come on too strong he had a hunger that needed to be satisfied.

Sanya assured him that she would be fine even though she winced when she sat down like that blaster burn was still paining her. He'd ask her about it later. Maybe she just needed a little ale to dull the ache. That she had, and he'd be back soon.

Only not too soon. Nya's doppelganger had gone all out. She was in full costume. Maybe it was because she wanted to please him and was expecting the same extra payment? Maybe the Madam had told her girls to be extra nice to the crew of her savior? Or maybe the girl just liked the idea of stepping into the seaboots of the young captain who was swiftly becoming most independent and powerful woman in the north.

Whatever the case Leon grinned, and as he stooped to remove his own boots she treated him to another surprise. The tip of a knife under his chin caused him to look up at her.

"I thought maybe a little sparring match as foreplay?"

He chuckled in a low growl. Did she know he had fantasized about just such an event? He ignored his boots and drew his own knife. Then he gave her a come hither gesture with his free hand.

Her stance was all wrong. Her wrist and her grip on the hilt were weak but he could imagine his real objective in her place.

He stepped forward in a feint and she danced out of the way with a scream of a laugh. He tossed his weapon from his left hand to his right watching her look of concentration and then he lunged forward. It was a move that Nya had been able to parry since she was nine years old. This however was not Sanya Harkon.

The knife she had been holding clattered to the floor as she cried out and grabbed at the cut on her arm, blood already beginning to flow between her fingers from the shallow wound. Her eyes looked into his, wide with shock and pain.

"I-I'm sorry." He managed to say before she ran out of the room. He was paralyzed for a moment and then he sprung into action. Her… outfit! If the captain saw…

But when he ran after the girl into the dining room, the captain wasn't in the seat where he had left her. Maybe she'd just gone to the fresher. He couldn't worry about that now. He continued after the whore who's real name he didn't even know.

She had run directly to one of the other girls. It was the same girl who had tended to the wounded after the fight the last time they were here. She took in the situation with a practiced eye and got right to work on cleaning and bandaging.

Leon watched over her shoulder. "It'll be alright, won't it? I didn't mean to hurt her. It was an accident."

"Aye," the medic confirmed but she still glanced at him disdainfully. "It's only a shallow cut."

"Good." That handled he looked back to where Sanya had been seated before. She still hadn't returned. He turned again and looked at the whores. "You didn't happen to see where…"

Just then the bang of a headboard against a wall and a lusty male cry rang out from one of the upstairs rooms, "Oh Captain!"

It couldn't be. But then another creak of bedsprings and an unmistakable female voice answered, "Jooohnny!"

The entire place went silent as they listened to the sounds of escalating pleasure and the culminating breaking of the bed frame.

Leon swallowed hard. It was impossible. He had to have been imagining things. That absolutely under no circumstances could have been his Nya in the throes of passion with …. with…

A young man exited the room with a satisfied grin on his face doing up the front of his trousers. "What?" he asked the room at large.

"So you popped the Captain's muja!" a voice yelled out of the crowd.

The young sailor frowned. "No, but if you are aware of who she bestowed that honor upon I'd like to shake his hand."

Leon couldn't listen to anymore. He burst through the doors of the establishment out into the street. Angry and confused, he made his way back to the ship.

...

When Johnny had gone half way up the stairs with the glasses of spirits, Madam Korina called out loudly, "Meggie, better get a tray put together for the captain and her paramour."

The girl who had been seeing to her co-worker's injury looked up from the kitchen end of the bar. "Aye, Madam?" She was arguably the prettiest most asked for girl in the place with her smooth caff and cream skin and dark flowing hair. But she had other talents as well, and from the tone in her employer's voice she could tell that these would be the more necessary attributes for the occasion.

"It seems Mr. Beskar is a real blaster between the sheets." The Madam informed her and the rest of the common room. "They'll be needing your special brew for sustenance after that tussel."

"Aye, Madam." It only took her a fraction of a standard second to translate the innuendo. Though she hadn't heard shot, someone had suffered the blast. It must have happened before they came in. Who knew how long the wound had been festering?

Mhaegen checked her work on the other whore's arm and then quickly ducked into the pantry and began to load a tray with stims and a bottle of bacta and bandages along with a couple of bowls of soup just for the deception. She wondered how large the affected area was and then had an idea.

She poked her head out of the kitchen door and saw that she had caught Johnny Beskar just before he entered the room. She called out to him in her high sweet voice that carried over the sound of the rowdy common room, "Mr Beskar, exactly how big are we talking here?"

For all the Galaxy she might have appeared to be hoping to be the next to partake of whatever it was he had just dished out. There was a roar of jeers and tuka calls.

Johnny was only astonished for a moment before he caught on and smiled. He juggled the glasses to get a hand free and held it up to show her his palm. "About… give or take."

She gave him a nod of understanding and then for the benefit of the assembled sailors she licked her full lips before she returned to the pantry for another roll of bandages.

Salt gods , Mhaegen prayed for strength. If he was right and the Captain's blaster wound was a big as the palm of his hand what was she in for. She closed her eyes in another brief petition for the salt gods to guide her hands in her ministrations and then broke the cover of the back room and made her way skillfully through the tables of the common room, avoiding the groping hands of a few of the patrons and invitations for their company.

She ascended the stairs, tapped on the door, and was provided entry by the sailor. Mhaegen hardly gave him a second glance as she went straight to her patient.

This was her element. She took in the broken bed frame and the fully clothed girl lying upon it seemingly sleeping but more than likely passed out from the pain. "What can you tell me?" She asked Beskar.

"Er… we didn't…"

"About the blaster wound." Mhaegen sighed.

"Oh aye. I didn't get a good look at it. It's on her right side. It had sort of a cloth on it but that was peeling away and it was oozing."

"Hmm." The medic set her tray on the bedside table and knelt next to the patient.

Captain Sanya Harkon stirred in her sleep when Mhaegen rolled her to her side and exposed the makeshift bandage. She winced slightly at the smell of the infection. "Do you have any idea how long she's had this?"

"I just met her this afternoon." Johnny stood awkwardly and looked on. "When I saw that though… I had to say something to somebody."

"It's a good thing you did." The medic attempted to ease the cloth away from the burn. "This could have been the death of her if left untreated much longer. She must have nerves of steel to have let it go this long."

Besker supposed for the deception he ought to stay but it wasn't an easy thing to watch. "Is there something I can do or…"

"Just stay out of my way." Mhaegen said sharply, trying to concentrate and not cause her patient too much pain. Then by way of apology, "or have some soup?"

Then as the captain stirred again she thought better of it. "Mr Beskar could you go around the other side of the bed and hold her hands for me?"

He hurried to obey. "You want someone to be there to calm her when she wakes?"

"Well, that," Mhaegen glanced up at him quickly with a rye smile and then grunted as she put more effort into the distasteful task, "and I don't want her to pull one of those knives on me while I'm trying to help her."

He chuckled. "Good point." After that he had to turn his face away and breathe through his mouth so he wouldn't be sick.

Mhaegen let her breath out slowly and steadied herself to rip off the last of the cloth. "Ready?"

"Who me?" He took a firmer grip on the Captain's hands. "Oh aye." he kept his eyes on her face.

Then the prostitute turned medic gave the covering a final tug and Sanya woke with a gasp. Her hands did intend to go for her weapons. She let loose with a string of curses directed at the first face she saw which was Johnny Beskar's but he held tight to her hands and took the punishment.

"I'm going to give her a sedative." Mhaegen's voice turned the flow of harsh language in her direction. Then once the stym took effect, they all three relaxed.

"Thank you." Mhaegen nodded, but the job was only half over. She continued to work steadily and since Johnny was no longer needed and didn't really know how to be of help anyway, he took her up on the offer of the soup.

He paced around the room with the bowl in one hand and occasionally made gestures with the spoon in his other. "You're really very good at that," he told her. "How ever did you learn?"

Her hands stayed busy as she told the story. "My mother was a midwife and healer on one of the smaller islands. It was the sort of place where everyone knew everyone else and she was generally respected among them even though we weren't from there originally. It was home to me, the only place I ever remembered. Still the locals didn't really want their children playing with me.

"So I spent all my time with her growing up, and she taught me about wounds and diseases, how to bring babies into the world, and how to ease the passing of the old ones out of it." She pushed a sweaty curl out of her face with the back of her hand.

"My mother was an avid reader anytime there was extra money she would buy books and holos about the latest discoveries in medicine. She tried her best to practice her profession in the most modern way possible keeping up with new discoveries and wonder drugs."

Mheagen cleansed the burned area of the infection, treated it with the bacta and then rebandaged the wound to her own strict standards. Then she sat back with a sigh and continued. "It was really the islanders who were backward. They didn't want her to use the newer, safer methods, and one day a baby who she was on hand to deliver, died. The mother was close to death as well. My mother, against their wishes, used a medicine that she had ordered from off planet and the woman lived. They accused my mother of witchcraft."

A single tear fell down her cheek at the memory. "They burned her and forced me to watch as the smoke rose up to Dxun. I tried to gather her ashes in my hands when it was over and give her a proper burial at sea so that she could go to the salt gods halls but they wouldn't let me."

"That's kriffing awful!" The voice, that came from the patient, shocked them both. Neither of them had realized that Sanya was awake or that she was listening. "What happened then?"

Mhaegen gave a short laugh at the surprise, not at the story, and after wiping her cheeks, continued for both her listeners. "The islanders were going to burn down our home as well. I gathered as many things as I could before the smoke got too heavy and then I ran to find a boat I could escape in. It was just a little row boat but by some miracle, if you can call it that, before my limited food ran out, I was picked up by some fishermen and they said they knew where a pretty girl like me could find work." That last bit came out of her mouth more bitterly.

"But I can't really complain. Madam Korina has been kind to me. She has allowed me to use what I learned from my mother both with the other girls and occasionally when we have a wounded sailor." She nodded to the captain with a smile. "And in my free time I've done more studying and got better at it."

"Well, I guess I'm thankful you were here," said Sanya grudgingly.

"I'm glad I was, too." She bowed her head for a moment, humbly. "You're an inspiration to all of us, Captain Harkon, a young woman going out there and taking what she wants. It was an honor to be of some help."

Before Sanya could answer, Mhaegen reloaded her tray and took her leave.

…

Johnny Beskar stayed with Sanya through the night. He didn't have to do that and she made rather a show of saying goodbye to him in the morning and making sure he was well paid.

Sanya would have liked to have had the chance to say goodbye to her physician as well. Maybe it was a good thing though that she slipped away while Mhaegen was otherwise occupied. The midwife's daughter might have put her under strict orders to stay in bed for a few more days and that was something the captain of the Bloody Galia was not prepared to do.

Thankfully her crew were obediently on their way to the dock or already on the ship as well. Though there was a bit of a disturbance by the gangway as she approached.

Now staying in bed was one thing, but she didn't think she was ready for a full blown physical confrontation. Quartermaster Hardicort was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and he seemed to be preventing someone from coming aboard.

"What's all this about?" Sanya asked him, feeling the pain in her side again and glad she had his muscle if this came to a fight.

"This gentleman , Captain," Leon sneered, "says you hired him as your new ship's surgeon. I wasn't aware of you acquiring any new crew members while we were on shore leave."

Sanya looked at the gentleman in question and nearly choked. Quickly she covered her astonishment.

The person standing before her had fine features and smooth caff and cream cheeks as if still too young to start shaving. The clothing was a mish mash of cast off pieces including a steel breastplate that looked like it might be as old as the Mandalorian wars. The hair that had once been flowing black curls was now close cropped.

"Well, I don't believe I hired anyone." The captain held back a smile. "What was your name again?"

"Marlon," a gruff voice answered and then the throat cleared. "Maybe you didn't officially give me the job but I did hear there was an opening for a healer." Marlon held up a black doctor's bag as if it were all the reference he needed.

"That's true enough." Sanya shrugged. She touched her side that twinged just then. "I've got a… bandage that needs changing. Show me you can do it and you can sail with us." She turned on her heel and marched up the gangplank to her beloved ship.

The new recruit had to push past Leon Hardicort to follow. The Quartermaster was not pleased. "Captain?" He protested.

"What? You know we've needed a healer for some time. When the salt gods provide you don't expect me to just turn one away?" She didn't leave any room for argument. She nodded to the prospective ship's surgeon to follow.

In another couple of minutes with the rest of the crew watching their progress avidly, the two of them were alone in the cabin with the door shut behind them.

"Mhaegen?" Sanya breathed happily.

"It's Marlon." She insisted with the same deep voice that she must have been trying to get used to but she also had a hint of a smile. She got right to work, determined to prove herself.

"Why didn't you just ask me? I could have brought you aboard as yourself." the Captain lifted her shirt not in the least shy in front of another female who had already worked on her once in the last twenty four standard hours.

"You'll excuse me." Some of the feminine lilt came back into her voice now that they were alone. "Too many of your crew know me as a woman. I didn't think they'd take kindly to being treated medically by a whore."

"They'll be your crew as well," Sanya huffed, "and they'll be treated by a medical professional no matter how she chooses to dress herself. Ouch." The bacta had done her a world of good but the spot on her side was still tender and she would probably always have a scar.

"Does this mean I get the job?" Mhaegen asked.

"Of course." The captain pulled her shirt back down and tucked it in. "I owe you my life, don't I?"

"I suppose you do."

"And I'll keep your secret for as long as you need me to." Sanya grinned. "Still it will be nice to have another girl on board to talk about… things." She knew she sounded like a child when she said it, especially to someone so wise in the ways of the world.

Mhaegen nodded. "It's true then, what Beskar said, about your being a virgin?"

"I need you to keep my secret too."

"To keep us both safe from the wiles of men." The former whore smiled. She really was too pretty to be mistaken for anything but a beautiful young woman but Sanya guessed that people tended to see what they expected to see as long as you didn't give them a reason to suspect otherwise.

"What are you talking about? You get to be one of them." The captain shoved her new ship's surgeon playfully.

"And you can kriff any of them any time you like," then Mhaegen added, "Captain."

"Honestly we had better get back out there before they all suspect that's what we're getting up to in here."

"Aye aye, Captain. Though you must know, you're not really my type."

They laughed and then they both sobered up so that Captain Harkon could introduce the crew to their knew on board medic.

Before Sanya could step out of the cabin however, Leon Hardicort shoved his way in and slammed the door shut behind him leaving their newest crewmember outside and out of hearing. Of course he'd be upset. She should have consulted her quartermaster before hiring anyone. Still, she was the Captain. It was her ship. She waited for him to speak first.

He paced back and forth for a few more seconds and then rounded on her. He obviously had some grievance and she had a feeling it wasn't all about the new crew appointment. "Why didn't you tell me that the blaster burn was so bad?"

He was… worried about her. Sanya sighed. "I didn't think it was at first. It sort of… cauterized." She thought that was the right word for it. Of course it had done nothing of the sort. She had known there was a problem when she nearly passed out from the smell when she had done her own makeshift bandaging job before they went ashore.

She shrugged and built on the lie, "It sort of opened up again last night."

"Last night?" He went back to pacing and stroked his beard. "That…" he seemed to struggle with a term harsh enough, "manwhore seemed to think he wasn't your first."

"He wasn't," She answered levelly. That was true at least. "Not that it's any of your business. I don't ask you about what you get up to in that place."

He didn't look angry now he seemed more… hurt. "You have to be careful, Nya. What if… what if you fell pregnant?" His voice lowered almost to a whisper.

She almost laughed. "I won't."

"And you're so sure about that?"

"Apart from being a good medic, Marlon knows how to deal with that, too."

"Marlon?" Leon's jaw clenched. Was he jealous? He couldn't be. "And just what exactly is the story with this Marlon?"

This time she did laugh. "You think me and… I don't think he's even attracted to girls."

Leon's head whipped around as if he could see through the planks of the door and get a better look at their new recruit.

"Besides," Sanya continued, "I would never have a… relationship with a crew member. It's unprofessional."

He turned and stared at her again. Did he still not believe her?

She remembered something then, something that Beskar had suggested. Well, if she was going to do it she would rather it was someone like Leon who she trusted.

She turned her back to him with another sigh. "I haven't even shown Marlon this." She undid her belt and dropped her breeches to reveal the birthmark on her behind.

He was silent other than a sharp intake of breath. She wished he would say something.

With cheeks flaming as red as her hair, she pulled up her pants and cinched them tightly again around her narrow waist. The swift action caused her to brush against her bandaged side. The resulting twinge of pain cut through her embarrassment.

She spun to face him and blustered, "so you have nothing to worry about."

"Aye," Leon croaked before he hurried off to his own cabin.