1/30/2
Rey wakes up a lot earlier than she'd like to.
Knocking, on the door, and… She's up, pulling on her robe. If someone's at her door this early, something's wrong.
She's half-turned to Kylo to tell him to go back to sleep, but… oh… okay. He slept through the knocking. She decides it's a good thing that he's comfortable enough here to sleep through someone coming to their door in the middle of the night.
She opens it, and Rose is standing in front of her. "Rey… Can you, come over?"
Rey blinks. "Uh… Sure, what's up?" She waves Rose in, heading to her room. If Rose is here, this isn't the sort of thing she can do in her bathrobe. "Hold up." A moment later, she's out of their room, dressed, ready for whatever it is Rose is here for.
"It's not allergies. Finn's sick. Like… throwing up and high fever and… sick."
"Oh." Rey winces. Of all the things you don't want. "What did MX-6 say?" One of the great things about a med-droid in a settlement this small, is that if you comm him, he'll come to you. One of the bad things, is that if MX-6 has made his visit, and Rose is here, it means there's not much MX-6 can do.
"Hiffa virus. Anti-viral resistant Hiffa virus. And apparently it's stupidly contagious, spread by breathing in cough droplets," Rey winces, harder. A lot harder this time. "so… In the next twelve to twenty-four hours, we're pretty much all going to have it, so…" Rose muffles her mouth in her sleeve as she coughs.
"So, you want to see if I can help?"
"Yeah. That's MX's best guess for keeping this from running wild. All he can offer is to make us a bit more comfortable while we go through it."
"Okay, you call Poe?"
"Yeah. I told him not to come home for the next ten days, unless he wants to do it in anti-haz garb."
"It lasts for ten days?" Rey groans. Ten days of everyone sick is not anything she's looking forward to.
"Yeah. Finn's volunteering to be your test subject. See if there's anything you can do to curb it or speed it up or…"
"Great." She rubs her forehead. There's got to be something she can do, but nothing is immediately springing to mind. Then she notices that Rose is sweating. "You're sick, too."
Rose nods, and then rolls her eyes. Her husband just got back from a long trip. "Yeah. I did a tad more than just breathe the droplets, you know?"
Rey nods. "Is Paige sick?"
"She's not fussing, and since MX said it's caught by breathing in the droplets, neither Finn and I have wanted to go into her room."
"That makes sense. Okay. I think the first thing we're going to do is see if we can keep Paige from getting this."
Rose slumps a bit in relief. "That would be good."
Rose and Finn's home looks the way it always does.
Well, except for MX-6, the med-droid, standing in the living room. He's humanoid, light silver, with glowing blue eyes, and, in a galaxy of many, many races, he'd be easy to mistake for some sort of organic creature.
Apparently, when it comes to medical care, a lot of organics like things that also look and feel like organics.
So MX-6, save for the glowing eyes, the never changing expression, and the silvery skin, does. (Apparently, organics also like to be able to identify non-organics at a glance, which is why MX-6 is silver with glowing eyes, instead of human colored.)
Finn and Roes's home absolutely doesn't smell the same.
Usually, Rose's home smells like spice, tea, and whatever's been simmering away in the cooker on low, getting ready for dinner. Today it smells like… Rey actually doesn't know. She's never run into something her nose less wanted to experience than this. It's the single worst thing she's ever smelled, and as an ex-scavenger, she's run into some mind-bogglingly unpleasant substances in the past.
She chokes a bit heading in, and MX-6 says to her, "Hiffa virus is known for that smell. There are many viruses that cause intestinal distress, but that particular smell is the calling card of Hiffa."
"Wonderful. What is Hiffa?" Rey asks, figuring the more she knows, the better the chance she can do something about it.
"It's a viral infection that starts in the lungs, multiplying and spreading through cough droplets. In the first stage, it appears to be a mild sore throat and cough, worsening to sweating and fever. That will last for twelve to thirty-six hours. Then it settles in the intestinal tract, resulting in a high fever, and the body evacuating everything."
"Is it fatal?" Rey asks, noticing Rose going straight into her bedroom to lie down.
"Only in settlements where IV liquids and calories aren't available. Dehydration and malnutrition are the primary killers in people with Hiffa. If you can keep the patient well-hydrated and fed, they'll survive."
"And you can't make it go away."
"If it was standard Hiffa, I could, but it's a long-lasting virus, staying active in a person's system usually for three or four days after all symptoms have passed. For an anti-viral to work, people have to take it long after they're feeling better. Most of them don't. Which means that an anti-viral resistant strain has popped up, and that's the one you all have now."
"Wonderful."
MX-6 cocks his head. "Well, on the upside, in a week and a half, you'll all be immune to Hiffa."
"Lovely."
"Indeed." MX-6's blue light eyes glow at Rey as he says, "Do you think there's anything you can do?"
"That's the questions now, isn't it?"
It's not difficult to find Finn. Between the smell, and the retching noise, and the fact that like every other cottage on this planet, they've got one refresher, there was only one place he was going to be.
Rey knocks on the door, and quietly says, "Can I come in?"
There's a groan from the far side, and she takes that as a yes, and enters.
The smell was bad outside of the door. It's staggering inside. Finn's mostly naked, he's still got his sleep shirt on, curled on his side next to the toilet, smeared with some greenish brown stuff Rey would rather not contemplate, and she's sure Finn would have preferred it not have come out of his body.
But, today's not the day for getting what they wish for.
"Hey," she says softly.
He tilts his head in her direction. Waves of hurt and sad and awful are just pouring off of him.
"I'm sorry," comes out of his mouth. "We were out longer than we thought we'd be, so I made sure we rushed right home. Cut a day and a half off the trip. If we hadn't rushed home, this would have hit me on the Falcon and…" And whatever comes after that doesn't have a chance to get out of Finn's mouth because he's on his knees, throwing up again.
Rey kneels beside him, and rests her hands on his back. He's scalding hot to the touch, skin slick with sweat, and shivering as he retches. When she focuses on Finn, she can feel the virus. It's a stretchy dark muck flowing through his body. Tendrils of it weaving through every system of his body, the bulk of it lining his innards. Apparently, his body knows what it's doing. Most of the muck is in his guts, so it's emptying those guts out.
Getting a feel for it, she can see how it'll go, spreading along. It's tenacious, creeping into any system it can get a toehold in, and breeding fast. She can feel Finn's system trying to fight it. Trying to purge it. His light is on fire, burning it out. It's breeding faster than he's killing it, right now. But every load of it he gets out of his body, is more he doesn't have to kill, and it's not killing Finn's fire, so eventually, he'll beat this into submission on his own.
It's just not going to be even remotely fun.
The problem is, she doesn't, just by feeling, really have any sort of plan for what she can do to help this.
Other than lay her hands on Finn, and just wash him in a general sense of calm.
Judging by the way he's groaning and still throwing up, it probably doesn't help.
From there she checks Rose. It's there. Not as much, but it's there. She's in bed, on her side, curled into a tight ball, shivering. Her fever is coming up, but, at least now, it hasn't spread into her intestinal track.
And that's where the start of a plan begins. Maybe, if Rey can head this off…
Maybe.
From there she sprints up to Paige's room.
It is true that when Finn gets home, he does want to see his girls.
It's also true that when Finn gets home, he wants time with his wife. Alone time with his wife. So, it wasn't exactly an accident that he got home a few minutes after Paige went down for her long afternoon nap.
And when Paige got up from her nap, she got to have some quality time with Daddy and Mommy in the kitchens, eating supper, playing, and 'helping out' with food prep. (Mostly by gumming a few tiny bites of plum and apricot.)
And then Mommy put her down to bed, where she was in their home, on her own (Yes, there's a comm that Rose keeps on herself so she can hear what's going on in Paige's room) not breathing in the hazmat that was issuing from Finn's lungs.
So, unlike everyone else on Lirium, who spent at least six hours, in an enclosed space, with Finn, Paige spent about an hour and a half in her daddy's company.
And thus, when Rey gets up to Paige, and takes a moment to get a feel for her, she smiles. Paige certainly has the virus; it's there, but just a tiny tinge of it.
She lets the sleeping baby lie, creeps out, closing the door quietly, and then heading to Rose and Finn's bedroom. "I've got the start of a plan. I'm going to see if Chewie can help." In other circumstances that would have likely gotten some questions, but Finn just groans a bit, and Rose curls into a tighter ball, shivering harder.
She's at the Falcon a second later. "Chewie!"
A moment later, he sticks his head out of the hatch. Rey?
"Sorry to wake you." She explains what's going on, and follows that with, "How's the air cycling on the Falcon?"
Good enough.
She takes his hand, and lets her senses flow through him. "And you can't catch Hiffa."
Can't catch most viruses that humans can get.
"Feel like doing some babysitting?"
Sure.
"I'm not sure if it'll work, but I'm going to see which of the kids have a tiny viral load, see if I can kill it, and then get them on the ship with you. Get them out of here."
We can do that. I'll get it ready. Just make sure you're right about killing it. I've got one refresher, so I'm in no situation to deal with a bunch of kids with tummy bugs.
Rey's about to leave when she remembers last night. "Chewie, was that all right? Last night?"
Did you see it not being all right?
"I'm checking. You said, before, you wouldn't be in the same place with him."
Chewie shrugs a bit. If he was still the same man he was when he killed Han, I wouldn't be in the same place with him, but… If Han can forgive it, and he can start acting like a person… how can I not tolerate him?
She gives him a hug. "Thank you. He's…" she's not even sure what the word would be for this. "Intense, about you. Regrets what he did to you."
He damn well better. Not like he accidentally stepped on my toe or broke one of my toys.
"Yeah, he knows."
Good. Get me the kids.
"Okay, Paige, come here, Sweetie" Rey says to her niece.
Paige looks irked to be up this early. She's annoyed by the fact that her mama isn't cuddling her. She's disturbed by the loud retching sounds coming from the refresher, and the moaning between retches. She doesn't much like the smell also coming from the refresher, and Rey doesn't blame her one bit.
And, as a ten month old, she's expressing being irked the only way she knows how, by crying, loud and incessantly, because according to Paige, getting some cuddles with Mama and nursing is pretty much the only thing that could possibly fix matters.
"Sorry, baby, I'm pretty sure that's a really bad idea, now."
Paige is utterly un-mollified by that.
Rey closes her eyes and feels the virus moving through the baby in her hands. It's just wisps of it, right now. Faint smears of black muck. She can feel Paige's light, her immune system, gearing up, ready to fight, and she boosts it, a bit, feeling it attacking the black muck.
She focuses down further, feeling her own light, and setting it against the black. It's slow, and tiring, but she can surround and crush it. Split it up, scatter it, feed it to Paige's immune system, which is avenging against it, roaring in victory.
The little girl in her hands cries, fever spiking, sweating, her intestinal track making some unhappy rumbling noises. She spits up, a little, but by the time they're done, twenty minutes has passed, and the virus is gone.
"Okay, come on, Paige, I know you're not feeling very good right now, but it'll get better soon. We're going to go to PapaChewie, and he's going to get you in some clean air, and cleaned up." Rey doesn't waste any time, she ports Paige and her stuff directly to Chewie, who isn't exactly thrilled to be dealing with a messy baby, but, he understands.
He takes the baby girl in his massive hands, half-coos half-growls something comforting at her, and she does calm, a little.
He nods to Rey. The others?
I'm making house calls. We'll see who we can save from this.
The correct answer is: Paige. Everyone who spent the whole night in the kitchen is oozing with germs.
Except, apparently, Rey, Savarah, Xanth, and Cassie. The lightsiders with natural healing chops. The lightsiders with natural healing chops, who were so good at this healing thing, they didn't even have to focus on the virus to kill it. It just waltzed on into their systems, took a look around, and promptly died.
Five of them, against seventeen sick kids, and the Ticos.
And, she likely should have expected this, but Critt and Ostrae are sinking fast. Darklings both. Critt not only doesn't have any healing skills, but his dark is more or less rolling over and just giving up in the face of the virus. Ostrae's got no Force specialty of any sort, but apparently her personality alone is making her just spiral inward in a dark circle.
Jacen's up, eyes bright, fever bright, but he's all over keeping up with Critt. Enjoying getting to 'help take care of him' for as long as he can keep standing. Elias and Muni are sick, but not falling too hard too fast, not yet. They're fairly well balanced, but have enough light, and enough Force to help stall the virus. They've got Ostrae. Again, for as long as they can keep standing.
Rey's looking at them as she's leaving to go back to the Ticos. Hours… maybe a day, tops, and then it's going to be her, Kylo when he's not Mastering, MX-6, and three kids among nineteen violently sick people.
Rey sighs as she heads back to the Ticos. It's going to be a long week.
Unless… well, her immune system beat the virus into oblivion before it could get a foothold in her system. Cassie, Xanth, and Savarah's did the same. She got Paige's to beat it out, too. So… Maybe…
Kylo wakes with a jerk, head spinning, something just got his attention, but he doesn't know what.
And a second later, he doesn't care. His head hurts. So does his throat.
"Fuck you, Finn! Allergies my ass…" and then he starts to cough.
"Master Ren?"
That gets a jerk from him again. C8's voice. Probably what woke him up. He groans, and then opens an eye. Yes, he's at home, which means C8's getting him through the comm, which means… "What time is it?" followed by more coughing.
"Fifteen minutes until your meeting with Grand Admiral Schiff. Since your coffee was still waiting at your door, and I didn't hear or see you, I decided to risk calling."
"Good plan. Uh…" Kylo seriously thinks about sitting up, but that seems like it would take a stupidly large amount of energy. "C8, talk to Schiff, see if he actually needs to see me today."
"I can do that, sir. May I ask why?"
"I've got a cold. Some asshole didn't keep his germs to himself, and now I've got them, and Schiff is what… Eighty-seven?" Too fucking old to catch whatever the hell this is.
"Eighty-three, sir."
Kylo burrows deeper under his blankets. It's really fucking cold this morning. He's shivering. "If I've got this after spending an evening on the far side of the room from the guy, I really don't want to give it to Schiff, so…"
"Done, sir. I'll find out whether he actually needs to see you, and if he does, I'll patch his comm through to yours."
"Okay. Uh…" He's so tired. "Uh… If this is just our usual monthly meet up, reschedule it. And… Uh… Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and my datapads. If you could get them all on a tray or something… maybe with some extra blankets… I'll… stop by eventually and grab them. Try to work from home when I've gotten a bit more sleep."
"I'll take care of it, sir."
"Good." And then Kylo rolls over, burrows deeper into his blankets, mentally curses at Finn some more for giving him a cold, and goes back to sleep.
"There's got to be something you can do, right?" Finn says, wishing he was dead. "Like what you did for Paige?"
Yes, there's something she can do, but… By the time she got to Finn and Rose's second thoughts began to creep into her mind. "You probably won't like it," Rey says to Finn, who's half-lying on the floor, half pressing his head against the side of the toilet. She saw how Paige's body dealt with just a tiny bit of the virus when she ramped up her immune system. Finn's got a full on raging case of it, so…
His voice is rough as he says, "We're both going to be wishing we were dead in two hours if you don't do anything, and Paige can't spend forever with Chewie."
"Paige had barely any virus in her, and…"
"Just do it, Rey."
Rey looks over to the lump that's curled into a little ball on their bed. Rose isn't talking. She's shivering and sweating and getting worse by the minute so…
"Okay, but…"
"Do it."
Rey lays her hands on Finn's shoulders, letting her Force swim through his system, finding his immune system, feeling it fighting, hard, steady. The virus is reproducing faster than the immune system is killing it, for now, but it's not killing the white cells, which are reproducing faster than the virus.
His body will, on its own, eventually win this fight. She's just… speeding it up. Giving it reinforcements.
She focuses on that, on the little light sparks flowing through him, making them stronger, making them reproduce, getting more of them into his system, bolstering them in their fight.
She can feel his fever rising further, and he's shaking harder, and then he's not under her hands because he's lurched up to start throwing up again.
Rey's wincing as he messes himself. She's got his immune system on overdrive, and his immune system is fighting the virus, by excreting it and cooking it. She stays next to him, gently rubbing his back as his body does everything it can to empty itself, and when he's done, slumped back on the floor, she lets herself feel what she's done. "Two days, maybe three. They'll be rough, but you won't be down with this for ten days."
He nods, weekly, lying on his side again, eyes closed, skin slick with sweat.
"You empty?" she asks.
"Maybe."
He's… looking off. In a way Rey really doesn't like. And she's starting to have second… third… thoughts about having done this. "Okay, I'm going to clean you up as well as I can, then get you to the medbay. You're likely going to need intravenous fluids, and Rose isn't going to want to share a bathroom soon."
He groans at the thought of Rose, and then whispers, because his voice won't hold for regular speech, "Don't do this to her."
"How bad does it hurt?"
"Bad."
"Okay. You just lie there."
She can't get Finn cleaned up. Every time she tries, he's wracked with more spasms. There shouldn't be anything left inside him, and by the third or fourth time he's just retching, but…
Overkill. His immune system is fighting hard right now.
Too hard.
She's not sure if she can get it calmed back down, either. Or if she should try to mess with it any more than she already has.
MX-6 looks, as much as something with one expression can, concerned when Rey ports in with Finn cradled in her arms and Force, and very gently lowers him onto to one of the cots.
"What did you do to him?"
"Super-powered his immune system."
MX-6 tuts. "Are you sure that's wise, Rey?"
"No."
Finn's on his side, shaking. The droid steps closer, his "hand" which is set with several sensors, pressed to Finn's forehead. "His fever is at 40.1, and he's dehydrated…"
"You said that's common with Hiffa."
"Dehydration is, but usually not this soon after onset, and his temperature is much too high." The droid heads, quickly, to the supply room and comes out a moment later with a cooling blanket. As it's swaddling Finn in the hydromesh fibers, it says to Rey, "Most viruses and bacteria cannot survive at more than 37.2 temperature. The immune system, when working normally, will boost above that level. That said, humans cannot survive at above 40, not for long."
Shit. Rey doesn't need MX-6 to fill in the blanks for her. Get someone's immune system working too hard, and it'll cook them just as well as the germs.
"Might I suggest, that if you experiment with this more, that you don't 'superpower' any more immune systems. Maybe just a slight tweak?"
"Is he going to be okay?"
"Oh yes. The next few hours won't be much fun, but I can keep him hydrated and cool enough to avoid any permanent damage. If we couldn't, this absolutely would have been fatal, but as is, it'll just be deeply unpleasant."
Rey grits her teeth. "Wonderful."
"That said, dehydration is a very serious side effect of Hiffa, so when you are out and about, keep watch for signs of it. We'll likely need to run IV fluids in everyone with it, at least some of the time."
"Do we have enough IVs?"
MX-6 looks around. Right now the medbay has four beds set up. "I have eight beds, and I'll get them set up. So as long as we don't have to do everyone at once, I should be fine."
"Force willing."
"By all means, let the Master rest. The last thing we need is everyone coming down sick," Schiff says to C8. "Besides, for the first time since our meetings began, the only thing I have to report is that we've actually met our monthly targets. And that will certainly hold."
"Thank you, sir. I'll let him know."
"Did he tell you what he's down with?" Schiff asks. He probably shouldn't be, but he is curious as to what, possibly Kylo could have caught. And part of it is genuine curiosity. And part of it is that he, like the rest of the general staff, knows that, somehow, Kylo leaves the ship at night, and goes somewhere, and if he's got something exotic, that could help them figure out where he goes.
"He said it was a cold, and I could hear him coughing. Why sir?"
Schiff's grinning. "Because my wife makes the finest hot toddy ever. Whatever she puts in there'll cure anything that ails you. I have a feeling she'll appreciate him deciding my old bones didn't need to be exposed to whatever plague he's got. She'll stop by with a flask of it for him sometime today."
"I'll make sure he gets it, sir."
Schiff remembers the first time he noticed that Ren might be worth something. By the time the biggest chunks of the debris from the Supremacy were cleared, and they had a rough count of who among the officer class was still alive, Admiral Schiff was the highest ranking, longest serving naval officer. (Though they did have to call him in from the Uquistor system, 297,000 light years away from the Supremacy. Which did, indeed, have a lot to do with him being the highest ranking, longest serving naval officer left.)
And, he was the only one Hux could stand. (Possibly because the entirety of the two of them interacting with each other was a ten minute call in which Hux informed him of the disaster with the Supremacy and pointed out he needed a Grand Admiral, ten minutes ago, and barring that, as soon as possible. The trip, at hyperspeed, should have taken nine days. He got his personal Navi team to cut it down to six. And then he took command, through his comm system, while en route. When he arrived, he'd been running what was left of the First Order Navy, save the Supremacy, for almost a week, competently. Then he showed Hux the navi chart they used, and from then on Hux was almost bordering on pleased with him.)
So that put him in a very good position.
After the battle of Crait, he, like most of the professionals in what was left of the First Order, was stuck in a situation where they could back the technological wonder child who very clearly spurted in his trousers when he blew up an entire system, or they could back the unstable rage puppy with the Vader fetish.
And though all of them would have preferred a different set of people to champion (many hearts broke the day it became clear that Captain Phasma was not going to be rejoining the high command, in that she seemed fairly stable and was decently popular with the troops, she was the one many of them wished had survived), that's who they had.
And for Schiff, it wasn't even a remotely difficult decision.
At almost 81, he was too damn old to go rogue again. It was one thing when the Emperor fell, thirty-three years ago. He was in his prime, and he had a command of professionals he could count on. Back then he didn't need to even think about it. He watched the second Death Star blow, sent the order for his command to get out and regroup, and once everyone still alive had been counted, he and his got out of anything approaching Rebel territory and began to reassess the situation with an outlook as to what was likely to happen next.
For Schiff and most of his colleagues, execution for war crimes was the answer, so they decided not to attempt to seek a peace.
And between then and Snoke's rise, he and his gathered strength, and took over a fairly comfortable chunk of the galaxy.
That fairly comfortable chunk was, unfortunately, located too close to Snoke. And when Snoke rose, Schiff ran the numbers, and rapidly decided that if he stood against him, he'd be ground to dust, but if he offered to take him and his in, they'd likely be able to continue as they had been. So, he threw in with the monster.
When Snoke fell, he was too old, and didn't trust enough of his command, to go rogue.
So, the technological horror or the rage puppy.
Schiff went all in for Hux. Even with what Hux had done to the Imperial Officer class. Even though Hux wasn't much of a military tactician; he enjoyed killing people way too much to be a functional military leader. If Schiff had had his way, Hux wouldn't have commanded anything that was even close to lethal. Instead, he would have given Hux as many credits and people as he wanted and let him build his own research center. In the hands of a competent tactician, Starkiller, that tracking device, the plethora of other gadgets Hux came up with, would have made the most effective military force ever to fly this galaxy.
And while Hux didn't have a whole lot of use for Imperials, he very much had a use for Imperials who were good tacticians who actually understood what he did and appreciated it.
So, yes, once it became clear Snoke was out, and Ren was in, and Hux was going to get him out, Schiff went all in for Hux. Better a genius sociopath, a predictable genius sociopath, than a toddler having tantrums.
The day Schiff arrived, Hux had called together a meeting, with all of what was left of the high command, and Ren, and offered up a carefully curated collection of things that needed to be done to get the First Order into something remotely like flying shape. Anyone with any technical background could see that some of the things on the list were the equivalent of buffing the rivets to a high shine, (and one of them literally was buffing the rivets to a high shine) and some of them were literal life and death matters.
The idea was to have Ren set the 'priorities' of the list.
Hux, of course, had set this up for Ren to pick the obvious, and in several cases, wrong, things, to show off how incompetent he was as a leader. Because, after all, at that point, not everyone was all in for Hux, and not everyone understood what he could bring to the table as the Supreme Leader.
Schiff, having written half of the list, understood that the man who sent the whole fleet after one fucking ship less than an hour after the Navy had been decimated by a suicide attack, was not competent to be anywhere near the Supreme Command, so he was willing to do what was necessary to take him out.
Granted, at that point, literally all he knew about Ren was his folly at Crait, his reputation for extremely destructive temper tantrums, that he was a personal attaché for Snoke, and that he had some sort of Force skills. And he had his entire army shoot at a phantom. (At least, according to Hux, Ren was screaming about shooting something, but none of them could see whatever it was. Other versions of the story indicated Luke Fucking Skywalker was there, withstood the bombardment, because of course he did, and then Ren took the field and physically cut him in half. That's part of the reason Schiff backed Hux, Luke Skywalker appearing out of nowhere to stand off against the land force of the First Order sounded like a ghost story. But… Schiff wasn't there. And in the years since, he's come to the conclusion that Luke Fucking Skywalker probably was there, but it also didn't matter. Ren's not the first commander he's served under to see the occasional ghost or make a stupid decision. He is one of the few who's attempted to learn from his mistakes and do better, and that's worth a LOT.)
So, he walked in with his mind shut. That rumor about Force sensitivity was far too likely to be true, so he thought about literally nothing but the contents of the list.
He expected Ren to just glance at it, pick the top five, and then command they do them.
He was pleased to see Ren actually read every item on the list. (The list was one hundred and seventy-three items long, intentionally.) And… he didn't hate seeing Ren carefully question Hux on some of the items which, given the dense tech writing around them, Ren didn't understand, but once he grasped they were in fact the equivalent of buffing the rivets, he just looked at Hux, and Schiff realized that Ren knew exactly what Hux was doing.
For a heartbeat, Schiff tensed, ready and waiting for Ren to pull his saber, and Hux to pull that mono-molecular blade he was rumored to keep on his wrist, but Ren went back to reading the list. Apparently, he knew, for the time being, he needed Hux to keep the First Order flying.
And that intrigued Schiff, because apparently, there was a chance that Ren might actually win this thing. There was a chance Ren might, possibly, be good for the First Order. Sitting there, watching Ren read the list, the idea that maybe there might be someone who wouldn't run the First Order into the ground, or kill it for kicks and giggles, began to spread through Schiff's mind.
As he was realizing that, Ren looked up at him, just for a few seconds, and then went back to the list.
And then Ren continued to read the entire list. And asked more questions. And then he began to pick.
He got the obvious ones. Obviously, hull structural integrity, restoring the grav field to the entire ship, restoring life support to the whole ship, and full communications through the entire fleet had to happen. If he hadn't picked them, they likely would have just started ignoring his orders from that moment on.
Then he spent a moment looking at the list, and said, "Air cycling? Is that not part of life support?"
"No, Ren," Hux replied. Half the table tensed because Hux hadn't said Supreme Leader or My Lord. They slowly relaxed as it became clear Ren wasn't going to hit him for it. "It's the system that cleans the air."
Ren's eyes narrowed slightly, and he just looked at Hux again. Schiff doesn't know what Ren was thinking. He does know what he was thinking, namely the rumor that Hux got his rank by offering a report on the woeful inadequacies of the security of the kitchens, taking advantage of said inadequacies, slipping poison into the kitchen system and not being willing to administer the antidote until he got his stripes. (And the fixes he designed to safeguard the kitchens were approved.)
Snoke gave him those stripes.
The kitchen improvements were implemented.
And everyone didn't die.
"Cleans it how?" Ren asked.
"In a good system, if filters out dust particles, makes sure the gaseous mix is ideally suited for the people on the ship, kills germs."
Ren nodded, and looked over the list. "We don't need a state of the art one to keep flying, do we?"
"It will have absolutely no impact on the ability of the Supremacy to keep flying," Hux replied.
But Schiff, and anyone else who knew ships, which was at least two third of the officers at that table, knew that without correct air cycling, they'd all die of CO2 poisoning, or someone would get sick and it would spread through the ship like wildfire, or just… Just dust. Without cycling, the dust builds up, and it gets static charges, and next thing you know a chunk of your ship just exploded.
But, no, it doesn't, immediately, or literally, effect the ability of the ship to fly, at all.
Kylo spent another moment reading, and then nodded, and said, "When we do the life support systems, make sure air cycling is working properly, and upgrade it if it needs it. The absolute last thing we can afford right now is for our surviving soldiers to get sick."
The rest of the crew looked at each other, and one, General Hapian, said, timidly, "My lord, what about our weapons system?" There were multiple versions of upgrade/fix/secure/improve the weapons systems on the list. Schiff still isn't sure if Hapian asked about the weapons because he was one of Hux's plants, or because, as a General, he didn't exactly grasp how precarious their situation was.
Either way, Kylo said to him. "Who exactly do you think is going to attack us? The Resistance is down to one ship, and when they called for help, no one was willing to come. Thanks to General Hux, the New Republic is no longer an issue. Our surviving fighters and destroyers will keep us covered as well as we'll need, but for the time being we have to secure the space we all currently living in."
One of the others, and Schiff knew he was a Hux plant, asked, "Shouldn't we at least attempt to find the number of dead and wounded."
Ren sagged a little, and then said, "We already know the number. Too many. But the dead aren't going to get any less dead. And if we haven't found someone who's wounded by now, they aren't going to survive. So we'll focus on getting our home back and flying so we have a place for our living members."
That was the moment that Schiff switched alliances.
He knew, that given time and enough money, Hux could design a fantastic air cycling system. Assuming those reports that Hux wrote after Ren gave his commands were even close to true, he did. He also knew that Hux was the kind of man who might put poison in it just for kicks.
Ren, meanwhile, chose it, over weapons, over his own comforts (and they were on the list) because he didn't want his men to get sick.
And now, more than two years later, as the chill of old age is seeping into Schiff's bones more and more each day, he's appreciating that again.
Because if whatever cold Ren has is the sort of thing that would take him down overnight. It's the sort of thing that could have killed Schiff.
And when he explains it to his wife, she's also pleased by the idea that Ren valued her husband's health enough to not meet with him.
Though, because she's been with the Empire, and then several years when Schiff was a renegade on his own, and then the First Order, she does ask him, "Do you think the air cycling Hux put in works?"
Schiff sighs. "I'll put it on the list of things to double check."
Just because Hux could design an amazing air cycling system, and just because he reported implementing one, didn't mean he did, or for that matter that he didn't sneak some sort of kill switch in there, just because the idea of using it amused him.
And if the Master is sick, now would be an excellent time to make sure the air cycling on the Supremacy works.
On Rey's second set of rounds through the Maji, Jacen and Critt volunteer to be test subjects. She can feel that for Jacen, this is a chance to be useful, in a way most of the rest of the group just can't. As soon as there's someone besides Rey who's vaguely adult and functional here, the better. Plus, (and this is likely a sign of exactly how sick Jacen is, normally he's much better at keeping his desires under wraps) he's clearly radiating that the sooner he's feeling better the more he can put into taking care of Critt (he's got some awfully detailed fantasies of doing so), who's a shivering lump in the next bed, occasionally moaning.
That said, one of those moans is "Me, too." so, apparently anything Jacen can do, Critt can do, too.
Maybe. Rey's feeling awfully skeptical about attempting to mess with Critt's system.
She doesn't pump Jacen's immune system nearly as high as she did Finn's, but, just like with Finn, in a matter of minutes he's gone from bad to worse, and any hopes he may have had at taking care of Critt are gone in a wave of stomach emptying nausea and brown-green excretions.
She did not, apparently, nail slightly more.
Which means bringing Jacen to the medbay, where he, too gets his own cooling blanket, IV drip, and a gentle sponging off as needed. (Which he, unfortunately, needs more often than he'd like.)
MX-6, by virtue of his mechanical face, cannot look skeptical, but apparently he can project that feeling awfully strongly, as he's swaddling yet another of Rey's charges in a cooling blanket to keep his body from cooking his brain past the point he can heal.
Or maybe it's just staring at two people she's more than rather fond of, who, in her attempt to make them better, all she appears to have done is make them worse is eating at Rey.
Then she's back to Critt. "Are you sure you want to try this?"
He's pale, and shaking, but not quite at the puking up his guts part of the illness, yet. "If you can figure this out, all of us can get better fast, right?"
"Faster."
"Bring it on."
"Okay."
With Critt she keeps him at about half as much as Jacen and gets the same result, if slightly less bad.
Sitting between Critt and Finn in the medbay, Rey's gritting her teeth, and getting the sense that when you get a nasty virus your immune system goes after it as hard as it can without killing you. Making it do more is likely not a good plan.
She wonders how many of the first Jedi accidentally killed their patients by pushing their immune systems too hard.
She sits between them, head in her hands, and tries to think, or barring that, feel a way to make this better.
Two hours after talking to the Grand Admiral, C8 adds a small flask, with a pretty ribbon around the neck, to the tray of breakfast, lunch, and dinner sitting on the table in Kylo's room. Attached to the pretty ribbon is a note: "Grandmere Schiff's hot toddy. Pour 10 mls into warm tea or cider. Good for sore throats and cough. Thanks for not spreading the germs! –Thea Schiff"
After all, just because her husband has obtained the highest rank in the Order, short of Master of the Order, doesn't mean that Thea Schiff stopped playing the game.
"Thoughtful" little gifts to keep your commanders thinking well of you is part and parcel of being an officer's wife, and she's very good at her job.
Making sure the other officers' wives that she likes also get a heads up, is also part of the job. After all, a good tide rises all boats, and Thea Schiff isn't about to let a good tide go to waste.
By the time her husband has gotten the first report back on the full diagnostic on the Supremacy's air cycling system (Yes, it works just fine. Yes, there's a kill switch in there. And yes, they found the cyanide tubes. And, of course, yes, as of right now, there doesn't appear to be a way to remove the tubes without killing the Supremacy's life support system, but… Well, that's why they've got engineers and back-up systems. Fucking Hux!) there is a collection of little bottles of various teas, salves, lozenges, and home remedies from all over the galaxy, each with a thoughtful little note, all waiting for the Master or his Lady to come pick them up.
There's a heartbeat where Kylo's awake and doesn't know why he's awake. A moment when he's just blinking and…
And it's over, and his body is bolting for the refresher as fast as it can while trying to simultaneously curl in on itself as his guts scream and spasm into the worst cramp he's ever had.
Whatever the fuck Finn brought home, it's not a bloody cold.
It's almost bad enough for him to call out to Rey, but if he's this sick, and she's… not here… Fuck… He doesn't know if she's sick or well or tending to others, and… He hurts. He hurts so bad, and his body is spewing everything he's ever eaten out of it, and…
And in a moment he went from being afraid to call out because he doesn't want her to get ill, to being so bad off he can't focus down well enough to scream out with his Force for hers.
"Rey?" Xanth says to her, as she's making rounds. Mostly just cleaning up, making sure the sick kids have blankets and towels and a soft hand to pet them from time to time. Make them feel more comfortable.
"Hey," she says, quietly.
"We've got the kitchen and chapel cleaned out. There's not a speck of virus alive in either of them." Granted, that wasn't terribly difficult. Hiffa can't survive below 15 degrees for more than an hour, so they just opened the doors to any room that didn't have people in it.
"Good."
Xanth nods to Opal and Tourine, both of whom are lying on the floor. They're hot, so, so hot, and the floor is cool tile, so that's where they are. "They look so sad."
"Yeah, I know."
"Immune boosting doesn't work?"
She half-shrugs. Finn might be getting better, at least, his fever's gotten low enough he's no longer in the danger zone. "The side effects are really nasty."
"Oh." He sits on the floor next to the twins, gently stroking their shoulders, getting a feel for the muck of the virus. "Have you tried killing it?"
"A little, with Paige. It's reproducing faster than I was killing it."
He nods, and then says, "Every one dead is one that doesn't make any more viruses."
"That's true. Feel it. Can you find a way to kill them without having to do it yourself?"
"Why not myself?" He's looking up at her, concerned.
"How many hours do you want to spend doing this? Everyone still needs nursing and cleaning and tea and…" And Rey's been up for almost twelve hours now, which isn't unusual, but she only got three hours of sleep before that, so she's tired.
Xanth nods. "Let me see what I can do."
"Thanks. It's been a long day, make sure all of you get rest, too."
"Uh huh… Are you getting a nap?"
Rey looks at the twins on the floor. She's not really doing anything to help anyone, just going from cottage to cottage and mopping up messes. But right now, she can't think of anything else that might help. She just feels stuck.
And maybe part of being stuck is she hasn't eaten anything since dinner and it's well past lunchtime. No food and three hours of sleep isn't a good combination for easy work. And this isn't easy work.
Rey stands up. "Yes, actually. Sleep and food. We can't take care of anyone else if we're exhausted. I'm going to rest a bit, and I'll make rounds again before dinner. And maybe, if I actually rest, I'll get some new ideas for how to fight this."
Xanth nods at that. "Good. I'm off to Kven's next. We've always gotten on well, maybe I'll have better luck with his system."
Rey nods, and heads toward her cottage.
Rey's a few steps from the door when she feels it. The rush of fear and pain and…
She's bounding forward, into the house, and as soon as she does, she feels it, and smells it. Kylo didn't dodge this bolt. She winces. She'd been so focused on everyone else, that she just didn't think… Kylo's always so Kylo. He kept fighting with what would have been on anyone else a mortal wound, with a saber through his shoulder, with… He'd go weeks without sleep back in the day. He's indestructible. She knows, rationally, that he isn't, but... He is.
The idea that he even could get sick just never occurred to her.
But it should have. She's mentally berating herself for not checking in on him the minute she saw how fast Critt and Ostrae were dropping.
"Kylo?" He's obviously not in their living area or kitchen. "Love?" Her voice is low, and she's hoping to find him curled into a ball, sleeping.
He's not on their bed. And really, if she can feel the waves of pain, she knows he's not going to sleep through them.
The door to their refresher is shut.
"Kylo?" She's intentionally keeping her voice low. His pain's eased off some, a general ache instead of flaming rips of pain through his guts. Now there's just this muzzy murk on the far side of the door.
"I'm gonna come in, okay?"
That gets a response. No.
She rests her hand on the door. He's hurting, well, they all are. And likely messy, but… Not like she hasn't been hip deep in sick today. Embarrassed, but… well… Again, everyone who's got this is in pretty sad shape, so… He won't be the first person who didn't get the right part of himself aimed at the toilet in time, and given how this is going, he's not going to be the last, either.
She sits against the door, back to it, and lets her Force find his, and just like Critt, which should have been a major clue, his system is useless at this. The germs are rampaging around through him, meeting pretty much no resistance.
His fever is high, muscles shaking, sweating… seems to have gotten himself into the shower, so he's got water running over him, so there's something… It's not the mess, the shower's helping with that, so it's not too bad, it's the smell. He hates the smell.
Yeah, I could have gone the whole rest of my life without ever smelling that, too. She thinks to him.
She feels a tiny little half smirk on the other side of the door. And then feels the whimper. Even that level of moving hurts.
How long? She thinks to him.
I don't know. I… C8 woke me up. I wasn't feeling good. I told him I had a cold and went back to sleep.
"That was smart, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is sleep." She can feel the sound of her voice is too harsh right now. Any sound is.
Not sleeping anytime soon. What time is it?
Early afternoon. Bit after lunch. Have you eaten anything?
Not since last night.
You keeping anything down.
No.
Okay.
He's quiet for a long time, just lying there, on his side, letting the water flow over him, not really present, or too present in how awful his body feels right now. Eventually, though he thinks, You're not sick?
Me, Savarah, Xanth, and Cassie didn't get it at all. Chewie's immune. Paige had a small enough dose of it, I could kill it, and she's with Chewie now.
Good. Everyone else?
Everyone else.
Can you do anything for them?
Rey sighs. Sort of. Finn and Critt and Jacen decided to be the test subjects. I can… she makes herself not sigh in defeat…'help' your immune system, make it do a better job fighting this.
She feels him almost perk up at that idea.
Yeah, don't get excited. All I did was make them go from bad to worse. Increasing your immune response means the fever spikes higher, you shake harder, your body gets rid of everything faster, and… off to the medbay with you for IV fluids, cooling blankets, and round the clock mopping off. Hopefully, you feel better in a few days instead of a week. That's the trade off. Right now Finn, Critt, and Jacen would tell you, if they could talk, but they can't, not to do it.
He groans out loud at that. Hurt long and slow, or hurt excruciating and faster.
You want help? she thinks to him.
I want to die. They both know he's not, really, serious.
Too bad. Not happening today.
She feels him tentatively attempt to move around a little, and the way everything hurts.
Can this actually get worse?
I really can't tell from this side of the door. What I can say, with absolute certainty, is there's nothing on the side with you I haven't already seen and smelled at least three times today, and I'm sure cleaning things up a bit and airing them out might make you feel a little better.
He's not thinking in words, just feeling the shame of being so sick he can't clean up after himself, and so sick he needs to. That's at war with the idea of maybe some clean towels in here, or possibly the room smelling a little better, and just having her nearer would make him feel better.
You won't catch this?
If I was going to, I'd be in there with you, also lying on the floor. I wasn't just in the Falcon with Finn helping to unload, I also hugged him and he kissed my cheek when he got back, and you got home an hour into the fruit cooking party, so… If I could get this, I'd be down with it. She also hits him with a little flash of what they were doing last night, while his body was apparently simmering away with germs and hers was happily killing them off en masse.
"Come in."
She braces herself for a moment, and then opens the door, and… Okay, it's messy, but… Well, it's just him in there, not say, him and two hut mates, so… She's seen worse today.
He's in the shower, lying on his side, letting the… she tests it, and right now it's just warm. Their hot water heater is likely doing the best it can, but once the tank is empty, best is just a hair over normal body temperature… Luke warm water rinse over him.
She shuts it off and squats next to him, gently petting his hair and shoulder.
"Hey."
He nuzzles a little into her touch, but doesn't say anything or open his eyes. She can feel that he's shivery, hurting, miserable, his insides on fire, trying to claw their way out, but… He's empty, too. Nothing left to come out, now. Though that wasn't true when he crawled in here. He was feeling too weak to really walk or sit, so he dragged himself in here, turned on the water, and collapsed on his side. He didn't want to have to lie in his own mess, and this took care of that.
She strokes his shoulders again, and does what she can to help with the pain.
At least that's something her Force is actually good for. Healing may be the sort of thing that's going to be a trial by fire, but comfort… Okay, yeah, he's not in any way shape or form better but some of the edges have been worn soft.
She sees him relax a little as that hits, and then shiver that much harder when his muscles try to relax.
She offers him a little squeeze to his shoulder.
"Okay, I'm going get you up, dry you off, and then put you in bed, okay?"
"Nghn."
She understands that as concern from him about not wanting to mess their bed.
"They're just sheets and an air mattress. We'll get new ones if we need them. You don't need to be on a cold, wet tile floor."
"Mrhmp."
"Come on."
She gets him hovering in the air, finds a clean towel, and gently blots him off. And, like with everyone else she's touched today, even the softest touch makes him ache. "I know, love, I know. I'm going as fast as I can. Get you all nice and dry, and into bed, under the warm blankets." She feels him perk up a little at the idea of nice, warm blankets. "Hold on." She spreads the towel on the floor, and gently sets him back down. He makes a slightly annoyed sound at that, but not enough to actually complain.
She can feel just being aware of her has him tired enough that talking either with his voice or mind is too much to ask, so she just explains. "I'm going to get the blankets, and put them in the oven on low for a little bit.
A pleased sort of purr slips through his mind.
"Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Back in a second."
She carefully picks her way out of the bathroom, grabs the blankets, does stick them in the oven on warm, and then also grabs her rags and cleaning supplies. When she heads back to the bathroom, she sets them on the sink, and then again, gently gets him hovering, this time she slips him through the air to their bed, lowering him onto the mattress. "You're on top of the sheets right now. Warm blankets coming soon." She drapes the towel he'd been lying on over him, and remembers she has access to a place with a lot more blankets and towels, and then flashes, fast, to the Supremacy. Apparently he'd felt well enough to ask for… quite a bit of food, and… blankets and whatnot. And… Okay, the news must have spread, because there's this… heap of presents, next to the food and blankets. The only names on the tags she recognizes are Schiff and Mitaka. She grabs them, along with extra pillows, and the datapads on the top of his desk. He's not going to want them now, but maybe in a few days.
He purrs again when she piles the extra blankets on top of him.
There's a bottle here from Lady Schiff. It's got something in it that's supposed to be good for sore throats and coughs.
That gets his attention enough, that he explains, Cancelled my appointment with Schiff. Didn't want him to get sick. I guess she was pleased.
Looks like she spread the word. There's the bottle from her, and something like ten other little get well soon presents. Maybe in a few days, they'll help you feel better.
But she realizes as she says that, that he's asleep.
The less said about cleaning up the bathroom, the better. Still, in the cosmic scale of things, dealing with puke and shit isn't that bad. It's mostly just annoying.
People get sick, they make messes, and sometimes, they aren't strong enough to clean up their own mess, so they need people who love them to do the cleaning.
She snerks a little at that idea, thinking that if she wrote it down, put it in some sort of pretty calligraphy on a nice piece of paper, and maybe picked some more impressive words, that'd be something Majis a thousand years from now would consider a particularly deep and meaningful meditation on the nature of love.
And maybe it is.
Or maybe it's just cleaning some stray poop off the floor.
Either way, it's real.
She gets a lot less nap than she'd been hoping for. She just can't sleep next to Kylo when he's hurting that bad. He's asleep, mostly. Every hour or so he lurches up toward the refresher to take care of business, and then she mops him off and tucks him back into bed. But, even if he were fully asleep, just being near him makes her want to do something.
But right now, she doesn't know what.
The absolute last thing she wants to do is make him feel worse.
Right now, as she's getting ready to drag herself out to check on everyone else, he's curled into a tiny little ball on their bed. It's amazing to her how small he can pull himself. A man his size shouldn't be able to turn into a child-sized lump. But sick and shivery and too hot and too cold and hurting from head to toe, he can.
Rey wants to just sit by his side, hover, pet him, and… her Force may not fix this, but he does seem slightly more comfortable with her near.
But she's got nineteen other people to tend to, too.
She kisses Kylo's forehead, the only bit of him peeking out from under the blankets. "I'm going to go check on everyone else. I'll be back, soon."
He moans a little.
She bundles up to… and then it occurs to her that she's been in everyone's rooms, so there's no reason for her to walk through the cold to get to them.
She takes the overcoat and gloves and scarf off, and ports directly to the medbay first, to check in and see how everyone is doing.
Awful.
Everyone is doing awful.
Finn's fucking gray. Yeah, she did a fucking lovely job there. His immune system is up and working super double overtime, killing those germs left and right, and even with an IV to keep fluids streaming into him, he's excreting them almost as fast and…
She's holding his hand, and can feel this, she hasn't literally killed him, she's just made him wholeheartedly wish he was dead.
Jacen and Critt aren't all that much better. They're at least keeping some fluids inside themselves and able to sleep, a little at least.
"Any new ideas on how to help?" MX-6 asks.
Rey can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not.
Mostly she just wants to rewind time and leave well enough alone.
Time doesn't seem to be interested in going along with that.
She ports from one cottage to the next, wiping up messes, applying cool, damp towels to foreheads, making sure that everyone who can keep a little tea down gets some. (Or everyone who isn't throwing up yet gets as much tea as they can hold. She's fairly sure that starting everyone off well-hydrated helps some… right?)
As she shifts from home to home, she finds Cassie, Xanth, and Savarah with their friends. Cassie was getting a rest. Xanth was sitting with Kven, holding his hand, staring at him. Rey can feel he's thinking and feeling, so she doesn't interrupt. Savarah's with Magiit and Marrock. Both of them are pale and shaky, but still in the coughing stage of things. She's got them sipping tea and resting.
Calm before the storm.
Rose is full in the storm. Rey gently gathers her up and ports her to the medbay.
This time MX-6 appears to be pleased. "Good timing, she's just on the verge of dehydrated. We'll get an IV going. It's probably time to start bringing in everyone else who's gotten to the throwing up part of this. Cycle them through so we can get more liquids into them."
"How long does an IV bag take?"
"Half an hour." He looks to the three beds with Critt, Jacen, and Finn in them. "I can take five at a time now."
"Fortunately, right now, we don't have five in need of fluids… Yet." Rey's looking around at the empty beds, and thinking about who's going to need them, soon.
And who needs one, now.
Kylo's skin isn't gray with dehydration. But the only reason Rey knows that is because she's seen Finn. Otherwise, she'd think Kylo's gray. And, for a moment, part of her wants to take him to the medbay, here, where she can stay nearer to him.
And part of her knows that if he's in the medbay, he's going to get one eighth of MX-6's attention, because the droid won't play favorites. Or she can take him to the Supremacy where they will devote more than enough medical attention to him, only him, and no one else.
"We're going back to the Supremacy." She says, as she starts to gently lift him a bit, cradling him in her arms.
He makes a I'd rather not sort of groan. There's a vague thought in his mind that bringing a virulent pathogen onto a sealed ship with millions of people on it is likely a terrible idea.
"I know, but every IV in our medbay is in use or will be shortly, and you need one, too, so… I'm taking you where you can get one."
He groans at that, too.
And then he's in his bed, on the Supremacy and the sheets are too cold, and the blankets aren't deep enough, and everything hurts, and… fuck…
She can feel how much he really didn't want to move.
And then she feels how much he has to move now.
And, of all the things Rey's seen him do, this was likely the top of the list he would have preferred her not to have her witness, but, he trips over his feet three steps into his run for the refresher because he's hit the point where he just can't hold himself up all that well. Which means he needs help getting to the refresher and he's just boiling in the shame of it, but…
Rey hovers him up into the air, making small soothing sounds, and settles Kylo back into bed, really hoping he'll just passes out again soon. He doesn't actually need to go to the refresher because there's nothing left in him to come out. Probably another hint she needed to get him hooked up to an IV a lot sooner.
He moans as the sheets touch his skin. COLD!
Nothing much she can do about the sheets being cold here, but… She probably could put them in the oven, and they'd still feel cold to him. She nestles Kylo into the bed, strokes his hair and face, feels him writhe and moan for a few minutes, dry retching, and then settle back down into mindless oblivion.
She kisses his forehead. "I love you." Then she heads to the door to his office.
"C8," Rey says; she's not entirely sure where the droid is. Not in Kylo's room.
But, within seconds of her voice, Rey hears the click of metal feet on metal flooring, along with the glow of his eyes lighting up.
"Mistress Ren."
"Kylo's sick. He needs fluids, but can't keep them down. Can you get a med-droid in here, without everyone seeing/hearing/noticing?"
C8 thinks about it. "How literally do you mean everyone? The med-droids are fairly small, but an IV unit and diagnostic kit, along with whatever the droid deems necessary to take care of the issue can take up space."
"Don't need diagnostics. He's got Hiffa virus."
"How did he get Hiffa virus? There are only active outbreaks on a handful of planets on the rim." Kylo's certainly told her that C8's not supposed to be able to have emotional processing, but he's sounding awfully surprised and horrified at this.
She just looks at him.
"Another question about what happens when he's not here that I'm not supposed to ask?"
"Yes."
"And I can assume, you'd prefer I didn't enlist Lt. Colonel Frakes or Grand Marshal Kinear in this endeavor because you'd prefer to minimize the risk of them getting sick."
"I'd really appreciate it. Especially Kinear. The only people who die from this are very old, very young, or already sick, and I think he qualifies as very old."
"I'll figure something out."
"Thank you."
Twenty-five minutes later, when a laundry droid comes rolling into Kylo's room to grab his hamper, (and it does seriously need grabbing, Rey brought their soiled linens with them.) Rey's very pleased to see it, if a little put out because Kylo's skin is getting grayer by the moment, and he's hit the point where he's not sweating anymore, and if there's not an IV in him in less than five minutes, she's porting him directly to the medbay, everyone else be damned.
When, instead of scooting over to the laundry hamper, the top opens and a med-droid, along with a collection of… things, pops out, she smiles.
These med-droids don't talk. They're the small spherical units that work mostly on stitchery and patching people up, so they don't need to. Their various sensors can scan a whole body and figure out what's wrong, though, so that's likely all they need.
She gently tugs the blankets off of Kylo, and he complains about that, trying to burrow deeper into her, seeking more warmth, because now he's cold to go with fever-shivering, but he doesn't seem to actually wake up.
The droid does its scans, and sets up an IV with both fluids and something to keep his nausea levels down. It then attempts to put the IV into Kylo. That wakes Kylo up.
He's not on board with that plan, doing his best to get his arm away from the droid. Rey gets a good grip on him, and uses her Force to keep him still while the droid inserts the tube and tapes it in place. She relaxes her grasp on him once it's done, and Kylo tries to rip the IV out. She's got to hold him down until he just can't fight it anymore. And as much as Kylo would prefer her not see him so sick he's not able to move around well, Rey would have preferred to never have to do that. He hates this so much and he's hurting so bad, and the IV hurts worse, and right now she just can't explain to him why he needs it, not in a way he can understand, and… She'll take a million years of cleaning poop off the floor over having to do this again.
Fortunately, there's something in the IV to help him sleep, too, or just the painkiller is working, and he goes soft and limp in her arms in a minute or two.
Once the IV is in, and Kylo's out again, the droid spits out a report for her, and nothing's new. He's got Hiffa. He's dehydrated. (There's some scolding about not getting an IV into him as soon as he started throwing up, but… nothing she can do about that now.) This particular variant is anti-viral resistant. They can add something to lower his fever, but that'll just extend the amount of time he's sick.
She says no to the fever reducer.
The droid hovers in a way that looks a bit like nodding, and then settles on the table, moving into wait mode. In three hours, it'll switch out his IV, and keep doing that until he can take fluids by mouth.
2/1/2
Rey has never felt this useless in her life.
What she wants to do, needs to do, feels like she should be able to do is to settle down, feel the thrum of the Force, guide and ride it, and then make all of her loves go bouncing up, hale and hearty, or, well, maybe pale and shaky, but no longer projectile excreting everything that's ever had the misfortune to end up inside their bodies.
And, okay, if that's not possible, she at least should have been able to figure that her favorite Darkling would have come down with this within seconds of it starting up, and gotten his butt here, on the Supremacy within minutes, so that he could have a personal med-droid tending to him, making sure he didn't get that dehydrated.
Barring that, she'd settle for being able to curl against Kylo, snuggle him, wrap him in her Force, and try to at least comfort him.
And, as long as she's actively doing that, he seems at least a hair better.
But if she gets up to deal with the nineteen other people, who also need her, he goes back to shaking and moaning.
She hates this, he's so weak and sad and hurting, every time he gets toward waking up, he flails ineffectively at his IV. If he was healthy, he could pull it out with his mind, and seeing him just sort of slap at it because he can't coordinate his hand well enough to close around the tube… Her resolve to go and heal everyone else falters. Kylo needs her, and maybe she can't heal him, but just being near means he's better, but…
They need her, too. She kisses Kylo and pulls herself away from him. He starts to shiver harder as soon as she's not touching him, so she grabs one of the blankets from home and tucks it over him, careful with his IV line. She sighs at that, all the more reason to get back to Lirium, fast.
She's doing fuck all as a healer, but because she can teleport, and because the bloody weather is doing everything it can to fuck with them, it's howling snow at Lirium, so she's the most effective way to get her Maji from their homes to the medbay, so they too can get hooked up to the IVs.
So, she strokes Kylo's dry sweat crusted hair, kisses his brow, and then ports back home, to begin shuffling kids from their homes to the medbay, because even if she can't fix this, she can at least make sure her people don't die from it.
It never occurred to her that teleporting would be tiring.
It just didn't.
Probably because she's never done it more than two or three times in a row.
One hour per IV bag. Port one Maji to the medbay, then another, and another and another, until all five of the beds not filled by Finn, Critt, and Jacen are filled. Port them back as they finish. Get new Maji to fill the now empty beds.
On the upside, she's not on cleaning duty. Which is exhausting and gross. (Though the less said about the condition of her clothing, the better. She's never wanted to burn her clothing before, but that's before she spent hours cradling a collection of violently ill people in her arms.)
She's the only one who can port, so she's the only one shuffling people around. But by the fourth hour of it, she's ready to drop.
It's MX-6 who tells her to stop. "Go home, Rey. Sleep and eat. You're about to drop, and none of us are going to be better off with that."
She's so tired, but… They're sick. And Kylo's hurting. And…
She feels a small hand in hers. Cassie's. She's looking up at Rey. "Come on, it's time to rest. You made us rest. Now you rest."
Rey sighs, thinks about going to the Supremacy and then makes herself go to their cottage.
She won't sleep if she's next to Kylo, and she's got to sleep.
In their home, she remembers something else she hasn't done. Eat. There's food. Her body needs it, stomach screaming at her as soon as it sees the food on the kitchen table. The food he thought to ask for before he got too sick to do anything.
She steps closer, almost touches the sandwiches, but seeing the... stains... on her clothing, she realizes she really needs to clean herself up before she does that.
Fast shower. Peeling out of her clothing, throwing it in a sack to bring to the Supremacy, and if it gets back to her, fine, and if it gets lost in the laundry, she won't miss it.
Then food. She sits down, touching the sandwiches, wishing she could share them with him. The first few bites are difficult. Too many images of partially digested food are in her head for eating to be easy. But her stomach is still yelling for more calories, so she feeds herself.
And once she's fed, her eyes are all but shut, her arms and legs weigh a billion kilos each and she's just so tired.
It feels really bizarre to lay herself down, in their bed, alone. It's not like this is the first time. He's certainly had late nights where he was up with meetings past the time she went to bed, but it is the first time he's not coming back. First time she won't wake up with him next to her. First time she doesn't pull off her clothing, because his warmth will come find her in the night.
She pulls the blankets over her, wishing they smelled like Kylo, and not Hiffa virus, but… Right now it's too damn cold to air the house out, so…
She falls asleep before she's got too long to think on it.
"Luke!"
"Rey." His expression isn't warm, but it's not closed off, either. If anything, he's smugly amused. And while this is a dream, it's real, too, so she can feel that he's enjoying 'getting to Yoda,' whatever that means.
In the dreamscape, they're back at the cliffs at Ahch-To. The air is what she considered cold when she first got there, but now knows is just damp and a bit nippy. (Though damp is something she'd happily avoid for the rest of her life.)
"So?" she says.
"So… Had better days, have you?"
She doesn't actually glare at him, but it's close.
He nods. "Yeah. I gave Yoda that same look." He sits down and pats the ground next to him. "Come on, tell me about it."
So she sits, and does, and lets all of the day's frustrations pour out. And when she does, Luke sums it up as: "Everything is wrong, everyone you love is hurting, and you feel like you should be able to fix it, but it's staying unfixed or you're making it worse?"
She nods, tossing a pebble into the ocean.
"What are you fixing, Rey?"
She looks at him like he's stupid, and then says, "Everyone is sick. I've been puked or pooped on more times than I can count today. Was that somehow not specific enough?"
"Yeah, I got that. Humans don't normally spew excrement from both sides. What are you fixing?"
"I'm so tired, Luke. Could you just tell me so I can get back to functional sleep?"
He looks annoyed at that, but given the dark circles under her eyes, and why he's here, it's not like she's making an unreasonable request.
"It took me decades to really figure this out. And I wasn't ever able to pass it on, because I learned it well past the point of having students. You cannot fix what isn't broken. Everyone around you is hurting and puking because their bodies are doing exactly what they're supposed to do. When you have a nasty virus you're supposed to get a fever so your body can kill it.
"That's the single most frustrating part of The Light. The Force will let you fix things that aren't broken. It'll let you do that all day and all night and foul up everything around you because of it. Part of the light is beating your desire to help, to be the great healer, to be the miracle worker, into submission and let whatever it is that is working work."
"But healing is a light side power."
Luke nods at her. "Yeah. Healing something that is broken. After fifteen years surrounded by kids with lightsabers, the cut or break I can't heal doesn't exist. But that's fixing something that needs to be fixed. Ask me what I did when we all got the flu?"
She raises an eyebrow.
"Made tea and passed around the blankets."
"Didn't you just say it took you decades to figure that out?"
He waves that away. "I figured it out with healing a lot sooner. Practical application and all that. The main point: 'if something is the way it's supposed to be, even if you don't like that supposed to be, leave it alone,' took much longer to grasp."
She's fairly sure she's grasping the larger point. "Kylo?"
"Among other things."
"And going too far on the leave-it-alone side is part of why I couldn't pry you off this island?"
"Maybe. Did you fix him, Rey? Try? Or did you go expecting him to fix himself, and get horribly disappointed when it wasn't an instant change? I tried to fix him. Spent a long time on it. And the kicker was, the poor kid was broken. Violent sociopath steeped in black from head to toe is not his base nature. Not so far as any of us could tell, and not so far as he is now. I just didn't have the right fix for him, which is the next part of this: the wrong fix is often worse than no fix at all."
"I didn't fix him. I… just thought he'd love me enough to just come, and I missed the point that he couldn't do that until he loved himself enough to pull himself out of unending pain."
"Romantically put, but…" Luke gestures a but-what-can-you-do sort of shrug.
"I want to make them feel better."
"I know. I wanted to make everyone feel better. All the time. But sometimes, you've just got to hurt. And sometimes, if you're out there, fixing what isn't broken, you're going to hurt everyone worse than they already are."
"Yeah. Great."
He pats her shoulder. "Exactly. No one said the Force was fun, you know?"
"No one said ever said anything about the Force to me. One day I just had it."
"One day I was whining about getting to go to town with my buddies. Literally the next day, my family was dead, I was on a ship that looked like it was going to fall apart any second, surrounded by dangerous strangers, attempting to rescue a princess I'd only seen a holo of. Seriously, no one ever said the Force was fun."
She sighs at that.
"Go on, get back to sleeping. All the problems in the galaxy will still be there when you wake up."
2/2/2
Luke is absolutely not wrong about that.
Rey wakes up not enough hours later, but it still feels like too many hours spent on her back.
The first thing she wants to do is port to Kylo and pet him.
But he's got a med-droid hovering over him, providing him with anything he might need.
And right here, right now, she's it. So she washes off, makes herself eat some more, and gathers up the rest of the dinner and lunch so that Cassie, Savarah, and Xanth have food, and ports to the medbay.
MX-6 isn't there.
Since she's been sleeping, she hasn't been bringing sick people to him, so he's been bringing IVs to them. Unlike the humans on Lirium, he doesn't have to rely on his eyes to find his way around, so no visibility through the howling snow isn't an issue for him. (Likewise, he doesn't get cold, has better all weather traction on his "feet" than humans do, weighs more than they do, so the wind matters less, and can't get tired, so trekking through the snow isn't an issue. The hydropacks freezing and having to be thawed before he can hook them up to each patient is.)
Critt is awake when she ports in. His voice is rough, he's shaking, but his color is decent and his eyes are tracking.
"Hi."
"Hey," she says back, voice soft, not wanting to wake Finn or Jacen. They're both sleeping, but not peacefully. Jacen looks miserable, face pinched, body curled in on itself. Finn's got a similar posture and expression, but the last time she saw him his skin was gray from dehydration. At least right now he's back to something approaching his usual color, and he's got enough liquids in him to sweat. "How are you feeling?" she keeps her voice low as she asks.
He looks like he's almost thinking about barking a short laugh, but that would likely hurt, so he doesn't. "I've had better days."
"I'll bet."
He looks from side to side: Finn on his left, Jacen on his right. "How's everyone else? Are just the three of us sick?"
Rey shakes her head. Just the three of them are in the medbay right now, because she's not porting the rest of them in and out. "Just the three of you volunteered to be my experiments in healing magic and ended up in here with IVs full time because I made you worse."
Critt nods. "Remind me not to volunteer next time."
"Remind me not to mess with something that's doing what it's supposed to do next time."
Critt's looking alarmed, and Rey knows what the issue is. She grabs a basin, and pets his back while he dry heaves.
When he's done, she grabs a damp towel to mop off his forehead some. He sighs, and lays back. "This sucks."
"Yep."
His eyes are closed, and his voice tired as he says, "How much faster than usual should I be getting better?"
"With any luck, tomorrow or the next day you'll just be bone tired, instead of still throwing up."
"Maybe tomorrow or the next day I'll think this was a good plan."
"Maybe." She strokes his forehead again. "Sleep some more. Your body needs it."
He closes his eyes and in a moment is gone from the waking world.
She looks around, takes a moment to pet Finn and Jacen, sees both of them relax a bit. She can't fix what isn't broken, but apparently she can make going through it less of an ordeal.
That's something, right?
As she ports out to go tend to the rest of the Maji, it doesn't feel like much.
"Xanth?" He's exactly where he was when Rey last saw him. Probably eight hours ago. Sitting next to Kven, looking far away, thinking/sensing, as he holds his sleeping friend's hand. And for a second, after her voice, he's still just sitting there.
Then he jerks, looks at her, shudders all over, blinks, and says, "Rey?"
"Yeah. Hey… Uh… When did you eat last?"
He blinks a few times, looking confused. Then he stands up, and sags back to the ground, knees going out under him.
"Xanth!"
"I'm fine." He's wincing. "Legs are asleep. Stayed in the same position too long. Uh, right, food." He blinks again, and this time slowly stretches his legs in front of him, massaging them, and wincing. "OW!"
Rey's not sure what's going on with Xanth, but… He's not sick, so… She crosses Kven's cottage, and grabs a few pieces of bread, and a jar of jam. A moment later, she's made a sandwich for Xanth, and then returned to the kitchen to wet a washcloth, and gently mops the dried sweat off Kven, who appears to be asleep right now.
Now that she's got his attention, Xanth looks excited. "You told me to think of other ways to heal them." He shoves half the sandwich in his mouth in one go, and then has to stop talking while he chews. Once he swallows, he says, "Killing it off virus by virus is a bad plan, and you're right about that. I was trying that with him, and all I managed to do was make myself tired."
Rey nods. "If you got it in the first few hours, it's possible, but after that…"
"Exactly." He's eyeing the loaf of bread, and massaging his legs. Rey makes him another sandwich.
As she hands him the sandwich, she says, "That look in your eyes… You've found something, haven't you?"
"Maybe… Not sure yet. I've got the idea and feel of it, but I don't know if I can do it."
She sits next to him, noticing that he let go of Kven to eat and rub his legs, and as he did so Kven's face grew tighter. He didn't wake up, but he looked much less comfortable, but as soon as he takes Kven's hand again, his face relaxes.
"I was talking to Luke, and he reminded me, or taught me, or… he said you can fix what isn't broken. Is this fixing something that isn't broken?"
"No." He looks fairly excited at this idea, and getting to share it. "It's breaking something that works too well. I… can do it for one or two at a time, and I've got to figure how to do it for a lot of them. The body kills the virus. If we make it do that any harder, it hurts too much. But the virus keeps making more viruses, and that keeps them sick. So… If I can make the virus not make new viruses…"
Rey smiles. "You can do it for a short burst, and then it's just… too much, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
And with that Rey knows the last piece of the puzzle. Like her, and Cassie and Savarah, Xanth's light. Which is great for his immune system. It works splendidly. It kills the fuck out of invaders before they can even register in his body. But for this sort of work, intentionally using his Force to go in and destroy something… "In a few days, Critt will likely be feeling better." She hopes.
"Critt… Why Critt?"
"You're talking about dark-side style healing. About channeling destruction into a positive force. And neither of us are particularly good at that. We need a darksider for it, and Critt's the one most likely to get better soon."
"Kylo's sick?"
"Kylo's sick. And after testing out my fix for this on Critt, Jacen, and Finn, I don't want to do it to him."
"I don't blame you." He stands up, wobbles a bit, and then stomps around a bit, wincing with each step. "I got too into it."
Rey nods to Kven, "How's he doing?" She can see he's sleeping, not hooked up to and IV, and he's pale, but not gray. So, at least just to look at him, he's as good, if not better, than the others.
"Probably better than most of the others. I can make the virus not reproduce, but it's slow and draining, and I can't do enough of them at a time. It's been…" he looks for a chronometer… "six hours… Way too long sitting in one position. Anyway, I got about a tenth of them sterile, which isn't enough, but… Okay, here's the cool part. I did rejigger his immune system a little. The fever makes him so hot the virus has a hard time surviving, and that slowly kills them off. His white cells attack the virus and do what I couldn't do, kill the boogers right and left. Here's what I did, I can get his white cells to ignore the sterile ones and focus on the ones that can reproduce, so… There's something."
She's grinning at Xanth. "That's absolutely something. And, honestly, figuring out a better way to do something, even if you personally can't do it, is worth so much. Maybe we'll get Critt on sterilizing, and if you can show the rest of us how to get the white cells to ignore the ones he can't hit…"
"White cells kill off the ones that make more viruses. Let the fever kill the sterile ones. That sounds like a good combination." Xanth looks pleased at that idea. Then Kven moans, shifts, his eyes jerk open, and he bolts for the refresher. They can hear the gagging sounds, and as Xanth's heading over to tend to his friend he says, "I wish I could do more."
"Yeah, me too. But right now, we can't." When Kven's done, Rey picks him up. "I'm going to take him to the medbay. I want you to eat, and then get a sleep. There's going to be a lot of mopping up between now and when we can get your fix into play."
Xanth nods, and then grabs the bread to make himself another sandwich.
2/3(?)/2
There's a point where Rey just doesn't know what day it is any more. Wake up, eat something, transport Maji to and from the IVs until all of them have had one, go to Kylo, eat, curl up against his back or side and try to nap next to him for a while, (not very effective, she really can't sleep when he's hurting this bad) get up, do another round of Maji transporting, another round of eating and tending to Kylo, and then back to their place on Lirium to sleep some more.
But, at some point, eventually, Finn's actually awake and sitting up when she goes to the medbay. More than that, he's not excreting from every orifice any more. On top of that, his fever is broken, too. He's weak as a newborn, tired, so damn tired, but as MX-6 says, there's no Hiffa left in his sytem.
(MX-6 also says that he's likely going to spend the next two days in bed mostly just sleeping and slowly putting real food back into his system, but, he'll be able to snuggle Rose when she's in the medbay, and that's worth a lot to both of them right now.)
When she sees him, she hugs him, gently and asks, "Are you really sitting up?"
He blinks a little. "Maybe for another minute or two. What day is it?"
Rey laughs. "I have no idea. It's night. That part I can tell you."
He settles back down, squirms a bit, and says, "I can't wait to get back to my bed."
She nods at that. "With Rose in it. I'm sleeping in ours, but it feels really odd without Kylo there."
And right now, Finn's tired enough that he just agrees. "Always sleep like shit the first night on the Falcon, because she's not there."
"Yeah."
His eyes are drooping.
She strokes his forehead. "Have a good rest. I'll see you when you're awake."
At another point, she's back in Kylo's room, and he's awake, too. And, for the moment, not throwing up. He's not doing much of anything, just laying on his side, eyes glassy, watching the stars move past.
She sits next to him, and lays her hand on his shoulder. He's still too hot. But he's with it enough he's not trying to rip the IV out any more.
He closes his eyes, and curls around her, chin against her right knee, his knees against her left.
For a moment, they're just there, and then he says, "You said you can get my immune system fighting harder?"
"Kylo…" She's stunned he even remembers that conversation. "Yes, I can do it, but… It's a really bad idea."
He looks a little surprised.
"It hurts. It hurts a lot. It's going to be another few days of everything in your body running out as fast as it can, your fever as high as you can take it, and everything aching, as opposed to another five or six days of just feeling cruddy. You aren't Finn, you don't have a sick wife at home and a baby who needs you. You can stay on light duty for a few more days. Just… don't."
He thinks about that for a moment. "Are you refusing?"
"No. But I'd really rather you didn't put yourself through it. If you don't have to hurt, maybe you can try not hurting." Left unspoken is that she doesn't want to watch him go through it, either.
His eyes are still fever bright, he's still achy and shivering, and it's been less than an hour since he was in the refresher dry heaving away. "I wouldn't call this not hurting."
"Yeah, but you're not begging for death, either, and you're lucid, He laughs at that. "and you can read or watch holovids and nap, and just take the time to lie around and heal at your own speed for once, so… Do it. I'm sure there'll be times when you need to be up again in a day, and I'll make it happen, but this isn't one of them, so…"
"So just, lay here and be sick."
"Just lay there, be sick, let me baby you, and maybe see if you can keep a few sips of tea or something located inside your body for more than an hour. Plus, once Critt is up, we'll be working on another possible fix, and maybe that one won't involve everyone wishing the Force would just take pity on them and end things."
He's about to ask about the other possible fix, and then he's got to run for the refresher. Anti-emetic meds means he's throwing up less often, it doesn't mean the problem is fixed.
Jacen is up the next time she's in the medbay. He's up up. As in sitting up, next to Critt, who's sleeping, and petting his hair a bit.
She sits next to him, and says, "Are you really this much better?"
He can feel what she's asking and rolls his eyes a little. "For the next minute and a half. Then I'm going back to sleep."
"Ah…" She strokes his forehead. He's still feverish, but apparently her 'fix' has him at not throwing up now, and… "You don't feel nauseous?"
He shakes his head and coughs. "Tired… So tired, but not puking or shitting anymore."
"Good."
He nods. "Hopefully." He nods to where Finn's laying, on a cot next to Rose, his hand against hers. "I think I'm doing better than he is. Don't know if that's a combination of my Force, getting my system revved up before I had this going full swing against me, or you not tossing me that far into hyperdrive, or just these things effect everyone differently."
"Yeah, maybe."
He can feel her concern for Kylo. "How's he doing?"
"Not as good as you."
"Obviously. Better than Critt?"
"Not sure. I didn't supercharge his immune system, so he's still in the middle of it, and Critt's got to be getting closer to the end."
"We can hope." Jacen yawns.
Rey gives him a hand. "Come on. Back to your own bed. You don't need the IV any longer, and the sooner you get to sleep uninterrupted, the sooner you're really up and useful to me."
He glares at her a little, but before he's got the chance to do much, she's got both of them in his cottage. The glare intensifies.
"You didn't have to pull me away."
"Yes, I did. You think I really sleep if I'm next to Kylo, right now? No, he's hurting too damn bad, so I keep trying to make him feel better, which means I'm burning my energy on him. You're doing it with Critt, too. And, either your fever is too high to realize you're not keeping your emotions in check, or you're sick enough you don't care you're projecting all over the place, but either way, you need the rest, so…" She pulls back the top blanket to his bed. "Into bed with you. Sleep. Heal. I'll likely have a project for you and Critt when you're feeling fully human again."
Jacen gets into bed, and he quietly says, "How badly am I projecting?"
"I know everything you want to do with your taking care of him fantasy, and assuming he remembers any of this, he will, too."
"Shit. Yeah. Okay." He rubs his eyes. "I can usually keep it down enough that he thinks we're just friends."
"Why are you doing that? Just let him know."
Jacen snorts at her, then he looks at Rey, and snorts again. "Of course, you're one of them. No wonder you don't see the problem."
Rey's staring at him blankly, because she still doesn't see the problem, and only feels a wall of annoyance from Jacen.
"Because like every other fucking guy I get a crush on, he only likes girls, and I'm not one."
Rey's still not sure about the them comment, but decides that's not the important part. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Thanks. Just… poke me or something if I start projecting it again. If he figures it out, it's just going to make him uncomfortable, so… Until I'm in control, let me know, okay?"
"Okay. Go to sleep. You'll have better control when you're feeling better."
"Probably."
2/? +1/2
Round and round and round again.
Eventually, she ports into the medbay, this time with Blaine in her arms, and Critt is sitting up. Eyes clear. Skin dry. Alert (ish.)
He's on the other side of the virus, and from there…
Rey gently settles Blaine in one of the beds, but he grunts in pain as he touches the sheets. Whimpers when MX-6 inserts the IV. She pets his hair, "I know, honey, I know."
Her hand stroking his hair eases the pinched look on his face, and the heated blanket that MX-6 drapes over him soothes the shivers, a little.
Rey quietly says, still petting him, "It's time to sleep, love. Hopefully, you'll feel a bit better when you wake up."
Blaine's eyes drift shut, and in a moment he's asleep.
Critt watches her do that, and says, "You're getting really good at that."
She crosses the room and sits on his bed. "Lot's of practice. By the time this is done, I'll be able to put a sick kid to sleep in a second and a half with barely a thought."
He smirks, a little, and lays down on his side, facing her. "With as tired as we all are…"
"Yeah, it's not an uphill march." She strokes his hair, too. "So…"
"Tired, sore, I feel like someone scrubbed out my insides with steel wool, but… Better. I can feel I'm mending."
She nods, and lays a little of her soothing magic on him. He sighs.
"That feels good."
"Good."
He curls in on himself a bit, and his voice is very small as he says, "She always used to call me sweetling. I'd be sick, and she'd hug me and call me sweetling." He closes his eyes, and Rey understands what he needs.
She curls up behind him, arms around him, and strokes his hair. "Have a rest, sweetling. You'll feel better when you wake up."
Critt nods a bit, tears leaking from between closed lids. He's fifteen now, but the little boy inside isn't very far under the surface. The teen his parents abandoned rather than see go dark is even closer to the surface. Rey kisses the back of his head, and holds him close. She pets his hair.
"When you wake up, when you're feeling better, you and Xanth are going to have a chat about using your dark to heal people."
He doesn't open his eyes as he says, "Can't heal. Dark doesn't heal."
She smiles against the back of his head. "You'll see."
Kylo's sleeping when she steps into his room. Like the rest of them, his face is pinched, and he's curled in on himself. The med-droid is hovering near him, making sure he stays hydrated.
She wonders what those little guys can do. Obviously it's paying enough attention to the situation to be beneficial to Kylo, but… Does it notice that she just appears a few times a day? Does it keep track of them talking to each other.
And if this one doesn't, does that mean if there's ever need for another one, that it won't?
She sighs at that, and begins pulling her clothing off.
She's tired. And right now she just wants to curl around Kylo and hold onto him.
He murmurs a bit when she nestles under the blankets with him. His skin is still fever hot, cheeks pink with the flush of it, and the heat feels good to her after too long in not quite warm enough rooms on Lirium.
She knows that in a few moments, she'll pull back, overheating, but right now wrapping around him and drinking in his heat feels good.
He stirs a bit in her arms, making a pleased sound, and settling a bit deeper into his own sleep.
She rests her head against the nape of his neck, just breathing with him, feeling him relax in her arms, and wondering if maybe this time she'll sleep.
She's so tired. Tomorrow… Critt'll be more up, and put him with Xanth, and maybe they'll find a way to really beat this, or at least curb it for everyone, and… Okay, they'll still be sick, but less sick, and healing up faster, and then she and the rest of the lightsiders can just rest for a little while, and Force, that'll feel good.
Her, and Kylo feeling better, and just sleeping…
Maybe not just… Her sex drive gives her a tiny little twitch of interest, and then it's run over by the mammoth wave of tired.
He's breathing deeper and easier in her arms, and for once it doesn't feel like he's hurting, so Rey keeps relaxing, too.
In, out, the heat of his body against hers…
She's almost asleep, just starting to see the images of her dreams when she hears voices on the far side of Kylo's door.
Loud fucking voices.
Really loud.
If she can hear them… Through the sound proofing…
C8…
Jon…
She blinks and sits up, awake.
Jon and C8 are arguing, and...
"Shit."
She pulls Kylo's bathrobe to hand, and then ports directly into his office, not wanting to open the door and expose Jon to any Hiffa that might be lingering in Kylo's room. In there, Jon and C8 are, apparently, in the middle of a heated argument, with Artoo between them, looking confused.
Well, confused is about to end, now.
"If either of you fuckers wake him up, I'm slapping your asses into next week with my staff. Now what's so fucking important I don't get to have a nap?"
Jon stares at her, stunned, and she can feel C8's awfully shocked by that, too.