Rule 13756: All ship girls assigned to Scapa Flow are asked to reign in your antics. Belfast has been so focused on keeping you all in check that she's been neglecting her own health.

Rule 13756a: Additionally, unless you are permitted, no one is to contact Belfast for the next two months, she is on forced medical leave.

Rule by Falkeno

It was late in the evening in Scapa Flow as Britannic stepped out of his office. It hadn't been an especially taxing day, but it had been a long one, paperwork was a bigger enemy than the Abyssal's sometimes. But, as he was fishing out his keys to lock up for the night, the silence was broken by the sound of someone coughing up one of their lungs.

Mumbling a curse at whoever had decided to make him a hospital ship instead of being a troopship like Olympic, Britannic dutifully obeyed his medical oath and went off to find his soon to be patient. A task which wasn't hard as the liner was simply following the sound of the coughing. However, as he rounded one of the base's endless corridor corners to where he thought the noise was coming from, only to find Belfast leaning against a wall drinking from a water bottle. Curious.

"Alright Bel, everything ok?" Britannic asked, drawing the attention of the cruiser.

"Yeah, shouldn't you be chatting with Hornet this late? Belfast replied, trying to make small talk.

"Eh, it's still early over there, and she likes getting breakfast with her sisters, so she won't mind if we're a few minutes late," Britannic answered. Something was off about this, Belfast, despite being one of the more aloof residents of Scapa Flow, was also one of its saner members. So, for her not to be searching for whoever was quite obviously ill was unsettling.

"Have you... heard anyone coughing?" he asked.

"No, I had my earbuds in, sorry," Belfast replied before taking another swing of her drink. It was a plausible answer, but something told Britannic that there was definitely off with her.

Shrugging, Britannic started past Belfast, appearing as he turned another corner, as if he was heading further into the base. However, as soon as he was out of sight and sure she wasn't listening, Britannic quietly doubled back, stopping just shy of the corner.

He wasn't sure how long he waited, but inevitably his intuition paid off as the coughing returned, more violently than before. Bursting around the corner, any witty comment he could dream up died as Britannic found Belfast propped against the wall, bent over as she struggled to breath in between her sputtering.

"Ok, let's get you checked out, because this isn't normal," Britannic stated as he looped one of Belfast's arms around his neck to help her walk.

"It's... nothing... I'm..." Belfast wheezed before breaking down into another coughing fit.

"Yeah... I'll be the judge of what's nothing," Britannic said as he helped the light cruiser back to his office.

Mentally, Britannic made a reminder to try and con Aquitania to take over this posting at the earliest opportunity.

...

"So, how long have you had this cough then?" Britannic queried from behind a mask as he finished checking Belfast's mouth for any sign of swelling. There wasn't any, but better safe than sorry if whatever she had was spreadable.

"A couple of days, but... it's nothing" Belfast answered, coughing mid sentence as she sat, shorn of her jacket on the examination bed.

"Bel, you're spluttering like a badly maintained car, clearly this is something," Britannic countered as he opened up the medical database. "Now, let's see what's in your file..." the liner said as he opened Belfast's medical file, only for any train of thought to be cancelled, and replaced by a replacement bus service of questions.

It wasn't that Belfast didn't have a file, she did, but not having one wouldn't have been much worse than it currently was. It had her name, her basic details and all the other generic stuff, but that was it. No record of her medical appointments, her dockyard record, even a psych evaluation, it was all missing. Maybe his predecessor had done everything on paper and hadn't updated the database? Oversights did happen in a base like Scapa. But that theory died when Britannic saw that Belfast's physical file was about as barren as digital one, the only difference between the two was the addition of a few post-it notes about general information.

"Ok... Bel you're going to have to help me here, because your file is blank, ok?" Britannic began as he scooped up a pen and pad of paper. He'd digitise everything later, once he'd treated Belfast, and written a letter of complaint to whoever had screwed up. Belfast merely nodded to this request, visibly uncomfortable with the entire situation.

"Right, let's start with the simple stuff, when was your last appointment and what was it for?" the ocean liner asked as he prepared to take notes. Only for Belfast to glance at her feet. 'Must be embarrassing' Britannic mused mentally.

"It's ok, we'll circle back around. Now, when was the last time you were in drydock?" Britannic continued, only to see that look again, only this time he saw it for what it was. Guilt.

"1982," Belfast eventually answered, not having the strength to look the liner in the eyes.

"1982, 1982! You haven't been dry-docked in 40 years! No wonder you're ill, you haven't had any work since you were made of steel!" Britannic screeched. He didn't know who to blame, Belfast for not bringing up the issue, or the army of medical staff who'd missed it. Hell how had he not seen it.

Then the rational part of Britannic's brain spoke up. Belfast, to his knowledge had never come back from a sortie with anything so much as a scratch, coupled shipgirl's didn't have to deal with general illnesses, it made sense that in a fleet that regularly dealt with damaged shipgirl's every time they returned from a sortie, that Belfast had fallen through the cracks.

And then another fact slipped into Britannic's head, replacing anger with deep concern. Belfast was one of the fleet's most active shipgirls, she held the record for the highest availability out of anyone, a record that now he knew her last dry-docking was when she'd been a museum, was setting off alarm bells.

"Jesus Bel, why didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you tell me? I am your friend after all. You know I'd have given you the dock time if you had." Britannic asked, slipping into family doctor mode.

"It's a long story, but… I don't like being in drydock, besides I haven't got the time with all the shit that goes on around here," Belfast replied. She had a point, between Vanguard's experiments, the destroyer's crazy-ness, the submarine's thievery, and the general antics of the other cruisers and battleships, she tended to get saddled with dealing with a continuous stream of issues. But that was only half the argument, why did she hate the docks? But answering that was for a later date, right now Britannic had to figure out what was making Belfast cough so badly. Sighing, the liner picked up a stethoscope, might as well start somewhere.

"Alright, roll up your top and face away from me so I can check your lungs," Britannic ordered, only to see Belfast blanche in response. "What's the matter Bel? If we want to get to the bottom of this I need to check your lungs, and your t-shirt is thick enough to muffle the sound," he reminded her, before his memory quickly reminded him of one of Belfast's 'odder' quirks. 'Besides it's not like I'm asking you to take your bra off," Britannic quickly added jokingly, causing the cruiser to squirm at his well-placed distraction, allowing him to get into position.

Despite being one of the most mature and grown up figures Britannic knew, if you brought up anything beyond kissing around Belfast, she was known to go full deer in headlights. Which was probably why the cruiser tended to avoid Centurion, bar when Iron Duke was involved, and the other, lewder shipgirls.

"Its not that its just…" Belfast began only to freeze when Britannic grabbed the bottom of her shirt and rolled it up. Had she been healthy, Britannic knew he wouldn't have gotten this far, but atleast he could check her lungs now. And then he saw exactly why Belfast was so hesitant to show her back to him, why she never wore anything without a collar that went to her neck, why she never went swimming, or why she always wore more layers that was necessary.

Belfast's back looked like someone had taken a sledge hammer to a slab of concrete. A spider's web of faded crack-like wounds that led to one massive lump of scar tissue between her shoulder blades, where it was bisected by another scar that ran right down Belfast's spine. Britannic had seen a wound's like this before, he had been on the receiving end of the former before, the only difference was he didn't have the scar, after all, he hadn't survived his. But why was it on her back? Why did she have a surgical scar on top of it? And then he remembered being told about magnetic mines, and how Belfast had become a museum because she wasn't as worn out as the other Royal Navy's surviving cruisers, most of which were younger than her.

Slowly, after putting the stethoscope where it was needed, Britannic slid Belfast's top back down. No one spoke for a few minutes, Britannic had nothing to say, and by the way Belfast was hunched over, she didn't want to either. Eventually Britannic had heard enough and removed the instrument from Belfast's back, before plucking up the nerve to speak.

"Your lungs sound like you've smoked twenty a day for a decade. In ship terms I'd say you need to have your funnels cleaned, but that's probably just the start of it." Britannic said as he placed his stethoscope on his desk. "I'm going to have you take a few hours in the dock to get a full service, no arguing." The liner continued, heading off any protests from the cruiser, who was currently staring daggers at his silently. But beneath the anger and with her light-hearted aloofness briefly stripped away, Britannic saw a flicker of something he hadn't seen since Gallipoli, the husk like expression of someone who had gone into hell, not all of them had come back.

Britannic didn't know much about Belfast before she was summoned, outside of her stint as a museum ship, seeing as how she'd been one of the first. What little he knew was at best rumours or hearsay, but right now, he was starting to see why people didn't fuck with Belfast. Christ, he'd really fucked up. But maybe he could do her a favour.

"I'm also going to speak with Collingwood about getting you a few months leave, from the looks of it you could use it," Britannic interjected as picked up his notepad to write his report.

"What! I don't need time off!" Belfast interrupted, the hint of something hiding beneath the surface once more hidden by emotion.

"Bel please, I know I shouldn't have pulled your top up, but listen to me. You. Need. Time. Off! I've seen how much you drink, both the coffee and alcohol. You're putting everyone else above your own health, and I know you haven't had any time off in years. You need a break before something happens." Britannic responded, prompting the cruiser back into silence.

"Now I'm going to go and see Collingwood, and you are going to get in a drydock until I'm satisfied, doctor's orders." Britannic continued as headed for the door. "And don't make me have to find some battleships to make you, for all our sakes," he added as he stepped out into the corridor, sighing as he began his trek to the admiral's office. So much for this not being a taxing day.