Uriellien sat back in the chair in his cabin, the buzz of the tattoo needle having become background noise. The pain of the injected ink had turned into a type of expectant, almost pleasant pinching. He watched as it deposited the last touches of a crimson red into his pale skin, coloring in the black outline of an asp that wound its way up his arm and across his muscled chest.
His aide-de-camp, Captain Traav Biallie, looked on with admiration. "It's turned out beautifully, sir," he said with his crisp Coruscant accent.
"Hurt like the dickens on the sensitive parts," Uriellien admitted. "But it has come out quite nice, hasn't it?"
The tattoo artist stood up and put down his pen. Shaking his hands he said, "All done, Grand Admiral!"
"Good job!" he said, clapping the crewman on the shoulder as if he were a young child. "I'm pleased with it."
The artist nodded happily and began to clean up his gear.
Uriellien stood, reaching for his undershirt which lay on another chair across from him. As he put it on, his personal comm beeped.
"Uri?" said a quiet, female voice. "Are you there?"
He looked at Biallie quizzically and picked it up from the table. "Sola?" he asked. "It must be the middle of the night back on Coruscant. What are you doing awake?"
"I had a nightmare," was the tinny reply.
Uriellien dismissed Biallie and the artist with a wave of his hand. The artist scurried to the door, Bialle calmly walking behind him. "Is Teo not there?" Uriellien asked.
"He's sleeping," Sola replied.
He shot a quick glance at his aide-de-camps and they locked eyes. Biallie was well aware of his opinion of Teo Tristane. If it wasn't right in front of his nose, he see it. And if he did happen to see it and it didn't directly concern him, he didn't care about it. It looked to him that his sister fell into that category.
She could have done so much better.
Biallie nodded and then slipped out of the room, giving Uriellien a sympathetic look.
The Grand Admiral sank back down into the chair he'd just gotten up from. "I have a little time," he said. "If you want to talk about it."
"It was about my first medic experience," she said. "Nothing new."
He took a deep breath. The desire to wrap her up in his arms was overwhelming, but she was millions of miles away. "You haven't had that nightmare in a long time."
"No," she said. "I haven't. I been volunteering at a free clinic—"
"Sola!" A flare of anger lit in his chest. "I've told you not to do that, all it does is trigger bad memories and put you in danger. Do you know the crime that happens down on those levels of the city?"
"Of course I do!" she shot back, but her voice was quiet, as not to wake anyone up. "But I can take care of myself."
"Hardly," he muttered. It wasn't her job to take care of herself. It was his job to take care of her now. That was what all their hard work was for, that was why he was here, in this cabin, on this Star Destroyer, so he could take care of her. And she was worlds away having nightmares and creeping into the lower levels of the city where anything could happen to her.
"You don't work down there anymore," he told her. "You can't save those people. You do better work here."
There was a moment of silence on the other end before she said, "A drug addict came in, he'd been bludgeoned with a pipe."
Uriellien swore.
"He was high on some form of spice, and there was blood everywhere. I had to give him a hypo, because Dr. Sezzir was busy with another emergency. I put an antihemorrhagic on his wounds, but they didn't stop bleeding." Her voice was small and far away sounding. "He bled out on the floor of the clinic…" Her voice trailed off.
Uriellien swallowed as he listened and took a deep breath. He hated that she did this to herself. That she kept going down there and trying to help people that were beyond help. That she kept dredging up trauma from their childhood. He wanted to reach through the comm and shake her until her head rattled some sense in it.
"You don't belong down there," he said. "You never belonged down there, even when you taught school. You do more good here," he said again. "You should be here, with me, reading maps."
"You know I can't—"
"Why not?" Uriellilen asked. "It's my ship. I get to say who is on it and who isn't. You have your own room all ready for you. If you wanted to work in the MedBay, it would be better than that clinic, Sola."
There was another long silence. "I have my family here."
"Term has already started, hasn't it?" he asked.
"Yesterday," her voice cracked. She sounded like she was about to cry.
"Then you can't say it's your family, both kids are away."
"My husband is still here," she replied.
"Teo can take care of himself." The brief thought of, I could certainly take care of Teo, popped into his head, but he pushed it out as soon as it appeared. "He doesn't need you there like you're his mummy."
He could hear her breathing into the comm.
"I'll tell you what," he said. "Get yourself to Astarrax and I'll get you on the ship. A fellow has asked for help for something on Ryloth. I wasn't going to do anything, but we can go. I could use someone who speaks Ryl."
"A fellow?" Sola asked dubiously.
"Public line, darling," he reminded her.
"You have plenty of people who speak Ryl."
"None of them are you," he replied. "None of them can do what you do." When there was a long stretch of silence, he added, "It would help me. I could use you to look at a map, if nothing else."
Again there was a long silence, and he thought for a moment she was going to refuse him. But then, to his delight, she said, "I'll see what I can do tomorrow, or later today rather." Her voice softened. "I would like to see you."
"I want you to see the Crimson Asp," he replied. "It's been refurbished."
She laughed. "So you've said."
"I need to get to work." He stood up and reached for his uniform tunic. "Let me know was soon as possible, alright? I want to see you, too."
"Ok," she replied. "I love you."
"I love you more," he replied, ending the communication.
He put the comm down and regarded it, as if it held a secret he had yet to identify. He could tell any soul on the ship what to do and they would immediately obey him. The one person he wanted on it, who deserved to be on it, he had to cajole to even agree. He considered leaving his personal comm on the table, but then snatched it up and put it in his pocket before striding out of his cabin door to head to the command deck.