Medical Records--three days gone

Na’an stared at the wall dully, half-ignoring the other woman in the room and trying to fully ignore the pounding in her head. The dull thump, like the beating of a sluggish heart, made it hard to hear what the woman was saying. Sometimes she could hear the voice buried under the thumping, growling obscenities...
“Na’an. Na'an, are you listening?”
The woman’s voice cut through the sound, causing Na’an to jolt a little. “Hmmm?”
Adelle Bastiel was sitting in the seat opposite hers, holding a datapad and looking concerned. “I said, Leigh’s been asking about your condition again. She wants to see if she can help with treating you.”
The voice growled louder. Na’an sat upright, her arms crossing in front of her as if to hold it inside. “I don’t want that thing in here. I already told you.”
“Na’an, Leigh cares about you. She brought you here because you said you wanted help.”
“I don’t want it in here. It’s his.”
She watched Adelle’s face twist in confusion. She really was quite a striking woman, with dark, kind eyes that spoke of years of practiced gentleness. Since she’d arrived on Felucia three days ago, she’d taken Na’an’s case on personally, for some reason. Maybe it had something to do with the scars on her own face, puckering across the line of her jaw...maybe it was sympathy, or pity.
Or maybe you're just a case study
“I don’t understand,” she was saying, reaching for Na’an again. She did this often during their sessions, touching her arms or her shoulders as if slowly working her way towards a motherly embrace. “It’s been three days, you need to tell us more than--”
Na’an jerked away from Adelle’s hands. “Ask it about the video,” she said, the tightness in her throat making her voice high and hysterical. She could feel herself trembling and held herself tighter, but the voice’s words were spilling out of her mouth now, mingling with her own to force the truth out of her. “You’ll see. Watch the video and you’ll see, It’s Aherk’s, it’ll, it’ll just come in here and finish the job the other one couldn’t, I’ll lose what’s left...”
Adelle sat very still, unblinking. “You mean the eye.”
Na’an barked a bitter laugh, and turned her face back toward the wall.


Master Chalco, watching Adelle and Na’an through the window of the medbay, rubbed at his chin in bemusement.
“It’s a little odd to think about, honestly,” the assistant at his side was dithering. He was a thin, nervous man, but detail oriented and precise. “We had to do some research on the subject. No one in the facility knew what a schizophrenic WAS. But when you go back to the old records and look at the symptoms, they’re pretty spot-on for schizophrenia, like the...whatever-that-was….said.” The young man checked the chart, ticking off items as he spoke. “Auditory hallucinations, inappropriate emotional response, disconnected behavior, an overall ‘flat effect’…” His voice faded under the Master’s gaze, avoiding the next phrase on the chart. Both Chalco and his assistant didn’t need to mention the paranoia; both of them had seen Na’an’s overt hostility towards droids in general, and especially Leigh, in just the last two days.
The Master stroked his beard a minute longer, puzzling. “But you can feel her,“ he finally said. “You know she’s only two steps away from being consumed entirely by the Dark Side.” He lapsed into silence again, thinking over the problem. It was in his nature not to speak unless his thoughts were clear, a habit grown after years of necessary clarity in his line of work.
His assistant was used to that, but his lapses were not helping to finish the diagnosis.. “You don’t think...” he prompted.
“That maybe all Sith are just mentally ill?” Chalco shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think all of them are, it’s too neat of an explanation. But what if some…” He sighed, a low rumbling growl of a sound issuing from under his hand. “I just don’t know. Maybe the fact that we didn’t even know this condition existed is indicative of a larger problem.”
“So how do we proceed?”
“We wait. She’s contained, and Healer Bastiel's onto something with this line of questioning. Let’s see what she does with the other one.”



The droid was being housed in a room near the training grounds. Adelle Bastiel knew the room well--she’d passed by it several times, even visiting the quarters’ new occupants once a day to check on their status. However, she’d never really talked to the being inside that room; not about what she was, not about her companion, not about the fact that everything about this case seemed drenched in hidden violence. The idea was unsettling, uncanny and new, like stepping out of what was known and into the realm of blasphemy.
But there was nothing for it now. She was a Healer by trade, and her patient wasn’t Healing. She needed to know more, and this...Leigh, had the answers she needed to move forward.
She took another deep breath, and palmed the doorpad, entering the room in one swift motion. “Hello, Leigh,” she said to the droid inside.
Leigh had been sitting at the far end of the quarters; she perked up now, her posture snapping into attention as the door closed behind Adelle. “Ms. Bastiel,” she said politely, inclining her helmet in a salute. “Good afternoon. I judge by your expression that my request was not granted.”
Adelle regarded the mechanical, slightly whirring bulk with hesitation.
She’d never seen a model of droid quite like this. When the pair had first arrived on Felicia, Adelle had almost mistaken it for a humanoid in armor, albeit too big to be a typical human. Whatever comprised her insides was light and flexible enough to allow her to move surprisingly smoothly, mimicking perfectly the posture and mannerisms of a strong, athletic woman. Her voice, under the slightly tinny quality, was warm and undeniably feminine...and one of her arms had a hand and the most dexterous fingers she’d ever seen on a droid.
The other arm, though.
Adelle took the opposite seat, making a point not to look too pointedly at Leigh’s arm cannon. “No, she didn’t want to see you still,” she said. “We’re working on calming her symptoms long enough to get a clearer explanation of what’s going on in her head, but bringing you up isn’t helping any.”
“I could assist in her treatment--”
“Leigh, she doesn’t want to see you. She gets violent at the very idea, starts going off about this Aherk person. She says you’re his, that you’re going to hurt her...” Adelle took a deep breath before continuing. However this was received, she had a feeling that the result would not be pleasant. But, as she had known, there was nothing for it now.
“Leigh, she’s been saying something about a video.”
The droid froze.
So they were at the heart of it, then. Adelle sat patiently, willing to outwait the machine if she had to.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Leigh moved abruptly, the joints creaking as she bent her arm to rest between it and Adelle. A light flickered lowly on the piece of machinery, the beginnings of a hologram projection that Adelle watched with a sick sense of apprehension. The droid’s voice was quieter now, the artificial tones so masked that the humanity of it was all she could hear. She sounded regretful, hesitant, and...sad, almost.
“Please. Try not to judge too harshly.”
The space above Leigh’s arm flickered, and brought to life the short film she’d hoped to never show again.
Adelle watched the hologram in silence.
She didn't have to wait long to see the first death.
From then, each minute she endured was a new horror. Each minute, a new death. Her hand flew up to her mouth at the sight of Lecter’s face being pulled apart, her eyes bright with tears when the camera switched to show the ship in flames from the distance...the Rodian family dying, the kids screaming for their parents as the flames began to burn…
She visibly jerked when the final shot dropped an old smuggler out of view in a spray of red.
“Oh, god. Oh.” Her voice was shaking when she looked up, the binary coding the transmission’s end blinking out of view. Her stomach was roiling violently, making her feel more ill by the second. “Oh, gods.”
Leigh’s face flickered back to life. The blue eyes she’d generated were puffy, the brown hair unkempt and hanging loose. “I knew you would not understand."
“No wonder she won’t let you in her room.”
“I was not in control.”
“I…I..”
“I wasn’t.”
“I just…” Adelle choked back a sob, tried to gather her thoughts. Behind her eyes, the last of the Rodian children was still crying for its mother. “You showed her that? That...that snuff film? I mean, why did you…Who were those people?”
Leigh’s projected eyes were hard. “For Na'an... it was everyone left,” she said simply, and Adelle’s stomach lurched again.
Everyone left. That could only mean...
“Oh, gods,” she whispered again. All the people who’d ever known Na’an, who'd ever cared that she existed, murdered brutally and filmed for her to watch. Adelle couldn’t even imagine how that sort of thing was even...would anyone go mad under that kind of strain?
“Why?” she choked out. Leigh was still sitting there, seemingly as calm as ever. She hadn’t even moved after the hologram’s conclusion. It was horrible...just looking at her, so still and unmoved, made it easy to see how Na’an would hate her. Adelle was not the hating type, and even she was getting dangerously close the more she spoke. “How could you? I mean...I thought you were her….You showed up at our door guarding her, you brought her to us for treatment, you keep trying to protect this woman, so why would you kill all those people--”
“I didn’t want to!”
Leigh stood suddenly, knocking over the chair she had been seated in. Adelle started with a cry, the Force propelling her towards the door and towards a weapon, but the droid didn't advance.
“You have to understand,” the droid continued, her voice modulating wildly with emotion. “I may look human, sound human, feel and think like a human, but I am not human. I am a computer. Just bits of electronics and code, like any other computer. If someone gets inside me, puts a program in me, I am unable to deny it.” She slammed her hand against her metallic chest in a defensive, defiant gesture. “I had an order. Get to Vidalu Na’an. I did not know her, but that was my directive I had to do everything possible to fulfill my directive, even change my own programming...”

The fist dropped. The arm dangled, limp and useless. “I did not know them,” she finished harshly. “I didn't want to hurt them. But I had no choice.”
Adelle’s heart was hammering, a hard lump of instinct, a coal nestled between her lungs. But even through her fear, what the droid was saying...tracked. If an order had been given, even to a droid this complex--Star's End, maybe the droid's complexity made orders harder to countermand. She swallowed, then tried to speak.
“Who...who gave you the order?”
“A man named Aherk.” There was a pause; abruptly, the pretty brunette face the droid was projecting vanished. It would be the last time Adelle would ever see that particular face. The voice issuing from the droid was thick, warped, and so quiet that the words seemed to hover against her dome.
“And my mother.”
That was the last word Adelle had expected to hear from this being. And it was...in retrospect...the one word that made this all make sense.
Leigh wasn’t some monster. She was, metal or not, a person. And she was grieving. This was shame, and grief, and an agony as intense as anything the human woman in the medical bay was going through. This droid had warped herself beyond recognition, committed atrocities she couldn’t stop, because of some compulsion placed inside her by someone she called her mother.
Maybe it was not in Leigh’s nature to show it, but...all those offers to assist in Na’an’s treatment..they weren’t just some kind of altruistic act.
They were penance. An attempt to lighten burdens no sentient being should bear. Vidalu Na'an's...and her own.
Adelle’s bones had locked in horror, keeping her pinned and standing against the closed door; now, consciously, she forced them to loosen, to allow her to sit. Slowly, so slowly, she reached out, and placed a palm on the flat surface of Leigh’s arm.
“Okay.” She let out a long breath, her eyes closed against her own rising tears. “Okay. So. Tell me about this treatment plan you keep talking about.”