From Darkness

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"As you wish, doctor," Cedric replied with a hint of a teasing tone to his voice. In truth, he found the idea of holding off on his hint for just a bit longer comforting. The darkness that had visited them was unlike any other he had come across, and while its nature was known to him, what had happened to it was not. The Sith Lord at its source had grown far more powerful than their last meeting; perhaps too powerful for even he to contest.

Even still, he had to try. It was a Jedi's duty, after all.

He complied, laying back on the couch as Prennis went upstairs. A quiet sigh escaped him as he forced himself to relax. His thoughts kept drifting to time wasted, and just how many souls might be killed in the time it took Cedric to even find the Sith Lord. The rational part of his mind told him that it would be unwise to track Maliphant down when he wasn't at his best, and it was that part that he chose to believe.

He gave Prennis a thin smile as she came back down the stairs. "It's been bearable. I've noticed that it's faded with time, so I assume things have been healing properly," he paused, his eyes narrowing as he peered into Prennis' eyes.

A question came to mind, and he ought to just force it away. Even still, he found that he simply had to put it to words.

"Would you run away with me? Somewhere far from here, perhaps not even in this galaxy. Somewhere where all this death is a distant memory?"

[member="Prennis Keeoli"]

 

[Prennis Keeoli]

{ Tag: [member="Cedric Grayson"] }​

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Doctor, right. She was a doctor.

He sounded like Cassius. But, maybe the other Jedi had been onto something about her forgiving herself and re-certificating.

Just maybe.

Prennis gave a tight-lipped smile as she neared the sofa and set the medkit down in the carpet. After washing her hands and halfway up her forearms, she returned to pull on a pair of gloves and sling her spare stethoscope around her neck. "Not necessarily," was her reply. "Let me be the judge of that. Tell me if I'm hurting you..." She began by feeling around his chest, first around the rough outline of where she remembered his wound was, and then even lighter on his wound, for loose stitches or bulging veins. No, no, no, no, she mentally noted. So far, everything felt okay.

"Oh!" she exclaimed when blindsighted by that question, firstly more concerned by how his chest moved and accidentally hurting him than surprised by the actual question. "Ced, you need to--" she began as she stepped back away from the couch, holding her hands above her waist habitually.

Then her mind processed what had been asked. "W-what?" Run away? Hadn't he just told her that he had a duty here? And-- "You're a Jedi; I'm a doct--a nurse now. If you haven't noticed, we both kind of deal in death." There was suddenly not tinge of annoyance or warning in her voice anymore, nor had anger replaced it. Actually, she seemed kind of sad. "There's always a mission, right? And I hop from patient to patient."

 

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It was a stupid question to ask, and he immediately regretted letting it escape his mind. A quiet, near-inaudible sigh escaped Cedric as Prennis stepped back. It became rather clear to him that he had crossed a line. Privately, Cedric had allowed himself something of an infatuation with the doctor. It was an infantile feeling, one more suited to a child than a Jedi Knight. Even still, he had allowed that kernel of hope to grow into something that he now understood to be inappropriate.

Aes'ona was his doctor, and she was just another of her many patients, there was nothing more to it.

He slowly sat up, running a hand over his bare scalp as he fought to find the right words. "You're right," he finally answered after a few moments of pregnant silence. "I apologize. It's been a very stressful few weeks."

Try a few years.

Despite himself, Cedric suddenly felt a distance between the two of them. It was the same distance with which he kept almost every other being he interacted with at. It felt alien, cold in a sense. He didn't like it, but then that was the price one paid for assumptions.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

"There is always a mission," he echoed her. The thin, practiced smile he had so often worn when delving into the political realm found its way onto his face. It was a practiced reflex, one that did its job quite well in most cases. "I-uh," his brow furrowed. "Just make sure everything's working right," he leaned back into the couch, and said nothing more. Prennis would find that his wounds had healed quite well with time, though he had not yet fully healed. He could fight, but it wouldn't be at one hundred percent for some time.

[member="Prennis Keeoli"]

 

[Prennis Keeoli]

{ Tag: [member="Cedric Grayson"] }​

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That was just what she found:

No loose stitches. Uninfected scabs. Neatly-healing scars. Normal lung sounds on each side of the chest.

"Looks good," she said quietly, putting his shirt down before kneeling down to coil the scope into the medkit. She may not have been sensitive to the Force, but she felt it too, and her voice was dragging its feet from her larynx up her throat. Considering the reaction to hers, he had been completely serious. What's more, she was suddenly all too aware of where the question has come from in the first place.

Why did she have to be so dense? Intentionally dense. She had ignored it since Carida and had tried to forget back on the FIV Malice. Even now, she had been navie enough to think she wouldn't run into anyone from her past, and so tried to move on. Granted, she had only met Voph once and did not even know what it meant, but...

"Would you like some stims for hyperspace?" she asked as she peeled off her gloves. "Or anything else?"

 

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Cedric was uncharacteristically quiet as she did her work. He was somewhere else, for all intents and purposes. His mind drifted through the void of the empyrean aimlessly, searching for something other than reality to occupy his attentions. Aes'ona's home had suddenly grown almost oppressive, and there was nothing he wanted more than to be free of it. Coming to Commenor had been a mistake, one that had cost him precious time and peace of mind.

It's not fair.

He quickly shoved aside such selfish thinking. Fairness was a flawed concept to begin with, and it in no way applied to this scenario. Even still, some part of him rankled at the turn of events, but it was a piece of him that he could suppress with little trouble.

When she finished, he drew himself back to reality. "Glad to hear. I was worried some of the bits and pieces might not be working properly. I've gotten into more than a few scraps since we last met, sometimes you can't tell what's getting knocked around." It was a bad joke, but then most of his jokes were. It at least served to lighten the swiftly darkening mood, if that were even possible.

He wasted little time in rising up to his feet and drawing his cloak about his shoulders. "No I'm okay. Stims and I don't mix very well, if you can remember," He offered her a genuine half-smile as he turned toward the door. "I'll see you when I see you, I s'pose."

[member="Prennis Keeoli"]

 

[Prennis Keeoli]

{ Tag: [member="Cedric Grayson"] }​

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She was left to sigh, but she kept it under her breath. She clicked the kit closed and stood without argument. Part of her wanted to smile, though, at his reasoning for denial of the stims, but the corners of her mouth were too heavy to do anything of the like. "Of course," she replied instead, stepping back towards the kitchen to clear his path. He was clearly on his mission now, indeed. "I'd like to stay away from the door; better safe than sorry." The words felt empty. "Be careful on the way back to your ship."

After Cedric had left, she would lock the door before retreating to her room. She stowed the medkit back in place, making a mental note to replace the gloves at the hospital tomorrow. She then sent off a quick holomail to her professor, apologizing for the delay but convincing that she was perfectly fine.

At least the circulatory system is, she thought as she drew up a draft. Physically, indeed, but not so mentally. She was a doctor, not a therapist. She could patch up sucking chest wounds all day, but managing a broken heart?

She couldn't even administer herself an ibupropen for that.