Life Itself

[Lina Renning]

She had doubled down lately on making herself useful.

Staying busy felt strangely necessary, the only way to keep out excess thoughts. And being useful was gratifying, the only way her mind stayed at ease. So Lina made it a point never to stay unoccupied too long. It would've been tiring - it was at first - but at some point she had realised it would have been far, far more draining not to do anything when there was something she could do.

What she could do was limited still - not for lack of trying, but limited all the same. But she knew what to do, where to go. The galaxy had infinite wrongs that needed righting, unlimited chaos that needed, neverending evil that needed good. As long as Lina did good, staying occupied would be the easiest task in the world.

And of course, she wouldn't stop trying to do good.
Really, she couldn't.

_______​

​

Skor​

​

"I need you to stay still," she requested quietly. "This shouldn't take long, but I'll need you to stay still."

The man in front of her lay with tired eyes and glass embedded up and down his arm. "How much will it hurt?"

She didn't answer.

​

The hospital within the refugee camp was crowded. Much more crowded than Lina would have liked, but she could do something about that. Relief work was draining in an entirely different way, but the reward of seeing someone healed at her hands had always outweighed the distress.

Staying calm as she tried to ease his distress was certainly tiring, but his arm was free of glass in mercifully little time and she was on her feet again at once, ready to keep going. The first person she found unattended to was bleeding from a gash in her leg. Not urgent, but still easily dangerous if it wasn't tended to.

Lina murmured words of assurance, promising she'd be back soon, and then slipped off to find materials. She turned a corner and treaded quickly down a corridor. Another. Another.

Finally she stopped, turning instead to catch the attention of the woman passing down the hallway.

"Excuse me-" she tried to hide a flustered air, only partly failing. "I've not been here before - do you know where the supplies are kept?"

[member="Kana Truden"]​

 

[Kana Truden]

[member="Lina Renning"]

There was a great amount of murmurs in the force here. Kana hadn’t been drawn here by them as much as because the Circle of Healers had made her. Of course, the murmurs she was referring to was those of stilled pain and her responsibility as a healer was to silence them in full. So maybe it was the murmurs that had brought her here in the end. Eyes rolled and heads shook as she pushed her lips to the side in a grimace. Kana wouldn’t say that she wanted a vacation, but as far as apprentices went there was a distinct difference between Madeline and Damian was the fact that, well, Damian was a millionaire who took her to beaches for covert infiltration missions whereas Madeline was… Well, pretty far from any of that.

Longing sigh parted her lips. She hadn’t heard from Damian in a long while, but she knew he was alive. He was too stubborn to not let her know if he had died. And he was a knight now, supposedly. He had his own life and so did she, even if Kana too technically held a wealth in his company that would let her…

Actually, why hadn’t she ever taken out-

Kana was taken out of her dreaming by a voice from the very corner of her mind. A surprised expression set on the master healer as she turned to look at the girl who had spoken to her with a brow perked as she tried to recap the brief conversation with an unsubtle ‘huh?’

“Oh.” She eventually spoke up. “Wherever they keep the other stuff, try requisitions or something.”

With that the master continued to walk down the hallway. A few good steps carried her down her path before her mind bugged her to do something more than be just outright unhelpful. Her feet stopped themselves from taking any further steps ahead. Her eyes closed and a deep sigh burst through her nose.

Groan.

“Actually, let me help you.” Kana said and turned around with a spin on her heel. “I guess I need to get myself a canister of bacta anyway.”

Arm wrapped against the girl’s shoulder to sweep her towards the supply shack so to speak.

“Name’s Kana, by the way.” She smiled at the girl. “Just Kana. No titles.”

 

[Lina Renning]

She winced internally, suddenly remarkably self-conscious.

Asking people for help was not something she liked doing (truthfully, asking people for anything was already less than enjoyable). Lina wasn't fond of being reliant. Troubling others always felt uncomfortable at best and weak at worst, and she was going to great lengths not to think of herself as weak.

Lina liked to help.
She strongly disliked being the one needing help.

So she turned to be back on her way and try to put her mind on something else. Surely one of the storage closets would hold a crate or two of medpacks. She didn't want to keep the injured woman waiting longer than she had to - that would risk far too much. How long did cuts that deep take before they bled out?-

Then she heard the woman's voice again, and her mind sighed, relieved.

"Oh! Thank you." Her expression wore intermingled surprise and relief, but she followed the other woman without deliberation.

"Lina." She smiled back. "Definitely no titles. Nice to meet you."

They reached the supplies, and at once Lina ran to the shelves, hunting for the right kit. The woman had needed stitches. Something to clean the wound first, too. Having a few extra bacta canisters at hand wouldn't hurt either.

[member="Kana Truden"]​

 

[Kana Truden]

[member="Lina Renning"]
Had Kana cared perhaps she would have sympathized with the young girl. She too had hated asking for help when she was an apprentice. Something about relying on others at the time had been so alien, yet with time she would come to realize that her time with the jedi would be nothing if not short if she avoided it. Heck, to a degree Kana still had issues asking for help but only if it was something she knew that she could technically do by herself. Finding the right meds would be one of those things. Another grin spread on the blonde healer’s lips as she watched Lina get to work trying to find the right things.

“You really ought to let yourself breathe between your lunges.” She quipped and looked more than a little amused. “And uh, put those extra canisters down. We’re guests here, and we should only take what we need. Also use it accordingly, come to think of it.”

Kana grabbed a single canister of bacta and held it out before Lina. “One bacta canister is enough, believe me.”

She then grabbed two rolls of bandages. “Bandages, you only really need two.”

And finally she grabbed a snack bar. “And then a little something for yourself in between shifts.”

“Your task here is not to rid everyone of pain, Lina.” Kana shrugged, it seemed very obvious to her. “Your task here is to lessen it. As a medic your task is to keep them alive, not to make them comfortable. To make them comfortable means that others will try for the same, many will even lie to get what they want.”

“The key is to separate those who are in actual pain from those who are not, and in camps like these there is plenty of the latter.” Kana ushered them both towards the door. “Shock creates illusions of pain. I mean, it’s real, but mental.”

Kana chuckled. “Do you get what I mean here, Lina?”

 

[Lina Renning]

Carefully, she listened.

The majority of Lina's experience with healing was experience she had picked up by herself. She taught herself wherever she could. Where she couldn't she'd find a way around it or ask very reluctantly for advice. Observation and common sense had always been easier tools to seek out than others' help. The latter felt messy, inconvenient.

Regardless, she always liked to learn. To improve. And when advice was being offered instead, she would always pay close attention.

Like now. To her it had always been about removing pain to the furthest extent of her ability. The idea that if she could do something, she had to do it had driven the best part of her work. If she had a connection to the Force, a talent for first aid, a knack for blending in, it had to be used, and for good. That knowledge had been wired into her being for as long as the girl could remember.

But she knew that Kana had more experience than she did. And what she was saying was far from unreasonable. It fit about right in her mind. Lina followed the older woman past the door, and despite herself she smiled to match her laughter.

And she nodded, clear blue eyes looking at the healer. "Yeah, that makes sense."

Then another thought. "How do you tell the difference?" She frowned, thoughtful rather than frustrated. "Mental pain always looks like the real deal - at least, as far as I can tell." She had a tendency to spot pain easily, to feel it strongly. Empathy could be exhausting.

[member="Kana Truden"]​

 

[Kana Truden]

[member="Lina Renning"]

To remove pain was in a sense impossible, to alleviate it to the point where it was manageable was not. With time perhaps Lina would come to agree in full, but Kana could hardly blame her if she didn’t. When Kana had started out she had also wanted to heal everyone she could only to end up stretching herself thin. For the price of helping three people be ridden of any and all pain she would let thirteen more live in constant agony. It was the bitter truth that she had come to learn during her time with the Circle of Healers. A healer was never alone, they always had companions around — force sensitive or not — that could pick up where they left.

Regardless, the difference between mental pain and actual physical pain and how to tell those who needed help and those who did not was quite simple.

“You just listen to their complaints.” Kana shrugged and looked back at the girl next to her. “Those with a dependency syndrome — or rather, an addiction — will always say anything to get your meds. Offer them a healing touch and they will tell you a tale about how it’s alright, and that the drugs in your cabinet will do just fine.”

“Sometimes though it’s just a matter of actually looking at the person in question. Ask them where they are hurt, and if you can see it, fix it. If you can’t see anything, send them to a counselor instead.” Kana looked back at the road ahead as they stepped out into the open again. “Actually, come to think of it you should always run a quick diagnosis before you do anything. That way you know exactly where you need to focus your efforts.”

“And, of course, this all becomes a whole lot easier with time as your mind… Adapts to the ways of the force and how you make the people feel better. How to read their body without even trying, as if on instinct.”

“I just wish someone had told me all this when I started out. It would have helped a lot.”

 

[Lina Renning]

Kana was without a doubt right that it helped.

Truthfully, she'd always been a believer in self-teaching. So long as she could pick things up by herself, there was no use rocking the boat, no use in complicating matters. But as simple as it was to isolate, help was comfortable, pleasant.

And helpful. Very helpful.

"Thank you." She sighed. "I'm- just starting out, yeah. Not so used to this much... well." The chaos on Skor had been messy. Naturally, its aftermath was just as much a mess. And without doubt a bigger mess than she'd tried to tackle yet. But it kept her occupied, and it gave her what opening there was to impart some good in between everything else.

She learned through her work. She learned outside of her work - with the Silvers, with the Alliance, through her cautious branch of exploration (she was wary of the unknown, but she prized discovery too highly to stay put). For the most part it was a straightforward lifestyle. It just liked, so often, to go wrong.

But she digressed.

"There's, um." Lina lifted the bundle of supplies in her hands, indicating. "There's man a few halls away who needs stitches."

[member="Kana Truden"]​