Owie

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

Aela walked down the subterranean halls of the New Jedi Temple on Sullust, her hand stuck to her side and her torso slightly hunched over. Blood had soaked through her clothes, her fingers pressed tightly against her side hiding the extent of whatever injury was bleeding.

Her face was a contorted mixture of pain and annoyance.

She wandered through the halls, a few padawans clinging to the wall as she moved past them, some Knights asking her if she was okay, and a Master or two offering her a solemn nod as they inspected her. It was clear that she had recently been in battle. Her hair was roughed and dirty, her eyes were slightly sunken, a multitude of cuts and bruises were arranged on her body. Her clothes were entirely ruined, caked with mud and more than a little bit of blood. Despite that, she was still walking, hunched, but still walking.

The temple here on Sullust was arranged in an odd fashion. On the surface sat a massive biodome installation that held most of the temple, the Archives, the Gardens, and of course the main Halls were located there. Yet beneath the surface, hidden miles under the earth was the Temples other section. Here one could find the secure vaults, prisons, and Aela's destination, the Infirmary.

It was arranged this way in order to ensure defense. In case of an attack the most important functions of the Temple would remain unharmed, though for Aela it was proving more to be an annoyance than anything else.

Eventually however she made it, the door falling to the side as she stepped forward. "Hello?"

Her voice rang out within the empty infirmary.

"Anyone here?" She had expected at least a Jedi or Two, maybe a med-droid. "I could use some help."

 

[Avalore Eden]

There came the sound of soft voices and babbling from a side room. A loud crack of squealing laughter, the clatter of something across the floor. More soft words before hurried footsteps brought the blue-robed Healer into sight in the doorway.

"Hello? Yes-oh!" brown eyes searched for the owner of the new voice, an unfamiliar one at that, and found [member="Aela Talith"] standing hunched in the entry of the Medical Labs, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in. My Learners are at a general assembly and I-" Avalore was not one of the many Jedi who seemed to have super-human senses at their disposal. She'd not had a clear look at the woman at first, but as she stepped closer her words came to an abrupt halt, as did her stride.

Gaze traveling from pallid, sweat-slicked face down along her doubled figure to the bloodstains at her middle and suddenly all manner of joviality dissipated into the air around her.

Good gravy. This gal had some timing...

Avalore's feet were moving again with quick, direct purpose to bring her to Aela's side where she took hold of her coupled arm to help steady and lead her in, "Did you walk all the way down here without receiving help from anyone?" Terse, unhappy words from the Master Healer, her brow set low in disbelief, "I'll be having a word with....well, with someone. Let's get you to a room..."

The first empty room they had. Avalore pressed her palm against the scanner pad to unlock it and helped Aela inside, "I'll need you to disrobe so I can see your injuries before I can address anything. Here, sit here and let me help you."

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

Aela flinched slightly as the healer grasped her, not because she was afraid, but mostly because of the pain that still wracked her body.

When they moved towards the room she suddenly found herself getting rather tired. The Young Marshall had been holding Crucitorn for nearly two hours, the force flowing through her in order to stem the pain of the wound in her side. Her head became light, though in truth she didn't really mind the feeling. There was an odd sensation that ran across her skin, a light tingle. She shook her head for a moment in response to her question of anyone helping her.

"I told them not to worry." Aela explained. "There were worse injured that the first response team got to."

She wasn't going to die, just suffer through a little pain, and that wasn't the worst thing in the world. "It's not as bad as it looks."

Aela would insist on that. The pain was bad, but the wound was mostly superficial, or so she thought. As they reached the room Aela followed the instructions given to her by Avalore. Her one arm remained down, the injury preventing her from lifting it too far in the air. Instead her other hand did the work, lifting the cloak from her shoulders and pulling the top over her head. She flinched, letting out a loud hiss as the cloth pulled away from the wound.

Her bra remained for a moment, mostly because she couldn't remove it herself, however half of the material had been cleaved away and the wound revealed itself. It was a gash across her ribs, cut by the tip of a vibro-blade.

 

[Avalore Eden]

"They should have sent someone with you," Avalore insisted, jaw tight as she carefully helped Aela peel off the layers. Someone should have been there to help the Marshal safely get to the Healing Halls at the very least. But, she sighed and digressed, Aela was here now and it was no longer up to someone - it was up to her to see this young woman back into health.

The Healer then gently removed Aela's bra, taking extra care where it lay near the wound, and moved to fetch a bandeau to cover her up. Not that it mattered so much, but Avalore was aware that most normal Jedi woman were modest and perhaps even a bit shy. She didn't know Aela so she wasn't about to make the woman uncomfortable.

"I'm Master Eden, by the way," she said, attempting to cover up the bitterness of the circumstances with a low, warm conversation, "but you may call me Avalore. What's your name and how did you receive this wound?"

Reaching around the front of the Marshal, Avalore stretched the fabric of the bandeau over her exposed chest and beneath her arms, using medical clasps to clip in it place at her back, she then motioned for Aela to move to the examination table and helped her up onto it.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

Aela followed along, though more sluggishly than they had been moving before.

"It's alright, I don't think any of them actually saw the wound." The force was beginning to ebb away from her, the pain beginning to settle into her side. She could feel the odd prickling sensation really hit her now, the gash across her ribs really beginning to sting. Of course there was no blame for the medical examiners in the Hangars, she had deliberately kept her own injury from them so that they could treat others faster. It was a stupid thing to do, truthfully, and had her mother been there she very like would have yelled at her.

"Pirates." Aela said, letting out a quiet hiss between her teeth as Avalore pressed against the wound slightly. She didn't mind the removal of her clothes, modesty having no place in a medical examiners room. She frowned slightly as she felt the bandeau over her chest, the fabric touching just the very top of her wound and making her wince. "They attacked an Alliance convoy and we were sent to free the hostages they took. Surprisingly, they were rather organized and before we got everyone out one of them managed to snag me with a vibro-blade."

That explained the rather large nasty wound, vibro-blades cut through flesh like a hot knife through butter.

"I'm Aela." She said in a surprisingly chipper tone to answer the womans question. "Aela Talith."

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore helped Aela lay back before moving to set up the medical table to monitor the woman's vitals. Pulling a light down on a hinge from above she left the bedside for a moment to wash her hands and don the necessary medical robes, gloves and face-mask. Brown eyes grimaced over the edge of the cover as she sat down to take a closer look at the angry looking gash on Aela's side, "I was going to guess vibro-blade..."

"Aela...Talith?" a short glance, eyes widening a moment and giving the younger woman's face a closer look, "...Kira's daughter?" Though her smile would be hidden behind her mask it reached her eyes with a growing fondness, "Can't believe I didn't see it before. You look just like her. Kira-" she placed a gloved hand on Aela's upper arm and gave a gentle, warm squeeze, "she's a very dear friend of mine."

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

She smiled.

Aela had always known that her mother had friends in the Order, she was far too nice not too, but she had never met any of them. Mostly the young Talith assumed this was because her mothers friends were all still part of the Old Jedi Order in the Republic. That seemed to be the most logical assumption, and until now she had no reason to think that it wasn't true.

"How do you know her?" Aela could already guess, but that was never as fun as hearing the story.

She ahd a genuine curiosity about her mothers life before she met Aela's father. Kira had been a Jedi investigator and the head of the Shadows. Aela had heard plenty of stories growing up, but most of them had been so cleaned up and changed for the benefit of the kids that she was sure that she had never heard the entirety of them, perhaps Avalore could shed some more light on Kira's past, or at least what it was like to work with her mother in the past.

A wince pulled at her as the wound on her ribs throbbed, the pain not to be forgotten.

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore made a thoughtful sound, pondering just where she first met Kira Talith as she leaned in to more closely inspect the young Talith's vibroblade wound. Brows knit, this needed a good cleaning but she wasn't about to attempt it without administering numbing agents, or at the very least a healthy dose of pain killers. Likely the latter would take the young Jedi for a bit of a spin ... but Avalore could see rib bone and that was not a good sign.

"At the Jedi Order during my time with the Republic," she replied gently, giving Aela a small smile, "and we later worked together as Housemasters in the Jedi Academy before I closed House Dionea down. I haven't seen her in about a year now...she helped me through some very troubling times."

Moving to produce a vile and clean syringe she pulled the stopper and injected the needle, drawing out the liquid contents, "I'm going to start by giving you a local numbing injection so I can clean out your wound. Do you have any allergies to medications that I should know of?"

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

"Oh." Aela said quietly, shaking her head. "No, no allergies."

She was grateful for that, Maleah had been the one to inherit most of the allergies in the family. Odd how genetics worked that way really. "She's been busy, my mom. I know the Jedi High Council of the old Order requested her help with some things and she...well she had a small incident on Contruum."

Aela bit her lip, both because of the pain and the thought of what had happened during that invasion.

The Young Marshal had been the last to arrive back on Borleias, having lead an attack on Coruscant at the same time as the invasion of Contruum. The sight of her mother in that hospital bed had been enough to move her to tears, much like it had everyone else in the family. Of course in the end her mother had made a swift recovery, but her father was still rather paranoid about letting her do...well much of anything without him tagging along. Aela supposed that was only natural, but she did think that he was going a bit overboard.

 

[Avalore Eden]

"This will hurt more before it kicks in..." nerve blocks were some of the worst injections to give. Nothing quite like killing a major nerve with chemicals to make a patient feel better.

"That so?" Avalore queried while Aela dealt with the injection. It would take a few minutes for the numbing effect to begin and hopefully conversation would help the girl along. Unfortunately Avalore was now in full-blown Healer Mode, which meant her conversation tended to be more detached than she really meant it to. Difficult to split her attentions too much, especially with a wound like this.

"What happened to her? Is she ok?"

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

Aela winced, her eyes bulging open as a sudden torrent of agony tore through her side. Her hands almost immediately clenched into fists, knuckles going white as her teeth ground against one another. Ouch. She grumbled inside of her head, eyes squeezing shut as the dull throbbing pain in her side seemed to spread all over before quickly dissipating and beginning to disappear. There was a sudden sense of relief as the anesthesia began to take effect, though she felt a lingering sensation of pinpricks.

"She's fine now." Aela said through gritted teeth, clearly fighting quite a bit of pain.

"She was on Contruum with my brother when the Sith attacked." The Young Marshal Explained further. "She fought a Sith there and was badly injured. My father and brother managed to save her though and bring her home before the worst could happen."

That hadn't been a pleasant thought at all, seeing her mother laying in the hospital bed, beaten, broken. It had been a terrible sight that had shaken Aela to her very core.

 

[Avalore Eden]

"The galaxy can be a cruel place," Avalore returned quietly, "that's why it needs Jedi so much. I'm glad she's ok, I'll have to make plans to visit her again soon. Last time I saw her was...year or so ago, before I joined the Alliance. I helped her on a mission to retrieve some bafforr trees and relocate them to my old Sanctuary."

They were still there now, unattended and growing freely in the greenhouse. Avalore knew she should one day go back but she hadn't strengthened her heart enough to do it. The place spooked her, to put it plainly. Too many memories, too many ghosts. With the numbing agent kicking in Avalore set to work rinsing and cleaning the wound.

"It's nice that you've joined the ranks here. We need all the help we can get. Are your siblings all Force-sensitive too?"

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

She winced again, pain lancing through her side.

"Yeah." Aela said through gritted teeth. "My brother, Micah, is here in the Alliance."

He wasn't part of the Order, at least not in the same fashion that Aela was. Micah was a bit more of a free spirit, not wanting to be controlled or shifted in any direction that he didn't necessarily want to go. Of course, he wanted to help, but he wanted to do it in his own way. He was like their father in that way, unwilling to help unless pressed to do it or feeling like doing it in the first place. A frustrating quality, one that Aela had to come up against over and over again. "My sisters are more independent. Kaili joined for a while, but I think she's more trying to do her own thing."

Maleah had never even bothered.

There was no anger towards any of her siblings because of their choices of course, she was helping the Alliance because she felt it was the right thing to do, not because she felt it was the right thing for everyone.

 

[Avalore Eden]

"I don't think I've met either of them," Avalore replied, smile tugging at her lips, "I may be bad with names but clearly I would never miss a Talith. I'm not here on Sullust much anymore though, so I don't get to meet all the new faces."

The Healer then fell very silent as she washed away the congealed blood, "This is much deeper than I thought. Aela, I'm going to need to put you under, and for that I require medical assistance." She stood without a second of pause and moved across the room to put in a call to the main hospital on the floor above. Within short order two nurses and a doctor arrived in a flurry of white robes. They were busy, but when a Healer called for assistance you didn't ignore them.


~

"Aela..." the Jedi Marshall was coming-to after surgery. Her side was full of stitches and covered with a heavy layering of bacta poultice, but she would heal. Avalore sat by her bedside, the doctor and nurses long gone by now, watching over her monitors as she came out of anesthesia.

"the surgery was a success," Avalore said, standing from her seat, "you've got several staples in your side that will take a few days to heal. You should be ready to return to training by the week's end."

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

The dull throb in her side was a clue that the woman was telling the truth. It wasn't the same jabbing pain that had been there earlier, but instead just a simple throb that seemed to emanate from her side over and over again. It was manageable really, more of a dull ache than anything else. Her eyes remained closed for a moment more as she tried to take a deep breath, a sudden hiss pulling from her teeth as the jabbing pain returned. The realization that she would have to be more careful for the next week hit her rather quickly.

"Thank you." Aela groaned as she opened her eyes.

"Do I need to put bacta on it?" Aela asked as she slowly tried to sit up, wincing slightly. "Or take anything?"

She was very health conscious when she wanted to be.

The wound had been a nasty one, a vibro-blade bit hard and it bit deep. She wondered briefly if she should begin to wear some sort of armor. For a time she had worn the Vanguard Armor that most of the Jedi used, but had abandoned it in favor of more mobility. Of course the trouble with that was eventually even she couldn't be mobile enough to dodge everyone and everything. That was the issue really. Shifting, she looked up at Avalore.

 

[Avalore Eden]

"There's a bacta poultice on it now beneath that gauze," Avalore said, "it will need to be changed every day for the next five days, after that you can use a topical cream. More importantly," there came that stern look of a Healer or, Aela might better recognize it, a mother, "you need to rest. That was a very deep wound and you have a lot of muscle damage that needs time to heal."

"I'm stationed here for the rest of the week. You can come straight to me for new dressing. I'd recommend you stay here for the night, I've got you on some pain killers but you may need something stronger that I can't release you on."

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

"I don't need painkillers." Aela said quite sternly, though not in any mean way. If there was one word that described her well, it was stubborn. Pain Killers would put her on a tilt, press her mind to not work as effectively and push her into a bit of a lull. She didn't want that. While the Young Marshal knew that she couldn't fight for the next few days she was also well aware that she might have to. A few weeks ago the SIth had made a direct attack against the temple, if that happened again...well Aela wasn't one to sit idly by.

"Thank you, though." She shifted her arm slightly, wincing. "Where are you stationed normally?"

The curiosity in her tone was more than apparent.

Aela knew that the New Jedi Order had expanded quite far, but she hadn't expected one of the Jedi's main healers to be located elsewhere, especially since the Temple here on Sullust was one of the most important ones and was where most of the injured were eventually brought for treatment and care.

 

[Avalore Eden]

She raised her eyebrows but truthfully Avalore wasn't very surprised at the response.

"You Marshals are all the same. I can hardly get Gabriel or Jacen to sit still, let alone take painkillers." Stali, at least, she had a bit more leverage on. As the father figure of her adopted sons he had something far more pressing on his list of priorities. They might not have been married but they were family now, linked by responsibilities and the love for the growing twins and each other.

Avalore sighed through a smile, "I'm stationed on the moon Sulon at Katarn Homestead where I live with my two infant sons. The Temple sends me specialty cases that they can't handle or calls me in for emergencies. Otherwise I'm here for one week a month to train new Healers, which is what I'm here for this week."

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

"Sulon?" That was Sullust's moon, a fact that she embarrassingly enough had only learned a few weeks ago.

"Do you know Adder?" Somehow Aela doubted that Avalore did, Sullon was still a pretty big place after all, but the woman was really the only connection that the young Talith had to the moon. Adder and her had worked together on multiple occasions, having run into one another when they had destroyed a nest of slavers and saved an entire Twi'lek village from being permanently sold off. The memory was one that Aela was rather fond of, and the last time she had seen the other woman things had been rather well.

Aela liked Adder, she was nice, if a bit rough around the edges.

"Tall, redhead." Aela began to describe her. "Looks kind of grumpy all the time."

 

[Avalore Eden]

"Mm," Avalore gave a thoughtful look as she searched through her directory of names committed to memory but shook her head after a moment, "no, don't know anyone by that name. Does he live on Sulon as well?"

[member="Aela Talith"]