Chapter Text
“Cal, where are you?”
Cal winces as Merrin’s question bounces off every metal wall of his hiding spot. “Quiet,” he hisses at his commlink. “I can’t reach the volume control right now. I’m in one of the apartment blocks south of the square – the troopers spotted me, they’re practically going over the place with a fine-toothed comb, but I’m pretty well hidden. Not safe to leave yet, though.”
“You need to get back here as soon as possible,” Merrin whispers. “We’ve reached the Mantis safely but Cere is hurt.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
Before Cal can start fretting over that, Cere speaks up – “A little positivity, please?” she says, lightly, yet she sounds thready and breathless to Cal’s ears.
“If you insist,” Merrin says, and manages to inject a hint of cheer into her voice when she whispers, “Bad!”
“What happened?” Cal asks, looking upwards at the only sliver of light in sight, wondering how soon he can risk getting out of here without becoming a pincushion. A whole bunch of the stormtroopers on this planet are using slugthrowers. He knows for a fact that’s not regulation, but the Empire gets looser on protocol the further from the Core you get.
Cere gives a staticky sigh. “Trooper got through my guard. Stuck a vibroblade between my ribs – he missed my lung, at least, or else I’d be in real trouble.”
“She is losing too much blood,” Merrin says. “We cannot get it to stop. You need to come back so we can leave.”
Cal closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Any chance of a rooftop pickup…?”
“Sorry, kid,” Greez cuts in ruefully, “but no can do. The whole spaceport’s been shut down. Obviously they bought the fake creds, ‘cause I’m not strapped in a torture chair already, but the moment I fire up the thrusters they’re gonna be all over us. I can get us off-world as long as we’ve got the element of surprise, but you gotta come to me.”
Opening his mouth, Cal pauses at the clang above him and looks up again, and the bright square is promptly shadowed by a familiar rectangular head. The troopers are moving out, BD reports happily. Seems they’ve agreed Cal escaped already and they’re going to search the surrounding area instead.
“Finally,” Cal says with a sigh. “Okay, Greez? Everyone? I’m good to go; I will meet up with you ASAP. Keep a low profile and see what you can do for Cere.”
“Be careful, Cal,” Cere says. “I’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t believe her any more than they believe him when he says it. “Sure,” he says anyway, and the comm line closes.
Now comes the fun part – climbing back up the trash chute he threw himself into when he realized he was about to be cornered. Dropping down might be faster, but not only does it already smell utterly disgusting six floors above the actual trash compactor, he’s not certain he can actually get out that way. Cal grits his teeth and draws his legs up, braces his feet against one side of the chute, and presses his back so hard against the other the pressure keeps him from sliding when he lets go of a tear in the metal. The fingers on his right hand are cut almost to the bone. Nothing compared to Cere’s injury. He awkwardly inches upwards until he reaches the open door where BD’s standing, watching his progress. “Still clear?” Cal grunts, feeling winded. He can’t get a full inhale with his diaphragm so compressed.
Clear, BD confirms.
Cal grasps the edge of the opening, ignoring the pain shooting through his fingers, and wriggles himself through headfirst, flops gracelessly to the stiff carpet. He only allows himself two good breaths to lie there and gather his wits about him. Then he’s up and boosting BD-1 onto his back. “Cere’s hurt,” he reports, looking up and down the long corridor. “We need to get to the Mantis as fast as we can. Best way out of here?”
There’s a junction down the hall to Cal’s left, BD says. That corridor ends in a set of doors that lead to a balcony. Faster than the stairs and safer than an elevator.
“Copy that….” Cal follows BD’s directions, stretching out with the Force before he rounds the corner just to be sure he’s not strolling into a wall of blasters, then thrusting a hand ahead as he runs and blowing the double doors wide open. He slows as he steps onto the rain-splattered balcony, lets the doors swing shut behind him, looks around, looks down. “Hello,” he mutters, dropping into a crouch and peeking through the railing.
In the alleyway beneath the balcony, three white, cog-emblazoned speeder bikes are parked in a neat line. He’s pretty sure he recognizes the model; it’s too recent to be widespread, but they’ve come across a couple recently. The stormtroopers who presumably brought them here have clustered together at the far end of the alley. “New speeders?” Cal murmurs to BD.
Yeah, BD says, very new. Imperial-issue, safe to leave unguarded because they require an Imperial ID to start the thrusters.
“Be a real pity if some droid just happened to have a stolen ID in their databases, huh?” Cal says, grinning a bit.
Truly, BD agrees, and hangs on tight.
The troopers have their backs to Cal, eyes on the growing turbulence in the square, so they don’t notice him dropping out of the sky and landing silently on the speeder at the head of the line. BD plugs into the system while Cal gets himself situated. Four kilometers to the spaceport – Cal had suggested they dock in the craggy, desolate terrain outside the city to avoid a situation exactly like this one, but now he’s glad they didn’t take his advice. That’d be a twenty minute drive and he’s afraid Cere might not have that long.
The stormtroopers finally get a clue upon hearing the thrusters snarl. By then it’s too late; they barely have time to turn around and start to lift their weapons when Cal seizes the handlebars and kicks it into high gear. Only one of them is brave enough to try getting off a shot as he hurtles towards them, and it goes wildly off-course. All three troopers fling themselves out of the way to avoid being bowled over. Cal and BD blaze out of the alley and into the city square.
Bad idea. He should’ve chosen the last speeder and gone backwards. He has to hit the brakes immediately to avoid running down a bunch of civilians. Capital square is heaving with anger, about to boil over; the people are infuriated by the ongoing Imperial occupation they were told would end months ago and a riot’s been brewing since sundown. Normally, the unrest would be welcome – Cal’s crew has been using it as a cover for their own activities – but the stormtroopers are out in full force to suppress any violent demonstrations and there’s hardly space to breathe in the square. Behind him, the other two speeder bikes roar to life.
Up, BD says, and Cal complies automatically, pushing the repulsorlifts as far as they’ll go to take him above the crowds. He won’t get much speed up here, but neither will they, and the locals are crowding in towards the troopers, hampering their progress. He leans low over the handlebars and urges the bike across the square. At least three people throw stuff at him. He ducks at just the right time to avoid a glass bottle to the head. He’s not exactly dressed like a stormtrooper, but that’s not stopping anybody.
“Come on, come on….” Halfway there. He chances a look back and the troopers have taken to the air too. Cal kicks one of the pedals, sends the bike into a barrel roll as the stormtrooper in front aims his blaster and gets off a surprisingly well-aimed shot that would’ve taken him out at the spine. No built-in weapons on these, fortunately. The repulsors whine when he cants to one side, then the other, making it difficult to get a bead on him.
Take the street on the right, BD says, leaning so far he’s practically falling off Cal’s shoulder. It’s emptier and he can put the bike down before the lifts overheat.
“For brand-new speeders,” Cal says, “these are garbage.”
They could do better with spit and spacetape, BD agrees.
He just barely makes it before the repulsorlifts quit on him entirely. They’re flaring red on the monitor; the back end of the bike hits the pavement with a bone-rattling crash and screams down the street, sending up a shower of sparks as Cal guns it. At least the garbage is fast on the ground. Of course, that means the troopers are too, but there are fewer civilians around here – when all three stormtroopers start firing, Cal ignites his lightsaber.
Deflecting blaster bolts aimed at his back while trying to steer a vehicle at the same time is an experience. If BD-1 had manipulators, Cal would let him take the controls. He keeps one hand on the handlebars, trying not to hit pedestrians or anything that’d total his bike, and banks another good shot into a darkened storefront. Thanks to the turmoil, everything’s been closed up early tonight. His shoulder twinges as he swings back wildly, relying on the Force alone to guide his actions. The third trooper, riding on the back of his buddy's vehicle, leaps down and grabs a speeder idling in the road and rejoins the chase. Right, BD calls, that’ll take them closer to the port.
“Gotcha!” He yanks the handlebars and leans and takes a corner poorly, almost takes a trash bin with him. The speeder’s finally quit dragging, though, so he puts a bit of distance between himself and the troopers as they slow down around the same corner. “How much –”
Something lands on the back of the bike. It nearly hits the ground again – Cal turns off his lightsaber and grabs both handles to keep it steady – then stabilizes. “About time!”
“I would like to see you teleport onto a moving vehicle,” Merrin says. “I thought you might need a hand.”
He glances over his shoulder at her, double-takes. “What happened to you?!”
She blinks at him through swollen red eyelids, oblivious to the tears streaming down her face. “A police officer sprayed my face with something that burned badly and made me cough.” Regardless, her bloodshot eyes are beginning to glow green, and she spins around on the seat to face the stormtroopers. “It’s much better since Greez washed my eyes out, but I still cannot see very well.”
“Aim directly in front of you,” Cal says. He hears a fwoom, an explosion, and a scream, glances back again. “Next one’s a little to the left –” Merrin flings another neon green fireball, misses. “Straighter!”
“That may be difficult for me,” she says.
BD cackles. Cal wishes he hadn’t told her the colloquial meaning of that word. “Try anyway! I have to turn again in three – two –”
Fwoom. Boom. “I think the last one is stopping.”
Yeah, BD says, peering past Cal right before they swing another turn, but only because he’s meeting with his backup.
“How much further?” Cal says. BD’s reply is promising, so Cal nods and nudges Merrin with an elbow. “Time to go.”
“After you,” she says, turning to face him. He flicks a switch to put the speeder on autopilot – won’t fool the stormtroopers for long, but they might trail it for a bit longer before they realize – and, as one, all three of them tuck and roll off the bike. Merrin makes it to her feet first, grabs Cal, yanks him up, and they duck down another street. The stormtroopers jet past.
“How’s Cere?” Cal asks as they run towards the spaceport.
“Not good,” Merrin says grimly. Cal speeds up.
The port is terrifyingly quiet. These places are always a cacophony – fuel barges, maintenance droids, repair work, docking managers shouting at people who don’t pay them, ships taking off and landing – but this one’s silent, like it’s holding its breath. They charge into the Mantis’s bay, up the ramp, and Merrin hammers the control panel to open the door.
Greez greets them with two blasters. The second he realizes who’s invading, he chucks them onto the holotable and goes running up to the cockpit. “Need someone on the scanners!” he bellows, blitzing through the ship’s startup sequence with practiced hands.
The deck vibrates when the thrusters fire and Cal and Merrin look at one another. “I’ll go,” Merrin says, and rushes to take the copilot’s seat even though she probably can’t see much yet. Maybe that’s why BD-1 follows her. Cal heads for the lounge, where he can see Cere stretched out on the sofa.
For a moment, as he takes her in, Cal fully appreciates what the rest of them have gone through every time Cal’s almost bled out or been stabbed with his lightsaber or got caught too close to an explosion. Cere is a horrible color, eyes closed, taking quick, sharp breaths. Her entire left side from underarm to mid-thigh is painted deep red. He can’t see the wound – she’s clutching a towel to her ribs like her life depends on it. She looks like she’s dying. Cal drops to his knees next to her. “Cere?”
To his relief, her eyes flutter open, focus. “Are we going?” she says faintly.
Cal nods. “Yeah.” He barely noticed the Mantis lifting off, but they must be in the air now – he hears the high whine of the cannons charging, then firing, followed by a distant shuddering explosion. “Definitely going. Hold on.”
She sucks a breath through her nose, swallows. “Cal,” she says, in a funny sort of voice that makes his heart stop.
“You’re gonna be fine,” he says, clamping his hand over hers where it’s clutched to her side, increasing the pressure. She’s not allowed to start apologizing or anything like that. She’s going to be fine. “Just – keep breathing –”
“Cal,” she says again, a little more firmly. “I need you to close the wound.”
He blinks. He looks at the sodden towel, where she’s holding it, and almost laughs from giddy panic. “Ruptured Spleen Association, huh?”
“…where can I resign my membership?”
“You can’t,” he says, pressing harder, bracing himself for the hiss of pain. Cere barely makes a sound. “I don’t have one anymore, remember? You have to take my seat.”
“You have to do as I told you… close the wound.”
“How?” Cal asks. He looks at the lounge table, where Greez’s tidy, organized medkit has been eviscerated. “I don’t think we have enough sutures – if the wound’s too big, they won’t even work –”
Cere’s gaze flicks to his lightsaber.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Cal says weakly. “That’s… will that work?”
“You tell me,” she murmurs, pointing a finger of her unoccupied hand at Cal’s chest. “It should. I’ve done it before… not to myself. A few troopers. It’ll work.”
He’d survived a lightsaber wound because they typically don’t bleed, he thinks. Instant cauterization. Like that laser the security droid on Respera had used to close Cal’s femoral artery, just on a much, much larger scale. He lost his spleen because it was burned so severely no amount of bacta would restore it.
Cal looks over his shoulder. “Greez?”
“We’re going!” Greez shouts back. “Just gotta get enough space – ah, get out of my kriffin’ way already – to jump!”
“I need Merrin!”
He doesn’t even have to explain. Merrin ditches Greez in a heartbeat, running into the lounge, dropping to her knees and skidding the last meter or so until she almost crashes into the sofa. Ordinarily, Cal would give that an eight out of ten, but right now he just starts unbuckling his wrist cuff and says, “I need you to hold her down. This is probably gonna hurt.”
Merrin doesn’t ask about that, either. She clambers onto the sofa, almost falls right back off when something impacts the Mantis’s shields and the entire ship rocks, kneels with a leg on either side of Cere’s hips, settles her hands on Cere’s shoulders. “We have already given her a painkiller,” she says.
“Good. Here,” Cal says, laying the open cuff in Cere’s free hand. “Might wanna bite down on that.”
“…hope you washed it… recently.”
“Pretend I said yes,” he says, and as she slips the synthleather between her teeth, he peels the towel away from her side and pushes her shirt up. The tear in her side makes Cal’s thigh wound from so long ago look like a papercut. The edges of the cut are a fraying mess, too – vibroblades are favorite weapons of close-quarter fighters for a reason. They’d need three-inch-long plastoid sutures just so they could reach intact skin to stick to.
Cere has a small vertical scar beneath her navel (probably that appendectomy she mentioned once) and a pinkish blotch by her hip that looks like it came from a blaster. This is going to be much worse… if she survives it. Cal inhales, lets the Force steady him, and activates his lightsaber, getting to his feet so he has a good angle. “Ready?”
“Yes,” Merrin says quietly, leaning forwards so most of her weight is on Cere’s shoulders.
Cere can’t speak with the cuff in her teeth. Her eyes meet Cal’s for an instant and there are a thousand emotions in that look – pride and fear and love and resignation – and then she closes them, nods. “Okay,” Cal whispers. He mops up as much blood as possible so he can get a decent grip, squeezes the wound shut one-handed until the edges almost meet, and sets the lightsaber blade against her skin.
Without the Force keeping him centered, Cal would’ve stopped at the noise Cere makes – the sort of guttural scream that sounds like it’s being wrung out of her as she thrashes against Merrin’s hands, instinctively trying to curl away from the burn. Good thing Merrin is strong, because Cere almost lurches out of Cal’s grip entirely. He prays he’s not sending her into some kind of Imperial torture flashback. Mercifully, she passes out a moment later. Cal leaves the lightsaber one second more, sickened by the scent as her flesh cooks, then turns it off.
Cere is still breathing. Her wound looks worse now, but it’s seared shut. Merrin, pale as he’s ever seen her, lets go of Cere’s shoulders, climbs off of her. “Did it work?”
“I… I think so.” She isn’t dead. Yet.
Greez and BD-1 hurtle into the lounge, then, startling Cal – he hadn’t even realized they’d jumped to hyperspace, but Greez wouldn’t be here otherwise. “Nineteen minutes to Tennspeck,” Greez reports shortly, eyes on Cere. “There’s a medcenter there – buddy of mine used it once, they took good care of him – how is she?”
Cal does not say better. He looks at Cere, the blood all over her side, her shirt, her pants, the sofa, her hands, Cal’s hands, and knows they aren’t out of the woods yet. “Not great,” he says, kneeling again. “She’s probably lost way too much blood.” He does not say I don’t know if she’ll make it nineteen more minutes. He begins sifting through the mess on the table and tries to remember what that vial had looked like. “Greez, the Regenon stuff, where is it?”
“The – we don’t have any more,” Greez says. “We only had the one and Cere used it on you.”
Fuck. He keeps digging anyway, uselessly. Enough supplies to stock a small clinic and nothing that will help Cere now. Stimulants, antiemetics, the sutures, gloves –
Cal’s eyes land on a coil of tubing, attached to a packet containing two needles.
He knocks down five other things grabbing the package, almost uses his teeth to tear the plastoid open before thinking better of it. It needs to remain sterile. He grabs the medkit scissors instead. “Wait,” Greez says, stepping closer and laying a hand over Cal’s. “Cal, you can’t.”
“Yeah, I can.”
“No, you can’t!” Greez says, louder; Cal yanks out of his grip, turns away, cuts the packet open. “It’s too dangerous – we gotta believe she’ll hang on long enough –”
“What’s dangerous?” Merrin asks, her eyes darting between the two of them.
“That’s for direct blood transfusions,” Greez says as Cal tries to unwind the tube. “It’s meant for my people – soldiers, technically. We’ve all got the same kinda blood, so we can donate to one another in an emergency. But Humans have whole different types; they can’t donate unless they’re the same kind.” He grabs Cal’s hands and forces him to hold still, and Cal again shakes him off. “Cal. When you were hurt way back on Bogano, Cere said she couldn’t do it because there was only something like a one in four chance you were compatible and she wouldn’t kill you.”
Cal pauses halfway through screwing a needle onto one end of the tube, looks the Latero in the eyes. “Greez, you know I respect you, but you really shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand.” The needle snaps into place. “I’m a universal donor. It doesn’t matter what type she is; I can give her my blood.”
Something an awful lot like hope dawns on Greez’s face.
“…okay,” he says, letting go of Cal’s wrists. “Okay. Okay – fine, sure, blood transfusion on my sofa. No biggie.”
“Sorry, we can’t risk moving her,” Cal says, starting on the other needle.
“Stars, kid, I don’t care! You guys are worth more than a karking piece of furniture!” Greez takes one of Cere’s hands in two of his, rubs it like he’s trying to warm her up. “Everyone’s bled all over this thing anyway. I keep finding drips of oil and little BD-shaped footprints on the seats,” he adds, giving the droid in question a look. “Merrin puked on here –”
“I am still very sorry,” Merrin says humbly, though they’ve told her a dozen times she doesn’t have to apologize for that. Either it’s just her or Nightsisters in general can’t eat hanava pods, because they’d made her sick without much warning.
“ – Cal peed on it once –”
Cal almost drops the needle. “I did not!”
“Oh yes you did.”
“Cere said –”
“Yeah, she lied to you.” Greez pauses. “‘cause I told her to. You were so skittish back then I figured you’d disappear if you thought we were mad at you. And you were, you know, dying and all, so I got over it quick.”
Well, in that case, they can give Cere all of Cal’s blood, because he’s going to die of humiliation one way or another. As soon as the other needle is securely attached, Cal hands Merrin that end to hold it off the ground while he tries to find the vein in the crook of his arm. It’s harder than medical droids make it look – he’s not sure where exactly to insert the needle and it seems unwise to just stick himself blindly. Doesn’t help that he’s right-handed, but he can’t use that hand because it’s a bloody, lacerated mess.
“Here.” Merrin gives back the tube, takes the needle from his shaking fingers. “Let me.”
“Do you know how?”
“I know how to bleed people for rituals,” she says, which isn’t reassuring, but neither is Cere’s rapid, shallow breathing or continued unconsciousness. Cal watches her while Merrin pierces his skin, then mutters a curse and removes the needle. “Sorry, missed. Everything’s still blurry. I will try again.”
She can try as many times as she needs. Cal doesn’t care.
“There!” Merrin exclaims on the third attempt, and Cal looks back to see blood filling the tube. He swiftly pinches it shut with two fingers so not to waste any, thinks about Cere clamping Cal’s nicked artery with her bare hand while Merrin sinks the other needle into Cere’s elbow. This time, miraculously, she gets it on the first try.
“Uh,” Greez says, sounding a bit dizzy himself, “how do we make sure your blood’s going into her and not the other way around…?”
“Good old-fashioned gravity,” Cal says, and stands. Bracing himself on Greez’s shoulder, he steps up onto the edge of a cushion, over Cere, and sits on the back of the sofa, and then releases the tube. His blood courses through it and spills into Cere’s parched veins. “BD?” BD-1, who’s been sitting by Cere’s feet and observing the proceedings silently, glances up. “How long can we do this?”
BD tips his head, thinking. It typically takes eight to ten minutes to extract 500mL of blood, he says. Approximately 4.75L in the average adult Human male, but Cal only weighs about 55kg, so they’ll assume 4.25L max. Donating more than 600mL will be a risk; they could possibly go slightly longer given the urgency of the situation, but no more than 700mL. He calculates ten to twelve minutes before it’ll be too dangerous for Cal to continue.
“Keep track of time and tell me when to stop,” Cal says, and BD nods.
Then there’s nothing any of them can do except sit and watch as Cal pours his blood into Cere. Merrin is seated on the deck by her head, eyes on her pale face, listening to her breathe. Cal just holds still, stiller than he ever has before in his life in fear he might dislodge the needles otherwise. He isn’t ready to let go of her just yet. There was a time when he would have done so more easily, angry and hurt and untrusting, but… Cere had no obligation to step up and look out for Cal, keep teaching him the ways of the Force even when she herself had pulled away, but she did it regardless. She’s still doing it, nudging her fumbling baby Jedi Knight onto the right path whenever his lack of knowledge and experience leaves him flailing. No, Cal isn’t ready to let go. He will if he must, but… maybe he won’t have to.
For his part, Greez does what he always does when he’s anxious – paces back and forth between the lounge and the cockpit, checking the Mantis’s monitors like close vigilance will propel them through hyperspace any faster. “Come on, Cere,” he murmurs at one point, squeezing her shoulder. “You gotta pull through. Don’t make me raise these feral teenagers alone. They’ll outnumber me.”
“I think her heart rate has slowed down,” Merrin ventures cautiously, her fingers on the side of Cere’s neck. “It’s not racing as much anymore.”
“She has more blood,” Cal says. “Her heart doesn’t have to work quite so hard to pump.”
“Good,” Greez says. “Good. You doin’ okay, kid?”
“Yeah.”
It’s been five minutes and fifty-one seconds, BD interjects.
He can keep going. Cal shifts his legs a little bit, careful not to jostle Cere, just so he can keep his own blood flowing instead of puddling in his feet. It’s working, he tells himself. She’ll be fine.
Greez takes another trip to the front, comes back, picks up a couple of medical supplies Cal upended, checks the soil of his plants like he didn’t water them this morning. “Maybe I should grab you some juice or something,” he eventually muses, eyeing Cal. “Keep your blood sugar up. You like the cachu one, right?”
“Yeah.” Cal turns his head to watch Greez take the steps, and the ship keeps turning, tilting like they just lost their stabilizers.
“Whoa!” Greez yelps. “Merrin –”
“I’ve got him,” she says, already on her feet and grasping Cal’s shoulders, pushing him upright again.
“That’s enough,” Greez decides, flapping a hand at BD-1 and reaching for Cal’s arm.
Cal tries to lean back without falling over, tucking the arm with the needle in it against his side, queasy stomach flip-flopping as it compensates for the sudden vertigo. “BD?”
Nine minutes, twelve seconds, says BD, who’s also standing now and watching Cal closely.
“I can keep going. You said at least ten.”
Based on a standard flow rate, BD says, which in practice can vary wildly from Human to Human. If Cal is getting dizzy, they’ve taken too much already.
Greez is shaking his head. “Is he saying no? Doesn’t matter; I’m saying no. Take it out.”
“Not yet.”
“Cal!” Greez seizes Cal’s other hand, holds on tight enough to ache until, reluctantly, Cal meets his eyes. And the Latero looks pretty wrecked – he’s pale too, hair sticking up in weird directions where he’s been tugging at it nervously, bloodstains all over his jacket. Cere’s blood is still on his hands. Probably on the Mantis’s controls, too. He didn’t even bother washing it off yet. “Cere’s my friend. I love her and I want her to be okay, but there’s gotta be a limit! I’m not losing both of you.” He takes a deep breath. “I know you’d give her everything, Callie, but you’ve given her enough.”
“…are we still talking about blood?” Merrin says, sounding almost timid.
Cal closes his eyes. The room spins on.
He fumbles at the needle until it slides out of his arm.
Merrin’s still holding onto Cal, so Greez grabs the end of the tube, raises it to let the last of Cal’s blood drain into Cere. “Carefully,” Merrin instructs, bracing Cal as he stands on wobbling legs; she winds up practically lifting him over Cere, and the second his feet hit the deck she pushes him down to flop on the other side of the couch. He lays back immediately, BD darting out of the way so he can rest his head on Cere’s shins. “Just stay there for a minute.”
“Not a problem,” Cal mumbles, shutting his eyes again. He’s lightheaded and nauseous, but doesn’t feel like he’s going to pass out. And how sad is it that he can tell how much blood he’s down by measuring the severity of his symptoms?
He reopens his eyes when a cold plastoid bottle is pushed into his hands. “Drink,” Greez orders, and unscrews the cap for him. “Great news, Merrin, we’re gonna have so much steak for the next week so I can get some iron into these two… uh, sit up a little first so you don’t choke. You need help?”
“No, I’ve got it…” Cal says. “How’s Cere?”
“Her color looks a little better,” Merrin says after a critical study of Cere’s face. “Pulse is still fast but not as fast, and I don’t think she’s breathing as fast now, either. But she’s not conscious.”
Cal sits up gingerly, takes a few gulps of juice, and then slithers down to the deck, taking Merrin’s spot next to Cere. Her skin is cool when he touches her forehead. “Greez? Can you get my blanket?” The Latero nods and scurries off, comes back with it folded in his arms, tries to hand it to Cal. “No – put it on Cere. We need to keep her warm.”
“I will go get hers in a second,” Greez says impatiently, flapping it at Cal. “You’re shivering too, you know. Bundle up, I’ll be right back….”
As soon as he leaves, Merrin helps Cal pull his striped blanket over Cere. Greez just sighs to see this when he returns, but it gives him an excuse to tuck Cere’s quilt around Cal’s shoulders. The quilt isn’t holding a whole lot of good echoes – Cere has as many nightmares as Cal, if not more – but it carries a part of her in it, and Cal thinks, suddenly, he will have to keep it if she dies.
Greez goes up to the cockpit to check their progress for the thirty-seventh time and then calls, “Four minutes! Merrin? I need you to get on the comms. As soon as we revert, I’m gonna take us in. You gotta find the priority frequency and tell ‘em we have a medical emergency on board; I need to know where to land to have a team meet us.”
With one more look at Cere, Merrin does as she’s told. That just leaves Cal and BD, who snuggles into Cal’s blanketed lap, providing as much comfort as he receives. Cal strokes his head like he’s a tooka, watches Cere breathe in and out through parted lips.
Then, slowly, her eyes crack open.
“Hey,” Cal whispers, folding his arm on the cushion and resting his chin on it so her face is mere inches from his. He can’t help smiling and BD-1 gives a happy twitter – Cere blinks fuzzily a few times, and she doesn’t seem able to lift her eyelids more than halfway, but after a long moment, her eyes find Cal’s. “About time you woke up. Sit tight; we’re dropping out of hyperspace in a minute and Greez is gonna get you straight to a medcenter.”
Cere blinks again, inhales deeply through her nose, licks her lips, swallows with a grimace. Her voice is a barely-audible rasp when she whispers, “I feel… awful.”
Cal almost laughs. “Yeah, been there. You’re gonna be fine, though.”
“…lightsaber worked?”
“Yup. Let’s not do that one again, okay… we also dumped a couple units of blood into you,” he adds, tapping the spot on his arm Merrin bandaged while he was trying to regain his bearings.
Cere’s eyes flicker to it, back to his face. “Risky.”
Shaking his head, Cal grins wearily. “Nope. O-.” And he’s never been more grateful for it. The corner of her mouth twitches. “You’d better take good care of that blood; I worked hard on it.”
She actually manages a faint smile now. Cere slides her hand over until the backs of her knuckles touch Cal’s cheek. He leans into it, listening to Merrin rapid-fire the details of their situation into the comms while Greez steers the Mantis down to Tennspeck, and shuts his eyes.
“Just evening the score,” Cal tells Cere a few days later, when she’s still somewhat pale and fatigued but doesn’t give Greez conniptions by standing up anymore. “You’ve stopped me from bleeding out at least twice… among other things.”
“Fair enough,” she says, smiling. They’re both quiet for a moment, then, more solemnly, she adds, “Do me a favor in the future and remember you aren’t a blood bank, please.”
“I’m not planning to run around offering my blood to everyone who might need it, Cere.”
She raises her eyebrows. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“Are we gonna have another argument about how I’m too self-sacrificing?”
“No,” Cere says, leaning back on her hands. “I think we’ve retreaded that one enough. And don’t take this as me being ungrateful, because I am very grateful, but the first rule of blood donation is stopping when it begins to negatively affect you, regardless of the recipient’s condition. You cannot provide further aid if you’re unconscious or dead.”
“I know.” Cal looks down at the Mandalorian orange he’s been playing with rather than eating, finally splits the peel with his thumbnail. “I was scared,” he admits. “I was afraid I’d lose you, so….”
After a pause, she says, “You were also missing enough blood to feel it, so I’m sure you weren’t thinking completely rationally. But Cal –”
“I know,” he repeats, dragging his nail around and around the orange so the peel will come off in a spiral. “Not the kinds of emotions I should’ve been acting on.” If Cal had given her too much blood and Cere still hadn’t made it, the crew would’ve been down two members instead of just one. He doesn’t regret the transfusion, but… in hindsight, Greez and BD were right. Cal wonders which of them tattled to Cere. “I’d do it again, though – the normal amount to donate, I guess, instead of… you know. Too much.”
She leans into him so their shoulders touch for a second. “Let’s hope you don’t have to.”
The orange peel detaches perfectly and Cal coils it around his wrist like a bracelet. It smells nice. Greez keeps telling them not to throw the peels out, since he can make some kind of candy from them. “Think it’s safe to go back in yet?”
In reply, Cere reaches up and prods the button to open the Mantis’s doors. They’re both immediately serenaded with the muffled, echoing, motormouthed bridge of Squid Like Me’s reviled dance remix, blasted as loud as BD-1 can manage, along with Merrin laughing and Greez spewing creative threats if BD doesn’t get out of the karking ventilation this instant.
Cere shuts the doors again, plunging them back into relative quiet. “No,” she says unnecessarily. Cal shrugs – it’s cool and breezy out here on the ramp, at least – and offers her a segment of the orange, which she accepts, and together they watch the distant sun melt beneath the horizon.