be kind, be kind.

( out of bourbon. )

‘SUP LOSERS. I DON’T REMEMBER ANY OF MY TAGS, BUT I WANTED TO LET Y’ALL KNOW THAT CLASS IS OVER IN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS FOR ME SO I?? MIGHT COME BACK, AND START WITH A TAG DUMP OR SOMETHING WHO KNOWS. ALSO, I WROTE A WHOLE BOOK AND I’M GONNA REBLOG THAT IN A SECOND AND TRY TO SORT OUT THIS MESS OF A BLOG AND CATCH ANY DRAFTS I MIGHT’VE MISSED WHILE I’VE BEEN GONE AND DRAFT ‘EM.

“Call it what you will. I am not interested.”

Hux opens his eyes, blinking against the sudden light, studying the face of the man charged with his care. He wonders whether this doctor drew a short straw in a lottery to be assigned this duty, or whether the man had wanted it from the start. The latter seems most likely. He lets his eyes slide away. 

The part of the room he is in has been isolated, it seems, by way of a curtain that looks like it had been someone’s bed linens, once: embroidered with a floral border someone shoved hooks into to hang the sheet from. Sloppy work. Embarrassing. 

Beyond the curtain, the place looks as one would expect a poorly funded terrorist base to look. Without sitting up, the best Hux can do is tip his head, which rewards him with a glimpse of a door. What little else he can see is quickly obscured by the doctor moving to him with a cup of water, offering it; Hux takes it, lips pursed, and rests it and his hand against the mattress without taking a sip. His eyes linger on the arm he had raised for it, and for the small IV tube that is, in fact, present. Licking his lips again, he finds that his throat is scratchy, uncomfortably so, but he still does not drink the water. 

“Stop,” he says at once when the doctor takes his other hand. Hux tugs at it, and regrets it immediately as the motion pulls at something in his shoulder that ignites into pain at even the thought of moving. Unfortunate, given that the chances of an escape being made without the proper use of one arm are unacceptably slim. No point in trying it. Ren will come for him, or someone else will, and he must wait for that arrival. 

If it comes. Hux knows that it may not. Snoke has no patience for failures. 

He lets the doctor take his pulse. “I am fine,” he says to the suggestion, and he turns his head away. A soft, cool pillow meets his cheek, and Hux presses against it, taking a steadying breath. Patience can be worn down, and tempers frayed; with time, and with the stubbornness that has seen him this far in life, Hux can break this doctor down. Can convince him to give him up so this can end. 

Closing his eyes again, Hux curls his fingers over the blankets covering the better part of him. On a ship, they would have been welcome. This planet’s atmosphere, however, is warmer than standard First Order climate control, and to Hux, raised on ships, stationed on ships, and most at home on ships, it approaches stifling. Not that he will deign to ask for it removed. Or to scrabble at and struggle to throw it off on his own time. He is watched, he is certain of it, from all corners, and he must act according to his rank, must act befitting the ——- the First Order, whom he failed the moment he fell into enemy hands. He’s oddly numb to the thought; either the pain of that realization set in before, or it has yet to arrive. None of those prospects are good ones.

    “It’s a real good thing I didn’t ask if you were interested, then. You’re on bedrest whether you like it or not.”

    Belligerent patients are nothing new. He knows any number of thickheaded pilots around here that thing they’re going to be up and about and good as new quick as they like after brushes with death. All this bravado, and what does it get them? Climbing out of a wreckage, holding the torn parts of themselves together, blood in their mouths and in their lungs. If he sees one more man smile at him with red on his teeth and that look of hope on their faces, almost manic --- well.

    He’ll do what he’s always done. He’ll patch them up as best he can and try to get them on their feet again. There’s nothing else to do. He can see the man eyeing the place up with a look that is nothing short of disdain. No doubt the medical facility on their big ol’ ship up there is a fancy, shiny thing. Doesn’t matter to him, any. Everything here is clean, sterile, and the people are good, and they care. He does, at least, and he’s striving to make sure everyone under him does, too. He’s got run of this medical outpost, and he’s not going to have anyone disrupt that, no matter who might be lying in here. It still irks him, those idiots storming in here thinking they could try and drag a patient from his medical area. It’d take twice their number and live ammunition before McCoy let a thing like that happen.

    “If you don’t stop floppin’ around like a fish out of water, you’re going to tear the stitches in your shoulder. Just calm down and let me care for you.”

    It’s a curious choice of words; much more personal, much more human than ‘let me do my job,’ might have been. He shakes his head, muttering to himself about people trying to tear themselves apart before they’ve even finished mending the first time. His eyes slide up at the man’s assurances that he is fine, a frown crossing his face, stern, but not unkind.

    “Like hell you are, kid. Drink the water. You sound parched.”

              “  so you seem a little MAD right now.  ”

@artaswellasscience

tagged by; @72-reasons.

kirk: wait i got this

kirk: *yells* THE USS ENTERPRISE IS TRASH

scotty, from other side of planet: Ẃ̀H̶̢A̢T͘ ̛͞TH̢͠E͡ ͜͠FƯ͟C̷͘Ḱ̷̨ ̴̕D̷̛I̴͘D̨͟ ͜Y͝͏̀ǪU̧͠ ̶J̶̨͠U҉S͏̕͠T͟ ͢͞S̡̛̛A̴͞Y͘͝???

    “Never again.”

    It’s the third time he’s said this. Today. In the past hour, in fact.

    “Never again, Jim Kirk!” ( Four. ) He’s starting to get his breath back, which helps add some proper volume to his words, to really make his point known. ( Not that his point could at all be misconstrued, with the consistent repetition and the number of times he’s sworn exactly this, and has always, always been talked out of it. )

    “Do you hear me? No more away missions! Not one! Your puppy eyes be damned, I’m too old for this --- “ In truth, he’s not so old at all. Not old enough for his old bones to start creaking, except when it rains, not old enough to worry about much except his blood pressure, which is currently, he’s certain, through the roof. But God, does running around with this kid make him feel old, chasing at his heels, avoiding death at every turn. McCoy has never been a thrill-seeking man. He’s a man of simple things, simple pleasures, simple desires. One of those desires is not to die so damn far from home.

    “If we get out of this,” he starts, rubbing his hands over his face, caked with sweat and dust kicked up from their hasty flight through the local countryside. Not the leisurely stroll he prefers, and not much good for sight-seeing. Zero out of ten, would not try again. “I’m goin’ to --- to wring your neck myself, kid.” No, he’s not. “Or put in for a transfer.” Again, no. 

    “And I am certainly not goin’ on anymore away missions with you!”

      “I do not think I want to know. Learning about bodies is ODD, I do not like it very much. Seeing people in their rawest forms just feels…….da, odd. Just odd.” Disgusting was another word for it, but Pavel didn’t think it was appropriate to insult McCoy’s entire professional field to his face, not after he had obviously worked so hard to obtain his title and position. Just like everyone else had. Sometimes, being on the Bridge wasn’t exactly a dream, away missions being so much worse ( and TERRIFYING ), but he still wouldn’t take input from anyone that hadn’t worked on the Bridge, not when they had no idea how hard and draining it could be. He assumed McCoy would feel the same about being in the medbay. 

      His head bobs along with Dr. McCoy’s words. It wasn’t just out of politeness, he was generally interested, he had been ever since he’d heard rumours circulating about the man’s apparent hatred for space. 

         “Does that not become draining, though? I could not imagine.” Because, while there were sometimes major breakthroughs in certain aspects of his field, they were few and far apart, and it was even less unlikely that they would change every single part of his job. He simply couldn’t imagine spending every day relearning the human body, ALIEN bodies. The idea of Spock having cold, green blood was enough to set Pavel on edge if he thought too hard about it. 

       As soon as the words leave his mouth, as soon as he notices the way it falls over the doctor, he wishes he could take them back. Pavel complimented people almost constantly, talking about the Captain’s achievements with such a starstruck awe, admiring Sulu’s pilot skills every other movement, showing a more SILENT respect for Mr. Spock —- but he didn’t really spend enough time around the doctor to compliment him, decided it was too unusual to really do so. Of course, he decided that all too late. 

               “Thank you, sir.”

    Odd. The word has McCoy, inexplicably, chuckling. There’s something funny to him about that; that someone could find their own body odd, and learning about it disgusting. The boy doesn’t have to say it; it’s written all over his face. It’s not that he doesn’t understand -- he’s met plenty of people, especially going through medical school his first time around, that just didn’t have the stomach to be a surgeon. So many otherwise promising students had dropped out over just that, though a fair number of them had gone into less hands-on branches of the medical field. 

    “You can say if it grosses you out. I’m not offended. A lot of people get pretty squicked with the guts and gore of medicine.” His tone isn’t dismissive, exactly; more of slightly resigned. It’s a rare day that he finds someone he can discuss the finer points of ligature with. Truth be told, though, that’s not the part of medicine that really drives him -- diseases are his main focus. “I’m a surgeon, first and foremost, but I like being in the lab, better. Working on cures means no one needs surgery; just sick people needing to get better.” It’s all a matter of time, really -- in almost every case, a man will bleed out faster than a disease can kill him. Surgeries are more pressing; but he can’t only think in an immediate sense. He wants to aim for the long-term.

    Draining? He seems to mull over the question, considers it, and eventually relaxes his posture from the tension brought about from the compliment. It is draining, yes -- but that’s not the whole of it, and he’s not interested in giving the boy only half of an answer. It’s a habit, at this point, trying to answer questions as fully as he can, particularly when it pertains to things of a medical nature -- a fully-informed patient is a good patient, because it’s a patient that can question their doctor, and a doctor kept in check by fully-informed patients is a good doctor. In his opinion, anyway. He’d rather someone tell him if something is wrong than him provide medical care they don’t need, or provide the wrong care -- but, the question.

It would have been simpler if he had died. 

He wishes, frankly, that he had. They had come from nowhere like a plague of locusts in their X-wings and their salvaged ships. What, exactly, the purpose of the attack was, Hux does not know — a test of a new tactic? Guerrilla warfare, darting in and out of the shadows, meaning to wear down the First Order’s defenses? If that were so, the Resistance was more reckless than he had imagined. Each foray of that sort had three possible endings: a complete routing, a stalemate, or a major victory for the rebels. The last of these was the least likely. Gritting one’s teeth and bearing the losses until one came by a lucky break was poor military tactics. Even children knew as much. Except —— 

—-except they had had luck on their side. Or the superstition they called the Force. Or, more likely, an informant. Regardless of how it happened, among the shuttles caught in the unexpected crossfire as they returned from a planetary expedition was Hux’s own. Most had been destroyed. One – his – had not, though narrowly. It had been taken as the rebels beat a hasty retreat to their own territory.

The Resistance pilots had looked like giddy children on Life Day as they unwrapped their battered, present of a shuttle and found the Starkiller inside. It was sickening. 

What Hux wanted, immediately upon discovering whose hands he was in, was to be thrown into a cell, forgotten, and left to either plot an escape or to quietly bleed out and take all his knowledge of the Order to the grave. That was, he decided, preferable to torture. Preferable to having it pried from him. Preferable to the betrayal, intentional or not, that will come if he is left to the so-called mercy of the Resistance for too long.

Instead of a cell, instead of bleeding out, he is here. In a medical ward. The wounds he received when his shuttle was crippled by friendly fire have been dressed and treated by steady, sure hands. Hux is unsure when he woke, but he has monitored the goings-on around him for a long time with closed eyes and measured breaths. The hands worked quickly, efficiently; Hux could appreciate that, though the waste of resources on a prisoner like himself was beyond him. The hands were not miserly, however, with bandages or bacta. And the owner of these hands — what planet was the man from, to have an accent like that? — had also, it seemed, taken it upon himself to shout off any and all personnel here to interrogate him. 

Why?

There is no point in denying that he is awake, now that the doctor is the only one here to see. Hux parts his lips, licks them, finds them dry. “I am uninterested in pity.” His voice is soft, hardly above a rasp, and his eyes remain closed. “Or charity.” The word drips with poison. “They will have their way. Save your breath.”

    It’s not that he is an ignorant man. Quite on the contrary; he, more than anyone outside of those poor souls gifted with the magic they call the Force, is capable of understanding, of truly sitting down and contemplating and understanding the enormity of the loss of life caused by the destruction of the Hosnian System. It’s mindboggling, stomach-turning, it’s almost too much --- but McCoy has traveled a lot more than he’s always wanted to, going where he needed to be, when he needed to be there. He’s seen planets the size of those lost. He’s been down on the bustling streets. He’d been on some of those planets, even. It’s not that he can’t fathom what the man under his care has done.

    It just has no relevance. Not here, not in Medical. Here, for whatever he has done, for whoever he has wronged, for whatever crimes he has committed, whatever atrocities he has acted out --- here, he is not the Starkiller. Here, he is Hux, Armitage Brendol. Here, he is a person. He is a patient. He is hurt, and McCoy will tend him. It is, in fact, in large part due to this attitude that he had volunteered himself for the position --- to care for the man nearly everyone else in this place regarded as a monster. He does not blame them. He cannot blame them. He understands. But that attitude has no home in a place of healing. Thus, he has not treated Hux any differently than he would any other patient -- any one of their own pilots, their own people. 

    He, as much as anyone, is deserving of decent medical treatment. That much is a point that he will defend to anyone who dares to come in here and try to deny him it. If they begin hauling injured men out of Medical to torture and question them, that makes them no better than the people they’re fighting against, and it’s not a movement he wants or is willing to be part of.

    “You save your breath. This ain’t charity, it’s bedrest. You took a hell of a beating out there.”

    Seeing the flick of the man’s tongue, McCoy is instantly in motion; he comes back with a cup of water, cool, and he extends it for Hux to take; he thinks he’s capable of it, but he’ll steady him out if need be. While he speaks, he starts checking Hux’s vitals, careful hands grabbing for instruments, but also taking his wrist to count the beats of his heart, his voice even and steady; he doesn’t sound angry -- he simply exudes a no nonsense air of exasperation. An old fashioned man who’s seen too many injuries worse than these, but cares for the minor ones just much as the major ones.