imalittleweird

The wreck is miles away from her, but there’s a spark of life in it, like a star to her senses, and she knows that there is a Jedi aboard. Technically, it is not the only option; there are plenty of Force Sensitives across the galaxy. Something about this one is just… Jedi, though. Familiar.

She thinks the Order may have realized she’s in trouble, and sent back-up. She thinks the local government may have shot the second Jedi down, for much the same reasons they’d attacked her. She thinks that, if her fellow was injured in this crash, she cannot leave them to the mercy of people who hate them for reasons beyond her understanding.

Luminara sprints to downed ship. She arrives before the locals do. She uses her saber to get through the hall, for the hatch is smoking, and ignores the unfamiliar circle symbol. It is not important in this moment. The person inside is.

The human inside is a Jedi, though not one she knows. They carry a saber, and the clothes they wear are in the fashion of Jedi classics. She pulls them from the ship, makes sure there are no spinal injuries to be careful off, and ducks out just as the first speeders land.

Luminara takes the human to her cave. She lays them out, and Luminara is not a healer, nor does she have any plans to be one, but she’s taken enough classes to almost qualify for many things. She knows just how painful those burns on his arms are, just how dangerous the already-infected wound on his leg. The man is feverish and unconscious, and she worries that there is a head injury to handle on top of the rest.

She gathers herbs from the nearest patches of forest, clean water—the Force has many uses, after all—and tears her own skirt for bandages to boil. She makes poultices, with half her hearing on the speeders that search the forest below, and applies them to human Jedi’s wounds. She hopes that her handmade, natural remedy will be as helpful as the Healing Hall’s readymade medicinal creams, but she is limited in what she can use. Half the plants are familiar, yes, but she doesn’t dare try those she doesn’t recognize.

The human sleeps on.

Oh, there are periods of almost-wakefulness. They speak, technically. They try to sit up, for all that they immediately fall.

They are unmoored and incognizant, muttering for people she knows and more that she doesn’t. They know Obi-Wan, apparently, but the rest are… well, she doesn’t know an Ahsoka, Rex, Fives, Kix, or most of the others that the Jedi calls out for. They recognize her, seemingly, call her ‘Master Unduli’ with confusion and only a shade less disorientation than the others. They ask her where Barriss is, which is as confusing a question as any, because the only person she knows by that name is a five-year-old in the crèche.

She tells the Jedi this. They may not register her answer at all, because they drift off again soon after.

She changes out the wet cloth on their forehead.

--

The fever breaks. The Jedi wakes.

“Careful,” Luminara warns, when they start moving. “Your stomach wound is nowhere near healed yet. Don’t sit up without help.”

They don’t. They stop struggling rather quickly, actually, which is gratifying. “Stomach wound?”

“Some sort of hook, or a serrated blade, I think,” she tells them. “I’ve packed it clean and have tried to speed the healing, but it’s not my specialty. Thank you for following instructions, now that you’re aware.”

“Been injured too many times to ignore the medics,” the Jedi mumbles. “Where…?”

“A little planet by the name of Reverenta. I was dispatched to broker some peace negotiations, but they quickly fell through and both parties turned on me. I had assumed the Order found out and sent you to help me get off the planet, but your ship was shot down.”

“Brokering…?” the human mumbles, brow furrowed in pain. They grimace. “No, I was in a dogfight with Grievous and some of his vulture droids. One of them got me in the port engine while I was distracted.”

“I do not know who that is,” Luminara admits, “but I hope that the situation is resolved soon. Was there anyone with you that may know to follow?”

The human stares at her. She thinks, perhaps, that the possible head injury is still affecting their cognition.

“Let me get you some water,” she offers. “You must be thirsty.”

The human continues to watch her. She tries not to take it personally. When she turns back from the pot she’s been using to keep and boil water, they are lightly feeling along the bandages she has on their abdomen. “Don’t fiddle with them.”

“Just mapping out,” the human tells her, eyes on the ceiling. They finish feeling at the edges, and drop their hand. Their head falls to the side, just looking at her. “I need a sanity check. What’s the date?”

“Third day, eighth month, six-nineteen,” she tells them. “You think you lost time to a head injury? I couldn’t tell if there was any damage, just that there wasn’t any cranial bleeding.”

“Something like that,” they mutter. She doesn’t ask further; they seem familiar enough with injury that they may have a private history with memory loss that she isn’t entitled to, even in their circumstances. “You’re… Luminara Unduli?”

“Yes,” she tells them. “You actually recognized me, while you were still in a fever, though you called me a Master. I am only a knight.”

“How old are you right now?” they ask. Their brow is furrowed again.

“Twenty-four,” she tells them. “I’m afraid I don’t have your name. You don’t wear a padawan braid, so I assume you’re a knight as well?”

“Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker,” they say, with a practiced, almost mocking lilt. “Twenty-one. I’m a ‘him,’ if that was your next question.”

“Not the next, but coming up,” she says. She shifts closer, and takes his hand. He stares in confusion until he realizes that she is taking his pulse. “How do you feel?”

“Like I just woke up with the worst hangover of my life, because my fighter ducked out of hyperspace while I was too out of it to fix the nav,” Skywalker mumbles. “Must’ve spent days in that thing without the… the… fuck, I can’t get the word.”

Luminara files this away. Infection needed time to set in, so it makes sense that Skywalker had a few days between suffering the injury and landing in her care.

“Drink something,” she tells him again, because she still has the water she’d been getting when they started questioning their memory. She does set it aside first, because Skywalker needs help to sit up, but it’s still only a few seconds before she’s pressing the cup to his lips and doing her best to keep from over-tilting it and spilling.

“Thank you,” he says, after. “Is it too early to know if I can eat?”

“I don’t want to risk anything heavy,” she says. “I can make a ground meal from some of the plants, though, or a broth if I catch something.”

“Sounds good,” Skywalker mutters.

Luminara looks at him for a few moments, judging, and nods. “You should sleep, I think. I’ll see what I can do about food.”

He doesn’t argue this. He simply closes his eyes and rests.