#rough wip

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There's a droid hovering over him. Its strange skull-like face shines dully and its optics glow a sickly yellow.

Its waiting for Cassian to give his consent or even just an acknowledgement of the proceedure it was about to perform, but Cassian knows if he's quiet for long enough it will proceed regardless. The fact that its asking him at all smells like a trap so he keeps his mouth shut and his eyes open, for all the good it does him through the gauzy high he's floating in.

Luthen says something but he can't hear it; the drone and swish of the bacta solution in its cycle is too loud. Kleya touches his cheek again and he looks up at her sluggishly.

She smiles in a way that tells him she's upset, although he can't tell from what. Her hair reminds him of-- of someone important. He can't remember who. He thinks he has been trying to remember for a long time but he can't remember that either. The room spins like a lazy pinwheel.

"Cassian," she says softly. "Can the droid seal your burns? It'll only take a moment."

He doesn't know why she's asking him. He looks over at Luthen with just his eyes. He's wet, for some reason, and when Cassian doesn't speak, he waves his hand at the droid. It starts working, hesitation in its joints like grit.

It sets his nose (late in the process if he's already in bacta, but he can't complain too harshly--at least he isn't required to do it himself), then presses derma graphs over the burns where his armor failed (eight of them, which seems excessive), and then informs Luthen that he is underweight.

That's....probably true. Eating more than once a day feels dangerous, so he doesn't. Luthen has never controlled how much or when he ate. He's been free to keep the regimen that Ghryon left him with.

Luthen says something back and the driod leaves. The solution in his ears and around his face presses him into a warm, muffled haze. The drugs have him flying a little too; he hasn't been under their influence in a long time, and certainly never at this volume.

Morpha makes him slow and clumsy, and is a powerful way to break a being's will if used over a long period of time. When he was X9, he remembers X6 being broken this way. She withered under Ghyron's 'care,' her strong'uhane crushed like a beetle. She was culled after a number of months, unable to fight or infiltrate or sabotage.

At the time he had been torn between a rage so wild it set him breaking his own nails againt the walls and transparasteel of his cell, and a despair so deep he was almost jealous of her. She looked peaceful when she was high, slumped down wherever they threw her in her cell across from his after they were done with her. Cassian suspects she never fully recovered from her injuries after the fall she sustained, and was willing to do whatever Ghyron wanted to have some relief from the pain she was in constantly. They didn't bother to cover her when Cassian saw her for the last time, her body stacked like dirty laundry on the gurney.

Twilite is a low grade anesthetic, meant to keep the patient still and uncoordinated and unconcerned with what's being done to their body. The mere existence of such a drug terrifies him. The horror of being unable to fight and unable to care about fighting, while anything could be done to him by anyone. The sickening helplessness of sighing when he should be screaming and shivering when he should be thrashing.

I'm going to be angry about this later, he thinks. It doesn't matter if it's a prediction or a reminder. His head is foggy; he can't care right now. His body doesn't hurt and Luthen is here. Kleya is here. Cassian decides that by the moment he isn't going to waste energy working out the details. He inhales and his sense of up and down whirls like the color in soap bubbles. The bacta rinse tugs oddly at his injuries in ways he knows should be horrificly painful, but instead are nothing more than pressure. The drugs are making his skin lie to him. He focuses on Kleya instead.

She's working on his hands right now, careful and slow. He thinks she might be looking for an excuse for contact; there's something wrong and he can't puzzle out what it is. His vision swims with the bright light above him. Her outer tunic has a tiny pattern on it that keeps gently turning as he looks at it. He squeezes her hand gently, careful not to hurt her.

"Kalani," he rasps. Basic can eat his piko from the back; he doesn't have the mental bandwidth to translate anything. Kalani suits her as well as her spinning tunic.

"Cassian, stop trying to talk," she chides. Her fingers rub at the blood under his nails. The plaster above her brow has a rusty patch in the middle. "They said your jaw isn't broken but I'm not entirely confident in their assessment."

"His jaw isn't broken. His teeth cut the inside of his cheek. He's fine."

Luthen is back, leaning on the edge of the tank just enough to his give back a break. His mouth and brow are set in unimpressed lines; the edges of his eyes are pinched.

It's past his bedtime, Cassian thinks deliriously and then turns his head before he can giggle at his own joke. He's high. He hasn't been this high since he was a teenager, passing a roll of something back and forth. The image rises like a broken holo, in flashes and stutters; a bright streetluma, white as a star, and elegant fingers just as dirty as his delicately taking the burning ember back in the near darkness.

"He's not fine," Kleya says and he snaps back to the present like falling through the floor. By her tone it might be past her bedtime, too. If they got him out of this tank and off these drugs he could find a spot for them to hunker down until they needed to move again. Taris is his favorite planet--whatever someone is hiding from doesn't know where to even begin looking, let alone where to find them here.

"He's as fine as he's going to be," Luthen replies. His voice is rough but steady, taking on that rasping edge it does when he's through arguing. Cassian ignores how comforting it is the way he ignores a hole in his sock. "How much longer does he have in there?"

Kleya checks something. Her hair really is pretty when it's down. He bets if she didn't flatten and spray and pin it to an inch of its life it would be a little wavy around her face. Another busted holo shows him the oil his māmā used to rub into his hair and skin after a bath, clear and slightly sweet, and how his hair used to lay down in ringlets on his shoulders when she was done. That was a long time ago, he knows. He wouldn't know how to do it for her if he tried.

"An hour at the very least," Kleya replies. She's wiping away the bloody crust on his knuckles with one wrinkled thumb, not that there's much left. Her eyes linger on where Ghyron cut into him and sealed him back up again. Cassian wishes she wouldn't look. Its worse, somehow, to be seen inside and out by someone who didnt have to disect him to get the vantage point. He shuts his eyes. Maybe its the drugs or head wound or the blaster burns in his wishbone, but he doesn't want to fight her. She won't hurt him on purpose. He thinks. He's fairly sure. He cracks an eye open just in case.

"We don't have the time. He's stable enough to move."

"He can't stand, Luthen."

"We'll help him. He just needs to get to the ship. Drain the tank and pull the lines. I'm going to get his clothes."