Medical Centre

She felt him slowly, slowly find the control, the focus, the Jedi calm, and slide into a healing trance that could support his struggling heart. And she allowed herself a second, just one, to breathe a sigh of relief. Her eyes closed for a moment of thanks.

Then she looked up at the screens again.

=Tebana Sor=
"His nervous system is firing at random, and his neural pathways are suffering from heightened and distorted electrical activity."

Seizures. Jago had no medical history of convulsive seizures. Yet he had been well on his way from a complex partial seizure to a secondary general one when he had slipped into his trance; it had had the effect of not just calming his heart, but his brain too, preventing the spread, and just as well. Her head shot around to Dav, searching his face for answers.

=Tebana Sor=
"What caused this?"

"Force Lightning."

Her eyes flicked to Lita, and then back to Dav. His chin lowered, almost imperceptibly; she accepted his silent communication, and turned back to Jago. The convulsions had all but ceased, and she could sense his mind returning to it's usual self within his trance.

=Tebana Sor=
"Electrical activity is stabilising, but he's still in danger of circulatory shock from the burns. We need to administer fluids, and prepare hemoglobin in case he deteriorates."

The droids and medics responded to her instructions instantly - a droid already had the fluid line ready before she said anything, and was affixing it to Jago's now still arm before she'd finished the sentence. One medical technician was already moving across the room to the storage cabinets, to retrieve a supply of packed red blood cells compatible with Jago's blood group. Those needs attended to, Tebana now applied her greatest gift.

She closed her eyes, retreating from the room into the all encompassing field of the Force, allowing its awareness and eternalness to dominate her perceptions. Through it she moved, her will crossing into Jago's body; the flow of his energies guided her to where the burns were most serious, where the damage was most severe. She passed into the cells, one by one, thousand by thousand, one following the other or one before the other - it was difficult to describe in the terms of limited mortal perception. All that was certain was that as she touched the cellular components that made up Jago's damaged body, they touched back, and she could feel which were injured, which were strong. She encouraged them to grow, to repair, to replace. She eased the painful blisters with generous yet miniscule applications of the energies of the Light. She guided and enhanced his healing, removing, bit by bit, the physical damage of Lita's loss of control. She worked on, the healer, doing what she could to help, once more, dear, dear Jago.

=====



He didn't answer her, not for a moment. He simply watched Tebana work, watched Jago breathe. Watched. And contemplated. Contemplated Jago, contemplated Lita, contemplated the whole event. The silence from him was unrelenting, for a while. When he spoke, it was unprompted.

"He's in safe hands. The safest, in fact."

It was the first thing he had said to her since he'd answered her request for help in the corridor; words of reassurance for Lita's worry. Those were the words he chose. Finally, he turned his eyes from Jago, from where Tebana Sor and the other medics worked diligently to heal him, onto the Iridonian.

"They'll be a while, but he will be fine. And yes. We rather need a talk."

His voice was level; absent of any anger, any sign of powerful emotion, as calm and level as if he were simply stating the time of day. His eyes affixed her face, however, in an unerring stare, as if he was looking to her very soul. He suspected she would want to remain by Jago's side - his instincts, more than anything, told him that. Lita may have shut everything external down once again, may have been hiding everything she could behind a stony facade, but he had heard those words... -- "I'm here, Jago, this time..." -- murmured from her at his side as he had guided her back from Jago's bedside. It was a simple choice of someone who was going to stay by Jago's side as long as he was in need.

Dav would respect that. He wasn't going to take her far.

"In here."

He gestured through a doorway at the side, leading into the space adjoining the treatment room - an observation room. He wasn't going to fight her wishes needlessly, but he also knew that they would only serve as a distraction to the medics if they remained in the same room, and so he gestured into the observation room. A compromise, one he hoped Lita would recognise and accept.

Dav stood behind her, away from her, a comfortable distance that allowed her her freedom, watching her silently as he leant against a wash-basin used by the medics to cleanse themselves for the sterile environment. He wouldn't encroach upon her space. That would only make her more defensive, which would undo any hope of finding some good in the situation.

No, he gave her her space, and the distance she sought to isolate herself within. For now.

"It would be a greater mistake to leave again."

He would ask her to stay, despite the threat in her voice. Hers was not the first involuntary disruption - and for all the harm Jago had just endured, hers wasn't even the most violent, the most damaging.

No, Lita Trykk, you have a long way to go before you earn that accolade.

He shook his head in response to her question.

"I wasn't here then. I first came to Yavin four - at least, first came here as more than a visitor - ten years ago. Bahiri taught here then -" Yes, I know of your past with Bahiri " - and Jago had only just come to the Praxeum himself."

He met her stare with his own, for a moment, before adjusting his focus into the centre of the room. A frown furrowed his brow, on of concentration.

"No, all I know of you comes from what Jago has told me, and what little there is on your file; which is exceptionally lacking."

He had made a demonstration of the utmost self-contradiction – he had shown that his knowledge of her was more extensive than she had realised, and yet, this one secret, this one event that seemed so important to her, was hers and hers alone to impart upon him. It was not in an attempt to disarm her, not in any effort to make her uncomfortable; merely so she could know that he was not uninformed, so she would not be taken by surprise if the information that he possessed became more pertinent later.

He could tell from the fierceness in her, the determined way she had turned to him, that this one event, the circumstances under which she had taken flight of the Praxeum all those years earlier, was one of the most important to her. Perhaps, in many ways, the most important to her. She had come here seeking their help and yet she and she alone knew why the Praxeum was so painful a place for her. What he had said was true; her file was lacking. No explanation had ever been offered as to why she had departed. All that was known was that her room had been trashed, and she had disappeared into the night. All he had discovered since was what Jago had told him; that something big had happened here. Something which had changed her world in the very most major way. Neither of them had much more than a speculation as to what.

She was silent, silent and speculative, and he saw, at last, those flickers of emotion, the micro-expressions that broke the stern, fierce facade; Surprise. Confusion. Suspicion. Dismay. She had ceased all movement. Whether like a predator hiding in the long grasses, or prey trying to spot its hunter, he couldn't decide – he was starting to think there was a hearty amount of both in Lita Trykk.

When she spoke, the words were soft. A mutter, but as his attentions were all on her, he caught each syllable clearly.



What?

Dav stood more upright now, alert and concerned. He eyed her with urgent curiosity, barely hearing her continuing comments as she turned from him, her remarks about those who remembered... Jago's request... his mind raced, trying to recall the files he had read, the stories he had heard from half a lifetime ago, when the Praxeum was still young and Lita had been among its students.

What?

Her final question; 'so where does that bring us now, Master Man'Sell'; registered more with him, as he was drawn out of his desperate effort at recollection to the here and the now with the little knowledge he had on the matter. Little, but crucial; Of the death of any of the very few Jedi Masters the Order had had back then, none were associated in any way with Lita Trykk, and there were no deaths that occurred on the moon for that entire year that had not been fully accounted for. And yet, the implication she had made was evident. More than evident – irrefutable, and irrefutably in complete contradiction to any and all information they possessed.

-What!?-


"Wait, track back a bit." He closed the distance between them, carried by his urgent need for comprehension. He was now only a meter and a half from her. "The Murder of a Jedi Master?"

That was what she had said, he was sure of it.

But it didn't scan. None of it did. It didn't make any damned sense at all.

He listened intently to her story; Gavyn Tolth, the initiate trials, her challenges against the dark side - all true according to her file, and the last part, apparent for them all to see in the journey she had walked since. But the point where the story deviated; the night she left. The version on her file read that there had been a disturbance in the Force. Ander Tagira and Kam Solusar had gone to investigate, and found an empty room, trashed, and no sign of her - or any other being, for that matter. The students that huddled around the doorway, unwilling to enter when they knew not what was happening, had seen no-one leave through the door, although none of them had exactly arrived promptly.

The next day they discovered the evidence of how she had left the moon. But no explanation as to why. That was the file. That was it, all of it, everything there was on Lita Trykk.



Dav's chin dropped half an inch, his eyes narrowed as they fell to the floor. He knew the Dark Side. He knew precisely what she was talking about. He knew, also, the burden of carrying that part of yourself, for once you touch the Dark Side, forever it stays with you, in some fashion or another. There were plenty who returned to the light, never again to dabble in that dark power, never again to be under any threat or risk of falling, but what others didn't realise, especially those that remain close to the Dark Side even when returned to the light, is that those that fall and come back completely into the light, those that would never again use that side - for them, the Dark Side stayed with them in the bitterest and most potent of ways. For them, it was a shame, a regret, a powerful, painful reminder of their weakest moments, of their greatest follies.

Her head was turned far enough for him to see her features again, and he lifted his gaze once more to her face.



Slowly, he shook his head.

"Everything matches your file up until the night you disappeared. From there... nothing of what you've said. Record keeping wasn't the Praxeum's greatest quality in those days, but the fundamental records were there and this is not, when it should... would have been. All it said was they found your room trashed, and you gone. They had no understanding of why."

His mind worked, still, trying to find something that might explain matters, his eyes once again turning from her and into the empty space of the room. There were no ready answers for him.

"I met Gavyn, too. He wasn't yet ready to take an apprentice when I met him, so I imagine he was a little younger than when you knew him. Just once. His death isn't recorded on your file, nor is it recorded as occurring within the Praxeum. I don't know what the official records say came of him, though I do intend to find out. I have some more research to do."

Dav crossed his left arm across his chest - at which point he was reminded by the feeling of skin on skin that he was wearing only trousers, something which had skipped his mind -, and with the right elbow resting on the back of his left hand, brought his right hand up to rest, balled in a loose fist, against his chin. The gesture was something of an automatic one for him, one of the deepest analytical thought. His brow was creased with the lines of his concentration.

After a long, weighted moment of silence, he spoke again.

"So that's what happened tonight, hmm?"

His eyes came back up to her, the same frown of concentration on his brow, his right hand hovering a few inches aside and beneath his chin.

"You were in the residential corridors, near where your old room had been, when you lost control. Reliving the memory?"

It was a logical deduction of the facts. Her telling him this story, the location, the echoes of long repressed pain he had felt during his meditations. If she had gone to face the memory, clearly she hadn't been ready to deal with all it entailed.

He pouted thoughtfully, and lifted his gaze to look out at Jago Pulastra. The Jedi Master knew, already, what he believed was the right response here. He knew what he believed to be necessary. But Dav Man'Sell was not one for rushing headlong into things without due consideration. He picked his words precisely, he chose his actions precisely, he affected the universe precisely, or as precisely as he could manage. Since he had enhanced his understanding of Shatterpoint, of perceiving the unfolding of events and seeing the fault lines, seeing the fixed points and the fragile points, he had become even more conscious of the preciseness of his choices. So he weighed it all up. Everything the Force was telling him, everything he knew of Lita, everything he had borne witness to and heard of this morning. He considered Jago lying, injured, less than a dozen meters away. He considered Lita Trykk's pain, and her anger, and her fear.

And he came up with the same answer as he had discovered before he'd considered all of this so precisely. The seconds of silence passed, and he was the one who, once again, broke it.

"I take back what I said earlier. It would not be a greater mistake to leave again."

His large brown eyes turned from Jago to her.

"It would be the greatest mistake you could possibly make in this moment. You should be here."

As she struck at him, his reflexes, the carefully honed skills of a man who had been fighting for seven decades, sprung to life. His right arm swung up, deflecting her hand off course as it shot out for his throat. His danger sense did not trigger, however, signalling to him that he wasn't in true danger, that she meant only to put some distance between them, to force him away from her - he took it's lead, and the impetus her strike gave the physical dynamic between them, and took a long step backward, giving her the space she sought, but without retreating fully.

He had wondered what her reaction would be. Had wondered what she would be thinking, and believing, internally. In truth, part of his reason for not explaining that was precisely to bear witness to the response, to see what her instinctual reaction would be. He knew that space was what she sort, he could read that in the subtle tensions that had increased in her as he had closed the space, and yet he had remained, encroaching slightly on her comfort zone, challenging her neurosis with his presence. It was not out of some cruel, malevolent, or sociopathic motivations, but exactly the opposite; he needed to see the truth of her, as much as he could, if he was to stand any chance of helping her.

His arms, still up in a defensive guard position, lowered as she moved away from him. He straightened again, watching her. Watching her tensions, and feeling her fear, her confusion.

"Lita, if such a thing were even within a parsec of my intentions, not only could I already have already found the excuse I needed half-a-dozen times in the past twenty minutes, but you would never have seen it coming until it was upon you."

He dared risk a small step forward, his head held low, and a little to the side - it was a passive stance, one of curiosity and concern rather than of aggression or challenge, matching the softness of his voice, a softness which disarmed any of the potential threat in what he said. It wasn't provocative or threatening, it was gentle, and it carried with it the slightest inflection to suggest the very idea of striking her down preposterous - which was the truth of what he felt in his heart.

"Jago is my friend. He's more than that, he's family to me, and I to him. The stuff we've seen together..." He paused here, a subtle shake of the head as his eyes fell from her face dismissing any potential long, rambling story. Now was not the time. "The thing is, Jago trusts you. He cares about you, and he wants to help you find some peace, some happiness. And that matters to me, too, because the impression I've gained of you, from him, is the impression of a good person who has been through some horrible things. The wounds he suffered... he took them, willingly, didn't he? He chose to put himself in the firing line for them. I know him, and I know his skills, and I know how he thinks and reacts, and above all, I know how he feels about you. And to me, that's the explanation that makes the most sense. And if he believes you're worth that, then I believe it too."

He held his gaze on her for a moment, before, eyes dropping again, lips pressing together, he turned partly away, his right side to her, and took a few steps which again increased the distance between them. His brow was furrowed, an intense concentration, as he considered her, and all he knew. There was more to why he wanted her to stay. So much more, some of it more instinctive and felt than reasoned and understood. But one part he knew carried weight for him.

She, perhaps, needed to know something more of him. Usually, he didn't tell all the details of his past to people when they first were getting to know him. He would tell them enough so that the full story did not come as a surprise, but he paced the story carefully, usually. But perhaps, just this once, with Lita, the greatest benefit for her would come from knowing about him.

After a moment, he broke the silence again.

"The reason I think you should stay is because I think you need some help. I think you want it. You've spent a long time without any kind of stable, reliable support, a life-time, nearly. Now you need it if you're to try and make some sense of your life."

There was another pause, he spared her a glance for a moment, before again looking into space.

"This moon, with Jago here to support you, with your past here carrying so much weight, is the best place for you to be, because everything that matters to you, or at least, to finding the answers you seek, is here. Leaving would be tantamount to leaving those questions you have unanswered, to leaving the offering of support behind. And I can't see any way that that can be of any benefit to you. What's more..."

He fell silent for a moment, seeming to consider, one last time, what he was about to say. He lifted his chin, still looking into space.

"What's more, I can help you."