Rest for the Responsible

Written by Sailor Dathomir

Chapel winced and said something, growling like an angry vonine.

"I probably don't want to know what that means..." Eriks muttered.

"Probably not, hurry up because that really hurts," Chapel warned him. Eriks looked up from the gaping wound in her back to Chapel's gold eyes. She was looking over her shoulder to watch what she could of him stitching the long gash back up.

"I thought you didn't know any Basic!" She huffed. "I don't. You thought and spoke."

He grinned, pleased with himself. A hand fell on his shoulder - but there was no one there.

Chapel grinned when he turned back to her, his eyes big. "Hurry up, Eriks."

Boots scrabble for purchase on the slick wall as hands keep climbing further upwards. Ren has sent her boogyman out for a bit of a training run. Ren likes sending Chapel out for no particular reason. She is a firm believer in continous training, fearing her boogyman's abilities will atrophy without constant training. Climbing, killing, aerial and terrestrial acrobatics, spying. Ren demands nothing short of perfection, and when Chapel fails to reach Ren's idea of perfection, there is punishment.

Both Lian and Eriks watch Ren's insane demands with disgust and anger. Lian, despite sharing the same blood, is perpetually disgusted with Ren and her actions. A senshi is a tool, and like all tools, can fail if not properly taken care of. True, Lian can be cruel but there is a limit to her cruelty. There is no reason to break a tool - ever.

Eriks is angry because he has to clean up the mess that Ren creates. He's lost count of the wounds in inaccessible places he's treated or sewn up for Chapel. He's splinted several fingers as well as taped toes. Burns were not uncommon nor were bruises and abrasions. All of this has to be done the hard way, the long way, the way that hurts and lasts because Chapel is allergic to bacta.

Chapel pulls herself over the top and collapses on the roof of the half-demolished building. She has managed this with a cracked rib, sprained ankle, fourteen stitches in her back and two broken fingers. She's not sure, but she might have a broken toe. She does know she has a very nasty cold that was probably given to her by Lega. She doesn't mind, and she grins at the thought of Lega being fussed over by Eriks. He would be shoving some sort of very healthy soup down her throat and demanding she drink the warm nourishing liquids he's made.

She sits up cautiously, pulls out a packet of squashed sandwiches Eriks had pushed into her coat pocket before she walked out the door and eats them.

When Chapel is alone (like she is now), she likes to think about her Roommates.

Eriks is a good sort, respectful of privacy and very good with a needle and surgical silk. He makes sure she eats and has clean clothes. He doesn't wash them for her, but he does make sure she washes them. He has complained before about getting blood out of the machine after she washes, but he forgets she's a telepath. He worries about her.

He worries about Lega, too.

Lega. Lega Toblue. The forty-second clone. The only success. The only one. Chapel often wonders if Lega is lonely because she has no family. The girl is terrified of Chapel and Chapel idly encourages this. She doesn't mean to be terrifying, but when the red washes over everything it's all she knows how to do.

Eriks takes care to hide any evidence that Lega has been in the apartment, and Chapel knows this. She doesn't mind. Something says she should, but she ignores it. She stays out of the aparment on nasty days. She's seen the streets on bad days. She's slept in the streets on bad days. That's no place for anyone. Except herself.

Chapel winces as she stands and begins the second part of her run.

Eriks sighed and pushed hair out of his face again. "Alright, Lian. This," one hand on a stack of data cubes, "is for the meeting on non-sapiant labour laws. This stack," the other hand on another teetering stack, "is for the committee on environmental controls and restrictions. This -" he looked around. "Oh. That box you're sitting on is the latest information on the Hapan presence on Coruscant and their military forces around and in the Cluster itself."

Lian picked up the two stacks and skimmed through each one in silence, then she stood and checked the contents of the box.

Eriks didn't take offense. He was used to her checking everything. He checked everything. Working with Lian after she'd worked with Ren caused that.

"Superb, as usual." Lian smiled cheerfully. She did truly appreciate all the hard work Eriks did, because without him half of what she'd accomplished would not have happened. After all, Ren was no help and completely undependable.

The door to the apartment slid open, a clatter was heard - as though several belts with knives were dropped on a tile floor - and then very quiet muttering and whimpering - as though a very sharp knife had fallen from a belt and landed point down in someone's boot.

Eriks wasn't aware of his hands clenching into fists until Lian laid a dark hand on his mottled ones. "You'll hurt your hands, Eriks."

He unclenched them and looked at his palms. Tiny red half-moons stared back at him.

"Don't let your anger override your senses or you will lose your abilites to see clearly," Lian said pointed.

Eriks nodded, trying to ignore the red pounding in his ears and the recent memory of the long slash down Chapel's back, deep enough for him to see the clean white of her vertabrae. He concentrated on the datapad in front of him. He would deal with that later.

"After your meeting with the senator from the Corellian System, the Twi'lek from Fortuna's Caf is bringing you lunch as a thankyou for being the pivotal vote in the referendum to not demolish his eatery along with the rest of that sector."

At her raised eyebrows, he shrugged with a small smile. "It's actually a very good Twi'lek eatery. No gornt. At least, it used to be very good." His face fell. "It's been a while."

There were times when Lian could glady rip off her sister's head and burn the body. Now was one of those times. It was not right to do such terrible things to someone and then keep them prisoner. "Then go tomorrow for lunch. Take Chapel with you though, I do not want a repeat of the incident with the droids and the Ithorian. That was embarrassing." She smiled at him - two smiles in one day, honestly, the boy was getting to her - and picked up her stacks of data. "I will call later this afternoon to check up on Chapel."

Eriks nodded. He was used to this - Ren would send Chapel out for no reason besides training, she would return hours later worn out and hurting more than when she'd left. Lian seemed to always know when Chapel returned and called to make sure nothing more drastic than Eriks' limited First Aid skills were needed.

That had been money well spent. She had personally paid for Eriks to attend a six-week class on advanced First Aid after Chapel's first failure. Woodrow had taken him and brought him back.

Lian nodded and carried her stack of data out the front, down the turbo-lift.

Eriks sighed and straightened his desk. Finding nothing else to prevent him from checking on Chapel, he found her in the 'fresher trying to remove a very sharp knife from her foot without whimpering.

Her glasses are neatly folded on the table beside her bed. Her foot is neatly stitched and bandaged, as are her ribs, fingers, ankle and toe. It is broken. She thinks Eriks has over done the bandages, but it makes him feel better and so she does not complain.

There is a mug of steaming soup beside her glasses. Eriks has fussed over and pestered her in a manner very much like his towards Lega. He is sitting in a chair he has dragged from the main room, scowling.

Chapel finds herself suprised that this bothers her.

Eriks only stops scowling when all of the soup has been drunk and the vegetables cruncked and swallowed.

She stops hurting not long afterwards. She suspects he has put painkillers in the soup, but considering how much she had hurt, she thinks it was a wisdom.

Eriks watched until Chapel was snoring - she would deny it until blue in the face, but she snored - then took the mug and the chair out. One of the computers had crashed, meaning a call to Lega. Lian was right. There was no rest for the responsible.

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