Nar Shaddaa

Cole hears a knock at his door. Then, Ashla enters with a young rodian boy.

Cole rubs his face, propping himself up blearily on one elbow. He's flat on his back, a pillow under the knee of his injured leg. He's wearing only his boxer-briefs, a blanket covering his left leg and half his torso. He doesn't get a chance to bid her to enter, so he pushes himself up awkwardly, trying to sit.

"Lights, mid-level. Ashla," he greets, then blinks as he spots the boy. "Uh? Ashla?"

The boy is wary of Cole, but Ashla encourages to move towards the doctor.

"Cole, I came here to do something about your leg. Jeebu here is helping me."

Jeebu looks at Ashla and then waves to Cole.

Cole manages to fold his left leg underneath him and find his balance, sitting up properly. He scratches at an unshaven cheek and smiles, "Jeebu is it? Well, come on over here and sit next to me," he pats the bed.

He pushes a hand through his curls and looks at Ashla. "You have so much explaining to do."

The boy doesn't seem to understand until Ashla says something to him in a foreign language. "He only understands Huttese. He's going to play with you while I work on your leg."

Ashla sets up a mini-curtain over the leg and begins going to work. Jeebu, for his part, isn't sure what to do, so he tries to play patty cake with Cole.

"Oh. I mostly understand, but I don't actually speak it." Cole plays patty-cake, surprised that he remembers, but the patterns come back fairly quickly once he starts.

"Ash? How old is this boy?"

"About 5, I think."

Ashla works on Cole's leg while Jeebu distracts him.

Medicine Boost From Physician's Kit: 3eA+1eP+1eB+3eD 1 success, 2 threat

At one point, Cole winces while she works, as she tweaks something painful. Although he doesn't know Huttese, he tries to remember the rhymes from when he was a kid.

Mary had a little lamb, she also had a duck
She took it round the corner to teach it how to--
Fry eggs for breakfast, fry eggs for tea
The more you eat, the more you drink, the more you wanna--
Peter had a boat, the boat began to rock
Up jumped Jaws and bit him on the--
Cocktails, ginger ales, forty cents a glass
If you don't like them, shove 'em up your--
Ask no questions, tell no lies
I saw the boogeyman doing up his--
Flies are pests, wasps are worse
And that is the end of my silly little verse.

Jeebu doesn't understand, but seems to enjoy it.

Continuing to play, "he's adorable, Ash. I'm afraid to ask what he's doing following you around."

"Apparently, I am to teach him how to be a proper Jedi."

"That's a lot of responsibility, how do you feel about it?"

She looks at Jeebu and then to Cole. "It doesn't matter how I feel. I just have to do the best I can."

"Of course it matters," he pauses in the game with Jeebu to run a hand through his hair, "it will affect how you approach this." He shrugs and goes back to the game.

Ashla ignores that. She can't think about it. She feels overwhelmed by the prospect of having another life dependent on her. Sure, patients were. But that was different. She didn't have to teach them. They didn't rely on her for guidance. She was going to ruin this poor child.

Jeebu, thinking it was part of the game, imitated Cole running his hand through his hair.

"Damnit. Don't teach him weird Cole things."

"He doesn't even have hair!" Cole laughs, breaking off the game and tickling the little Rodian.

"You'll be fine," and he believes that, because her father was a better role model than his was, and both of them were killers, if you twisted things in just the right way. "So, he's a Jedi, Jedi-to-be, then?"

The rodian jumps away, and Ashla goes over to him to soothe him, occasionally pointing at you. Afterwards, he slowly approaches Cole again.

"I got him at Jo's Slave Emproium. He misunderstood what you were trying to do." She returns to her work. This is taking longer than it should. Idiot shouldn't have been walking on it. "Yeah. He'll be inducted into the younglings after we leave Nar Shaddaa."

Cole looks guilty, and pats the bed next to him. He finds a streaming episode of Vera Hawke: Jedi Knight dubbed in Huttese on his datapad and indicates that the Rodian should sit next to him and watch.

"The hell are you doing down there? Are you performing surgery, or just having a perv?"

Ashla stops what she's doing. She is pissed, but retains her calm. "Are you saying I to the slave market for sex and bought a child? What the fuck do you think I am?" Her voice remains low and calm as to not bother Jeebu who is watching the show. But this is probably the most pissed that Cole has ever seen her.

"Woah," Cole passed the datapad to Jeebu, he's seen the episode several times already. Quietly, "what the actual fuck, Ashla? I was talking about my damned leg." He scoffs and shakes his head, unbelievable.

Ashla looks genuinely embarrassed. "Don't change subjects so suddenly. Or at least let me know you're not talking about the same thing I was." She goes back to the surgery. "It would be easier if someone didn't feel the need to prove how tough he was and kept walking around on it."

"Right, sorry," he mutters, running a hand through his hair. He doesn't elaborate as to whether he's sorry about the former, the latter, or both.

Ashla continues to practice her surgery. She reaches out with the Force, but her embrassment/annoyance clouds her judgement. "It's fine."

(Tried to use Heal. Does not use the Dark Side Pip.)

Heal: 1eF 1 Dark Side

"Hey," Cole puts out a hand and touches her lightly on the arm. "It's okay, relax. Why don't you tell me about what happened? Why you went down to the Slave Emporium. I wouldn't have thought the Jedi would look too kindly on that sort of thing."

"Jedi look down at keeping slaves. Not buying them." The faces of the children she left behind. They still haunt her.

((Ashla again resists the call of the Dark Side.))

Heal: 1eF 1 Dark Side