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Syril Karn is waiting for her when she exits the ISB.
Of course he is.
He’s not only pulled her from the mob of Ferrix and seen her safely on a transport back to Coruscant, but he’s bothered to track her to her place of employment yet again, to what purpose she can only guess.
She sighs deeply as she sees him, steeling herself for whatever he’s going to say. After the day—days?— she’s had, she’s not really in the mood for any more human interaction.
Andor vanished, Corv dead, her career presumably in tatters. Though Partagaz had not been unkind as she relayed an informal version of events while being checked over in the med-center, she could read his disappointment in his body language, his tone. Formal debriefing and, she presumes, punishment, will wait a few days more, until the matter has been more ‘officially’ examined from all sides.
For now, she’s been released, told to go home and rest up. She’s not keen, however, on sitting by waiting for the proverbial axe to fall.
“You’ve made it back safely.” Syril falls into step with her as she walks. “Can I accompany you home?”
“I don’t need your help,” she says tiredly. She just wants to go back to her apartment in peace and wash the blood from her hairline, scrub the red dust of her failure from her skin.
“You hit your head pretty hard,” he protests. “You— you probably shouldn’t be alone.”
She stops walking. He’s right, and she resents him for it. Though she’s been scanned and prodded and thoroughly checked over to make sure she isn’t going to keel over from an unnoticed brain bleed, the ISB med-center had only released her on the condition that someone else would keep an eye on her. She’d assured them that such a person existed.
She’d lied of course.
It’s the head injury, she thinks later, that makes her give him the number to her personal comlink saying, “If you wish, you may call to check up on me.”
He nods, relieved. “And if you don’t answer?”
She considers. Against her better judgment she does feel inclined to trust him. He’d given her no reason not to on Ferrix. But giving her address to a man she barely knows seems foolish. “If I do not answer within an appropriate timeframe, you may contact the ISB on my behalf. They will know what to do.”
He nods. “Yes. All right.”
She starts walking again and he follows.
“I’ll call you every two hours.”
Dedra’s already starting to regret her decision.
Syril keeps his word. The first call comes around 2000 hours after she’s showered and is scrounging for something to eat. Her cupboards have been bare since before she’d left for Ferrix; she’s not really in the habit of keeping much food around, spending far too few hours at home for that to be practical. But in her disappointment and humiliation of the failed mission, she’d not picked up anything to eat on the way back to her apartment. And she’s in no mood to venture out again. A nutribar, found stuffed at the back of a drawer with the disposable cutlery, will have to do.
“It’s Syril,” he says as she answers the comm.
“I’m still awake,” she says by way of greeting. She knows it’s him— there’s no attempt to keep the annoyance out of her voice. No one else she knows would be calling at this time of night.
“I figured.” His awkwardness is evident even through the tinny speaker of the comm unit. “But it has been two hours.”
“I will speak with you in a further two.” She ends the call.
It’s 2200 when he calls next. He’s proving to be quite punctual.
“It’s Syril again,” he says.
She rolls her eyes. “I know.”
“How are you feeling?”
She prickles at the attempt at small talk, not understanding why he would care. “I’m fine,” she says, perhaps a touch more forcefully than is warranted. She had agreed to this after all. Against her better judgement.
“Yes. Okay.” His words are stilted. She’s flustered him. Good. “I… guess I’ll talk to you in another two hours?”
She hangs up.
At 0000 exactly, her comm chimes. Anticipating his call, Dedra’s not quite managed to fall asleep.
“I am still fine, Syril,” she says, saving him the need to identify himself a third time.
“Did I wake you?” he asks, his voice tinged with concern.
“No.” She moves to hang up, but Syril slips another question in before she manages it.
“Does it— I mean, is your concussion keeping you awake?”
The more specific query makes her pause. “I was given an appropriate amount of painkillers,” she answers finally.
“That’s not what I asked.”
She exhales slowly. “The headache is not keeping me awake.”
No, what’s keeping her awake is the acrid scent of smoke and red dust. The ominous metallic clanking. The roar of the crowd, and the feeling of hands grabbing at her, pulling at her limbs in the dirt as she scrambles to get away. She shivers involuntarily.
“Good,” Syril says slowly. “Good.”
Dedra is asleep when Syril calls at 0200 hours. She jerks awake, her heart racing.
“I’m up,” she says quickly, gratefully. She doesn’t remember what she’d been dreaming about, but she knows it wasn’t pleasant. She’s left with the impression of trying to run, of being unable to get away. Her head throbs angrily.
“Are you all right?” His concerned voice floats out of the comm. “You sound out of breath.”
“I was just— I only…” she pauses, taking another breath to steady herself. “It was just a dream.”
“Oh,” he says simply. And then, “Oh,” more slowly as he understands.
She feels exposed, her fear and anxiety left out in the open for him to see. She looks away ashamed, though there’s no eye contact to be broken.
“It’s okay,” he reassures softly. She hangs up before he can continue.
She’s dozing uneasily when her comm chirps at 0400. She’s reluctant to answer, but knows failure to do so will cause more trouble than it’s worth.
“I have dreams like that too,” Syril’s quiet voice says when she finally answers.
What do you have to dream about, she wants to bite back. But then she remembers—
She remembers Blevin’s report— remembers now the details of the failed raid and the destroyed landing pod. Remembers that Syril’s been held at blasterpoint by the very man she’s failed to apprehend. Remembers that this failure is what has brought Syril back to Coruscant in the first place.
She doesn’t know what to say to that. Knows she needs to acknowledge him somehow. A low hum of commiseration is all she can manage.
“They— the dreams— they do get better,” he says. “Eventually, anyway.”
She lies in the darkness of her bedroom as she contemplates his words, the faint hum of late-night traffic outside of her windows grounding her.
“Do you promise?” she asks finally.
“I promise.”
She’s not sure why, but she believes him.
At 0600, the light of day has begun to peek over the artificial horizon, banishing the shadows lurking in her subconscious. The night hasn’t been restful, but Dedra can’t stay in bed any longer. Syril’s call comes just as she resolves to get ready for work.
“Good morning.” Syril sounds far too awake for a man who’s had just as little sleep as she has.
“Good morning,” she echoes mechanically.
“Are you going to work today?”
“Yes,” she says simply. There’s still the incident report to write. Somehow, she’ll have to figure out if it’s possible to salvage her career.
“Good,” he says. “At least there will be other people around.”
She wonders, not for the first time since yesterday, why Syril cares. Why he saved her from the mob on Ferrix. Why he’d waited for her outside the ISB again. Why he’s bothered to check up on her for the past 12 hours.
He won’t need to worry about her being alone anymore, she thinks. Won’t need to continue calling her.
“Your assistance tonight has been appreciated, Sy—”
“Dedra, wait—” he interjects.
She does.
“I know you only gave me your number so I could make sure you weren’t— dying,” he says bluntly. “But would it be all right if I called you again? When you’re not— injured,” he clarifies.
She considers his request. Though he’s not really done anything so far to give the impression he shouldn’t be trusted, there’s a fine line between well-intentioned and stalking. She’s not yet sure Syril’s intentions don’t fall into the latter category.
And yet, there’s something about him that puts her at ease. Something that seems warm and comforting and safe.
“That would be— acceptable,” she says finally. She hopes she doesn’t regret this.
“Right,” he says. She can almost hear his smile through the comm. “Thank you.”
The injection slides into Dedra’s left shoulder with a hiss. A burning sensation spreads down her arm, intensifying until the needle is retracted unceremoniously and the med-droid holding it turns to face her.
“You are now vaccinated against Ratava virus disease,” it intones politely. “Please note that a further two weeks are required for full immunological protection.”
What was meant to be a routine security audit to the naval yards in one of her sectors is turning out to be anything but. An outbreak of something particularly nasty among the dock workers means that anyone arriving or leaving the planet is required to have proof of vaccination against the disease. This sort of occurrence isn’t typically a problem, but the virus is rare enough on Core Worlds that procuring the vaccine had proven… not difficult exactly, but time consuming. Time that Dedra doesn’t have if this inspection is to be carried out on schedule.
And in the wake of Ferrix, she can’t afford any delays in her work, even if it is due to factors outside her control.
Dedra awkwardly wriggles her arm back into the sleeves of her undershirt and tunic, the burning ache in her muscle preventing her from lifting it more than a few centimeters. She re-fastens her uniform and rolls her shoulder experimentally, hoping repeated movement will cause the discomfort to dissipate.
The droid clanks over to Heert, seated across from her, and injects him without warning. From Heert’s startled expression, Dedra can tell the sensation must be equally as painful for him as it was for her.
“The side effects in humans can be— unpleasant,” the droid continues, tilting its head. It turns back to Dedra and fixes her with its glowing eyes. “But you mustn’t ingest any analgesics. They will blunt the immune response.”
She gives a curt nod. “Understood.”
She slides off the exam table on which she is seated and heads towards the entrance of the ISB’s med-center. Heert follows quickly behind her, working at the fastenings of his collar as he walks.
“The worst of the side effects will subside within 24 hours,” the droid calls after them as the door slides shut.
The side effects being 'unpleasant' turns out to have been a massive understatement; Dedra has half a mind to report the med-droid to maintenance for re-programming. First there’d been the creeping malaise that had wound up her spine and into her bones in the hours after that morning’s injection. Then had come the intermittent chills, distracting from her review of the weekly sector data sets. But the most intolerable is the hot, swollen ache in her joints, sending shock waves of pain through her body every time she moves.
Dedra can’t remember the last time she felt this unwell. It’s taken every ounce of resolve she has to last— if not quite until the end of the day— late enough into the afternoon to be appropriate to leave. If these are the side effects of the vaccine, she thinks, she’s glad she’ll never have to suffer the disease itself.
Her movements are sluggish and plodding as she finally leaves the office. If she had any mental capacity left, she might be embarrassed at the thought of what she must look like to the outside observer: as pale as her tunic, and moving with all the speed of an arthritic bantha. She can only concentrate on putting one foot in front of another, breathing in and out with each movement in an attempt to push through the torrent of pain.
It’s with enormous relief that she finally stumbles into her apartment. Though she knows a hot shower would probably help relieve her symptoms, she can’t face the thought of doing more than crawling into bed and sleeping until her body is no longer rebelling against her. So that’s exactly what she does, clumsily stripping out of her uniform and donning the warmest, softest pair of sleeping clothes she owns.
When she crawls under the covers and can finally, finally stop moving, there’s a moment of absolute bliss as the pain temporarily recedes. The respite lasts maybe a minute before being replaced with a persistent, dull ache. She’d murder someone to be allowed painkillers.
She’s almost managed to fall asleep, when she remembers Syril.
Kriff.
He’d been planning to come over tonight. It’s an occurrence that’s become regular in the weeks since Ferrix. Typically, he cooks dinner. Sometimes, he spends the night.
He can’t see her like this. Wouldn’t want to either, most likely. She grabs her comlink from the bedside table and types with unsteady fingers. Don’t come tonight. Not well.
Message sent, she curls into a ball and pulls the covers over her head, letting exhaustion pull her under. Sleep comes uneasily, but eventually.
Hours— minutes?— later she wakes to a cool hand on her forehead.
Syril.
“I told you not to come,” she chides, but there’s no bite to her words. She breathes in and out stiffly as the ache in her joints comes flooding back to the forefront of her consciousness. Waking up before the worst of the side effects have worn off was not part of her plan for tonight.
“I was worried.” He sits down on the edge of the bed, pushing a strand of hair out of her face. “And you shouldn’t have to be alone when you’re sick.”
“‘M not sick,” she insists. Her protest sounds petulant even to her own ears. “It’s side effects from this kriffing vaccine.”
“The sentiment stands,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to be alone when you aren’t feeling well.”
She doesn’t answer, wanting to be left alone to suffer this particular indignity in peace, and hoping her silence will make him leave. She doesn’t understand why he even came.
“What’s the matter?” he asks patiently. He’s moved his hand to rest lightly on her shoulder, in what she supposes is meant to be a comforting gesture. Unfortunately, he squeezes it.
Dedra makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a yelp and jerks away as hot, vicious tendrils of fire explode from his touch. The sudden movement only serves to flood the rest of her body with pain and she’s left breathing hard with sweat beginning to bead at her hairline. What little patience she had has evaporated, but she has no energy left to berate him.
“Sorry sorry sorry!” Syril pulls back, panicked. “Look, um—” he collects himself, takes a breath, begins again. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Everything hurts,” she grits out through clenched teeth. She doesn’t know why she’s humoring him.
“Have you taken anything yet?”
“Not allowed.” This is pointless.
There’s silence as he considers this information.
“It wasn’t the Ratava vaccine, was it?” he ventures, finally.
She makes an affirmative noise, not wanting to move her head.
“Okay,” he says, breathing out. She can hear him thinking. “Okay,” he says again, decisively this time. He digs into a small bag he’s brought with him, fishing out something small and metallic. “This might help.”
‘This’ is a small tin of something off-white and smelling strongly herbal. Gently, he rolls back her sleeve and rubs the ointment onto her wrist as lightly as he can manage. His touch itself is soothing, his fingertips cool on her skin— but as he continues, the cool gives way to a gentle, tingling warmth. The ache starts to recede.
He pulls his hands away and looks at her expectantly. “Better?”
She nods.
“I can keep going if you want. Or you can do it yourself if you’d prefer?”
“You may continue.”
He pushes back her sleeve further and begins to work on her elbow. “There was a case of Ratava on Morlana One. Years ago. I’d been there for maybe a few months?” He pulls her sleeve back down before rolling the opposite one up. “It was in the leisure district— some kind of brothel— but because it was next to one of the common patrol routes, we all had to get vaccinated— the entire Pre-Mor office.”
He pulls back the coverlet of the bed, gesturing questioningly to her legs. She nods her permission.
“I think they probably meant well, but I don’t think management really understood the…implications of making everyone get the shot at once. I’ve never felt so bad in my life. We were all pretty useless for a day or two.” He laughs ruefully; the corner of his mouth twitches upward at the memory. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t at the time— the criminals could have had an absolute field day if they’d known.”
His fingers gently work the ointment into her ankles, her knees.
“The only thing that saved us was that the government also set up mandatory vaccination clinics, so the criminals had to get it too.”
Dedra’s almost fallen asleep again, the ointment having filed off the sharp edges of her pain. Syril’s voice is a blanket she’s begun to pull over her consciousness.
He caps the tin, pulls the coverlet back over her, and turns out the lights.
When she wakes in the morning, she’s almost disappointed not to see his form next to her.
It’s this type of day that makes Dedra long for her time in Enforcement: a day which had started with a holo-meeting at 0700 and had not let up. She’d jumped from meetings to briefings and back again with barely time to visit the refresher. And at no point had real, actual, tangible, focused work taken place. Instead, it had been all knowledge sharing and internal coordination. Sometimes, she thinks bitterly, the Imperial Security Bureau leans a little too heavily into the bureaucratic.
At least in Enforcement, there’d been the regular excitement of field work and the odd interrogation.
Her headache hadn’t helped. A mild annoyance since she’d walked into her office had only grown throughout the day, the muscles at the base of her skull gradually tightening with every hour until she’s surreptitiously rubbing at her temples and squinting ever so slightly at the harsh glare of the office lighting.
Since her concussion on Ferrix, she’s noticed she’s more prone to headaches than she used to be. They don’t happen often— certainly not frequently enough to consult a doctor. But when they do occur, she’s found they are more difficult to quell and almost impossible to ignore.
Her head is pounding by the time she makes it home, every step, every slight movement of her head, her shoulders resulting in a sharp, nauseating spike of pain behind her eyes.
She keys open the door to her apartment with her eyelids scrunched shut, peels off her hat and coat and heads straight for the refresher, where she clumsily fishes two pills out of a bottle as fast as her fingers allow and swallows them dry. The painkillers can’t act quickly enough.
Mission accomplished, she steps back out, unfastening the collar of her tunic as she moves toward the living room. She sits down heavily on the sofa and pulls the pins from her hair with slightly more force than necessary, tossing them on the table with irritation. Leaning back, she breathes out heavily, moving her head experimentally in an effort to stretch out the offending muscles at the base of her skull. She hisses and clasps a hand to her neck as one of them starts to cramp in protest instead.
“I’ve got you.” Suddenly, a strong pair of fingers is on her shoulders. “Just relax.”
She hadn’t heard Syril approach. Hadn’t even noticed him when she’d come home, though he’d almost certainly been preparing dinner in the kitchen the entire time. If she were thinking rationally, she’d be alarmed at the lapse in awareness of her surroundings. But after almost twelve hours straight of intolerable bureaucracy and a headache that she’s been unable to beat into submission, she can’t bring herself to care. Instead, she breathes out, closes her eyes, and tries to do as he says.
He begins kneading with deft fingers, gently forcing the muscles of her neck to release their tension. They don’t submit willingly, tightening up again as soon as his hands drift to another spot on her shoulders, but he notices immediately and returns, determined to bend the muscles to his will.
Gradually, she feels the pain fading back to a tolerable level. Whether it’s due to Syril’s skilled fingers, or the painkillers finally kicking in, she neither knows nor cares. Her breathing evens out as she’s finally able to let the strain of the day ebb out of her body.
“How many stim pills did you take today?” He moves his hands to her scalp, massaging gently.
“This is not an interrogation.” She prickles at his insinuation. One time. It had only been one time since he’d started living with her when she’d exceeded the recommended dose of stim pills. She’d it done intentionally, out of the need to complete a time sensitive analysis that had led to the capture of a minor rebel group. And she’d done so anticipating the resulting energy crash she’d be subjecting her body to later. And it had worked.
It’s not her fault if Syril had been alarmed when she’d fallen asleep at the dinner table.
His fingers stop, and she hears him move back toward the kitchen. She lets out a huff of annoyance, rolling her eyes behind closed eyelids. “Not enough to cause this,” she calls after him.
It’s true; despite her typical bad habits, she’d had no more than one dose today— just enough to stay alert through the last push of evening meetings. No, regardless of what Syril may think, stim pills aren’t to blame tonight.
She feels the sofa dip beside her. Syril’s returned.
“Here.” He hands her a glass of liquid tinged a pale pink. “Drink this.”
She takes a tentative sip. The beverage is cool and lightly sweet with the artificial tang of some sort of fruit she can’t identify, but it’s also inexplicably… salty. She can’t quite keep her disgusted reaction off her face.
“What is it?”
“All of it,” he insists, ignoring her question.
She attempts her most withering stare, but she knows it’s not having the usual intimidating effect.
He sighs. “It’s just a sports drink— isotonic; it’ll help rehydrate you. You didn’t eat or drink anything today, did you?”
It’s less a question than it is a light admonishment. Dedra looks down at the glass in her hand as she bites the inside of her cheek, guilty as charged. She certainly hasn’t eaten today and neither can she remember the last time she had anything to drink since the mug of caf she’d downed in lieu of breakfast. Syril’s uncanny ability to immediately know what’s physically ailing her has caught her off-guard once again.
She takes a second, longer sip. “This is vile.”
His mouth gives the barest of quirks. “It’s definitely an— acquired taste,” he admits. "But I promise it will help.”
She’s not entirely sure she believes him, but through the months they’ve now spent together, she’s found he is typically right in matters relating to health. She braces herself mentally, then downs the rest of the drink in several gulps.
He takes the glass from her. “Dinner’s ready. You should eat.”
She nods, and rises slowly to follow him into the kitchen.
The food is good— it always is, Syril proving a far more capable cook than she could ever aspire to be. She forces the first few bites down, still mildly nauseated by her headache and her stomach’s own gnawing emptiness. But as she continues eating, her body seems to remember it hasn’t been fueled all day, and her appetite returns. She’s suddenly ravenous.
Steadily, as she continues to eat, her headache recedes until— as she finishes the last bite of her meal— it’s faded completely.
“Better?” Syril asks, as he refills her empty water glass and clears her plate.
“Much,” she says with relief, before lifting the glass to her lips.
They adjourn to bed soon after, Syril playing some sort of puzzle game on his datapad and Dedra watching, leaning against him as he strokes her hair absentmindedly.
It strikes her that she must look slightly ridiculous like this— she’s no better than the tooka cat that lives in the window of the grocery store downstairs. Syril likes to scratch its head too. But the lazy sensation of him running his fingers through her hair, rubbing circles at her temple, lightly kneading the nape of her neck is too relaxing. She closes her eyes, listening to Syril’s heartbeat.
She falls asleep on his chest with his fingers carding through her hair.
Dedra hates Coruscant in winter.
This has nothing to do with the weather, which despite being noticeably colder, is controlled by the WeatherNet and thus still considered temperate by Galactic standards. Rather, it has to do with the sheer number of diseases that seem to run rampant around the planet like clockwork during this season. Trillions of lifeforms, and even more pathogens to circulate among them. The price to pay for living at the center of the galaxy, she supposes.
And while the superiority of Imperial medicine means anything truly dangerous is kept at bay and outside of the Core Worlds, there are still an infuriatingly plentiful number of colds, flus, and general agues to which there is no remedy except rest.
So when she feels the slight dryness in her throat slowly worsen over the course of the day into a swollen rawness that cannot be ignored, she realizes with dread that she has not managed to escape the latest low-level ailment that is currently being passed around at headquarters.
The timing of this couldn’t be more inconvenient. Though there’s never really an acceptable time to fall ill at the ISB, two days before the quarterly reports are due is certainly not when Dedra would have preferred. She goes to bed with the faint hope she’ll be better in the morning, but knowing with certainty she’ll feel worse. When she wakes the next day shivering with a dripping nose, she has never been so irritated to be proven right.
It’s with resignation that Dedra dresses and drags herself into the office, having taken the full array of medication stocked in the refresher cabinet to keep herself functional. Any other time of year, she’d submit a request to work from home, but the final data she needs to pull together to complete her reports can only be accessed from an ISB terminal. She hadn’t had the foresight to download the relevant information to datachips.
Syril, of course, has noticed her misery. Syril always notices.
By now, he knows better than to confront her directly— knows telling her to rest, or take it easy will only make her more determined to do the opposite. Instead, he hands her a cup of herbal tea with breakfast instead of caf, and sneaks packets of tissues and throat lozenges into her briefcase.
Dedra locks herself in her office and sets all communication devices to ‘do-not-disturb.’ Heert notices something is awry when she comms him to ask for clarification on some of the data tables he’d prepared, and then vehemently rebuffs his offer to come up and walk her through them in person.
“You sound awful,” he says finally, after she’s sneezed for the third time during their conversation.
“We’re not discussing it,” she responds with a finality that’s undermined by the hoarseness of her voice. She makes sure the comm is muted before self-consciously blowing her nose.
When a delivery droid shows up at her office door fifteen minutes after the end of their call bearing a thermos of tea from the canteen and pills from the med-center, she begrudgingly accepts them. She only needs to last long enough to finish the reports; she has the following day off once they are submitted.
There’s still more to be done when she leaves headquarters hours later, but Dedra’s feeling too rotten to stay in her office freezing under the glare of the lights any longer. Work had gone slower than usual, her mind dull and lethargic in the haze of sickness. Fortunately she’s managed to complete all the heavy analysis; all that’s left to do is finalize recommendations and write-up next steps.
Syril’s already preparing dinner when she arrives home. When she emerges from the shower bundled in her warmest clothes and feeling marginally improved, he has it plated and waiting on the dinner table. He’s made a soup— something light enough to be palatable in her illness and flavorful enough to cut through the fog of her congestion. He always knows how to comfort her when she’s feeling poorly. Gone are the days when she’d stumble home to an empty apartment and suffer alone. Something in her chest tightens with the realization.
She doesn’t finish her bowl, too distracted by the looming deadline of her reports. Instead, she unpacks her datapad and heads to the living room to complete her work, cocooning herself in the blanket on the sofa. Syril doesn’t comment, just cleans up before coming to join her, his own datapad in tow.
They sit in companionable silence as she works, for which Dedra is grateful. Her concentration, already subpar today, threatens to derail completely as the meds she’s taken begin to wear off one by one.
She sneezes once, twice, desperately grabbing a tissue from the box Syril— When did he buy these?— has placed nearby. She’s sure she’s read this paragraph before. Knows she wants to reword it— but the thought on how or why has slipped out of her brain.
She drops the datapad on the coffee table with a clatter and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. The combination of illness, frustration, and anxiety are rising steadily in her chest like a tide, threatening to overwhelm the seawall of her composure.
She can’t think. She can’t breathe.
And the quarterly reports are due at 0800 tomorrow.
“Dedra,” Syril says softly, rubbing slow circles on her back. “How can I help?”
She tries to tell him he can’t, that it would be a breach of security, that she could be dismissed for that— her train of thought is disrupted by another sneeze, and she buries her face in the now disgustingly sodden tissue. The only response she manages is a watery sniffle.
Syril squeezes her shoulder, making a noise she thinks is meant to be comforting. He puts down his own datapad and picks up hers. “Would it help if I read this out to you? Or do you want to dictate to me?”
Neither feels like the right decision, but with time running out, she knows she’ll have to choose something.
“Read it out to me,” she says finally. “I’ll tell you what needs to be changed.” If she continues on her own, she runs the risk of not being able to submit the reports by the deadline at all. And after Ferrix, that’s not a chance she has the luxury of taking.
They work together slowly but methodically. Syril keeps her focused, asking easy questions to prompt her for the content he needs. When her mind stalls, he makes suggestions, recognizing that it’s easier for her to react to something rather than generate it.
At last, blessedly, the reports are completed. Dedra hits send with a rush of relief. It’s well after midnight. She collapses back into the sofa, closing her eyes. She’s so tired.
“Come on,” Syril says gently. “Let’s get you to bed.” He presses a kiss to her forehead as he strokes her hair.
She burrows her face into his shoulder before muttering an entirely unconvincing, “‘N a moment.”
Syril moves off the sofa and she can’t keep a whine of disappointment from escaping her throat. She’ll have to follow him, but any will to move is overpowered by her exhaustion. The blanket is warm. The sofa is soft. And she doesn’t need to work tomorrow.
Dedra has almost drifted off when she hears Syril return.
In one fluid movement, he scoops her up, blanket and all. She curls into him as he carries her to the bedroom and deposits her on the bed as if he’s afraid she’ll break. He readjusts the sofa blanket around her, making sure it covers her evenly, before pulling the thicker coverlet of the bed up around her shoulders.
She feels the mattress dip as he climbs in next to her. “Feel better,” he murmurs, before pressing one last kiss into her hair and turning out the light.
She’s already fast asleep.
Dedra spends most of the following day in bed, waking only long enough to take the medication Syril’s left out for her on the bedside table and to use the refresher. It’s not really how she would have preferred to spend her day off, but she can’t deny the rest is needed.
It’s evening when she wakes properly, the light of day having given way to the city’s artificial glow. She rolls over, rubbing the grit from her eyes. She’s still exhausted, still feels undeniably ill with her raw throat and cotton-stuffed head. But she feels no worse than yesterday, and that, she thinks, must count for something.
A hot shower washes away most of the foul, sticky feeling, restoring some of her dignity. Syril’s already home, puttering around in the kitchen when she emerges from the refresher. She collapses into a seat at the dining table without a word.
“How're you feeling?” he asks, slipping a mug of tea into her hand.
“Mmh.” It’s neither an affirmative nor a negative, but it accurately reflects her current state.
He doesn’t press her, instead turning back to the counter to heat up dinner. It hadn’t taken him long to learn her cues, to read them effortlessly and adjust his responses. That he now always gives her the space she needs, even when she can’t articulate it— especially when she can’t— is something for which she continues to be grateful.
He sets a steaming bowl of last night’s soup down in front of her, before taking a seat and nursing his own cup of tea. He hasn’t prepared a bowl for himself.
She examines him with furrowed eyebrows. “You’re not eating?”
“Not hungry,” he answers with a sniffle. It’s then she notices the red tinge around his nose, the tissue clasped in his hand. “I think I’m coming down with whatever you have,” he continues with the faintest note of displeasure. “At least we bought all the essentials already.”
You bought all the essentials already, she corrects mentally. Of the two of them, Syril’s always been more concerned about making sure the apartment is properly provisioned. Usually, that simply means Syril has all the ingredients he plans to cook their meals with. This week, it’s meant that he’s also taken care to purchase extra tea, to place boxes of tissues around the apartment, to ensure the medicine cabinet is fully stocked. When he’s managed to do this, she’s not entirely sure; he must’ve done it days ago, when she’d felt the first symptoms.
She nods. “It’s to be expected.” She dips the spoon into her bowl. “We’ll have an early night.”
Syril calls out sick the following day, falling immediately back into unconsciousness once the task is complete. Dedra, feeling vaguely human again after a full day’s rest, heads into the office. She makes him a mug of tea before she goes, leaving it by his bedside, along with the same array of pills he’d left for her the day before.
He’s still sleeping when she returns. Doesn’t stir when she goes to check on him. She leaves him be, at a loss of what else she’s meant to do. This is new for her— having someone else to look after. In their time together, it’s always been the other way around: Syril checking in on her, Syril coaxing her to eat, Syril making her tea.
He should probably eat something, she thinks, resolving to wake him.
“Syril,” she says, gently shaking his arm. He moves, but doesn’t fully wake. “Syril.”
“Mm?” He’s awake now, but doesn’t open his eyes. His misery is palpable, radiating off of him in waves.
“I’m going to heat up dinner.” There’s no response. “Will you— join me?” she suggests haltingly.
He shakes his head, doesn’t look at her. “‘M not hungry.” He burrows further under the bedclothes. “Just lemme sleep.”
She nods, patting his shoulder awkwardly. “All right.”
She compromises by replacing the mug of tea at his bedside.
The following morning passes much like the previous: Syril calls out sick and then promptly rolls over and falls back into an uneasy sleep. Again, she leaves him with a mug of tea and an array of medication.
Dedra can’t help but start to worry. Though her offers of tea have been accepted and drunk, he’s not had anything to eat for over 24 hours. While she can last that long without real food, she’s not sure Syril can. It certainly can’t be good for him, she thinks. Especially not when he’s ill.
The idea of enticing Syril into eating follows her through the work day, popping up unexpectedly in moments of idle thought.
Should I cook something? She thinks desperately during a meeting which should have been a comm message. No, surely that would have the opposite effect; Dedra knows her strengths and is self-aware enough to recognize cooking is not one of them.
Perhaps those pastries he likes? She thinks later as she reviews the latest output data from her sectors. No, the bakery will be closed by the time she can leave the office.
Maybe—? An idea occurs to her as she makes her way home. She’s stopped outside the grocery store they frequent, staring thoughtfully at the tooka dozing in the window. It opens one eye at her and flicks its tail lazily. She takes that as a sign of approval. Yes— yes, that might do. She enters, quickly locates her targets, and purchases them.
She’s relieved to find the bed vacant and the shower running when she enters the apartment. Syril’s awake, thank goodness. Maybe she’ll be able to convince him to eat after all. She places her purchases on the kitchen table and puts the kettle on, before turning to the refrigeration unit in search of leftovers for her own supper.
The water has just finished boiling when Syril emerges from the shower looking distinctly worse for wear, but at least conscious. That itself is an improvement over the last two days.
“It’s good to see you awake,” she manages as she hands him a mug of tea. She turns back to the counter to pour her own mug.
There’s silence as he slowly pulls out a chair and takes a seat. And then—
“How did you know?” he rasps.
“Know what?” She looks at him, confused. She follows his eyes; he’s staring at her purchases, his eyes glittering with delight.
He reaches for the cardboard box she’d placed on the table moments earlier. “The cereal.” He turns it over in his hands, examining it. Dedra’s pretty sure she’s correctly remembered the brand.
“It’s the only thing I can stand eating when I’m sick,” he explains, smiling self consciously, shaking his head. “I think it’s the sugar.”
He moves to open a cabinet and retrieve a bowl, plucking a spoon from the drying rack next to the sink before sitting down again.
“I didn’t—” Dedra stammers as Syril pours himself a bowl of cereal, following the multi-colored spheres with an equally generous pour of blue bantha milk. “It’s just— you had to eat something. It’s been two days.” She watches, relieved and self-satisfied as he takes a bite. “And I know you’ll eat this.”
He grins at her in that familiar, lopsided way of his. “I should say thank you.” He takes another bite.
Against her will, she feels the corner of her mouth twitching upward at the familiarity of his words. She takes a seat across from him, cradling her own mug of tea.
“You don’t have to.”