Private Echoes

[Inosuke Ashina]

I am you and what I see is me.
​

Consciousness returned. Pain pulled Inosuke out of the blackness of comatose far quicker than he could adjust to. Infirmary lights flooded his vision with a painful, featureless white. He hardly moved, only blinking his solitary eye slowly as his vision steadied and darkened to the sight of the ceiling. For what must have been minutes, he stared aimlessly, aching, hardly coherent. Finally, a question formed in the nothing; Where am I?

Sharp, throbbing pain expanded like webs within his skull as his eye moved. Vision split into double, even triple as he tried to refocus elsewhere. Voices were distant behind the ringing in his ears. As far left as his left eye could go, the blurry triplet forms of a woman and a droid wobbled in the distance. What happened? The last thing he could remember were tunnels. Too many pieces were missing, he still could hardly figure out where he was.

A side-view of the womans face made a lightbulb slowly flicker to life. "Henna?" he croaked, raspy and meek. His voice was a husk of the usual direct austerity, reduced to a near-voiceless crackle. The sound of it made his head feel as if it were being hit with a hammer. Why is she here? It clicked suddenly, the notion finally coming together. Halls of Healing.

"Henna," he gasped again, determined.

Henna Ashina ​

 

[Henna Ashina]

The droid had begun its bi-hourly rattle of names and statuses as the master's hands moved across the datapad, inputting the knight's latest numbers. She could not focus; instead, the image of him, small and frail in his bed clung to her thoughts. Henna held up a hand, motioning for silence. She knew that this was hardly the greatest number the Halls had ever seen, but it still felt too many. The arrival of allied forces who were not yet stable enough for further transport in addition to their own had made for long days and sleepless nights. She would give all she had, and yet went to her quarters every evening wishing she had done more.

The master pulled the stool towards herself and sat, allowing only a moment's respite. Robed shoulders slumped beneath the weight of it all- then came the shame. She glanced to the droid despairingly, searching for some reignition of hope and motivation, but it only brought another wave of sadness and exhaustion.

A sound caused an instant jump, but it took a moment before her eyes moved sideways, looking to the knight. It was another moment to process he was looking back at her. Emotions and needs were shoved away as she sprung into action, approaching him.

"Inosuke, it's alright." She stated, expecting confusion. Yet, he knew who she was... "You were injured in the battle. You're at the temple, on Coruscant. Are you in pain?"

Before he answered, she took up his hand, gripping it tight. A deep breath filled her lungs with the warmth of the force, and she allowed Ashla's energy to flow through her arm into his own, bringing small waves of comfort with it. Though she tried to push feeling down, immense joy and relief welled inside of her, and she could not keep the smile off her face.

 

[Inosuke Ashina]

"Are you in pain?"

Initially, Inosuke didn't say anything. The stoically dazed look on his face could've fooled someone into believing he'd suddenly become stricken with statuesque catatonia. "Injured," he echoed, voice regaining some semblance of regularity. Almost like he was trying to convince himself. His eye drifted less painfully than before down to where he hand was held. Whatever she was doing granted relief, and with it some vestigial kind of clarity.

"What happened?" he inquired. Not enough clarity, it seemed. A slow, twitching blink coaxed a winced from the pain it caused. "I- I cannot recall," he lamented softly. Words articulated slower than was normal. How exactly he'd been injured clearly hadn't yet occurred to him, either. Slowly, he looked back to Henna to ask, "Did we fail?" A sudden throb sent pain through his skull like an aftershock as the sound of a medical cart bumping a doorframe elsewhere reached his ears. An abrupt, reactive wince made it worse

"My head," he confessed late to her inquiry of pain.

 

[Henna Ashina]

Her patience kept at she allowed him the time he needed to work through and process. It hurt to watch the rise and falls of his face while understanding dawned. She held his hand until the flare of pain passed, and the tension faded from his expression. Only then did she offer a squeeze before placing his arm gently beside him once more. Drifting to the counters that rested against the back wall, the master remained silent. She went to work, collecting vials and needles and most importantly, her thoughts. Erasing the grimace from her face as she turned back to him, Henna thumped the syringe for good measure.

"A little pressure," She told him as she took his arm again. "And maybe a little sleepiness, but it'll help with your head."

She gave him her hand once more, before sliding the needle in carefully, the emerald ichor disappearing in a matter of seconds. Recapping the needle, she set it aside and turned back to him.

"You didn't fail, Inosuke. The battle is still unclear, but it's apparent the Brotherhood suffered great losses." She didn't mention their own. "In the fighting, your eye- the cybernetic- took some kind of damage, causing it to shatter. We were able to stabilize you, however... We were unable to remove the shrapnel from the blast, which is still lodged in your brain. We are unsure what the long term effects will be, but it is clear, you are very lucky to have woken."

 

[Inosuke Ashina]

Through the pain in his head, Inosuke hardly noticed the needle. Whatever she gave him worked quickly, granting a gradual relief from the sting that molested every inch of his skull. His hand felt the bandage over his face, gingerly inspecting where it covered his now vacant eye socket. "I see," he acknowledged, irony escaping him.

Yet, he didn't see, not really. Inosuke didn't doubt Henna, but her explanation didn't jog any details from his memory. Squinting, he tried even harder to make himself remember, wondering if the shards in his brain were locking the memories away. Lucky to be awake, she had said. As far as he could tell, aside from feeling beat up, it didn't feel like anything else was wrong aside from not remembering how he'd ended up like this as well as feeling a little hazy.

Inosuke would wager that neither Henna nor any Medical Droid in the vicinity would be too enthused about his next move. Still, he had to be sure.

Abruptly, breaking his pause, Inosuke began to sit up, writhing against dulled remnants of pain as he did so. Wriggling his way backward, eventually his back was against the wall, with his pillow residing beneath his lower back. Henna's injection had given him a surge of artificial wellness. While it was likely detrimental to do so, there was now very little pain holding him back.

He looked down at his hands, closed and opened them slowly. Toes wiggled, making the fabric mounds that covered them move with odd undulations. It was like moving through clay, but he was relieved that every limb responded to his desires to move. So, nothing devastating, at least not according untrained medical opinion, but shrapnel in the brain had to do something though, didn't it? Inosuke wasn't totally oblivious to how serious that could be. Yet, it didn't make him any less reckless in the moment, either.

Bandages, bruises, but nothing that looked, or that he could identify as severe. Though, didn't have a doctors eye, nor one's medical insight. "Was there anything else?" he asked in regards to his injuries as he continued to check himself over.

 

[Henna Ashina]

"Hey, hey, careful now." The warning came as he had begun to move. Her hand surged out, meeting his back to help him adjust. "That is the worst of it- some of the wounds had become infected during the aftermath, but they got you here before things grew dire."

A frown developed as she spoke, accompanying a growing crease in her brow. The words were troubling- as if her former news wasn't enough. She moved away only briefly to nudge over the rolling stool she had sat on earlier. Her worry turned on the droid, who has ceased to make himself scarce.

"TB-3, please perform rounds on rooms 10E-25E."

"Yes, master." Came the computerized reply.

Henna pushed away the new bubble of anxiety- that Inosuke would be reckless, and she'd be alone to handle a crisis. It will be fine, the master told herself, I'm trained, and he's not one to be rash. The stool was lined stone beneath her as she settled beside his bed.

"You need to be careful." She stated plainly. "We are still unsure of the security regarding the shrapnel's position. For all we know, simply moving the wrong way could knock it loose, killing you in the process."

 

[Inosuke Ashina]

"I see."

Once again, shown in a twice-in-a-row display, irony was evermore a foreign language to Ashina. One wrong move could be the death of him. Not a foriegn concept by any means. In this context, though? It managed to be unsettling, even for the ever-deadpan steeled nerves that Inosuke was known for. "I suppose I have no other choice," he conceded in regards to her reccomendation of caution. It was that or an abrupt invitation to oblivion.

"Henna-" As soon as it sounded like he was going to say something, words cut suddenly into silence. A silent deep breath staved off the embarrassment he felt for the state he was in. His involuntary, undeniable gratitude served to make it even worse. "Thank you," he offered. After a pause he clarified further, "For taking care of me." Grateful as he was, a lingering sense of pride made the sentiment difficult to convey.

Starkly out of character, but the statement was not retracted.

 

[Henna Ashina]

just let your heart speak up and i'll know​

"You're welcome." The words were quiet, her eyes downcast, but she offered a nod still. "You would have done the same for me, if the roles were reversed."

That she was sure of- like herself, the knight was intimately familiar with duty. Yet, she would be lying if she refused to admit the attentiveness she had given since his arrival was routine. It was not the acceptance of her actions that troubled her, but the motivations behind them. Content to fill an empty heart with hints and stolen moments for months, every wall of feigned interest had come tumbling down when she had seen how small and broken he looked in the bed. What laid behind the ruins was vast, deeper, true. There was no rationalizing, nor figuring of logistics. The delicate balance of a professional relationship became insignificant when true stakes were added. Henna took up his hand once more, but in place of the healer's touch came a tenderness foreign to her. A thumb traced idle circles among the callouses.

"I'm..."

The circles all but ceased as she, for once, at a loss for words. All preparation had led her to accept her emotions for what they were, to figure what came after the revelation of weakness, but not what moved them there. All known languages failed her. Galactic Base too weak for the roils in her chest, High Galactic fluttered graciously around the point, and Hapan put no stock in feeling, only in beauty and power.

"I'm glad you came back to me." She finally said, unable to fully convey the unfamiliar emotions.

 

[Inosuke Ashina]

"I'm glad you came back to me."

In every other instance, Inosuke had met Henna's presumptuousness with indifferent looks and silence. This time, the smallest sign of reciprocation came with the slight squeeze of the given hand. When Henna's gaze returned to him, he would meet it, the vaguest semblance of a smile spread weakly across his face. A curtain of drowse kept any part of the expression from looking too intense.

In that moment, she could have been forgiven for concluding that the shrapnel had rattled his brain more than what was initially surmised. Perhaps it had. As an afterthought, even Inosuke wondered if that response had been his own. If he'd felt this way before, surely he would have noticed. "Would I not?" he wondered. Unless he simply hadn't let himself. Nevertheless, Inosuke dismissed that doubt at once, certain it wasn't a brain-traumatic fluke.

Even if it was, he wasn't sure if he'd care. Water takes the path its given. This one felt right.

"You have done so much," he observed quietly. A lot more than she might have readily realized. Counsel on the worst days, a companion on the best days. Conservator and lifesaver when he was helpless. Everyone Inosuke could recall had only been one of those three things, and never the last. She gave and gave, even when he had nothing more to give her in return aside from the occasional tutor.

"When I have adequately recovered, allow me to make it up to you."

How? Inosuke couldn't begin to imagine how. Gratitude beyond a spoken thanks was an alien frontier. Never before had he received a gift or service sufficient for anything more than that. Until now, it seemed.

"I would not wish for you to see me as one without gratitude." His voice was hardly above the ambient sounds of medical equipment. Whatever Henna had stuck into his arm was slowly catching up with him.

 

[Henna Ashina]

The squeeze, as small as it was, sent Henna's heart flying to her throat. The words that followed put any lingering doubt to rest. Warmth spread across her face as she allowed herself to return the smile. You could let me take you to dinner. The abrasive statement lingered on the edge of her tongue before she shook it away.

"You have done so much,"

"You have not been without your own contributions."

The order brought all within its bounds together in fellowship, but it had been far too long since she a true bond had formed with another. He placed his trust in her when filled with uncertainty and turmoil, provided sanctuary when their charges were like to drive her mad, and above all else, saved her own life. After, he had provided the tools needed to she wouldn't need to rely on others, but never in those lessons had he made her feel weak nor foolish.

"I can't ask you for anything in return now, though, even if you insist- it would be unfair." She explained before he could produce an argument. Drugs and the escape from death's embrace twisted a man's mind. "But we have time."

 

[Inosuke Ashina]

One blink felt like a boulder crashing into the ground. Prying it back open took a monumental effort. "Enough time for me to insist later," Inosuke countered. A deliberate, forceful breath momentarily strengthened his tether to the waking world. That wakefulness was fleeting, nearly dissipating entirely before he could articulate the struggle he was having. As if it wasn't blatantly clear already.

"Forgive me, I-" Sudden groggy faltering was fought away by a slow shake of his head, eye shut tightly only to pry open again. "I am afraid I cannot hold off insentience much longer." The next time he blinked could be the threshold into a long, anesthetic sleep. Another squeeze, drastically weaker than the last. Though he staged his last statement as if he had more to say, nothing came.

Before he himself knew it, the drugs had pulled him beneath unconscious waves. Precious moments of coherency became a memory. Dreamless, he persisted in a vast nothing only inches above the precipice of death where he'd once been.