Mutinous Legs

[Livia Maddox]

“The odds of walking unassisted on your left leg are 302,398 to 1. Reccommend anaesthesia and surgical intervention.” The droid medic projected surgical options, a litany of surgeries, amputations, and treatment schedules bathing the screen. “Amputation at the knee would guarantee walking unassisted at an odd of 1 for 1.”

Captain Livia Maddox pushed to a seated position, lips tight. “Get me another med droid.” She didn't know who she spoke to, as her eyes glazed, but that the medbay was filled to the rafters and posts with crew. The chaos was as palpable as her nerves refused to show, in the aftermath of taking the Vi'Nu.

Sitting in her under tank and a pair of shorts, Liv attempted to swing her legs over, but a cacophony of sharp pains stabbed at her nerves. Gritting her teeth, she gurgled out a groan. Her eyes shut, banishing the caustic liquid threatening to overwhelm her barriers.

“Ma’am, recommend you lie back down. You require 4 point 3-6 more cycles of recuperative rest.”

Livia reached for her effects on the table beside the med-bed, yanked her pistol out and shot the med droid in its’ central processors. It stuttered and crumpled to the ground. “Another… droid… or a goddess danged doctor.”

“Ma’am, the key medical staff are tending the wounded crew. Would you like me to pull one?” An ensign, was she an engineer? Someone with first aid, most like.

Livia worked her jaw and shook her head. It swirled, the universe around her following two seconds behind. Gauge was around… he was there during the fire fight. Did he push something off her leg? Images retracted to fragments of colour and lines, jacking into fractals that faded to a gross and confounded black. During the mutiny, he was there… beside her like always. Fighting the urge to tip over and lie down, Livia tried one more time to push off the med-bed.

Zero success.

"Someone get me moving." It was the closest to a whimper Livia'd ever made.

 

[Amz]

“Easy there Darlin’,” Gauge drawled, a signature smirk blanketing the concern in his baby blues, shouldering his way past the ensign. His legs were long, and a couple short strides brought him to Olivia’s side, a strong hand placed as gingerly as he could against the small of her back if she so would choose to use him for support.

A curt nod was given to the ensign standing there. “You have nothing better to do than sit and stare!?” his voice barked, following with a rumbling growl from his barrel chest. “Get back to your post!”

The girl scrambled and dropped her pen, scooping it up and scurrying off as fast as she could.

Once they were alone, Gauge glanced back towards Olivia. His expression changed from the hard-exterior officer to something...softer.

He yanked the blaster out of her hands and put the setting on stun. “Who the devil thought it was a good idea to give you a blaster, huh? Give me a name, so I can kick their shebs all over the base! And you're not going anywhere. You're resting. Even if I have to strap you to this gorram table for you to do it!” he grumped, looking at the smoking med droid crumpled on the floor. He sighed, musing a hand through his dark and disheveled hair. “Least we know your aim is still on point! How are you feeling, aside from…” he didn’t want to say it, he knew what it meant for her.

His shoulders slumped and a heavy sigh fell from his lips. “...Ya had me worried, Livi.”

 

[Livia Maddox]

“I am not your darling.” Livia's lower back hit something hard and hot. She grunted, chin rolling up until she could see the smug smirk on Gauge’s face. The man was a perpetual nuisance. A tag along. A blessing as she leaned imperceptibly against him.

“Easy? What part of yesterday was easy? Today? What time is it? I’m late for duty I’d expect. Won’t die to have one’s Captain out of uniform.” Pushing against the sides of the thin medibed, Olivia tried to bend her knees and push, only to have an ungoddessly swell of pain shock across her left leg. She panted, her eyes going agape. Her teeth grit and Livia let out a moan. Hand shooting over to grab her left leg, she felt the sticky back of bacta patches still soaking in. Her leg was covered.

Gauge called some ensign out and Livia barely registered the moment as she concentrated on the condition of her leg. Knees... knees didn’t look like that. Ankles didn’t bend at such an angle in rest. Burns. Burns all the way down the leg, from thigh to ankle and the top of her foot.

“And now the Commander is demanding his Captain rest! What’s next, carry me off to lock me in my quarters? Enough of this nonsense, Gauge get me moving.” She couldn’t wiggle her toes. Livia couldn’t move her toes or get her foot to respond at all. Her lungs worked faster and faster as she fought the sensation of lacking control. Her knee jerked and Livia's face contorted only minutely in pain.

“Blaster? Oh, Lieutenant Gulligan... Gauge I can’t...” members of the crew and the medstaff busied around the medibay, where Livia was laid on a intensive bed near the middle of the bay. It was the sort of bed one treated life threatening wounds on, an interventionist’s bed. “... how long have I been...”

Gauge’s voice was too quiet and soft. It lost the bravado of his facade, the silk of his womanizing ways. Livia dragged her eyes off her ruined and secured leg to Gauge’s face. “I feel perfectly fine all things considered. It’s time to return to duty now, why don’t you tell me which shift this is, Commander Eclipse and I’ll step in line... where... where’s my uniform? Her skin was soft, moisturized. Her hair neatly combed back from her face. “Have I been in a bacta tank? I was barely injured, just dazed really... wasn’t I? Gauge. Why are they staring at me so?”

[member="Gauge Eclipse"]

 

[Amz]

He surveyed her with a glance, she had a fire in her that he’d always admired, and was glad all of that sass was still in tact. Her reproofs only ever seemed to encourage the Commander, making the corner of his lips tug up in a smug smirk. He really was incorrigible. “Alrighttt Livi...don’t get all excited now!” He lifted his hands up to show his pure intentions here and took a seat beside her on the medical bed.

Gauge looked down at his hands and frowned when she started going on, the realization set in, cogs started fitting together. He reached up and tugged the shirt collar that suddenly felt ten times too small, constricting his airways. Fingers fumbled to loosen the top button so he could breathe easier, though nothing about this was going to be easy.

“Because…you’re lucky as the devil to be alive right now.” Gauge swallowed hard, all of the quip and cheekiness gone from his voice, replaced with a somber and strained note in his tone.

“My Mom used to tell me, ‘nil ach ceithre huaire is fiche ar na laethanta is measa’. It’s an old corellisi saying, means, ‘even the worst days only have twenty-four hours.’ I’m not a man who buys into the naive notion of hope, but fear does funny things to a person when you have nothing else left. Watching you float in that bacta tank? It was all I had. Livi...my worst day has lasted more than three-hundred and thirty six hours.”

“I heard you cry out when it happened...the Knight standing above you...barely got there...and the blood...I killed him...And I would kill a thousand men more if it meant I could have got to you sooner. Had to pull you from the rubble and I brought ya here, hanging on by a thread. Not on par with the medical facilities like the Fringe used to have, but they got your vitals to stabilize. But...the damage to your leg...they tell me there are options.”

[member="Livia Maddox"]

 

[Livia Maddox]

“Excited! By you!? You’re bolder than your looks.” Livia muttered, giving Gauge one of her signature scowls. It lessened with the wave of post-coma recovery, and her side collided with Gauge.

She tasted the soot of days in her mouth, the soreness of lip and teeth bound in the bacta respirator. Her leg throbbed to halfway down her shin… then nothing.

A vacuum of sensation.

Nothing but Gauge swallowing too hard for Livia's taste, and turning into the rare, but honest somber man. “Nothing else left? Oh gracious.”

Livia choked on a gasp, her hands reaching for her thigh, the other for her neck. “But I was barely wounded.”

The medibay seemed to take a breath around her, to still and wait in its’ expansion and contraction. People turned, unabashedly facing the impending scene they’d been waiting for days to see. “Why would my injuries be your worst day? Afraid of command?”

She tried to put levity back in, a bit of a joke, but it felt wrong. “Two weeks… I’ve been… no. No I do not accept that, I do not accept that I’ve been out for three hundred and thirty six hours. This is… it’s a ploy. You’re running a colossal… options! Yes, I know the options, the darned droid couldn’t help but bring out the saw and say ‘snip snip’! I’m not letting some wind up toy take my… take my leg.”

Voice descending to an angry whisper, Livia pushed at the bed with her palms, trying to nudge herself off by inches. The pain which wracked her leg tightened her features into a hard mask.

“Get me out of this butcher’s shop. Two weeks! The Vi’Nu must be a mess, what would Cinder think? Good gracious me, two weeks, I’ve got… I’ve got… far too much to do.” A gasping softness panted out of her as she turned her face finally to her long time partner officer.

Liv whimpered. “Gauge, get me out of here.”

[member="Gauge Eclipse"]

 

[Amz]

"Afraid of command?" Gauge tried to muster up a chuckle, but his voice choked at the unpleasant thought of all that entailed, producing a sound that was weak and strained. He cleared his throat and straightened beside her, looking down at his bruised knuckles to distract from the desire to put his arms around her shoulders, to feel her sink in against him. It was inappropriate, given where their positions put them in relation to each other, but this event made him realize the reality of what she really meant to him. "That's not the reason."

While she mentally tried to grasp everything, he instinctively moved until his broad shoulders shielded her from the onlookers, putting himself in a closer proximity to her.

"I know it's not what you want to hear, but you need to give it some thought." He frowned and sighed, lowering his voice with hers. "Cybernetics aren't all bad, recovery time is next to nothing these days. A lot of soldiers get them. Both of Cherles eyes are, remember him? The flyboy with a happy trigger finger? Can't even tell."

Trying to change her mind once it was set, was as pointless as rattling off odds and statistics to a Corellian. Gauge looked up, huffing in aggravation.

"That's an unsafe discharge, against medical recommendations Captain Maddox." He arched a brow and scratched at his stubble with a smile then stood up, grabbing the arm of a passing nurse. "I'm taking the Captain out for some fresh air, get me those crutches."

He looked back to Olivia and shrugged. "Had a feeling you'd be stubborn about things, had them ordered before you woke up." he clicked his tongue. "Look...I'll get you out of here, but you're not going back to work. Not until you can walk on that leg. I talked to Cinder, we have someone in place until you're back to fighting power. Ah! Don't try to argue with me about it. It's already done, and there's a place waiting on the outskirts of the city for your rehabilitation."

[member="Livia Maddox"]

 

[Livia Maddox]

“You’d hate it.” Livia squinted, attempting in her way to see him through the haze of her physical pain. “Isn’t that’s why we have each other, Gauge? I take the unpleasant bits, and you handle everything I cannot stand.”

A wave of nausea hit her as her eyes rolled back. Her side collided with Gauge’s body, and she caught herself with one of her arms. “No butcher is cutting off my leg. I refuse... I cannot fathom it, I can’t.”

The nurse brought the crutches and a full leg immobilizing brace, which she fit to Livia's ankle, all the way up the knee and securing to her upper thigh. The captain refused to lose her composure over the intense pain of moving her shattered and wrended joints. Her face was the same mask it had been the last months, since returning from the Mid Rim. Pain.

Her body and mind were laced with it. By the time she was standing on the crutches, Livia worked her way out the door before anyone else could stop her.

“I’ll show you unsafe, just hand me my blaster. Anyone attempts to keep me prisoner, shoot them.” Livia grunted, working the crutches to freedom. There was an expression to Gauge’s body language, which gave Livia even more reason to hurry out of the medical bay. It unsettled something deep within her, a memory of another man, who expended his own life to have one more chance to look at her just… like… that.

Livia's eyes watered as she pushed her body out of the bay, not halting her forward momentum until her arms burned and she had to lean breathless against the wall or fall over.

“That’s the deal? I walk, I go back to work? I accept your challenge, Commander Eclipse. Get me the feth out of this den of flesh robbers… so I can make this leg bend to my will and get our ship back from whatever command hack they have ruining her.” She went to put her crutches back under her arm and dropped them. Grunting with a jaw-clenched growl, Livia tried to lower on her right leg, knocked her braced leg against the wall, and tumbled over.

"Tom... help me." An unusually timid voice from a woman of phrik-spined strength. Eyes clouded with pain reaching up to her best friend, and colleague. She reached for a crutch, gripped its' side rail and tried to pull herself off the ground, as she stiffled a cry.

[member="Gauge Eclipse"]

 

[Amz]

“Probably.” his deep voice agreed. “Mostly because I’d have less time to be a...what was it you called me again? Right…’swarthy Corellian panty snatcher.’" Gauge nodded. “That’s the dynamic we’ve somehow managed to find works for us.”

He caught her by the shoulders when she crashed into him and gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Alright...we won’t let them, it’s your decision, okay? Don’t worry..”

Olivia, with a stone-like face, could have fooled anyone into believing that pain was a concept that was far beneath her as the nurse strapped the brace to the ruins of her leg. Gauge knew better, knew her well enough to see beyond the mask she presented to everyone else, but he also knew when to keep his mouth shut. It was hard to fathom what it all must be like for her, the least she deserved was to have the dignity to walk out of here with her chin held high.

Rising from where he sat on the medical cot, Gauge gathered his jacket and her belongings, following at a near distance. Her defiant voice about shooting anyone trying to keep her in the medbay, caused his lips to round in a smirk. “Oh, I know. I’m not such a fool as to give you a firearm when you’re in a state. Shoot them?” his deep voice inquired with a chuckle, watching those clearing out of Olivia’s path. “I don’t think it’ll be necessary, but I’ll keep my blaster set on stun, just for you.”

Gauge knew she was struggling, and even though they were beyond prying eyes now, he didn’t think Olivia would accept his help even if he offered it. She never did, no matter how wretched the situation. “...You’re unusually agreeable about this...should I be worried? We’ll grab the next shuttle out.” He scratched uneasily at the back of his neck. “Cinder is expect--”

His natural reaction when she fell was to aide her, but Olivia was a complicated woman and he held back only until she asked for his help. “Don’t move, I got you.” Like a bolt of lightning, he was quick to act, throwing her arm over his shoulder and hoisting her into his arms. He moved her out of the walkway and set her down onto a nearby bench, retrieving the crutches and laying them beside her. He bent his knees to crouch in front of her. “...Take a minute, breath, then I want you to pick those up and try again. We’re going to work at this, together. I’ll be here for you, and you’re going to get stronger every day, I know it, because I know what you’re made of.”

[member="Livia Maddox"]

 

[Livia Maddox]

“Managed somehow? Frak you, it’s taken loads of work.” Livia raised an eyebrow, giving Gauge the sort of rough time she always did. “You are a panty snatcher… I see the girls. Half the female crew blushes when you walk by.”

Was there a hint of something in Livia's voice? Perhaps. She shivered as he caught her, nodding at his agreement that the ‘butchers’ wouldn’t take her leg.

“Shoot them! That’s an order!” Livia barked, as an orderly momentarily stopped in her path. He dove out of the way, and slapped his back against the wall.

“You gave me a mission. I need a mission… shuttle? Not good enough. Command can commandeer vehicles as seen fit for the completion of a mission, and we are not waiting on a bunch of potential look-e-loos. That ambulance. It has autopilot and homing signals in emergencies. It can fly itself back… Cinder is expecting what?” Livia would have continued on her way if not for the fall.

She grabbed at the floor, forehead peering down to the smooth ground. Her ribcage shivered, and she shut her eyes. Gauge pulled her into his arms, and for one brief second, Livia clung.

He was warm, heart beating loud enough to be felt in her skin. Livia remembered slivering moments with Gauge through the years, his eyes on her, his arms when she was inebriated and they needed to lean on each other to stand.

Gauge Eclipse was perpetually at Livia's shoulder, except in the lasting months she spent on a secret Rebellion mission. Since returning, Livia's implacable resolve had turned from optimism to fatigue. Her drinking became less about letting off steam, her interactions with the other officers were ramrod and unyielding. He set her down, tender and kinder than he ought to be.

“Pass me the crutches, let’s go…” She reached for them, her forehead dipping again closer to his broad shoulders. “… I don’t have anything left, Tom… there’s too many eyes here… I don’t want a minute, I want to get out of this prison… how do you have such faith in me, after all this time?”

[member="Gauge Eclipse"]