"Looks like she's finally stabilized, anyway," Becki's hesitant voice pulled Thayer's eyes away from the bacta tank and back to his lady's face.
"She'll live, then?" he wondered finally.
"I think so," she answered with a faint grin. "I don't know how to read this monitor any much better than you do, really."
He nodded. "Still, I don't suppose Sylvana would have left her here, were she not out of danger."
"At least for the present."
"If she should not survive this--" he winced and sought out a seat along the side of the Red Home's small med bay.
Becki settled next to him and took his hand. "You're blaming yourself."
"I sent her on this mission."
"I thought that was her idea."
"Yes, but --"
"Wasn't your blaster bolts that got her, either." They both spared a moment's silence as their thoughts at once turned to the story that had been told them of Lenka's not-entirely-accidental shooting.
"Yet, as she is a subject of mine, her loss would -- and yes, by Grace, love, I feel responsible! What if she should die, after all Sylvana has done? It is I who'll have sent her to her death."
"If there really was a dark Jedi in the fight, like Vickie said, don't you go stealing all the credit from him," Becki chided. "Besides, you've sent people to their deaths before. Sometimes you have to." As his look of gravity did not abate, she raised his hand to her lips and kissed it gently. "But then, she isn' t just a subject, is she?"
He smiled and pulled her hand to his own lips. "Given the piffling and impertinent nature of the rest of the gentry who, like her, call themselves my subjects; no, I can hardly book her in that category. Did I ever tell you, love, how she came into my service?" Becki shook her head, brightening at the promise of a story in this introduction. He faithfully launched into one that confirmed her hope, telling how the Queen mother had sent Lenka at the end of a long line of maidens schooled to steal the Dictator's heart away, and succeeding only in turning it more and more against the sender.
"Dohrnaira was one of that company," he mentioned.
Becki made a doubtful face.
"Didn't last long," he amended.
"I did notice," Becki grinned, "that she seems nearly as frightened of you as Eti does now. What did you do, growl at them?"
"Rar," he teased, leaning close to growl nearly in her ear.
"Oooh, scary Dictator," she teased back, fending him off. "Go on with the story. Lenka?"
"The last of my mother's sending," he resumed. "Who knew better than any of her predecessors why she was there, and would not stand for it. I doubt even now Mother's aware how Lenka called her bluff. And it was such a refreshing thing, to find a Mendellian lady who doesn't want to be Queen." Becki visibly relaxed at this. "So I was very careful not to growl at this one. She proved a great help to me, so I made her my assistant. And . . ."
"She made herself your friend," Becki surmised.
"As she were my sister," he agreed. "A most invaluable lady, as reliable as she is sensible."
"She'll live," Becki proclaimed suddenly, sibyl-like.
Thayer arched an eyebrow. "Whence this certainty?"
"It would be neither reliable nor sensible of her not to," she grinned, prompting a laugh from him.
A tone sounded just then from the med bay's holocomm unit, alerting them to an incoming call. They exchanged curious glances, then, conceding that they'd sooner find out what was going on from the comm than from each other, Becki went to answer it. The resulting holo image was staticky, but the data feed below it indicated that the call was coming from the Gaia. "Chief?" Becki guessed.
"Ah. Three," Sci's unmistakable voice answered. "I was hoping to find Seven there."
"Josh? In the med bay?"
"For the same reason I presume you and Thayer are there," was the cryptic response. "You haven't by any chance seen him?"
"No. Not since . . . well, since the fight. What's going on?"
"He should have been back by now."
"Back from where?"
"You hadn't heard? He took off after Lenka was shot. Chasing the American agent, Wells."
"So he really is in Jerusalem?" Becki gasped.
"And Cochran is out for vengeance. I'll want to know the moment he gets back, or if you get any word from him, all right?"
"Done, Chief," she nodded, and the holo image faded away. Thayer stood in its place, watching her from the other side of the comm unit.
"The same Wells?" he asked quietly.
"It would seem so," she said. "Like he's haunting our steps. And now Josh is trying to haunt his." She frowned at Thayer's grim expression. "What?"
"And you're all set to go haunt Cochran's."
"If you mean to start a search for him -- yeah, if he doesn't get back soon. Sci's right, he should have been back, or at least checked in by now."
"Surely he can look after himself."
She shrugged. "Any of us can, to an extent. But to the extent that any one of us can't, that's why we're a team."
"Which team he's parted from, on this chase of his," Thayer persisted. "If he wanted the team's help, wouldn't he call for it? Vickie did that, before the firefight, yes?"
"If he can," she said. "Thayer, what is this? It's just common teamship -- not to mention friendship -- to do what we can to help a teammate who's missing and might be in trouble." She frowned as she guessed at the meaning of his dark looks. "You just don't want to see him, do you?"
He grimaced. "Bec . . . I am finding it somewhat less simple to forgive him than you."
"Poor love!" She stepped into his arms in consolation. "Nothing to be jealous of. But it was easier to forgive me when you saw me face to face, wasn't it?"
"What am I to say to him?" Thayer sighed.
"I honestly have no idea, love," she soothed, then pulled back to smile up at him. "But I can promise this much: I'm there with you when you do say it, and it's you I'm leaving with when all's said that must be said, and that alone will say a lot. Well -- unless you'd rather face him alone, fight it out or whatever."
"A thought I have entertained," he confessed.
"Then I probably don't want to know. But . . . maybe," she glanced over at the bacta tank, "you won't have to say so much after all."
"No?"
"Since Lenka's going to live, and all," she reiterated. "I didn't see an awful lot of her during the mission, while she was still conscious, anyway, but every time I did see her, and Josh was around -- well," she grinned thoughtfully, "he might just get over me, after all."