Chapter Text
General Skywalker’s new vod’ad’ika is incapable of sitting still. She wriggles about on the examination table as Kix tries in vain to establish a record of base life functions, and he wishes desperately that he’d delegated this job to someone else.
“Commander,” he says flatly. He had to call in Rex for reinforcement, except Rex had taken one look at the squirming ad and promptly commed Skywalker, so now the child is constrained in her master’s arms and doing her very best to worm her way out of his implacable hold. “Commander. Commander.”
“Captain Kix is talking to you,” Skywalker rumbles. Tano twists around and bares her teeth at him. They’re very sharp. Skywalker, however, appears not to be moved by this. “Listen to him, Padawan.”
Ahsoka turns all her attention on Kix. Kix swallows. He is not scared of a fourteen-year-old that barely comes up to his shoulder, even taking into account the horns on her head. He is not.
“I need to take a blood sample, Commander,” he says. Tano redoubles her efforts to escape. “It won’t hurt. The hypo numbs the skin automatically.”
“No, no, no,” she chants. “No, no, no.”
“I have been told by her crèche-master that she dislikes needles,” Skywalker informs him. “Among other things. Meat, for example. This is a problem because she is a carnivore.”
Kix notes that down.
“Ahsoka,” Skywalker says to his furious charge. “Tell me about your crèchemates.”
“I know you’re trying to distract me, Skyguy. You can’t trick me. You can’t trick meeeeeee.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Tano sighs explosively and goes completely limp all at once, then, just as suddenly, snaps up and wraps her arms around Skywalker’s neck like a small and particularly malevolent sloth-creature. Skywalker doesn’t even flinch.
“My friends are Fih and Demaah and Tyyyrm and Anjebri,” she says, although she doesn’t stop glaring at Kix. “Tyyyrm can’t speak Basic because she’s a Wookie, so we all know Galactic Sign. Anjebri’s Human. They’ve got fur too, like Tyyyrm, but only on their head. And their legs, I guess. And their arms. And their face. But not the way Tyyyrm does. It only feels like Tyyyrm’s fur on their head.” She breaks eye contact and turns, temporarily releasing her death-grip on Skywalker in favour of reaching up and grasping a handful of his hair. Kix sneaks forward, hypo at the ready, and she whirls back around, still clutching a fistful of blond curls.
Skywalker winces.
“Ow,” he says. Belatedly, Tano lets go.
“Sorry, Master.”
He readjusts his hold. Tano pouts.
“Why do I have to get my blood taken?” she whines. “They have records at home. Why don’t you just use those?”
“Your medical file was wiped during the transfer. Someone hacked into the GAR-Temple transmissions.”
At that, Tano brightens.
“Cool.”
“Ahsoka,” Skywalker says. “It’s hair. Tell me you know what hair is.”
“I know what hair is,” Tano repeats dutifully, then deflates. “It should just be called fur, though. It’s the same as fur, just not all over you, except it is, which doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s different.”
“No it’s not.”
“I have hair. I am a certified expert in having hair. It’s different.”
“Master Obi-Wan has fur. He is furred.”
“That’s a beard.”
Kix locks eyes with Skywalker, lunges forward and attaches the blood-scanner to her thumb, then retreats to a safe distance as it sprays the preliminary cleaning agent.
“Stay still, Ahsoka,” Skywalker says. She shrieks indignantly and bites him on the wrist. It clangs dully. “That was my prosthetic.”
“I need you to hold her arm still, sir,” Kix says. Skywalker nods and grasps her bicep firmly. Tano, mouth full of glove, glowers at her master for his betrayal, and clenches down on her bite. A pained expression crosses Skywalker’s face. Kix wonders if he has synthetic nerves linked to it. The scanner pricks Tano’s thumb, and she screeches like she’s been shot and lashes out at him with one foot foot, which Kix dodges. “It’s done, Commander. You can stop kicking me now.” She tries for one last half-hearted jab, then slumps bonelessly in Skywalker’s arms, making a clicking trill in the back of her throat. Kix takes the opportunity to swoop in and retrieve the blood-scanner, and gets a boot to the knee for his efforts.
He fiddles with the scanner, which is flashing several error messages on its tiny screen. It spits out the test strip with the blotch of blood as the final computations resolve. Kix stares at it. Skywalker stares at it. Tano, who is preoccupied with undoing the laces of Skywalker’s boots, clicks her teeth together excitedly.
“Why,” says Kix, “is it green?”
Skywalker prods Tano in the back.
“Hmm?” Tano says, now tying the laces into some sort of complicated knot. Skywalker disentangles her gently and lifts her upright, for which she sinks her teeth into his flesh-and-bone palm.
“Why is your blood green, Snips?”
“I have high levels of biliverdin,” she says indistinctly around a mouthful of hand and leather. “It overrides the haemoglobin pigment.”
“She has high levels of biliverdin,” Skywalker relays with an air of grace and knowledge, then pauses. “What’s biliverdin?”
“Do you know what jaundice is?”
“Yep,” says Skywalker, popping the p. Tano rolls her eyes and disengages from Skywalker’s flesh.
“I don’t have jaundice.”
“Technically, Commander, with that much bile in your blood, not only should you have jaundice, you should be dead. My reader is indicating you are dead. Why aren’t you dead?”
“You’re the medic,” she snarks. “You work it out.” Well. At least Kix now understands why Skywalker calls Tano Snips. He places the reader on his desk and retrieves his stethoscope. It’s a nice stethoscope. He bought it with eight months of pay on one of Coruscant’s moons. It’s got engravings and everything. He holds it for comfort.
“I am a medic for what is essentially one person, with one blood type, one bone density, one everything. I have taken advanced courses to ensure I know how to treat a Near-Human that is not a clone of Jango Fett. You are not Near-Human.”
“I am.”
“Commander, your blood is green. That indicates to me that there are some major physiological differences going on.”
Tano launches out of Skywalker’s arms and latches onto Kix’s shoulder. It’s an impressive jump, Kix thinks, and then he decides that maybe he should’ve worn his shell, because Tano’s broken through his armourweave and, by the feel of it, punctured the skin beneath.
“Ahsoka,” Skywalker chides, and stands, strides over to them, and grabs her around the waist. Tano hangs on grimly. “Ahsoka, let go. Sorry, Captain. She usually doesn’t misbehave this badly.” He tugs at the small body gently, and Tano growls at him.
“Ow,” says Kix, who is wistfully envisioning a bacta-plast.
“Ahsoka,” Skywalker says again, sounding desperate. “I will let you have a whole jar of bugs.”
Thoughtfully, Tano stops biting Kix. He sighs in relief and begins looking for the tub of bacta he keeps in his drawers. She hangs upside-down, draped over Skywalker’s arm.
“Live or fried or dried?”
“Both. Either. You can choose. I’ll request a few hours of leave and we’ll take a shuttle planet-side tonight.”
Tano wriggles her way upright and throws her arms around Skywalker’s torso, clinging on for dear life. Gingerly, he pats her on the head. She clacks her teeth at him. Skywalker grimaces a smile in Kix’s general direction.
“Thanks, Kix.”
“Bye, Kix!”
“Goodbye, General, Commander,” Kix says solemnly as he sticks his hand inside his shirt and rubs bacta on the wound. Tano waves at him, and Kix waves back.
“I understand Obi-Wan now,” Skywalker says cryptically. “Snips, listen to me. Your grandmaster is a saint. He is the paragon of patience and virtue. Nobody is as holy and noble as Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
“I think we should dye his tunics.”
“That, Padawan, is an excellent idea. Let’s go.” He pauses. “Ahsoka, I can’t walk if you’re grabbing my legs—ow, Ahsoka, that was my knee, why did you bite my knee Ahsoka, no, get back here, stop running away, Ahsoka—”
Kix leaves them to it. He has a lot of research to do.