Fever

by Kass (kassxf@aol.com)

Disclaimer: Aren't ours

Summary: An unexpected illness

Rating: Totally PG

Obi-Wan has been short of temper these last days of Tatooine's winter. We have no snow, of course, but there has been rain in unusual quantity, a blessing for us and our scant water supplies. I plant at the end of summer, in our small garden, and it has been bountiful this winter indeed, spring should bring us a good harvest, and I have gained a fair amount of skill in freeze drying or otherwise preserving whatever harvest there is; this year, we shall have bounty indeed, enough to see us through the harsh summer and more.

Too, parts of the desert have blossomed, and I have collected enough lore to gather rarely seen plants for preparation of herbal medicine. Indeed, I've collected seedlings, just a dozen or more, of fauna said to have miraculous curative powers. Obi- Wan has given these seedlings some long looks thinking, I know, of our water ration, but I've also collected lore on Tatooine's weather cycles. Barring some unforeseen or unimaginable catastrophe, our present water stores should also see us through, thanks to the unusual rains.

All in all a blessing, one should say, but when Obi-Wan comes back from repairing a sensor array on the evaporation units, he is soaked through and more ill-tempered than he was when he left. Hardly surprising. We have been pent in the house for some days, and it has rained steadily for three of those. The desert absorbs the water rapidly, but after this winter, we have seen mudslides and flashfloods along the perimeter of our land, and his boots are caked with mud, his slicker smeared with it.

Against his protests, I run him a hot bath, water and bathsalts and herbs, and once he sinks into it, some of his ill temper seems to ease. It possibly helps that I bring him a steaming mug of tea with a tot of prized Alderaan brandy in it. We ration that as carefully as our water, of course, it is scarce in the Outer Rim, and a remnant of the past; fortunately, neither of us have turned to intoxicants in our time, but the brandy does take the chill out of him.

He is almost somnolent when I tuck him up in bed and bring him hot stew and fresh bread to eat. "You are too good to me," he tells me, and I'm struck by how tired he looks tonight.

"I'm not good enough," I tell him drily. "I should have insisted that I go instead of you. I hope you aren't going to be ill."

His forehead is warm when I brush my fingertips over his skin, but not overly so; he tosses his head a little irritably at the touch. "I'm not going to be ill," he snaps, and then looks penitent. "I'm sorry, Qui, I have a headache, that's all."

Tension, I think, but the evanescent worry remains. "No need to be sorry," I tell him, "I know, I'm getting old and fussy about you, forgive me."

"You aren't getting old." He catches my fingers with his own. "Or perhaps we both are. I don't remember being this irascible in the old days."

"In the old days we had fewer worries." Mildly, but I raise his hand to my lips. "Eat, beloved. I'll rub your neck and shoulders when you've finished, and then I want you to sleep. Slogging through desert mud and watching your step for flash floods is doubtless more exhausting than watching for Tuskans."

"Or Jawas," he mutters and dips his spoon into the stew.

I have to smile. I like the Jawas, but the little bandits will steal anything that hasn't been fastened down, I swear. I watch him eat for a moment to be sure he will, then go back into the kitchen to clear up and fetch my own. When I return, most of the stew is gone, and Obi-Wan is curled on his side, looking as young as he did when he was my padawan, one hand tucked under his chin.

I carefully clear the dishes away and let him sleep.

But the worry remains.

By the time I come to bed after performing the nightly tasks of setting the security system and locking up, Obi-Wan has pushed away the bedclothes; his skin definitely feels hot when I brush my lips over his temple, and my alarm drives me to search our medical supply cabinet. I find some anti-pyretic tablets and wake him, coax him into swallowing them.

"You worry too damned much," he growls, still more asleep than awake, but he takes them. "My head does hurt, maybe you're right." Grudgingly, after using the last of his cold tea to swallow them. "Thank you."

"My pleasure." I watch him ease himself back down, catch a grimace of discomfort. "Are you comfortable, can I get you anything else?"

He rolls on his side, tugging the bedcovers up again. "You can let me go back to sleep." Another penitent look. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

I rise and lean over to kiss his temple. "The day we cannot be honest with one another," I tease him gently, "Will be a sad day indeed. Go back to sleep, beloved, it's the best thing for you."

His fingertips graze my cheek briefly. "You really are too good to me sometimes," he murmurs and his eyes close before I have left the room.

In the front room of our house, I dig out my medical reference comp and begin to research what types of viral illnesses are common on Tatooine.

Obi-Wan's fever breaks, but only for a little while. It rises higher in the small hours of the morning before dawn, and he moans in his sleep as if in pain. There is only the fever, no rash, although the glands under his chin feel swollen when I check for them.

My medical reference comp lists the possibilities and I like none of them. Womp rats carry a virus that seldom crosses to a human host, but which can be deadly. I find the medi-scan and tune it to Obi-Wan's baseline readings, discover that his temperature is higher than it has ever been, even when he was fifteen and came down with a particularly virulent form of Terasian pneumonia while we were on Teras during a diplomatic mission.

Worse yet, I find other things. A distressingly high viral load of some unknown type. There is also congestion beginning in his lungs, which suggests the worst possibility, A'kri d'eat, it is called here, a kind of pneumonic plague and it is associated with womp rats, but not the desert kind, the kind that live in the cities of the desert.

It is deadly, and there are few anti-virals said to be efficacious; looking at my lifebonded, my beloved, it is hard not to feel afraid, but we all know where fear leads. And I am still Jedi enough to meditate on the litany and regain my calm.

I find the strongest anti-virals in the kit and load the hypo- spray. He barely stirs when I give him the injection; I give myself one as well, although reluctantly. I can't afford to become infected, he needs me to care for him. Of course, I could be infected already, but except for weariness, I feel fine, and my intuition suggests that I am not.

Throughout what remains of the night, I bathe him to reduce his temperature, listening to him mutter in his sleep. I dare not send to the city for a physician, nor do I dare to take him there. If nothing else, the danger of having his midchlorian level known is too great; Luke is nearly three now, and we cannot afford to take chances, either with ourselves or with him.

I confess, I'm far more concerned with Obi-Wan than the evanescent hopes of a toddler's future.

"No, Owen, please!" He tosses his head, locked in delirium and I wipe his face and throat and chest with the cool cloth. "Please." Almost a child's plea, and I feel the old anger stir to life, that his brother should treat him unkindly.

"Hush, beloved, it's all right, it's but a dream." I dip the cloth again, wring it out, and begin again. I have stripped his sleepshirt from him, he lies there, burning, burning, eyelids almost translucent, flushed with fever. But he subsides, faint plaintive sounds as his face turns into the cloth, seeking the coolness.

The medi-scan shows me that the anti-viral has had little effect. I give him another injection anyway, and just before dawn, the fever loosens its grips just enough to let him sleep again.

I cannot sleep, yet I must. Seated in a chair beside the bed, I close my eyes, and this time I'm the one who dreams.

//The Jawas are a curious people. I like them, despite their thievery, and their wise ones know the desert even better than the Tuskans. Abw'lu is one of their wise ones, old beyond my years, and wizened with the desert heat and sun. "This," s/he tells me, "This g'rhex, this is good for for the city fever."

I look at the dried plant and nod my understand, storing away this information. "How is it prepared?" I ask.

"Dried, one measure like so mixed with b'hwara, steeped until it is the color of the sky after the suns have just set." Gleam of dark eyes from the hooded robe. "But it grows very rarely. You must gather all you can when it does."

Suddenly, I am in a dark room, and before me Obi-Wan lies on a frame of some kind, strung up over some sort of radiant heat device. Cooking, in fact, as if he were a j'kar, ready for basting.

I rush to him, drawing my lightsaber, and somehow get him free, but he slumps in my arms, dead, his skin seared and crisp and I scream out rage against whoever has done this...//

I wake and it is clear that the day is fairly well along from the way the sunlight slants into our room, across the foot of the bed. Obi-Wan is coughing helplessly, and a quick scan shows his fever has risen dramatically. Cursing myself for a fool and inept, I begin sponging him again, another injection of anti- virals, more anti-pyretic.

He's so hot, so incredibly hot, it seems unholy to me that he can burn so and still live, still fight with me in his delirium. "NO!" Crying out, his eyes wide and unseeing. "NO! He can't be dead, oh, please, please, let me go, I have to help him."

I'm not sure who he is seeing, but I suspect he is back on Naboo, where I nearly died. "Hush, hush, love, I'm here, I'm not dead." Catching the flailing hands. Sick or not, my Obi-Wan is strong, I narrowly avoid having my nose re-broken and manage to bring his temperature down just enough that the mindless grief subsides to broken weeping.

"Hush, love, it's just a bad dream," I tell him softly, but he doesn't hear me. He's already lost in another dream, shifting restlessly.

The fever is burning away spare flesh, I swear, before my very eyes. And the cough is bad; I prepare something I hope will ease it, hurrying in the kitchen, and my eye falls on the seedlings set up on a narrow table against the far wall. Good for fever, I think and turn to look at the dried bunches hung above the window.

I have both g'rhex and b'hwara, both dried, and what can it hurt, I tell myself, and he's so sick, so very sick, with the promise of becoming even more dangerously ill.

The b'hwara smells acrid when I crumble it between my fingertips, just the amount for a healing tisane. Then, one measure of the g'rhex. It smells bitter, and turns the dull scarlet of a sunset at first; I let it steep a little longer and it gradually goes that sullen purple hue of the sky, as Abw'lu has described.

Obi-Wan is twisting and turning on sweat damp sheets, weeping brokenly again. "No, please, Master, don't send me away, please, not for the boy, he's dangerous, he's....noooooooooooooo!" Voice rising in entreaty and terror and I know he's dreaming about Anakin, about the terrible time when he thought I wanted to be rid of him.

I set the cup down in safety and bathe him again. "Shhh, beloved, I'm here, I'm with you, Anakin is not here, Anakin is dead." I kiss his brow, run my fingers through sweaty, lank hair. "No, beloved, I will never send you away."

He quiets at that, his head against my shoulder, and coughs, raggedly and painfully. I retrieve the cup and coax him to drink, with small success at first, but using my Master voice finally convinces him to swallow the bitter stuff. When it's finally gone, I hold him a bit longer, murmuring to him. "I have loved you since you were thirteen years old and I was unwilling to examine just *how* much I loved you." I use the damp cloth on his neck and face, press my cheek against his hair. "I will not let you leave me, beloved, I cannot."

He mutters indistinctly in sleep, turns his head trustfully against my throat. My eyes burn so badly I can scarcely see, and I close them, shift our position so that I can sit upright, still holding him.

Naturally, my eyes close, I'm an old man and very weary.

I wake after only a little while, of course, Obi-Wan is not a boy of thirteen any more, and I am no longer a man in his prime. I ease him down and reach for the medi-scan; the viral load in his bloodstream is lessening, even if only fractionally. If he is not better yet, he is no worse, which is a relief that makes my knees wobble when I get into the kitchen.

More of the decoction and I manage to get it down him despite delirious protests, and he sleeps again.

Again, I thank the Force for the rainy winter, for if it had been normal, I would have none of the herbs, I would have to deal with the Jawa, and while they have desert knowledge, they are also bandits. I don't like to think what it would have cost.

But that's not necessary. I have a good supply. And Obi-Wan is cooler an hour later when I use the scan, the viral load is again fractionally decreased. Cool enough that he wakes and peers at me, licking dry, cracked lips. The underside of his chin and his throat both look bruised from the sudden decrease in swelling there, and his eyes have dark crescents beneath; he still looks beautiful to me, and he lets me feed him a cup of ordinary broth.

"I feel terrible," he tells me rustily.

"You look wonderful," I tell him honestly and smear a little salve on his mouth. "There, that should help."

He smiles a little. "A lot, thank you, love." Very rusty voice.

"It is my pleasure," I tell him sincerely and the words have hardly left my lips when his eyelids flutter closed again and he is sleeping.

I had never asked how often the dose should be repeated, and I'm apprehensive about giving Obi-Wan a substance I have not studied at length, but when I run the scan again, an hour later, as the winter night sets in, I see little difference in the viral load and no sign of toxicity. Again, I make another cup, following the measures exactly, my hands trembling slightly from exhaustion. I hate aging, and it's not vanity that speaks there, it's the loss of vitality, the loss of stamina, that makes me bitter.

I can deal with thinning silver hair, and vision that worsens and even the loosening skin at my throat, I can deal with all the embarrassments of growing older, it's the fact that I can't be as strong for him any more that tears at me.

It's the conviction that as I continue to age, I'm going to place more weight on his shoulders than he already bears, and if that's a self-centered viewpoint, so be it. But I'm still young enough to take care of this, and I coax more of the awful stuff down into him; he wakes, cognizant and while he protests and even gags once, it does down.

Sweetened tea to wash that down and he lies back against the pillows. "You look tired," he tells me weakly.

"I'm fine." Stoutly. "Just worried about you, beloved."

He shivers, under the sheet, and I know his fever is breaking again, I get him a clean sleepshirt, and help him sit up to put it on.

"I hate being ill." Muttered complaint.

I can't help laughing softly. "I hate your being ill, too."

Brief amusement and a yawn. "I'm so tired." Marveling a little.

"Rest is your--"

"Best medicine, I know." Just the faintest hint of a gleam in his eye, his youthful mischief surfacing however briefly.

That, I'm afraid, is my medicine. That and his fingers loosely laced with mine, cooler now, if still a bit warmer than usual. I kiss the tips of them, one by one, which earns a blurry smile. "You're going to be fine," I tell him.

And, of course, I'm right.

There follows a long span of days spent recovering; it takes him several days to regain any 'snap' as he calls it. He's not yet forty, but he's not a boy any more, and I tremble when I consider that he might have died.

His life is a debt we owe those bandits, the Jawas, and their wise one, and one I would be cautiously willing to repay if we had much that they coveted. Or rather if we had much that was unnecessary to us that they coveted, I should say, but the next time they come by to see if we wish to buy any 'droids or mechanical supplies, I take a moment to greet Abw'lu.

"There is much still blooming to the south of us," I say carelessly, having replenished my stocks and coaxed the seedlings into taking root within planters in a makeshift conservatory I am building beside the house. "Many medicinal plants, you should have a look."

Dark eyes gleam with recognition of a gift. "And how would you know these, outworlder?" Disdainfully.

"Have you not shown me?" I sit back on my heels, look over at Obi-Wan, standing strong and healthy in the early morning sun. Still a little thinner than he was before he took ill, but healthy. Spring is on the way, soon the days will grow longer, and our work will increase, but by that time, he will have shaken off the last effects of the fever.

There is nothing left but a cough, and that infrequent; the medi- scan shows me a little scarring in his lungs, but nothing notable, and substantially less than he might have had if I had been forced to rely on anti-virals. If, and that's a big if, he had survived.

Currently, he's dickering with all the narrow-eyed skill of a Darsk' trader, getting parts and tools that we may well need in the upcoming season.

Telling the Jawa where the herbs grow is repayment of a debt they would not honor if the situation were reversed. But listening to my bondmate swear fluently in Jawa makes me smile, makes me all the more glad I have told them.

"Good bargaining," I tell Abw'lu and rise, incling my head just slightly in the gesture due someone of years and wisdom.

"Outworlder." Disdainful, but beneath the disdain, there is respect.

On both sides.

Obi-Wan is well. And within the constraints of our concerns, all is right in my world.

What more can even a Jedi ask?

fini

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