Hairy Palms and Other Urban Myths (Barton)

[Chaz de Coventina]

It was hard to tell exactly what it was.

Violently yellow and slickly shiny, with a consistency too gelatinous to be soup yet too watery to be pudding, the steaming mess of... something jiggled around in it's bowl as Chaz de Coventina lifted it onto her tray, setting it next to the small plate of protein cubes and ding-na noodles. It smelled spicy, which was why she'd decided to risk it, hoping it would help clear out the remnants of a cold from her sinuses. A quick scan at the busy hall around her, however, revealed a distinct lack of the dish on everyone else's table.

Chaz hesitated. Certainly it couldn't kill her. There had to be some sort of rule that food served to the masses had to be edible, right?

It wasn't often that the reticent physician took meals out of the medbay or her quarters. The quiet was much too alluring and, even more valuable, free from the varied company of pilots and technicians and Jedi and whatever else formed the whole of this motley operation.

As she weaved through the closely-situated tables (reminded again of why this wasn't the sort of dining experience any sane being would choose), tray held aloft, Chaz caught sight of a familiar profile. There was an empty seat just across from him and the doctor sent a quick word of thanks to the universe; at least it was someone she knew. Altering her trajectory, Chaz made a beeline for him.

"Hello there," She said, relief shining through her voice. "May I join you?"

[Barton Henning]

It was an unexpected yet pleasant surprise to see Chaz de Conventina in the cantina. In fact, it was a surprise to see her at all. Though she'd come aboard the Wheel as a part of the Knightfall's crew, his ships resident medic remained largely an enigma to the rest of the freighters occupants. Since they'd joined the Rebel convoy, her talents had been on demand almost every hour or every day, and Barton couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt that he hadn't been quite the helping hand she'd doubtlessly needed.

“Hello, Chaz. Have a seat.” Henning gave the contents of her tray a wary look. “You've gone for the mystery soup too, I see. Tastes better than you might think.. though I'm not sure that's saying much.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

It seemed strange, given the intimate size of the Knightfall's crew, that the relationship between the two was scarcely more familiar than an acquaintance. They had the distinct advantage of a broad playing field of common ground in the shared field of medicine, for starters. There were any number of topics that they could discuss, debate.

Chaz cleared her throat. Awkwardly.

"It's very bright," She remarked. "The soup, I mean."

This might have something to do with why we hardly know each other, Chaz mused, wincing internally. She picked up a pair of long, tapered sticks from her tray and threaded her slender fingers around the thick ends.

"How have you been keeping, Captain?" Chaz asked, pinching a tangle of noodles with the narrow tip and bringing them up to her lips.

[Barton Henning]

For nigh-on fifteen years, everyone had called him Doc. It wasn't as if he'd been the only doctor on Cloud City, but for some reason the name had stuck. Making the change from Doc to Captain was something that Henning had yet to become used to.

“Well.” He nodded, sifting through his mind for anything that was worth noting. It had been a week or so since they'd travelled away from the Wheel, so he had few stories to tell, something which he found himself surprisingly grateful for. “Ben and I fixed the ship's faulty burst thruster.”

Henning supposed that she would want to know how the vessel was doing. Besides medicine, the Knightfall was all they had in common, at least that he knew of.

“Haven't seen you aboard much lately.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"Oh, how wonderful," Chaz smiled and licked a bit of oil from her thumb. She hadn't been aware that the ship needed repairs but she supposed that it was a rather regular sort of ordeal; everything needed fixing up once in a while. "Very important to make sure that's..."

She made a vague sort of punching motion in the air with a fist and nodded. What the hell was a burst thruster?

"So how--" She started, at the same moment that he spoke. Momentarily thrown, Chaz shook her head and smiled apologetically.

"I've been busy with patients and cataloging supplies, I'm afraid. And it's easier to grab quiet elsewhere, avoid that terrible music Ben insists on playing." The woman rolled her amber eyes. "You must have nerves of steel if you can stand having that ruckus blasting at all hours."

[Barton Henning]

Henning huffed a laugh, nodding to himself as the image of Ben's parsec-wide grin came to mind. “I learned to tune that out pretty fast. Helped that my apartment on Cloud City was conveniently located right underneath a night-club.”

That remark was given a little shrug by Barton. He'd known all along how to make the most of his few hours peaceful down-time, with refreshing techniques he'd learned as a Jedi, but had never dared to make use of them. Instead, he'd gone through ten years with a near perpetual look of run-down sleeplessness, the shadow of stubble never leaving his cheeks.

“He asks about you from time to time. Lyanie too. We should have a sit-down together sometime soon, all of us.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"A sort of makeshift family dinner, then," The concept was a foreign one to the medic who was hard pressed to remember a time when she'd ever broken bread with her own biological relatives; or, for that matter, with colleagues outside of discussing hospital policy between calls over lukewarm 'caf and stale juju muffins. Chaz was under no illusions as to the reputation her cool manner bred. Whether told in the shared glances of judgmental med students or by the ever-persistent attempts at friendship by Lyanie, a fact was a fact: Chaz de Coventina was a total bitch.

And it was true. To some extent, at least. She'd long since accepted that the crippling awkwardness that ruled her interaction with others was simply a personal shortcoming, perhaps the sort of thing that could be eased with some of that hippie feel-good therapy that was all the rage in the nouveau sectors of Coruscant, the likes of which Chaz wouldn't have paid a single credit for and damn the sleek brochures. It wasn't ideal, but then again what was in this day and age?

Barton was right though - the soup wasn't nearly as ominous as it's appearance suggested.

"I've been meaning to ask you to issue a script for me," Chaz blew on the contents of her spoon, "For Somatoll (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Somatoll). They won't authorize a release at the clinic and I don't know you well enough to forge your signature."

[Barton Henning]

“Somatoll?”

Henning frowned a little. There weren't many instances when he'd had cause to order in Somatoll. In fact, it was more often on the billing sheet for the veterinary clinic who shared the administrative offices of Cloud City. The thought of them made him wondered how everyone back on level 115 was doing. Digging distractedly at his soup with his spoon, Barton looked across the table at Chaz.

“You planning on sedating a rancor sometime in the near future?”

[Chaz de Coventina]

She grinned, shyly, a soft shame crouching in the corners of her lips.

"There was an accident," Chaz watched his fingers - surprisingly rough-edged for a clinic physician - ply around his spoon, twist the polished handle 'round absently. "I get terrible headaches as a result; nothing else seems to help, save knocking off for a few hours."

Calling it an accident was stretching things but there was some truth to that; enough so that squashing the niggling guilt that tried to voice itself was easy.

"Obviously it's not ideal but that's often the way of necessity, I suppose."

[Barton Henning]

“Right.”

In spite of his nod, Barton didn't fully understand. Then again, he didn't suppose he had to. Everything about the Wheel was a matter of necessity. They just did what they did because they had to do it, and because none of them could be really certain that if they didn't keep on doing whatever it was they did, that the Wheel itself wouldn't grind to a halt.

“I haven't been by the med-bay a whole lot since we ran into that Imp ambush a little while back. Support Services have the Knightfall tied up on shuttle runs most days, but I can see if they'll let me off supply duty for a while to help out, give you a day or two down-time.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply..." Chaz faltered and shook her head, brushing back her coppery hair with a familiar irritation as it fanned across her face. The last impression she wanted Barton to form was that she couldn't handle the daunting schedule or that he was somehow being negligent; there was a dogged pride amongst physicians in being a workaholic, earned from soldiering through the hellish residency process and emerging victorious--if not irreversibly exhausted--on the other side with the distinct privilege of being a full-fledged doctor. Chaz had more than her fare share of that strange sense of accomplishment. There was no reason for Henning to feel guilty, if he was leaning towards that.

"I'm not overworked." She continued, a rare smile tugging her lips into a lopsided curl. "Or, well, I am but so is everyone else. It's alright; and to be perfectly honest,"

Chaz leaned forward, pushing her food to one side, and lowered her voice. "I don't think I remember what to do with down time. Do you?"

[Barton Henning]

“I hear there are.. places you can go and do some of that illusive.. socialising. Places where everyone isn't bleeding or puking or..”

Barton glanced down at his food and, chuckling to himself, nudged the bowl away.

“Honestly, we get a lot of it on board the ship. Supply fleet sends us here and there, but when you're halfway between point a and point b, there's nothing to be done. Except wish you were up to your elbows in chaos.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"That sounds awful," Chaz said, and she meant it. The problem with having a busy schedule wasn't the schedule in and of itself, but rather the agonizing inability of knowing what to do without it that it bred. "You must get stir crazy out there; although, once you're back I suppose you wish you weren't. That's the rub, isn't it? The grass is always greener on the other side."

Mirroring Barton, Chaz pushed her food aside. She wasn't really in the mood to eat, really; hunger was an abstract sensation these days. One ate as a means of fueling activity, not for real enjoyment or satisfaction. Now caf, on the other hand...

"Would you like to go somewhere less crowded?" Chaz asked, glancing around the buzzing cafeteria before returning her clear gaze to Barton. "I've got some vine-coffeine hidden away in the clinic for when the instant stuff just won't cut it and I think I hear it calling."

[Barton Henning]

“That sounds awful.”

Barton nodded. He'd made a point of doing something with every moment of his life. It wasn't a case of being drawn to self-sacrifice, just an innate need to keep his mind and hands busy. Even then, sitting across the table from Chaz, he still had his spoon in his hands and was twisting it between fingertip and thumb.

“Vine-coffeine,” he sighed the words, like the name of a lover he'd not thought of it in a while but nevertheless remembered fondly. “Yes. Absolutely.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

The captain was enveloped by a rare look of approval at his wistful tone. Though she wasn’t forthcoming with her association, the list of traits ill enough to earn her concentrated disassociation was actually a humble one; a lack of appreciation for something as wonderful as a properly brewed caf beverage was in the top three. Frankly, anyone who turned their nose up at the magical properties of a strong, dark roast simply couldn’t be trusted.

Chaz considered herself something of a connoisseur. Having been initiated in her younger years with endless mugs of cheap, grainy bilge consumed in vast quantities for the sheer purpose of beating back sleep so as to plow through endless hours of studying, she’d assumed (like most she knew) that caf was caf was caf. It didn’t taste all that great but with enough sugar, blue milk and determination, it could get one through even the most tedious lab seminars - who cared if it felt like industrial rust stripper going down? It wasn’t until years later, stumbling home from an exhausting evening, that those earlier ventures had been put to shame. In a tiny, shuttered cafe in CoCo Town, utterly unremarkable in appearance, a Zelosian female with beads in her hair that glinted to match her cat-sharp eyes had taken one look at Chaz and dismissed her ordered tea with a distasteful sniff. When she returned from behind the counter, it was with a tiny mug of something thick and dark, steam rolling over the rim in richly-scented plumes. It had been Chaz’s first encounter with vine-coffeine and one sip of the deep, velvety liquid was all it took to win her alliance. Over the years she’d sampled various brands and brewing methods, tweaking her routine until the science of it was near-perfect. It was one luxury she allowed herself to maintain, even in the direst of times.

The medbay was quiet when they arrived, it’s normal pulse of activity dwindling to a low hum in response to the mess hall’s jamboree. Chaz led Barton over to her... well, it wasn’t an office so much as it was a corner in the small room where they stored supplies (and didn’t it seem like they always had too much of what they didn’t use and never enough of what they needed?) Chaz had strung up a silver foiled heat-trapping blanket between two of the bolted-down shelves. It gave an illusion of privacy that was relieving, even if it was false.

“Now, I’m trusting you,” Chaz turned a solemn eye toward Barton, twisting to look over her shoulder as she lifted the lid on a box of syringes and pulled out a slim plasteel rectangle. “This is a top secret stash. There will be terrible consequences if word of it’s existence gets out.”

The redhead’s expression was absolutely deadpan, her only tell a quick pursing of her lips as they tried to quirk. She deftly began plucking bits and pieces from the drawers and shelves - a canister, emptied of it’s individually wrapped bacta pads, a bit of tubing, the flat, screened end of an unused microbial plate; after a few moments of fiddling, Chaz stepped back to display a pieced together cylinder that resembled the press-brewers often used with vine-coffeine.

“It doesn’t look pretty but it does the trick,” She assured Barton, deftly measuring finely ground black powder from the plasteel container into the contraption. Chaz went about with the preparations, timing the steeping of the grounds down to the exact second before pouring the dark, spicy-brew into two mugs procured from the reception area.

She handed one to Barton. “There you go - liquid hope.”

[Barton Henning]

It smelled like – something Barton couldn't put his finger on. A memory at the fringe of recollection, too old to be ever fully remembered but by the same token old enough that he would never forget it. Henning took a slow sip and looked down into the dark liquid. It was a strange kind of nostalgia, when you didn't know what you were pining for.

“What did you have to trade to get this?”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"Oh, just a soul or two," Chaz said casually, reveling in the comfort that the feel of warm ceramic against careworn palms brought. "Very reasonable."

She took a tentative sip and closed her eyes; for just a moment, she was transported to a different place, a less complicated time. It was incredible how such a simple pleasure could turn into a healing balm for weary souls.

"You know," shifting to lean a hip against the shelves, Chaz looked up at Barton. "It's a pity we haven't done this before now. Things have been chaotic, of course but... well, to say I've been antisocial would be very generous." Her face twisted into a sheepish expression. "It's nothing personal. Fraternizing... doesn't come easily to me, I suppose. I'm sorry if you've been made to feel awkward or ignored."

[Barton Henning]

“Fraternizing?” Henning smiled a little, tickled by what felt like an almost clinical term for just – talking, interacting, doing something other than trying to hold the Wheel and by extension the whole Alliance together. He concealed the small smile behind a sip from his cup, then went on.

“It's alright. It's difficult to be... normal aboard this fleet, to do normal things like.. meet over a cup of coffeine.” Barton hesitated. “Honestly, I'm so out of practice with,” he gestured his cup to Chaz then himself. “This. It's probably better that no one has been attempting any... fraternizing. I can hardly string a worthwhile sentence together.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"You do alright," Chaz countered, tilting her head as she studied Henning`s face; he looked permanently careworn, in way that made her curious as to what had sculpted it so. He was too young yet to carry such experience in those quietly keen eyes of his.

Though really, when you got right down to it, weren`t they all?

"There`s something very approachable in your nature, Captain," she continued, sipping her coffeine thoughtully. "You put people at ease, coax their trust. That`s why I..."

Chaz faltered, and corrected herself. "That`s why we signed on with you."

[Barton Henning]

He nodded faintly, a half-attentive part of his mind trying to pin-down the source of the flavours in the steam drifting up from his coffeine.

“...Captain's a title I've yet to get used to,” he said, lifting his eyes back to Chaz. “But as long as the ship's intact, you'll have a bunk aboard.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"Ah, so you're saying I should keep my bags packed," it was old fodder, poking fun at the cobbled-together Knightfall but there was a telling fondness underneath the words. She was a steady old girl, all things told.

"You know," Chaz swirled the oily coffeine around in her cup. "It seems like an age since that smoky, mysterious tavern meeting and yet I still don't know a thing about you, really."

"Come on," she nudged him with a toe. "What makes Barton Henning tick?"

[Barton Henning]

The quip elicited a grin from Henning, who – like the rest of the freighters passengers – was constantly amazed by the Knightfall's resilience. The ship was ancient and he always suspected that were it not for Lyanie, they would be one bolt away from the hull collapsing. His grin faded some as Chaz turned the attention back to Barton himself.

“I could say the same about you,” he answered, in a voice that he hoped was more teasing than tense. “You're better off thinking I'm mysterious, anyway. The truth might not be as exciting as whatever you're imagining.”

[Chaz de Coventina]

Chaz sighed. "And here I was hoping that you were hiding a sordid criminal past - perhaps a bit of deep space piracy? That strong and silent angle of yours fits the bill exactly."

The medbay's familiar white noise, the beeping and whirring of monitors and the soft shuffle of sleeping patients mending, was a comforting backdrop. It seemed to invite conversation as if this place of healing thrived on the spark of life of those who walked within it's walls.

"What about Cloud City - how did you come to be there?" Chaz asked, her eyes skimming over Barton with well-practiced discernment. "You weren't a born native, certainly."

[Barton Henning]

“Well observed,” Barton conceded with a half nod. “My family was from the Factory District of Coruscant. Used to be a thriving industrial zone, I'm told, but by the time I was born it was falling to pieces... the factories were all put out of business. My folks moved to Bespin because the tibanna refineries were always hiring. I think they liked the thought of the clean air. I stuck around on Coruscant for a while but...” Henning shook his head. “Coruscant is a difficult place to live. In the end, I followed them.”

He gave a small shrug. “What about you? Where did you.. study?”

[Chaz de Coventina]

"I did my residency on Coruscant," Chaz said carefully, using the excuse of topping of their cups to mull over the best way to phrase it all.

"My father was a doctor; well, no, that's a bit too generous. He was more of a con artist who happened to know a bit about old remedies and rituals. Where we lived was very small and inclusive, that sort of two-credit act was looked on with quite a lot of reverence. Disgusting, isn't it?" She grimaced. Amar de Coventina had captured the trust of many a good Tafaran and returned it with nothing but whimsical nonsense that had done more harm than good. "When I decided to go into medicine, I wanted to do it legitimately."

And she had, too. There had been no question at all of her not following in her father's footsteps, running his sham of a practice so that he could retire on the good graces of the citizens he'd taken advantage of. All the good intentions hadn't stopped everything for getting all twisted up, though.

"After he and my mother died, there was nothing left keeping me there, so I went to Coruscant. Its where I've spent most of my adult life." Chaz mimicked Barton's shrug. "And your parents, are they still on Bespin? I imagine they're proud of their son, the doctor."

[Barton Henning]

“I think they were. Proud, I mean. They passed on a few years ago.”

Though he hadn't gone looking for the Henning's, Barton had stumbled across details of their deaths whilst searching through civilian medical records in search of donors for a particular rare blood-type. His father had fallen ill, on account of some side-effect of working so heavily with tibanna. After her husbands death, his mother had remarried and retired to Spira, where she might well have been living out her old age on the sunny beaches of Ataria Island.

“So, what made you decide to leave Coruscant?”

[Chaz de Coventina]

The unpleasant conversation in the administration office flashed through Chaz's mind and she looked away briefly, lips twisting into a rueful line. Working in the hospital had been a means to an ends and demanding in a way that clawed and stretched a person until the conflicting tugs were actually tangible, showing themselves in aching joints and taut, tense muscles. There had been times when it was nothing short of a horror story; street war bloodbaths that brought kids in on the third night of a four-day graveyard rotation, where the combination of exhaustion and adrenaline was so confusing that she had always felt she were one stitch away from losing control and overturning the hovergurney in a fit, to hell with patients and procedure and the bigger frelling picture.

And yet despite the chaos... despite the doubts and warring motivations... she had loved it. The cavalier dismissal when it had come had been sorely felt.

"I.. was fired, actually," a burst of air pressed past her grit teeth. Blushing faintly, Chaz shrugged and looked Henning in the eyes. "'Misuse of hospital property'. They never caught on to the fact that I was skimming off the top for the Alliance, fortunately, but it seemed wise to make myself scarce just in case."