A Thing Worth Doing

From TFC Galactopedia

“Jaro’s blood,” Xeniya wheezed, letting her ferment splash from her mug onto the scarred surface of their small table. “That’s terrible.” Oblivious to their audience of hardened spacers, the tall blonde lifted her cloth napkin from her lap and delicately patted at the purple droplets on her muzzle.

Damn girl was gonna get found out in under a cycle at this rate. Xeniya’s guard, a tough bobcat fem who liked one-word answers more than she liked her husband, merely grimaced at the girl and swigged the rest of her own violet-hued ferment. “Y’signed on for all this,” Petia muttered into her mug, unsure if the words were for her princess or for her own sake of mind. “Don’ forget that.”

“As if I could.” Despite her glum expression, the leopardess sat straight at the table with her legs together to the side and crossed at the ankle.

“Might as well put a sign over your head, too,” Petia grumbled in disgust.

Xeniya blinked and looked at her guard. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“Uh—it was nothin, Flip.” The bobcat slouched a bit lower in her seat, a prickly feeling on the back of her neck warning her of the attention they were getting. “It’s just—you don’t fit in here, girl.”

The leopardess’ brow furrowed beneath her bangs. “I don’t?”

“Y’know. No . . . friends, no lovers, no . . . nothing.”

“But you’re my friend, Petia.”

The bobcat closed her eyes and counted to ten as slowly as she could, reflecting in mild amazement on the fact that someone as naïve as Xeniya could hate ale, be clueless about cantinas, and still stand to provide medical treatment day-in and day-out to flirting, half-naked pilots.

Perhaps she’d simply never seen one of the Rebel hotshots completely naked. A slow smile curved the bobcat’s lips as she contemplated on how amusing that might be.

“Well, well. Our own little Doc Flip’s come down to join the common male?” a sneering voice brought Petia out of her daydream of Xeniya fainting because all the blood in her body had rushed to her face in a brilliant red blush. It was the work of merely a handful of seconds to identify the male who’d spoken, a snub-nosed Alderaanian ruffed lemur who wore a tattered green hat at an angle over his eyes. Obviously he thought it made him look dashing, but in Petia’s opinion it made him look like one of the giant things on the garbage-levels of Imperial ships had sneezed all over his fur.

The more he spoke, the more he cemented that opinion.

“Yes, I’m known by that name,” Xeniya said coolly, “But I would prefer it if you referred to me as Dr. Odana.”

“And I’m going to call you Doc Flip,” the lemur smirked, reaching out to touch a lock of Xeniya’s hair. Petia caught his wrist in her hand, squeezing hard enough to bring discomfort to the drunken male.

“That’s Dr. Odana to you,” the bobcat fem growled in his ear. “And if you touch her again, I’ll bring your attention to the general.” Her brown eyes raked over his face. “Didn’t she tell you to quit wearing those ridiculous hats?”

The lemur’s eyes narrowed, and he yanked his arm free from Petia’s grasp. “How dare you touch me?! I am Lieutenant Felan Milar of the Green Berets—”

“You,” Xeniya interrupted in a soft voice, “are a member of the Cornet’s Vengeance, and by the sufferance of the other members of this cell. Your theatrics are neither necessary nor appreciated here, no more than your allegiance to a group that no longer exists.” The tall leopardess rose to her feet, hovering a full seven inches above the top of the lemur’s ears. “And if you do not begin showing Nurse Petia proper respect, I will tell Emtee up on Deck 10 that you are in need of total limb replacement.”

The color drained from Lt. Milar’s face as the depth of the threat sank in. Until Petia and Xeniya had joined the cell, the only medical care had come from the badly programmed EM-T08, a medical droid known to believe that the common cold was properly cured by the replacement of digits with bionic fingers. Needless to say, even the patients who disliked Xeniya and the Derisians she represented felt that her care was a sight better than Emtee’s.

“Now,” the doctor continued in a more gentle tone of voice, “I believe you will want to find your way out. If you have a headache from having had too much ferment tonight, I would be happy to treat it in the morning – so long as you treat us with proper respect.”

“What kind of Sithspawn are you?” Milar muttered, blinking his overly-dilated eyes.

“She said get out before I find the bouncer,” Petia growled. “Or decide to bounce you out on my own.”

That threat the lemur was fully capable of understanding. He backed away slowly, stumbling against other tables and chairs as he muttered about the witch of a doctor and her Imperial demon of a nurse.

Petia turned reproachful eyes on Xeniya. “So much for making friends, heh?”

Xeniya shook her head and tossed a cred chip onto the table for their ferment, starting for the door. She, at least, was able to walk in a straight line. “The Rebellion’s supposed to be full of heroes, Petia. Not—not—barbaric, proprietary males with no sense of proper decorum.”

“Keep talkin’ like that and you’ll make us a whole boatload of friends here, Flip,” the bobcat sighed, following her mistress out of the Rebels’ shipboard cantina. “You never could do anything the simple way, could you?”

The leopardess spared a glance over her shoulder. “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing the right way, Petia.”

The guard sighed and shot a few dark glares at the other rebels on the way out. She’d heard that one before, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last.

She just hoped it didn’t get them discovered. If someone figured out who Xeniya was, they’d be in much worse trouble than dealing with drunken braggarts.