02. Someone isn't good at being sick

[chirrutsluck]

WHO: Baze Malbus and OTA
WHERE: Out and about, and then the inn
WHEN: August 16th and onwards
OPEN TO: Any and all
WARNINGS: Grumpy spaceman is grumpier than usual, plague is catchable if you want it to be

Yesterday he'd started to feel... off. Today, he definitely feels off, and it's more obviously in a "sick" kind of way. It's ridiculous. Baze hasn't been sick in years. Decades, even. So he ignores it, and continues doing his usual things-- prowling the forest setting snares, doing rebuilding on one of the various projects around the village, helping around the kitchen for mealtimes, sitting on the inn porch trying to whittle tree branches into some sort of bow-shape. It just all seems to take longer than usual, and it all leaves him exhausted and over-heated.

And itchy. That red patch on his back and stomach definitely itches, though he tries not to scratch at it.

It takes a couple of days of this, pushing himself through what he figures is just a cold, before the really awkward stuff sets in, like seeing storm troopers out of the corner of his eye only when he looks, they're not actually there. Or making the rounds on his snares twice because he's forgotten he already did it, and being annoyed at finding nothing there on the second round.

Or seeing Chirrut laughing at him from the next chair over, on the porch of the inn, interrupting Baze's staring tiredly at the latest attempt at a bow and not actually making any progress on it. "You're dead," he tells the apparition flatly, unaware if anyone is watching him. "And now I'm seeing things."

Comments

[scepterschild]

Wanda hadn’t been watching him but she had been exiting the inn when Baze began to speak to the apparition sitting with him. Light green eyes pulled towards him, her brow furrowing at the remark. By nature, Wanda wasn’t one to pry but as her eyes inspected Baze she realized that something was off.

Was he sick?

She had seen sickness in the village before; last time Clint had gotten sick. She stepped forward so that he knew she was there and spoke. "Who are you seeing?"

[chirrutsluck]

Baze twitches, but just shoots her a foggy kind of glower. "No one. Because he isn't there." He swipes a hand across his forehead, and adds reluctantly, "Must be more feverish than I thought." Storm troopers out of the corner of his eye was one thing, this was entirely another.

"Maybe you ought to go to bed," the figment of his imagination says with some concern. Baze ignores him, because looking at him again makes his heart hurt, and that's worse than being feverish.

[scepterschild]

Wanda was used to stubborn, thanks to not only her brother but also a vast majority of the Avengers. She stepped forward, pressing the back of her hand to Baze's forehead. "You might have a fever." She lowered herself, peering into his eyes. His irises were both the same size, that was a good sign, but seeing things was not. It could mean many things, but from Wanda's experience, it was something in the canyon that got him sick.

"You need to rest. Where are you staying?" She intended to take him to his bed, wherever that happened to be. Wanda didn't put a lot of stock in owing people but she'd seen that Baze was a good person and so, she wanted to help him.

[chirrutsluck]

He scowls at her irritably, leaning his face back from her touch. "I don't need babying. I've dealt with worse than a little fever." Chirrut, thankfully, says nothing, and a sneaking sideways glance shows he's gone again. That's both a relief and a disappointment.

[scepterschild]

"Yes but fevers here aren't like what I've experienced before." Wanda's tone was serious and thick. She didn't want him to end up like Clint. "If you caught something here then you shouldn't push yourself. It might not go away without rest."

[chirrutsluck]

"It might not go away with rest, either," Baze points out. But then, frowning and thinking fuzzily over what she just said, he adds the question, "Has there been sickness here before?"

[scepterschild]

"Yes." She replied in an even tone that suggested that she wasn't going to let this go. "Come with me to the hospital."

She paused before picking an argument that she knew might win against even the most stubborn of patients. "If you don't you might get others sick." Which was just rude.

[chirrutsluck]

He looks grumpy about it (well, more grumpy), but the sentiment does work, and he levers himself to his feet. It takes him a minute, blinking, to focus enough again to actually get moving. "Tell me about the last time people were sick," he says. "If I'm going to have someone poke at me I want to know what to expect."

[scepterschild]

"People hallucinated..." She paused, following close enough to catch Baze if he fell. "Some of them saw old enemies and attacked friends." Wanda had to restrain Clint and it had broken her heart to do it. She wasn't above tying Baze down so that he could rest and not hurt anyone.

"I don't know what will happen this time or if its the same."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi's in the woods for a walk, not for a purpose as practical as checking snares. When he realizes Baze is his approaching company, he casts around quickly in search of something productive he can look like he's doing. He settles on picking up some sticks that could be mildly useful as kindling if they're wanted, though the ones around him seem to be too green and he's sorting through the pile in his arms with a frown when Baze actually arrives, entirely caught up in his own smokescreen. "Hello," he says absently, noticing nothing amiss as yet.

[chirrutsluck]

Baze hardly notices, until he's spoken to, and then he twitches-- a hand going towards where his shoulder cannon would have been. It's a habit he'd mostly broken, but with the things he keeps almost-seeing, and the way everything seems to be moving just a little when he's not looking directly at it, he's regressed a little bit.

Then he realizes it's Bodhi and drops his hand with a huff. "What are you doing out here?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Um. Firewood?" Which admittedly he literally just decided, but he's got enough evidence to stick to the story. He's wrapped up enough in his extremely mild duplicity that it takes him a second to notice that Baze seems off. It's probably only really obvious because Baze is more solid than most trees, so even a but of a wobble is distinctive. "Um. You?"

[chirrutsluck]

Baze hesitates, scratching at his eyebrow with one thumb to avoid actually rubbing his temple, where his head hurts from all this moving around. For that moment, he can't quite remember what he's doing out here-- it comes back to him, thankfully. "The snares. Though there's nothing in them."

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Okay." Bodhi is too squeamish to ever land that job--Kira handles all of the little bit of hunting they do. "Are you feeling alright?" He's only really aware of the issue because his roommate's been feeling it. Bodhi doesn't exactly stay on top of news evenly. But the idea that something's going around (again) gives him the guts to suggest Baze might not be feeling his best.

[chirrutsluck]

It's entirely likely that some of what Baze catches winds up on Bodhi's table, too, whether or not Bodhi knows it. He can't give everything to the inn, and the idiot pilot needs to eat. He shoots Bodhi a glare for the question, though at least he answers. "Just a headache. And my eyes playing tricks sometimes."

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Those... could be two very different scales of problem." Eyes playing tricks could mean a bit of funny interaction of light and shadow out the corners of Baze's vision, but that's a best case scenario and Bodhi doesn't believe in those. Eyes playing tricks is often, in his experience, a euphemism for something altogether worse.

[chirrutsluck]

"I'm fine," Baze waves the concern off irritably. "Just need more sleep, probably." He definitely recalls not sleeping well the night before, too many restless dreams-- another sign of fever he's doing his best to ignore. He can't get sick. He's dead, after all.

[71st_victor]

Johanna's been keeping to herself in the woods, coming back to find that people look sick. It's almost enough to force her back out into the woods, but the trouble is that she's run out of some of the supplies she likes to have on her and that means a trip to the inn to replenish. When she does, someone informs her that she's dead, but then he's just seeing things.

It's another fun day in the village, it seems, where their observers are clearly taking signals from the gamemakers when it comes to how to fuck with them. "I'm glad you admitting you're seeing things, but even if I am dead, I look good," she deadpans, staring him down. "Who's dead?"

[chirrutsluck]

Baze blinks, squints at her, and after a beat says, "Not you. Obviously. I didn't even see you there." Which means he hadn't been talking to her. She does look familiar, though. She's the one who hangs around Bodhi fairly often, isn't she?

[71st_victor]

She raises her brow, because she could be plenty dead back home and probably is, if the Quell ended as badly as Johanna suspects it did. Then again, she might just be important enough to be leverage and wouldn't that just be peachy keen. Johanna tips her head to the side, spreading her knees so she can rest her elbows on them as she sits outside the inn.

"It's hard to miss me," she points out. "What's wrong with you?" she asks bluntly, because it's also hard to miss that he looks a little...not exactly right.

[chirrutsluck]

If you want to be technical about it, Baze is also dead, and he knows it. But still.

He scowls at the question, pausing to come up with a half-way decent answer that doesn't make it sound like he's insane or dying or both. "Probably just more feverish than I thought," he finally settles on. "This irritating cold getting worse."

[71st_victor]

Sick people aren't really up Johanna's alley, mainly because she's missing a few key aspects of her makeup to actually care, but she also isn't so bad that she'd just get up and walk away. Mainly because she hasn't entirely worked out who she needs to keep around as an ally, but still, she'll pretend it means she has a heart.

"What kind of sick?" she asks suspiciously. "Last time, there were chocolates involved. Did you eat anything?"

[chirrutsluck]

"Nothing I didn't catch, chop up, or helped make at the inn," Baze snorts. The last time he'd had "free" food had been the ice cream a couple months back. "I'm fine," he insists groggily. "It will go away eventually."

[71st_victor]

"You also could die," Johanna feels compelled to point out, seeing as that's generally how being sick goes. It's either good or bad and ti's the bad part that she's a little worried about. Grimacing, she already knows she's going to do something stupid, all because of a tentative friendship she's somehow let get into her head.

"Fine, damn it," she says, as if they've been arguing. "Come on, let's get you inside."

[chirrutsluck]

"I already died, I don't think I can do it twice," Baze comments, and eyes her skeptically. "Do you think I am less likely to die-- again-- if I'm inside?" There seems to not be a lot of logic to what she just suggested they do, but then, Baze is not really following very well period, right now.