Vanni's back from another mission. Hurt. Again. A week in bacta, and he's only just now coming up through the deep thick liquid of whatever they've got him on for pain. It's hard to say for sure, but I have a feeling I look pretty blurry from in there.

Right arm bandaged; left eye covered with some kind of shade; eyebrows and hair ... well, something blew up in his face, is what I'd guess. Singed off most of his hair; all that white-blond heavy silk, lost. After the bacta, his face just looks like he got a nasty sunburn, but a little check-in tells me it hurts.

They know me pretty well around here at this point, well enough that the healers have already given him the extra pillows they know I'd be demanding for him, and the chair in the corner I'd be sleeping in, if sleep were in the picture. Well enough that when the slender, slate-skinned Selki padawan comes by with Vanni's meal, she hands the tray to me, because she knows I'll get him to eat.

"Come on," I urge him. "Just a little. This stuff is supposed to be good for you." And half-out as he is, he takes a spoonful of tapioca, because I ask him to.

"I hate this stuff. Does anybody eat ever eat this outside the Healers' Hall?"

"I bet people eat this stuff for dessert, somewhere."

"That's crazy. You're crazy. Stop trying to make me laugh -- I'm not ready for that yet."

And he's not -- I can see it hurts him even to smile -- but it's nice to see him try. I take a bit myself, nasty insipid lumpy stuff. It tastes like lying sick and dazed in Healers' Hall. "Yeah, this stuff is great, really ..."

And in comes Artur Bale, in some kind of undercover outfit involving black with tiny grey stripes. Well, not exactly in; he just sort of stands there, leaning on the doorframe, some kind of suitcase in his hand. Probably explosives or Senate secrets or something in there, I think. Whatever it is, I don't care to know, and I'm glad he's keeping it away from Vanni.

"How're you doing?" Stupid question, considering the bandages, the lack of hair, and the presence of tapioca. Most of the time I don't quite get Artur.

Vanni mumbles something about "better," which is sort of disturbing when you think about what "worse" must have looked like.

"Hey, kid, glad to hear it," Artur says, "because you look like hell."

So helpful.

"Aren't you on the way to something? Maybe running late, even?" I ask. A little Force push would be in order, if I thought I could pull it on him.

"Just passing through, just passing through. Wanted to see if the rumors are true." He snorts through his nose. "And now I'll be stepping along. Take care of yourself, too, you know, Kourt. See you later, Weiner Dog."

And to my complete amazement, Vanni sits up (which I wouldn't have believed possible a minute ago) and hurls his dish in the approximate direction of Master Bale, who's halfway down the hall (and I believe that's snickering I hear from that direction) before it hits the wall by the door. The tapioca makes its lumpy way down the wall.

Vanni's turned slightly redder than he was already, breathing in that jerky way that could possibly turn into sobs. His eyes are closed, so I can see that his eyelids are their regular pale color. This tells me that they were open when whatever it was blew up.

I get him settled back against the pillows and ignore the tapioca; it's probably the least nasty thing the healer padawans will clean up tonight. "Care to tell me what that was about?"

"No. I don't want to talk about it. Tell me a story."

"I can't think of a story right now." (Actually, I can think of a story about Artur Bale, and it doesn't end happily.) "Come on. You can tell me." I squeeze his left hand; it seems to be the only part that doesn't hurt.

He squeezes back, but doesn't speak for a moment.

"It's this ... really ... stupid nickname I had a long time ago." He isn't looking at me. "From the creche."

"Artur calls you creche nicknames? I don't get it."

"Well, you know I wasn't a particularly ... attractive child." Kind of a smirk, there, and I can see that it hurts.

"Well, we all have our high and low points. Couldn't have been that bad."

"No, Kourt, it could have been and was every bit that bad."

And I can see he's completely serious. "Tell me."

"Well, I was the smallest standard humanoid for my age ... well, that they had record of. Really short, and really skinny. You wouldn't have picked me for your team, let's put it that way."

I try to picture a tiny little Vanni, blond and blue-eyed. "I bet you were cute as hell."

"Yeah. The shortest, the skinniest, with white hair like straw and pimply skin ..."

"You're serious."

"You ever see glasses? Like for eyes?"

"Once or twice, on some backward planets, I guess. Don't they just do that ... whatever, surgical thing?"

He snorts. "I had some kind of ... well, they thought it was allergies, they thought it was some kind of chronic virus, they never did find out what it was, but I was always sick. Always, always, always sick, and when I wasn't at the Healers', I was ... well, sort of drippy. They didn't think it'd be a good idea to do the eye thing it 'til whatever it was cleared up. So I had to wear these ... lens things."

"Oh, shit." Raised alone as I was, I'd still heard stories about human kids, how they could treat ones that weren't quite the same. "Oh, man, that had to ..."

"Suck? Yeah, it did. Just a little." He looks away from me, straight ahead, eyes palest blue water. "And on top of that, when we did Huttese, it turns out 'Giavanni' sounds a whole lot like some kind of little whiny canine thing. That they eat. What they call a, uh --" and it actually seemed to pain him to say it -- "a wiener dog."

I pull that uninjured left hand to my cheek. "Oh, babe, I'm sorry ..."

He takes a deep breath. "The ones that didn't call me that felt sorry for me. My own master -- and you know Master Kelleth was a wonderful master, but -- I overheard him once telling some of the knights that it was a good thing I had a good personality."

I grit my teeth and feel my eyes narrow, but then remember that Master Kelleth is already dead.

"He'd never have said it if he knew I could hear him. He was always reminding me how the kids who didn't want to spar with me were jealous because I was strong in the Force."

I heard that one myself. It always came right before "As soon as you stop reacting, they'll stop making fun of you."

"Shit. If they'd known what you're like, how beautiful ..."

"Beautiful inside doesn't cut it when you're fifteen and wishing you were either pretty or dead." Blue eyes closed again. "And some of us can't just change our appearance at will."

That smarts -- and I know, if I'd been there, I'd probably have been one of those kids making fun of him, so as not to stand out too much myself. There are some advantages to being raised in isolation.

"I just pretty much suffered through it all and concentrated on my studies and my saber training and the rest of it. You know, the stuff I could do."

"But when did you --"

"Get to look all right?"

"Well, yeah."

"When I was seventeen, Master Kelleth and I were sent out to Scylla Minor to catalog plants. It was ... well, just sort of a jungle where we were stationed. You couldn't see the skies for the trees, or the ground for the undergrowth. Really hot and humid." A laugh, slightly bitter. "You know, I had a humidifier going in my room the whole time I was a padawan."

"You liked it there?"

"It was just so entirely different from Coruscant. I was used to being indoors all the time, you know, even when you're outdoors, it's like you're indoors here. I don't know what it was -- Master Yoda had this theory about there being more nitrogen in the soil, or something. But there were flowers everywhere, all these crazy vines growing, and I just sort of ... grew with them. Eighteen centimeters and forty kilos in a year. One day I realized I hadn't been sick in a month, not even a little sniffly."

"And the rest?"

"I guess so. I went to a local clinic and got the eye thing done, and then I had to learn half the katas over again because I wasn't used to seeing properly, if that makes sense. And Master Kelleth got tired of sending for new padawan robes, and it was so hot anyway, so he just let me wear the local stuff. Mostly sarongs."

"And suddenly you were ..."

"Not exactly Weiner Dog." And the slightest smile. "The local kids didn't know me from when I was like that. All they knew was that I was this tall blond Jedi padawan who was inexplicably a virgin. And they sort of ... well, I think there was some competition to do something about that."

Oh, I don't doubt that for a minute. "And it was good?"

His eyes close. "It was wonderful. It was better than I'd read about it being, and I'd read a lot. And I don't know how I got anything done the rest of that mission, and to be honest I don't think Master Kelleth cared."

"He was glad to see you happy, finally."

"He was glad to not be taking me to the Healers' every week, if nothing else. And the girls loved me, and the boys loved me, and I never could decide who I loved more."

"And when the mission was over?"

"Everybody cried, and we went back to Coruscant, and whatever it was that had happened ... well, it was permanent. I didn't get sick again, and my skin stayed all right, and there were a few people who hadn't made fun of me, and ... I guess I was sort of popular."

"Or sought-after, anyway."

"Sought after, yeah. And I had the distinct pleasure of reminding a few people that they hadn't wanted anything to do with me just a year previously."

"I bet that was satisfying."

"Well, for me, sure." He smiles, and then wishes he hadn't. I run a finger over the place near his mouth where the skin is cracking. I've never been able to do much healing, but I damp the pain down a little. "They missed out on something good."

"And there were a few people who hadn't joined in on the teasing, and ... well, they got to see what the kids on Scylla Minor showed me." Hard to believe a blush could show through that flash-burn, but it does. My Vanni is shy at the oddest of times.

"Lucky them." I stroke his head, and suddenly he looks very badly surprised.

"My hair. Oh shit. Kourt, is my hair ..."

"Well, it's sort of ..." I don't have the heart to mention the eyebrows -- or the eyelashes, for that matter.

"Sort of what, Kourt? Sort of gone? It can't be sort of gone."

"Well, it's, yeah, it's pretty much gone." I think there's a little left behind his left ear.

And he leans back into the pillows, and closes his eyes, and yeah, it's pain. "I guess I probably look kind of Weiner Dog-like, at this point, right?"

"Hon -- I don't know what a Weiner Dog looks like."

"Not very good, is what it looks like. Fucking pitiful is what it looks like."

"No, not even. How is somebody who does the things you do pitiful? You're braver than I am. Heroic, even."

A skeptical snort from Vanni. "I don't wanna be heroic. I wanna have nice hair."

"Look, here" -- and I stroke his head as gently as I can -- "the curve of your skull, here. It's beautiful."

And it is, bandages and flash-burns and all, and I let him past my shields enough to know that I mean it. It's beautiful because he's my Vanni. Hair or not.

He settles back, and lets me pet him a little, as much as I can find that doesn't hurt. "I bet you never had a bad hair day in your life. Even when you were a little kid. You could look any way you wanted. You never even had to grow out your padawan braid."

"Well ... I've never told anyone this before. But when I was really small, I sort of had trouble with the human form."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Well, balancing. Walking, really. So, sometimes, when I wanted to go fast, like when I was following Sarafel, I sort of had ... a tail."

"A tail? Like an actual ... tail?"

"Well, it helped me balance. You've seen little kids, right? They just topple right over, if they try to run, sometimes."

"A tail." And it's good to see Vanni smile, it really is, even when I know it hurts him. "What kind of a tail?"

"Well, I don't know what kind. The kind I had. I guess maybe sort of like a ... a wiener dog."

And we both just collapse into laughter, and Vanni's yelping because it hurts, and some Healer or other is going to be in here any second because they're going to think we're doing something inappropriate, but it's worth it. Because, you know, he's my wiener dog. Whatever the hell that is.

And I put every ounce of healing power I have (which isn't much) into fixing Vanni's lips, because right now the best way I know of shutting him up is kissing him.

---

Comments always welcome!