A/N: Not the first post-"Jedi Night" fic that I wanted to write, but the first one that came to mind. Don't give up on it in the middle; I promise it goes somewhere at the end. I can't tell if I like this one or if it's a disaster, but after THOSE EPISODES, I feel like a disaster. References to torture, and there's a gnarly part with a medical procedure (inspired by an episode of "Chicago Fire" where a character donates bone marrow without any kind of anesthetic.)

Drugs

They tortured you, she reminds herself. Remember the probe, the needle, the serum? The way it burned in your chest. That was real. You're hallucinating now.

That's the thought in her head when the light from the explosion becomes so overwhelmingly bright that her eyes close of their own accord and she loses him forever.

It's the drugs, it's the drugs, it's the drugs, it's the drugs, it's the drugs.

2.5 ABY

The medical droids are…well, they do what they're programmed to do and they do it well, but the Alliance's sentient medics are who people really go to for treatment. They're a hodge-podge throng of medical professionals, first responders, half-trained volunteers, gentle souls, and cantankerous borderline-drunks collected from every corner of the galaxy. They soothe the wounded bodies and minds passing through the medical frigate and they do what they can to make the war a little more comfortable. Their compassion softens the horrors the rebels face. These medics are unflappable. And at this point, they've seen it all.

But General Hera Syndulla is a nightmare for them.

Trish Varr, the twenty-year-old Alderaanian with sad blue eyes, bursts into tears almost as soon as she sees the general come in wounded these days. It's not that Trish has ever been dealt with harshly by General Syndulla—no one has—but Trish knows that the general is going to refuse strong medication, even if she really, really needs it.

For the general, it's either a basic pain reliever, or a local anesthetic, or general anesthesia, or nothing. No sedatives, no narcotics. Nothing that will alter her mental state in any way. Not under any circumstance ever.

It's painful to watch.

This all started before the Battle of Yavin, Danek says. (He's the oldest and most experienced of the medics, a Nautolan who's taken Trish under his wing.) Danek remembers treating the general for an ankle fracture not long before her disaster of a mission to Lothal. It had required a minor surgical procedure, and the general had happily accepted the sedative given.

Danek also remembers treating the general after her return from Lothal, when he'd been required to perform an extensive, invasive examination of the injuries she'd received while under Imperial torture. He'd offered her a sedative, knowing that sometimes, the subsequent examination could be as traumatic as the torture itself.

(Sometimes he thinks about how ashen and pale her face had gone after that, and how she set her jaw and told him it was fine, just go ahead.)

Something happened to the general on Lothal, Danek tells Trish with conviction, but we'll never know what—she's the sort of person who keeps her smile kind no matter the trouble.

So over the last four-ish years since then, the general's been seen by the medics for all sorts of things: broken nose, sutures on a nasty gash across her forehead, blaster wound to the thigh, emergency appendectomy, two concussions, dislocated shoulder—refusing sedatives and heavy-duty pain medication each and every time. She's no stranger and she's not afraid of pain—what is she afraid of?

It's the middle of the week when somebody wakes Trish in the dead of night (well—what passes for night on a ship), shaking her and telling her she needs to get to the trauma bay STAT because General Syndulla is in bad shape. Trish runs full-tilt through the labyrinth of the ship's halls, pulling on clothes and shoes and latex gloves as she goes. She skids to a stop in the trauma bay and she freezes for just half a second as she sees more blood than flesh; there's a gaping wound in Hera Syndulla's chest.

Her autonomous mind kicks in and Trish springs into action, assisting Danek and the medical droid and the others. Getting the bleeding stopped is such a task that at first, no one really hears what Sabine Wren—standing to the side and not in pristine condition herself—is saying.

An explosion, Trish finally registers. There was an explosion and this is a shrapnel wound.

Trish swallows convulsively, nausea threatening to get the better of her when she realizes that this is going to require surgery and that's a problem because there's no general anesthesia on this ship or any of the others; supplies have been hit and miss, and they've been waiting on a shipment for days.

They can give the general a local, but it won't do much and if she refuses a sedative, this is going to be a special kind of hell. Trish glances at Sabine Wren, who's pale-faced and probably in shock, and the Mandalorian meets her gaze with a helpless shrug.

Sabine watches as the medics work frantically to keep Hera from bleeding to death. They seem to be moving in slow motion, agonizingly slow, and the blood is the only thing moving in real-time; so fast. Too fast. Too much. She looks down and remembers her own hands are stained with it. She watches as it drips from Hera's body to the table to the floor, puddling, pooling. The medical droid is all but yelling, monitors and indicators squealing, the medics so stressed that a couple of them aren't even speaking Basic anymore. It's too much noise, too much chaos, too many bad things happening today—

Another pair of bloodstained hands closes over Sabine's and she's suddenly looking at Trish Varr's face. She blinks. All the noise has stopped. Hera's still lying on the table but the blood's not dripping anymore and she's stable for the moment, Trish says. They're waiting, hoping that she'll regain consciousness soon enough and for long enough to give consent for the surgery she desperately needs and the sedation wherefore.

Of course, Hera says no to the medicine.

Of course she does. So the medics—poor, pale-faced Trish, Sabine thinks—and the droid start the procedure as Hera's just about conscious.

Sabine's flatly refused to the leave, but she's out of the way as she watches them make an incision and she hears the strangled noise in Hera's throat that rises to a scream when they start to spread her ribs apart.

Sabine has to bite back a scream herself because her whole body is throbbing with a deep and terrible empathy she can't name. "Just give her the karking drugs!" She yells and then usually-placid Danek, wrist deep in Hera's chest, yells back that they can't, they don't have consent—

She runs to a cabinet in the corner of the room and throws the doors open, throwing aside what she doesn't need until her fingers close on a vial, a heavy-duty sedative. Her hands are shaking so violently she can hardly puncture the seal with a needle and draw the medicine into a syringe, but when she does, it only takes her about a nanosecond to jam it into Hera's thigh and administer the dose.

Sabine steps back as the medics (and even the droid) look at her with mixed expressions of horror and relief. Hera's screams die down with her consciousness and the procedure continues. Sabine slides down against the wall, head in her hands, trembling and exhausted and overwrought. It vaguely occurs to her that Hera—if she survives this—might be utterly and completely pissed to find out she'd been given medication against her wishes, but Sabine doesn't care. She's done watching Hera deal with pain.

Hera survives her injuries on almost sheer force of will; she remembers dimly that she'd told Chopper to fix a problem with the Ghost's hyperdrive, and she refuses to die and leave his work unchecked. She's unconscious for a couple of days, and when she finally comes to, she sees Sabine in a chair pulled close, upper body slumping over on her bed, head pillowed on one arm. Hera can see her face and the dark shadows beneath her eyes, and it hurts to look at. (Which is saying something, because right now, Hera's chest feels like it is on fire and she's got tubes and wires running in every direction and her head aches and she is devastatingly thirsty.)

But she ignores that because Sabine just doesn't look…good. She lays a gentle hand on the young woman's head and Sabine shoots up, wild-eyed and bewildered as she orients herself to her surroundings. Her gaze finally lands on Hera and Hera watches apprehensively as Sabine's face cycles through expressions of panic, confusion, relief, and, finally, anger.

They stare at each other for a long time.

"They got all the shrapnel," Sabine says at last. Her tone is wooden.

"That's good." Hera can barely whisper.

"Do you…remember?"

"Not really." She remembers the explosion and the blinding pain, and she remembers how she'd felt warm and sticky, covered in her own blood. She doesn't remember anything else.

Sabine nods, jaw tight. "You had to have surgery. Only—" She stops, clearing her throat roughly as tears well in her eyes. "Only the Rebellion doesn't have any general anesthesia right now," she continues, "so, you regained consciousness long enough for them to explain that fact and you—you refused a sedative because you always do, and you told them to just go ahead with the—"

Sabine stops, swallowing, wiping tears off her cheeks. She leans back in her chair and stares at the ceiling. "It was the most awful thing—you screamed and—gods, I thought poor Trish Varr was going to faint—I got something to dose you with and did it before anyone could tell me no."

Hera blinks, processing. "Have I had anything else since then?" She asks finally.

"What is wrong with you?" Sabine's voice edges toward a shout. "Do you like being in pain? Do you feel like it's some kind of penance or something for what happened to Kanan on Lo—"

"Stop." Hera squeezes her eyes closed.

"No! I wanna know! I wanna know why you seem so bound and determined—"

"Sabine, stop!" Hera gasps at the pain raising her voice sends through every nerve and it takes a few seconds for her breathing to regulate. "You don't understand," she chokes.

"I would certainly like to."

She can see in Sabine's eyes that that's true and, really, she doesn't know why she's kept this a secret. "Sabine," she whispers. She turns one hand over, and Sabine takes it in her own. "I don't like that stuff—how it makes me feel."

Sabine's eyes narrow as she tries to understand. "Well, no one likes it, Hera, but—"

"On Lothal—Pryce—she used an interrogator droid on me." She swallows hard; why had that been so hard to say?

Sabine's visibly taken aback and she nods once, urging Hera to continue.

"So when Kanan rescued me, I was just—" She stops, remembering how the room had pitched and rolled when he undid her restraints, how she'd barely been able to stay upright, how unlike herself she felt.

"Out of it," Sabine finishes quietly.

Hera blows out a short, painful breath. "You have no idea." She wonders—has wondered many times—if she'd been more alert, more on her game, would things have ended differently? "That's what I have to hold onto—my last memories of Kanan exist in this…fog that I can't cut through no matter how hard I try." She has to stop again, this time because the threat of tears is tightening her chest and making it hard to breathe. "But I remember in those last few seconds how his eyes looked…normal, Sabine, like he saw me…and I knew how impossible that was and then the explosion and…and for the first few moments after…I thought 'it's the drugs; this isn't happening.'"

Sabine looks utterly heartsick. "Oh, Hera."

"I didn't know what was real and I can't, I can't, I can't ever feel that way again."

"Okay." Sabine nods. "Okay." The conversation's not over, Hera can tell, but it's over for now.

There's just enough space in the bed that if Sabine lays on her side, she'll fit next to Hera. So that's what she does, and Hera doesn't mind at all; in the last few years, she's learned to let the people close to her be close to her. Sabine rests her forehead against Hera's shoulder and holds her hand. For a long time, they're quiet, both aching after having spoken about what happened on Lothal. (Which they so seldom do.)

"He loved you," Sabine says after a while. Her words are thick. "That was real—drugs or not."

Hera's too exhausted to answer, but she manages to nod. Tears streak across her temples as pain and fatigue lull her into a fitful sleep. She closes her eyes and for just a second she swears she can see his, brilliant and clear. And she can almost hear his voice, gentle and low in the background of her thoughts—

It wasn't the drugs.