Log:Reality Ensues

Quentin pulls the thread

OOC Date: June 3, 2016
Location: Medical Lab - D'Qar
Participants: Quentin Haslett, Hex, The Resistance

Long story short: When you're constantly getting yourself grievously wounded, your doctor is going to start asking questions.

The whole story:

Hex didn't come back in multiple pieces this time, so... that's probably good? He still managed to get his green ass shot all to hell, though, out there in the festering jungles of Bayuir. One shot burned down the left side of his face from cheekbone to jaw before sinking into his torso around the collar bone; someone juuuust missed a head shot! The other wound is more solidly to the torso, dead on and nasty. Both are improved after a first round with bacta, but the tank is being changed and cleared, conditions and improvement assessed, so Hex is disconsolately occupying a hospital bed. Someone has divested him of his cybernetic limbs, and he is looking around with the general expression of someone contemplating jail break.

"If you attempt to escape, my little green friend," declared the voice of someone particularly observant nearby, "I assure you, it won't go well for you." The older, shaggy haired man with the spectacles and the penchant for well lit environments stalked over as only a man with a plan could. Quentin Haslett held a clipboard, one with real paper (!), and he did not look happy. "Now," he stated. "What on Hapes possessed you to replace your self-preservation instinct with that of a Gank?" Gank Killers were nasty, but tended to focus more on the 'kill' part of 'kill or be killed'.

Hex's lekku spasm guiltily. Caught in the act! Caught in the act of thinking rebellious thoughts! "It's not like I'd get far even if I did attempt it," he comes clean with a sigh, launching an attempt to sit up. "What'd they do with my arm and leg? I need those." He pauses. "For... not escaping," Hex adds lamely, then the lekku slack a bit at the rest of the doctor's comments. "One hundred percent not my fault! I got shot from behind cover, in a pouring rainstorm. I did not run afoul of the electric fence, the mine field, /or/ the other electric fence."

"Your arm and leg are being kept safe. The rain seeped into the joints and repairs were needed. I hope you don't mind." Quentin's bedside manner left a lot to be desired. It was funny how he could say those words and instead have them mean 'Don't try to argue, it's already done'. "I'm also growing synthskin for them, but that's a side project. Now," he rapped the clipboard with a knuckle. "Care to explain to me why, in almost every engagement, you come back with major injuries?"

"Two! Two engagements!" Hex protests again. He clearly wants to hold up fingers in illustration, but he's leaning on the elbow of the only arm he's got, so he waggles his extended index and middle finger from near the mattress. "Sullust and Bayuir. I didn't get a scratch on me on Felucia." He did get stuck in an adhesive bomb, and it was kind of his fault that Gerratt DeLong got taken prisoner... but that's beside the point. "And Sullust -- that was not my fault. You know that all the self-preservation instinct in the world wouldn't have done any good against a person who ---" There, he stalls out. They've had that talk before, and Hex clearly doesn't want to revisit it. So in the end, the only explanation he can provide is, "I'm unlucky."

"In my experience there's no such thing as luck," Quentin retorted. He was looking at the clipboard. He was scribbling on the clipboard! Oh no! A doctor scribbling on a clipboard was always an undeniably bad sign! "Combined with your," he sniffed, "substance abuse issues and borderline martyr tendencies, I'm strugging to find reasons to keep you on active duty." Understatement. Scribble scribble. Dot. "Well?"

Oh god, the scribbling. Hex knows the scribbling - and he looks like he knows the scribbling, which itself is an indication that he's spent enough time in the medical facility to become familiar with its peril. Thus proving Quentin's point, and earning more scribbling. Hex gives up on sitting up and lies back again, regarding the ceiling, lekku twitching in frustration. "There's four of them dead because of me and none of me dead because of them, I'd say I'm soldiering just fine. What do you mean, martyr tendencies??" He's not actually arguing the substance abuse issues.

Quentin Haslett sighed. "Martyr tendencies," he began, sounding like an exasperated mathematics teacher. "An overwhelming desire to throw one's self in harm's way in order to protect allies, loved ones, bystanders." Leave it to the scientist to give the textbook definition. There was the quiet sort of 'thwack' sound that came from the side of a pen being clapped to a clipboard. "I could say 'suicidal tendencies' but that would be rude." He said it though. "Perhaps 'instinct' is a better term. Though an instinct implies that the tendency is ingrained, as it were. Curious. I'll need to test this theorem at a later date."

Twitch, twitch, twitch, Hex continues to move his lekku in a manner not unlike the tail-lashing of an agitated cat. "It's not the first time it's been said," he eventually remarks, regarding the rudeness of calling a spade a spade where suicidal tendencies are concerned. "Don't take me off active duty. If I can't fight them, someone, something, I'm going to go insane. This is the only function I can perform for the Resistance that I'm any good at. This is the only way I make a difference. I can't fly, I can't fix things, I'm not good with people, I'm not good with..." he gestures vaguely at Quentin. "Brain... things... " That's one way to file a scientist! "The hell am I even going to do with myself, not on active duty?"

It's a shame Quentin had already done the put-pen-to-clipboard thing. A dramatic 'thwack' would have suited the mood. "You are walking a very fine line, Heksash'kuri," he stated, with ominous gravitas. His head tilted to look at the man in such a way that the light caught his glasses, rendering them bright and opaque for the briefest instant. "Currently, you contribute to the Resistance's war effort. However, it doesn't take a statistician to see that you are fast approaching a plateau." He pushed a piece of paper over the clipboard and started scribbling again. A few moments later he turned the clipboard around to show a simple graph, the line climbing, levelling out, then falling. A sine wave. "You are here," he said, pointing to the tip. "Continue on your current course, and your effectiveness falls until you become a liability. Do you understand my meaning?"

It is possible that many people have tried to get through to Hex in many ways over the years, about the fighting, about the chaos, about his total willingness to flirt with oblivion from any number of different sources. But did any of them have a graph?! Quentin has a GRAPH. A graph in the context of that bastion of defense around that self-destructive behavior, the War Effort. It's brutally successful, this graph! Hex stares at the line on the chart, looks at it for a long, long time, then looks away. He's got nothing at all to say in rebuttal. Quentin has used Terrifying Science With Statistically Relevant Data Sets and it's super effective. "I understand your meaning."

"Excellent. You're on medical leave for three weeks." That was fast. Quentin turned the clipboard back and folded the top bit of paper back over, hiding the Graph Of Infinite Truth from view. He loved numbers. Numbers unlocked the galaxy. "During this time, you are to see Ailee Ray on Nar Shaddaa. She's qualified in one of the few areas of sciences in which I am not. Unsurprisingly, it's psychiatry." He paused, thought, then decided something else needed to be said. "Know this. In this medical lab, I am God, not just in power but authority." Uh oh. "My ruling supersedes that of General Organa, Major Greystorm, your mother, your father, your own personal deities, and Sar Yavok's somehow sentient stench. So I would suggest not running to them to get you out of your task. It will do you no good."

Hex has stopped twitching. Now he's just lying there still, looking up at the ceiling as he simmers in resent that's probably 80% self loathing, but with a solid 20% in there for Dr Haslett and his infuriatingly clear metrics. At the conclusion of all the people to whom it will not avail Hex to turn, the Twi'lek looks over again. "What do I have to do after the three weeks are up," he's already asking, "So that you'll let me back on active duty? What standard do I have to meet?"

The easy way to approach this conversation would be to say 'I know it when I see it'. But Quentin Haslett was nothing without definable goals, measured statistics, and numbers that could be browbeaten into making sense. "You have three weeks in which to reconsider your life choices and determine new ones. Doctor Ray will assist you. Upon the conclusion of these three weeks, you're to return to me and we will discuss them." Quentin started to pace. Pacing was a good way to facilitate clear thought. "A clearer understanding of the concept of self preservation. An identification of all current self destructive behaviours, their root causes, and how best they can be addressed." Stop. Turn. Pace. "Potential other areas of expertise in which you wish to develop, such as piloting, communications. The choice is up to you. But if you are going to become a liability to the Resistance in one area, I require you to pick up the slack in another." Stop. Turn. Address patient. "Do you understand?"

Hex resumes his glaring at the ceiling, which remains categorically unimpressed with him. The Med Lab ceiling, which he has spent a lot of time looking at lately, continues being utterly unconcerned with the plight his constant state of internal chaos is facing against the metrics of merciless logic. "What if I return to you, we discuss that, and you don't think I'm good enough still?"

"Then we repeat the process once more," Quentin answered flatly. He folded his arms, clipboard dangling lazily in one hand. "I've been informed that true madness is repeating a process and expecting a different outcome. However, I believe enough variables will have been altered during the first iteration to provide us with a second data set with which to work. Truly, this will be a test for whether I'm mad." As opposed to getting Hex back on the straight and narrow and making him a productive member of society. "Be assured, when I say once, I mean once. If you still remain on the fast track to liability, I will have to change the experiment depending on the results."

Hex looks over again. This time, it's not with that cocktail of frustration, anguish, and idiocy that informs so much of his decision making and character. This time, he looks alarmed, and wary. You don't exactly realize how terrifying it is to hear Dr Haslett say he's going to change the experiment depending on the results until you're lying prone in front of him, you can't actually get away, and all sorts of worrisome things exist in the unknown particulars of Experimentation. Hex just stares for a second, but when he speaks again, it's with much more compliance. Even if it does take his brain a couple tries to get back to his second language. "Ka. Passi. Okay."

"Good." It was just like Coruscant all over again. Social experiments weren't normally Quentin's thing, but the change of variables interested him. Especially when veiled threats shook up the data even further. The outcome of this one was of high interest to the scientist. "Now. Get some rest," he said, in his soothing-but-really-just-flat-and-slightly-scary voice. "As soon as you're sufficiently healed, your cybernetics will be returned to you. And then, your three weeks start. Are we clear?"

The veiled threats do seem to have the data (that is to say, Hex) shook up. But it's progress! Charts, data, inexplicably unsettling glasses-lens-flares, and scientific progress! "We are really, really clear," Hex promises, which is not an irritated voice or a compliant voice so much as it's an 'I'll say anything if it makes you go away and/or be less scary' voice. The bacta tank is cleaned and prepped and ready for his green self to hang out in there like an olive in a martini, and medical droids have come to wheel (well, hover) the bed away. "We're clear," Hex promises again as they take him off, back to the tank and the promise of healing, semiconscious floating, and muted nightmares about ugly, simple, truthful graphs.