The Bigger they Are, the Harder they Fall [Breccan]

Six miserable days, and no sooner to a solution.

S'kef set his jaw against his pounding headache. He was in his own room in the infirmary, laying rigidly on his back while he waited on a healer to bring him his medicine. It was a troubling situation; what began as a simple fever had quickly developed into something much worse.

He'd ignored it at first. After all, he was a busy man. Like every other problem in his life, he ignored it. After several days of worsening symptoms, he'd visited the Healer Hall only to have some idiot apprentice give him something to help him sleep and the dubious advice to 'sweat it out'. Of course, it hadn't seemed like such a bad idea right away. He had no reason to think his condition was actually serious. People got fevers all the time...

Then, without warning, he couldn't stand up anymore.

Tyrrisath's nerves had been shot for the remainder of the day after that. S'kef could remember it only distantly, how he'd walked into his kitchen and been overwhelmed by a sudden surge of dizziness. Off-balance and confused, he'd clutched at his kitchen table and cringed as he felt a wave of heat rush over him, even though his skin was covered in cold sweat.

Then, he'd passed out...but not before vomiting all over his kitchen table and the front of his shirt.

Tyrrisath was a good dragon. He'd broken his own habits and called out for help, quickly rousing the attention of the weyrfolk. S'kef was safely to the infirmary in short order, but his condition hardly seemed extraordinary at first. A fever, vomiting, and fainting...could be anything, they said. Even just the heat.

Six days were spent treating his symptoms alone. He didn't feel better. In fact, he felt worse. It was hard for him to sit up in bed without getting dizzy, much less stand up and walk around. Ashamed of his condition and not wanting to be a burden on the Weyrleader, S'kef had sent a letter to D'ren requesting leave. D'ren had granted it, and even promised that S'kef would have his position returned to him when he recovered.

If he recovered. That was what the healers were saying.

S'kef was determined to make it. What troubled him was the lack of a dedicated healer to watch after him; he knew Katila was in possession of a Master, but that boy was spending a lot of his time with the ill gold weyrling Jada. That was fine with S'kef; Jada was more important than he was. But shards, would it kill them to send someone?

D'ren had told him just that morning that another skilled healer had been assigned his case. Well, where the shards was this illusive healer? Sure, there were plenty in the Weyr who outright despised the suspended Weyrsecond, especially after recent events...But this was getting ridiculous. S'kef wondered with distant amusement if they were taking their time hoping he would die. Perhaps B'jin had paid them off? Hah.

S'kef's frustration was swimming around jut below the surface, accompanied by a stubborn refusal to die. Suck it, greenriders.

Breccan was, ah, less than pleased with her new 'project.' Her return to the Weyr at the hands of S'kef had been far from pleasant, but she'd almost welcomed the confinement to her room. She wasn't in the mood to buddy-buddy with anyone, and certainly didn't want to explain herself for the hundredth time, or be subjected to lecture number one thousand. Now, though, she'd been assigned a patient, and a long-term one, if the notes on his case were any indication. He was complaining of headache, fever, dizziness, and had vomited at least once. Nothing she thought could possibly that difficult to treat, and yet he was still in the Infirmary. Did the Healers here have nothing for a bad case of the flu?

She had packed a bag, preferring to use her own plants whenever possible. She could not be sure of someone else's methods, and the way a plant was dried often affected its potency. She firmly believed that less was more, and saw no point in dosing someone with large amounts of an ineffective medicine when a more potent one could be used with some small alterations to technique. Packing the obvious culprits for the treatment of various fevers, she added a few others, some with anti-nausea properties. Dizziness she was less sure of, but she knew gingko, chamomile and ginger could all help, and chamomile and ginger would treat the nausea as well. Finally she declared herself satisfied, tied the bag closed, and walked to the Hall.

She met the eyes of the first Healer she saw squarely, daring him to make any comment about her disappearance. He naturally chose not to, but merely pointed the way to a small private room, neatly curtained off. She gave him a small smile to reward his courtesy, and then pulled back the curtain.

No. No way.

S'kef was there, sweating, jaw clenched, his body tense with pain. For a moment, she felt a sweet vengeance pull a grin out of her before the reality of the situation set in. There was a fitting sort of irony, she supposed, in the man who'd all but dragged her by her hair back to the Weyr now serving as her patient. She knew she could make his convalescence long and intensely unpleasant, using plants with unfortunate side-effects rather than their more innocuous counterparts. She could even kill the man, and she spent a moment dwelling on the idea. No one liked him. She knew he'd beaten B'jin, the greenrider Talian thought so much of, and was generally considered unpleasant. She'd experienced some of that herself, and certainly had no love for the man. Would anyone really miss him if he were dead?

Well, Tyrrisath would. If she killed the man, the Brown would kill himself for love of him. That sort of devotion was beyond her powers of imagination, but the thought itself meant she wouldn't be killing his rider. Not intentionally, anyway, she reflected, looking at the man on the bed. This looked much more serious than the flu she'd suspected.

"They do say what goes around comes around," she said sweetly, stepping into his room and tugging the curtain closed. She made a show of placing her knapsack onto a chair and fussing around it, lifting up small containers of carefully-prepared herbs and herbal blends. "Interesting, isn't it, that your life is in my hands?" she said mock-thoughtfully, her tone still cloyingly sweet, "Of course, I'll do my best job."

She smiled at him. Just because she'd decided not to kill him didn't mean he had to know that.

S'kef rolled his head to the side as he heard someone else enter the room. He opened one sharp eye to inspect his caretaker, and was overcome with a brief stab of surprise when he realized just who it was. He considered laughing, but the sound caught in his throat and came forth as a cough instead, dampened by both his weak condition and perhaps the faintest bit of self-restraint.

Breccan. Smart girl. At least he hoped so, for both of their sakes.

He remembered her well. She'd been less than pleased at his appearance in the jungle that day, but at least she was less crazy than some of them were. She had a good reputation, so in a way he supposed he was glad. Of course, she was also a woman. Women were emotional and prone to poor decisions in stressful situations, but then again, that young Master was supposedly a headcase. So which was truly the better option?

Either way, S'kef still had no plans of dying.

"Hello," he said lightly, watching her movements with cautious interest. Her words came so sweetly and easily. He smiled back at her, biting back at his pain. His own expression was equally false.

"It is in your hands, isn't it?" he said softly. He closed his eyes and relaxed against his pillow. "I suppose it's a good thing that a girl so clever and ambitious as you wouldn't dare consider risking her life on a petty act of vengeance," he said dismissively. He added a mild chuckle on the end, brightly sincere in comparison to the rest of his words.

He wiped some sweat from his forehead. "So what do you think is wrong with me?" he asked, sounding far less interested than he actually was. Outside, he could feel Tyrrisath's presence. The dragon kept his consciousness close to that of his rider, ever vigilant of his rider's condition. The brown drifted into S'kef's mind and peeked out through his rider's eyes, inspecting the girl wordlessly. S'kef could feel a faint pulse of warning from the dragon. Tyrrisath didn't trust Breccan. Not by a long shot.

Noted

Breccan tilted her head unconsciously to one side, her mask of sweetness firmly in place despite her turmoil. Would they really kill her if he died on her watch? She could certainly make it look like a result of his illness. There were plenty of plants that would increase or cause a fever, and a few degrees higher would mean he wouldn't be telling anyone anything that made sense. He'd die raving. A warning nudge told her her usually lazy conscience had come in to work today. No matter how she felt personally, S'kef was the Weyrsecond, and good at his job. He was too important to kill.

Her smile shaded towards crooked. This was so like the incident with Jada that had sparked her departure. She'd have been rather pleased to see the hope of the Weyr die of infection -really, it was what she got after ignoring those symptoms for so long- but Jada was too important to kill. And, of course, that time there had been too many witnesses. The problem with poisoning someone was that they often died quite dramatically.

"S'kef," she said, shaking her head like an auntie reprimanding a silly toddler, "Vengeance? I hadn't dreamed of it." She couldn't imagine why he was laughing, when he'd admitted that she really did hold all the power in this situation. Perhaps he didn't think she had it in her...but that was a dangerous thought. That was the kind of thought that made her do things just to prove that she could, but killing him was wrong. Rare though it was for Breccan to bow to morality that wasn't precisely her own personal code, she wouldn't do it.

"I thought flu at first, and incompetence keeping you on your sickbed," she answered, her tone businesslike now, "But unless this is a new varietal I haven't seen up North, I suspect it's not the flu. It's not much like anything I've seen before." It didn't trouble her to make that admission, though typically she disliked to admit when she didn't know something. If she wasn't going to kill him, well, perhaps she could make him worry.

"I know they've been treating your symptoms, and I will too, to try and make you more comfortable," she said brusquely, her expression eloquently speaking of how little she wanted to make him comfortable, "The fever makes me suspect infection, so I'll dose you with antibiotics. I'd also like to know if you've any bug bites or the like, anything that seems swollen or painful or unusual. That could cause a strong reaction if you're allergic, especially, but a poisonous bite alone could bring on your symptoms. The more you can tell me about how you feel, the more effective my help will be."

She rummaged through her bag with purpose this time, setting aside verbena for its antibacterial and analgesic properties, citron to act as an additional antibiotic and to counteract nausea, willow bark to treat his headache, and borage for its generally good effect on the body. After a debate with herself, she added coriander, blackberries, and meadowsweet, partially for their additional helpful properties, but primarily to improve the taste. Faranth, she was so nice.

She ducked out briefly to request hot water, and soon had the dried herbs steeping in a small, tight-woven net. "If the pain's very bad, I can add a drop of fellis," she offered, "Some of my choices will help, but nothing's quite so good as fellis." There was tension all over his body, and she could only imagine it was because he hurt. Or perhaps rigor? Shards, she hoped not.

Her little reprimand was cute. That was the best word he had for it, anyhow. He wasn't completely sure what motivated Breccan, but she seemed to fall into a category he was all too familiar with: women who thought being a coy bitch made them clever. He tolerated it though, smiling good-naturedly as if dismissing his own words (and hers) as a joke. "Of course you haven't."

And he didn't know for a fact that she was having such thoughts about him. He just tended to assume everyone did. Of course, Tyrrisath's observations weren't without merit. The girl's ominous first words aside, S'kef knew she had plenty of reason to take issue with him. Plenty more reasons not to throw her life away, though. He let it go, though he would do as his dragon recommended and keep an eye on her. He was pretty confident Breccan valued her own hide too much to try anything stupid.

"I figured it the flu myself," he said, adjusting his position slightly and letting out the softest grunt of discomfort. He wasn't beyond displaying discomfort to others, but he preferred to remain stoic. He was in an awful lot of pain, though. "At first, anyhow."

"When I first came in, I mentioned these scratches I have on my leg to the apprentice that saw me," he commented. He nodded towards his left leg. He'd torn his calf on some thorns while retrieving the first errant healer girl. "I was snagged one some thorns in the jungle, but I had them cleaned up that evening. They got a little red and puffy, but I've had far worse," he said, trying to recall the specifics of the event. He wondered bitterly if the apprentice had even written about the scratches in his file. Not that it seemed important at the time. He'd thought nothing of it himself, but Breccan had a point - absolutely anything could be important.

He exhaled a bit. "I'll pass on the fellis," he remarked. "I prefer to stay alert." That habit had served him well over the years. "Otherwise, go for whatever you think will work. I'm no healer, so you know better than I do."

He closed his eyes again, no longer able to fend away the pounding headache lurking just behind his eyes. He groaned a little bit and adjusted himself again, increasingly aggravated by the wet spot on the bed. Wait, wet spot? Had he really been sweating that much?

The brownrider turned his head to one side and grimaced in disgust. He was going to melt at this rate. His clothes were damp and he was feeling...dry. Dehydrated?

"I would like some water, though," he said lowly, not exactly a demand, but the sort of firm suggestion he was used to issuing - though perhaps lacking a little bit of it's normal bite.