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

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.