Chapter 3

Rostan removes Jenos’ stained shirt to see three knife wounds, two slashes on his chest and a stab wound to his gut. “Jenos…” Raine sits behind him so his head rests in her lap with his back along her knees. Jessica brings down the emergency kit behind the mirror and pulls out some bacta bandages and a cleaning agent. Being the only one with any form of medical training in the house, she does her best to patch up her cousin.

Jenos groans as he slips in and out of consciousness. Raine rubs his hair, trying to ease his pain. “He’s warm.” Rostan looks at Raine before placing a hand on Jen’s forehead. “Yeah… not a good sign.” He gets up and turns on some water, retrieving a towel and dampening it with cold water. He places it on Jenos’ forehead and sits beside his sister’s son. “Be strong Jen.” Jessica finishes dressing his wounds and looks at his face. “He should heal, but as I’m not a doctor, I can’t say whether or not there’s internal bleeding, which might kill him.”

Raine looks at her father. “We need to call a doctor, we can’t let him die…” Rostan nods lightly. “It won’t do to allow him to follow his father’s footsteps in this manner.” He gets up and goes to the holocom, calling over a medical speeder. After five minutes, the speeder arrives, and the medics place Jenos on a hoversled with the McLeod girls behind them. Rostan tells them to accompany Jenos, as he has to return to work. The medics close the door of the speeder and the five occupants rush towards Argos Medical Clinic, which lies in the heart of the city.

The speeder parks by the door to the emergency room and the medics hop out. They get the door open and pull the hoversled out, letting the nurses bring him inside to see the doctor. Raine and Jessica get out and start following their cousin, only to be stopped when they get at the inside door leading to the operating areas. “I’m sorry, but only patients and medical personnel are allowed past that door.” The women look at the receptionist and nod, going to sit down in the waiting area, seeing other people waiting on patients and a few patients with less life threatening injuries waiting to be seen.

After a few hours of waiting, Jessica looks up and sees her father coming through the outside door with a plastic bag in his hand. She smiles at him as he gets closer. Raine stops watching the holodrama and sees Rostan. “Hey.” Rostan smiles and gives her the bag. “I figured you would have been waiting here for him to come out, so I took the liberty of getting you guys dinner.”

Raine smiles and pulls a plastic container filled with light brown liquid and white noodles. She hands the other to Jessica and hands her one of the spoons. “Thanks dad.” Raine nods. “Yeah, thank you.” He smiles and lets them eat as he goes to the front desk to ask the receptionist if he could find out what was going on. “I’ll get a droid to find out and tell you.” Rostan nods and thanks her before sitting back down in front of his daughters.

A silver plated MD Medical Specialist comes out of the inside door and goes to the trio. “Hello sir, I am Emdee forty-six. The young Jenos is one of the patients under my keeping. He is in stable condition now, though is still unconscious. The wound to his stomach did puncture an artery, and it was very fortunate for him that you brought him here. He’s responded well to the bacta, and he should able to leave when he wakes up. Just be sure he doesn’t move around too much or lift anything over thirty kilograms.”

The MD droid makes a light bow before explaining there were other patients that needed its attention and went through the inside door. Rostan starts talking to his girls about this new starship he picked up for the lot. He talks about the stats on the Soro Suub Starmite, stating that even though it wasn’t Corellian made, it wasn’t that bad a ship. Raine looks at her father, who stops talking about the ship to look at her. “What is it Raine?”

“I was just thinking, you said earlier that Jen shouldn’t follow his father’s footsteps in death, but was there any footsteps you wanted him to follow Uncle Darien?” Rostan stiffens slightly in his seat, Jessica noticed but Raine did not. “Well, yes. He was a family man and genuinely loved his wife and son. However, his job as an officer in the Imperial Navy was not something we -me, your mother, and Aunt Val- agreed with. He was the Captain of a Corellian Corvette that had been destroyed while protecting a convoy of Imperial officials. The attack failed and Darien was posthumously rewarded for the sacrifice.”

He sighs. “When he was home, I used to joke with him about not doing his initials, D-I. After I told him that it sounds like die, he laughed. He always told me that he would do his best not to, but if he did, he would die protecting others. Which was how he did. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I would rather not see Jenos going off and getting killed.” Rostan sits back further in the seat and crosses his arms. Raine nods lightly, apparently lost in her thoughts. Jessica frowns lightly, something about the way her father said it didn’t seem right.

The inside door opens up, and Jenos staggers out. The three look at him and Raine gets up and rushes to him, placing an arm around him to help keep him up. Jenos smiles lightly at her, his face was a little pale and he looked very weary, but his eyes were clear and focused. “How are you Jen?” Raine asks, looking up to his face. “I’m better now… and thanks.” She smiles lightly and looks away. “It’s okay, after all, you carried me last night.” They walk to the other two and Rostan gets up, putting his hand on Jenos’ right shoulder, opposite of the one leaning slightly against Raine. “Good to see you up and about again. You gave us quite a scare.”

Jenos smiles wearily. “I’m sorry about that. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.” Rostan smiles and pats his shoulder. “No, it’s quite okay. You’re family, and we take care of our own.” Jessica gets up and looks at Jenos. “Just don’t do it again. We love you, but that wasn’t a very nice surprise. Next time bring a cake or something.” Jenos laughs and smiles at his older cousin. “I’ll keep it in mind.” The four walk out of the waiting area into the light breeze infused with a salty taste they had long since stopped noticing.

Roughly fifty meters away is Rostan’s silver and chrome six passenger speeder. “You can stay here while I get the speeder.” Rostan starts walking to the speeder as the other three walk to the sidewalk and wait for him. After a few minutes Rostan brings the speeder to the curb and the others climb in. The four speed away to the McLeod home on the north part of the island. They arrive and climb out of the speeder, heading inside to the living room. Rostan takes his seat at the recliner as Raine helps Jenos down onto the sofa before sitting next to him. Jessica takes a seat on the other side of Jenos and Darlene comes out of the bedroom to sit in the loveseat.

“Well, now that everyone’s here, how about we find out just what’s been going on you two.” Jenos cringes lightly as he looks to Raine before looking at his uncle. “Yesterday after school, three guys approached Raine and asked her to join them hanging out. She declined, but they kept persisting. End result they got angry and took her to an alley where they beat and raped her.” Darlene took a sharp breath in, and Jessica looked at Raine. Rostan frowned lightly but mostly kept his emotions hidden. “I found her and brought her home. Then today I started making inquires and found them. They won’t be troubling her or anyone again.” Raine looks at Jenos and her eyes widen. “You killed them?” Jen looks at her and nods. “Yes, I didn’t want them to try that again to you, so I made sure they couldn’t. I just got careless at the end.”

Rostan gets up and walks to stand in front of Jenos. “You shouldn’t have done that. Murdering three kids wasn’t right, even considering what they had done to Raine.” Jenos’ eyes light up in a brush of anger. “So I should just shrug and let them get the chance to do it again? No, I refuse to allow that if I can prevent it.” Rostan meets Jenos’ glare and keeps it. “I never said that, there’s a proper way to handle things, and taking the law into your own hands is not how it needs to be done.” Jenos slowly gets up and bites back the pain in his stomach from it. “When the law is no longer fit to judge people it needs to be replaced.”

Rostan glares at Jenos. “You’re talking about a rebellion.” “No uncle, I’m talking about a reconstruction of something obsolete.” Jenos flexes his arm muscles from his frustration and pain. “Are you threatening me Jenos?” Rostan asks, unconsciously reading himself for a fight. Jenos shakes his head. “No, you’re frustrating me, but I’m not going to fight you because of it. Besides, I didn’t bother to take any pain killers so I’m putting up with that as well.” Raine gets up and puts a hand on Jenos’ left shoulder, lightly squeezing it. He sighs lightly and closes his eyes, looking down. After a few seconds he looks back up at his uncle. “We don’t agree, but we don’t need to fight with each other. I just want to make sure she’s safe.”

Rostan just stands there before nodding slowly. “I know you do Jenos. Even though I wish it wasn’t so, I do see much of your father in you. We shouldn’t fight, since I know you do mean well.” He extends his hand, which Jenos accepts and shakes. “What’s done is done. I won’t say anything about what occurred.” Jenos nods. “Thanks.” Raine moves her arm and then the other to hug Jenos. “I don’t like that you did it, but you did it to protect me… thank you.” Jenos smiles slightly and uses his left arm to lightly hug her back. “I suppose I should be heading home now. I know my mom’s probably worried.” Jessica nods. “Yeah, she dropped by here a bit before you did. Though, not quite in the way you did.” She adds dryly with a slight smile. Jenos smiles slightly. “I’ll remember to bring a cake next time.”

The family laughs and Jenos slowly leaves the house. Rostan offers to take him back, but Jenos refuses, wanting to walk the pain off. He heads off and the household settles down. Rostan turns on the holoprojector and watches the holodrama with his wife on the loveseat. Jessica goes to her room and pulls out a book and reads it. Raine goes out the back and looks out at the starlit night. Her arms go around herself as she stands out on the grass thinking. She sighs lightly and closes her eyes before opening them up again and looking west in the direction of her aunt’s house. “Jenos…”