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Author	Topic: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
The Musical Jedi Registered: Dec '99	Date Posted: 8/25 9:41pm Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette - Date Edited: 8/25 9:48pm (1 edits total) Edited By: The Musical Jedi
	Title: Mortality Author: The Musical Jedi Timeframe: Battle of Coruscant Genre: Angst Characters: OCs Summary: The realities of a job hit one OC particularly hard A/N: This is in response to the MAS*H quote roulette, and the quote is in bold. Yes, I know, I'm slow. Many thanks to Jello for (unknowingly) providing the inspiration, and KnightWriter and Jinngerbread for the necessary kick in the pants to actually finish it. I feel inclined to warn you, Disney this is not. Thanks to Lucas for the universe. ConCrit and feedback always welcomed and appreciated. ----- Tienan Riean jerked awake, sending a pile of data chips and flimsies spilling to the floor, the sheets fluttering in the air before coming to rest. He blinked for a moment at his desk, blearily taking in the half-full caf cups, disorganized piles of filled-in forms with handwriting ranging from legible to barely Aurebesh, a few styluses, and his watch, precariously balanced on one of the corners. He ran a hand over his face, trying to scrub away the sleepiness, only to find the corner of his mouth damp and sticky, a telltale puddle of drool on his blotter. He pushed himself away, wincing as the abused chair let out a belabored squeal. Everything was protesting from fatigue, it seemed. The human moved to the window that gave him a mediocre view of the cityscape of Coruscant, looking up to see where the flashes of light indicated that the battle still raged on between the Republic and the Separatists. Tienan mentally checked off the hours as he glanced at the chrono – the battle had been going on for a little over two days now, with no indication of letting up soon. Moving back to his desk, he unbuttoned the top of his collared shirt and rolled up the sleeves in an attempt to make himself more comfortable. His mouth quirked into a sour expression, and the Coroner for Sector XXIV reflected that he wanted nothing more than to go home to Svetlana. Of course, with a steady flow of casualties flowing into his office – at least, proverbially – and a growing pile of paperwork, that looked to be a distant hope. The corpses had been making their way to his few floors, crammed into some nearly forgotten and likely never updated governmental building, since the battle had begun. Despite the prestige of being Coroner of this particular sector – it housed Corsucant General, the hospital affiliated with the most respected medical school in the Core – the downside, up to this point one purely hypothetical, was that in the event of a large-scale disaster, it would receive the bodies from the hospital, a necessary process to keep beds open for those triaged as likely to survive. Tienan began moving the completed flimsies into piles, noting the names signed at the bottom of each form. Some were filled out by medical students, others by residents, and even a few by attendings, a situation he’d never seen in his 23 years in this particular office. He estimated that, down in the morgue, there were probably three thousand bodies, many neatly stored in the drawers until they could be claimed by friends, family, or an undertaker contracted by the government. All of the paperwork had to be sorted and ready to travel with the bodies, though, in the event the battle ended without the total destruction of the planet. Glancing back up at the window, Tienan speculated that that particularly contingency might be more likely than he was willing to contemplate. Yet, the hostilities continued, indifferent to the havoc they were wrecking on those whose very professions were dedicated to cleaning up the messes sentients made of one another. Outside his office door, he could hear Radar shuffling nervously, the noise prompting him to roll his eyes. Radar was the cousin of a cousin of some high elected official who’d gotten him this job because it was unlikely the Bothan was employable elsewhere. Tienan had nicknamed him thus in a fit of desperation. The coroner had never met another being so unfit for this line of work – Radar lacked any social grace and had such a profound and unfailing ability to act precisely the wrong way in any circumstance that Tienan would have suspected it to be on purpose if it weren’t painfully obvious that the Bothan’s lift didn’t go all the way to the top. If the situation called for silence, Radar talked. If it required social chitchat, he was silent to the point of belligerence. He could spot an adopted child who didn’t know a klick off, as well as mistaking girlfriends for wives, wives for mothers, and VISs for regular sentients, never failing to comment when one of these notions entered his head. The only benefit Tienan saw about his lack of awareness was that Radar didn’t see his nickname for the insult it was. The Bothan knocked, entering promptly before being told to come in. “Mr. Riean,” he began, his fur rippling in what Tienan speculated was nervousness, “you’re needed out here.” Tienan grunted in irritation, standing and gesturing to his desk. “Radar, whatever it is, sign it, cancel it, or order five more. I have more than enough to do without doing your job as well. Now, if you don’t mind…” “It’s your wife – the body they brought in, that is,” Radar said bluntly. “I figured you’d want to deal with her now. Yourself.” His heart dropped into his shoes at Radar’s words. “What do you mean?” he asked, frozen behind his desk. Then, Tienan shook his head, forcing himself to move if for no other reason than not to hear what would come out of Radar’s mouth next. “Your wife,” Radar repeated, his words trailing behind Tienan as the Coroner pushed past him. “You know – Svetlana.” Tienan all but ran down the hallway to the autopsy room that had been hastily converted to a staging area before the bodies were moved down to the morgue. His eyes flickered over the tables, finding her small body almost immediately. She was bruised, the crust of dried blood blurring part of her cheek and her hairline. Her dark blond hair was dirty from something, tangled and matted. Bruising covered her thorax and chest, and one leg was mangled. He reached out, hands shaking, only able to touch the unzipped bag encasing her. She looked strangely unreal to him, all of the life gone from her neutral expression and pale skin. The contrast was all the starker, given than she had been one of the most expressive and animated sentients he’d ever met. Tienan carefully touched her wrist, avoiding the bracelet cataloguing her name, admission information for Coruscant General, and a barcode to help track her and her medical treatment. The skin was cool and waxy to the touch, and he noted that it would have unnerved him, had the sensation in anyway reminded him of a living being. He’d seen thousands of dead bodies of all species, but this one reminded him of the disquiet he’d experienced when he’d begun his training, especially when forced to truly contrast the difference between living and dead flesh. “Lana,” he whispered, his fingers curling around hers, “you lied to me. How could you lie to me?” The bar where they had met – where she worked – was one that he’d frequented after his first wife had died. Tienan could remember the gradual transition from not leaving the house except to work, then as a pathologist, to stopping at various bars for dinner before going home to his too-quiet apartment. Hers had been one of the nicer ones, with decent food and an atmosphere noisy enough that he could pretend he wasn’t alone, at least for a little while. Svetlana had commended on his frequency one night during last call, giving him a speculative look that he took to mean she was sizing him up as a loser holding it together just enough to stay employed. And, he’d mused, she was probably right. “Honey, you’re sure in here a lot,” she’d said, almost so quietly he couldn’t hear her. Her eyebrows, high on her forehead, gave her curiosity away. “Normally our frequent fliers don’t look so –– put together.” “I’m a good actor,” he said, a little more peevishly than he’d intended. Svetlana just shrugged, unruffled. “Why don’t you let me take you home some time? Give you something that’s not been deep-fried in bantha fat or sitting under a heat lamp since the night before.” Her smile then appeared, lighting up her whole face as she showed her amusement at her own joke. He blinked at her slowly. “Take me home?” The laugh bubbled up from his belly, and the emotion that accompanied it threw him for a moment before he finally pinned it down as humor, edged with a glimmer of happiness. “Sweetie, you’re not my type. I already lost one wife – I’m not in the market to lose another. I’m looking for an immortal.” The smile had faded as he spoke, but the amusement reappeared in a quirk at the corner of her mouth. She just winked at him, before saying, “Honey, I don’t have to be an immortal – I just have to live longer than you. And I betcha I will, especially at the rate you’re going.” Tienan was brought harshly back to the present when the door to the autopsy room slammed shut, the metallic clang resonating through the room. He glared back, seeing Radar with a sheepish expression on his face and his fur sticking out at odd angles. “More bodies,” the assistant explained, pointing a thumb at the gurney that had knocked the door closed. “Her paperwork is in the pocket of the body bag,” he then added helpfully. “Her paperwork,” he repeated, in disbelief. “Her paperwork!” The numbness within him suddenly gave way, crumbling under the onslaught of grief and shock. Emotions filled him, each underscored by the idiocy and inevitability of the mountains of bureaucracy and paperwork that always followed such a tragedy. He heard himself scream, and the coroner whirled around, looking for something to destroy, a way to get the turmoil of out him. All around, however, were bodies – someone else’s wife, boyfriend, child. Tienan couldn’t bring himself to touch any of those former sentients, to desecrate and defile their bodies in his desolation. Instead, he flung open the door, which rebounded against an instrument cabinet with a mighty clatter, and stalked back down the hallway to his office. Once there, he swept his desk clean, knocking away the cups of caf to leave cold, sticky brown stains on the floor. A few of the piles of flimsies fluttered to the floor, unsatisfying in their near silence, and Tienan threw some of the data chips at the wall, where they rained down along the baseboard and were covered over by more thrown forms. The styluses were hurled towards the door, a few clicking as they contacted with the wall in the hallway beyond. His watch was knocked from its precarious balance, a casualty of one of the piles of forms. Tienan even kicked the chair, its squealing filling the silence before it toppled over. His energy spent, he leaned over the desk, the blotter the only thing left untouched. One side of his shirt had come untucked in his fury, and the left sleeve of his shirt had come unrolled, the unbuttoned cuff half hiding his hand. Tienan’s head sagged, and he closed his eyes, this time tears wetting his blotter. Radar then appeared in the doorway and, for once in his life, did the right thing by failing to comment on the shambles to which Tienan had reduced his office. “Mr. Riean?” the Bothan then asked hesitantly, his fur coming to lie close to his skin. Tienan raised his head just a little to look at Radar, not even bothering to wipe his face. “I know – I mean, I don’t understand what,” the assistant began before breaking off and pointing to the window. Tienan followed the gesture, looking over his shoulder to take in the skyline where the light still flickered in red and green hyphens, occasionally punctuated by a white-hot flash. “Coruscant General called. More bodies are on their way.” When Tienan looked back, Radar had disappeared from the doorway, leaving a neat stack of forms on the blotter, each needing to be completed and signed. The coroner regarded the stack for a long moment, feeling his heart pounding in his chest at the name on the form at the top of the stack: Svetlana Aryn Riean. He then found one of his styluses buried under a cascade of flimsies and sat down at his desk. -----signature----- Hold your own Know your name Go your own way A Moment's Deliverance: http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30573115
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divapilot Registered: Nov '05	Date Posted: 8/26 7:27am Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	Very poignant. You've done here what the best short story writers do -- shown a character who undergoes a profound change from the beginning of the story to the end. This is a great vig! -----signature----- Never tell me the odds. UConn: Huskies forever! RIP Jasper Howard, #6 "Focus on what matters. It's about the GAME, not each other. Dumb humans."
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MiralukaJedi Registered: May '08	Date Posted: 8/26 8:27am Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	Very nicely done and great use of the quote. Your OCs were great and a look at the Battle of Coruscant that you never really see. Well done! -----signature----- I'm amusing, if only to myself ~ a twisted sense of humour can do that to a person :; Call and Answer~ http://boards.theforce.net/beyond_the_saga/b10477/28668422/p1/?3 I, Exile~ http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/29148129/p13
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VaderLVR64 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Feb '04	Date Posted: 8/26 10:02am Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	An amazing piece of work. But that's no surprise! -----signature----- R.I.P John, Alex, Jason, and Christian Never forgotten Soldiers' Angels http://soldiersangels.org/ 2114 soldiers waiting for someone to care
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slow_dawn Registered: Apr '06	Date Posted: 8/26 2:11pm Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	Great vignette, I really enjoyed it. Your portrayal of the Doctor's emotions was perfectly done. -----signature----- The finest country blues singer - Mississippi John Hurt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-GN-BP_Qlk The Vig Challenge Board - http://boards.theforce.net/fan_fiction_resource/b10304/28176650/p1
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The Musical Jedi Registered: Dec '99	Date Posted: 9/7 8:36pm Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	divapilot: He really does change -- although not for the good. You have to feel badly for the guy. MiralukaJedi: I've been on one of those bents lately, wanting to look at things you don't really see in the movies or might not think about happening. Each of those galactic events has profound consequences though. MamaV: Always good to know. I hope I never fail to meet expectations then. slow_dawn: I'm glad you could sense what he was feeling. -----signature----- Hold your own Know your name Go your own way A Moment's Deliverance: http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30573115
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GeneralKenobi7 Registered: Jan '09	Date Posted: 9/8 7:00am Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	Great piece of work! -----signature----- Ewan Mace:"Sometimes a Jedi's most important duty is to stand and wait. I presume you've mentioned that to Anakin on occasion?" Obi-Wan: "Not more than twice a day." Proud Padawan to EG Kenobi
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SithGirl132 Registered: Dec '05	Date Posted: 9/9 12:11pm Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	A little part of the Battle of Coruscant that many of us probably haven't considered before. You showed such a change in your main character during the course of the story- a well-done and powerful vignette. -----signature----- if loving you is wrong, i don't want to be right UDC 4: http://boards.theforce.net/beyond_the_saga/b10477/29954776/p1/ The Way of the Sith: http://boards.theforce.net/beyond_the_saga/b10477/29545048/r29567455/ Fics in Prolific Writers' Thread.
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Valairy_Scot Registered: Sep '05	Date Posted: 9/19 3:08pm Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	Am I ever glad I turned that quote back in because I could not find the story - well duh, the story was in your head! Beautiful job! -----signature----- http://boards.theforce.net/fan_fiction_resource/b10304/25405090/p3/?52 Prolific Author thread: list & links there. Muse fueled by coffee. Often AWOL despite frequent sipping. Writes on inspiration, not a schedule. 2007-2008 the quality years
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The Musical Jedi Registered: Dec '99	Date Posted: 9/27 5:21pm Subject: Mortality - A Battle of Coruscant Vignette
	GeneralKenobi7: Thanks for the read. SithGirl132: I'm glad you found it powerful. You just have to feel sorry for the guy. Valairy: If it makes you feel better, I had to give away my first quote too. Same problem, the story was in someone else's head. -----signature----- Hold your own Know your name Go your own way A Moment's Deliverance: http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/30573115
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