Even In The Grave, All Is Not Lost

The Doctor Is In

A/N: Viruses and infections are incredibly risky when it comes to my disease. They can trigger a relapse or - in my case - rapid and progressive deterioration. The reason I've been constantly getting worse and losing functional capacity is because I caught gastro last year (so you can imagine how scared I am to catch covid, given it's so much more dangerous). Anyway, I started writing the next ten chapters or so after I came back from hospital. Gastro had me incredibly sick for about a month and then, even once it was gone, I had to deal with the fact that my disease was now progressing rapidly. So yeah I wrote these chapters as a sort of way to work through all that (and it's why they weren't originally in this fic and I had to slot them in before what I originally had written).

. . .

"I can't believe you're both sick."

Raven grunted, burying her face in her mug. "Luna's fault."

"You fell on me."

"You're the one who said you would catch me! And the whole poison fishing thing was your idea. So - your fault."

Abby closed her eyes with a sigh. Prayed for patience. You were friends with Thelonious for years, you can handle anything.

She'd been dismayed when, upon discovering the two rash-stricken women, Raven had informed her about their little tumble into a river. Rivers were breeding grounds for infection and if Abby had known about their plans for the day, she would have put a halt to them immediately.

If she could.

Raven was, by nature, suicidally stubborn and Luna was proving to have her own particular brand of obstinance. It made for. . . a very challenging pairing.

"Just. . . try not to infect the rest of us." She really didn't want to spend what might be her last days on earth suffering from a chest infection - or whatever the hell this was.

Raven grumbled her acquiescence whilst Luna looked vaguely apologetic.

Good enough.

Of all the things that could have happened. . .

"It's not contagious," the nightblood assured.

"You're sure?" Abby's brow furrowed, looking down at the tablet in her hand. The results from the blood tests she'd done pointed towards some sort of pathogenic bacteria, one she'd never heard of before. If it was similar to cyanobacteria then Luna was correct and they had no need to fear contagion.

But only if she was correct.

Abby would have preferred to have a little more scientific evidence to back up the claim.

"As I said before, it's Horni Ichei. Which doesn't spread from person to person. You contract it from a type of black algae called woda nailai that glows in the dark. You can usually spot them in the day because they grow in a unique spiral fashion." Luna grimaced slightly. "If you remember to look."

"And you saw this algae?"

Her lips pressed together. "No."

"Then how can you know it's the culprit?"

Luna gestured at Raven's arm, which had grown a more fearsome shade of red in the time it had taken Abby to run the tests. "It causes a half-circle rash."

Abby leaned closer, inspecting the odd-shaped marks for a second time, just to be certain.

She sighed, drawing back. "Well, I suppose that solves it." Though again, she would have preferred to have something more scientifically concrete to go on.