Confronting Fear

Hereditary

But long before,
Having hurt,
I'll send the pain below,
I'll send the pain below.

Send The Pain Below - Chevelle

Chief Medical Officer Klendra somberly and silently gathered together a tray of medical materials as the Supreme Leader of the First Order sat submerged to the neck in bacta fluid. She had treated him dozens of times for injuries worse than what he had come in for today but had never seen him so strongly affected, granted this was the first limb he had lost.

The hand had been cleanly severed at the wrist, the heat of the lightsaber cauterizing it instantly. Normally he would have been fitted with a prosthetic, but he had actually brought the hand back to the ship with him. There was little that shocked her anymore, but that had done it. She had treated many severed limbs and never before had any of the stormers actually brought it back with them. The pain tolerance he must have.

Kef Bir was a short enough distance that the tissue was still alive when he returned. She had personally led the surgical team that had reattached it in combination with several mechanical augmentations. The resulting hybridization would function almost as well as it had before with no loss of dexterity or touch sensitivity that even the best prosthetic would have.

She suspected the real reason for Kylo Ren's mental state had less to do with the actual injury and more to do with the manner in which it was delivered; or rather the person by whom it was delivered. The only details she knew for certain was that he had arrived back on the ship with a severed hand and a blaster wound. However, rumors had spread before he even left that the Jedi girl had escaped and the wound was too perfect to have been delivered by anything but a lightsaber.

While Klendra was on better terms than most with the Supreme Leader, she knew this was not the time to push her luck. With a beep the tank began to empty, the allotted treatment time expired. A few minutes later, the Supreme Leader took a seat in the medical chair with his left arm outstretched.

She had treated soldiers all her career and she had never seen one with a physique as intimidating as his. At over 6 feet tall he towered over most other men; his entire body could have been chiseled from marble. His waist was almost as wide as his broad shoulders though much thinner. His long legs, though currently covered by loose pants, resembled nothing so much as tree trunks. He collected scars like trophies, his entire body covered with the telltale signs of his profession.

She carefully lifted the hand, checking for his reactions. The muscles were twitching in response, the nerves active, the blood flow good. "How does it feel? How is it responding?"

"Like a hand." he answered as though bored.

She nodded as she began bandaging it over the black technosutures and small splint that held it level. "Any pain or anything else? How about the shoulder. "

He shook his head nonchalantly, "Shoulder is fine."

"Well then, I think we're done. The technosutures can be grafted over tomorrow. I would recommend the splint for a few more days, just to finish setting the bone. The plasteel injection should finish filling it in by then. The bacta tank is no longer necessary, just patches until the skin finishes healing."

Without any kind of recognition he stood and exited the medbay. The CMO shook her head sadly. Nothing good can come from this.

The knuckles on Kylo's right hand were bloody. He had pounded it into the sand bag in front of him until it bled and still kept going, using the pain to ground himself. He liked pain, physical pain anyway. It distracted him from the other pain, but today it wasn't working as failure after failure replayed in his mind. Rey had escaped. She had beaten him on Kef Bir. The Resistance base on Ajan Kloss had been deserted.