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In the dark privacy of her quarters, with no-one around but the droid standing motionless at the foot of her bed, apprentice Deskyl meditates. Remembering how to establish a telepathic link is hard, and doing it is even harder, but she thinks in this case it will be worth it.
Hello? It's more a sense of presence than a proper word, easily mistaken for just another thought by someone not expecting such a thing.
He’s trying not to panic. It’s so, so hard.
He discovers that it’s possible to sleep, when she’s like this, but it’s restless and dreamless and difficult.
She improves, overnight. It's not much, in fact it's barely anything, but the blank nothingness gives way to a kind of subtle texture that's not thought, but is maybe a precursor of it.
It’s something.
He calms down, by the time he’s really awake again. She’s getting better, so it’ll be fine. She’ll wake up as herself.
It's slow going, if that's what's happening. The droid takes good care of her, feeding her again, turning her every so often, checking to make sure she's not too warm or too cold and adjusting the blankets as needed.
Just before lunchtime, she shows her next improvement, if it can be called that: when the droid picks her up to move her, she stiffens in purely-reflexive response that segues almost immediately into painful full-body tremors.
He tries to still his body only to realize that it isn’t his.
—are you there? are you there? fuck shh it’s okay it’s fine calm down...
He doesn’t know why he’s doing this. She’s not there (not yet. not yet).
It's impossible to tell whether she's responding at all.
The droid holds her, gently but firmly, and after a few minutes the quaking subsides into a sort of dazed exhaustion. She lets her rest for a minute, and then takes her hand: the reflexive grasp this time is firm and steady.
He feels a hand in his and can’t think any further than that before he starts to tear up.
He tries to hold it tighter.
Her confusion at that is muted, diaphanous, but definitely present.
She settles back into pleased observation. She's not parsing the message at all; in fact at this point she's still not aware that he's a separate person, or even that she's one, just that this is an experience that she's having.
...well. Okay. She’s...not really aware, yet, but that’s okay. (As long as he doesn’t think about how they’re going to get out, it’s okay.)
He tries to move their hand.
She doesn't know what to do with that.
Her attention wanders, but she keeps coming back to it, and after a few minutes, almost by accident, she takes the prompt.
The usual scramble to the corner, before he realizes what's happening and takes his food.
She tenses up and scowls; she's not coordinated enough to do more than that, yet.
Pings are confusing, but she's there.
Her attention is drawn to the door to her room when another droid arrives with a tray; her droid sends the delivery droid away, and a few minutes later another one arrives with a different meal.
That's confusing, too, but she doesn't have long to be baffled; the droid brings the tray over, and it's forgotten as soon as her attention is drawn away.
Her meal isn't gruel, this time, but rather a chicken salad sandwich and chunks of soft-baked fruit; the droid feeds it to her one careful bite at a time.
This is weird to experience.
It’s still good food, though. He tries to appreciate it like he did before. She should at least have nice things while she comes back to herself.
She enjoys it, too, enough to send the Force flickering around the edges of her awareness in response - it's very distracting.
It is distracting, but in an incredibly welcome way. He matches it with his own little ripples when he can, trying to learn the feeling of it.
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