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Tyrin the doctor walked towards the small colony hut, his assistant by his side. It was a small prefab wooden hut, typical of extraterrestrial colonies. A wooden sign had been nailed crookedly to the door. 'Thorinair'. Tyrin glanced up. The planet's green clouds were low and overcast. He could tell it was going to rain soon. When the pair reached the door of the hut, the doctor winced when he heard an agonised groan come from inside. Wordlessly, his assistant handed him a clipboard. The doctor read through the report, his ears drooping, and a sad look coming over his face.

"Luciferium is evil stuff..." he muttered under his breath. He flipped over the page, and his ears drooped even lower.

"Euthanization?" he whispered disbelingly to his assistant, who nodded curtly. The doctor was starting to dislike this government assistant. He was always too... formal about things.

The doctor took a deep breath, and kept reading down the page.

"Cutting?" he asked, "the standard procedure is a lethal injection..." he added.

"We were not supplied with any lethal injections," explained the assistant, "cutting is the most humane form of execution we can provide with our current supplies,"

The doctor gritted his teeth. This assistant was treating this as if it was an animal, rather than a colonist. He should have never volunteered Vera, his old assistant, for a transfer to another colony.

The doctor sighed sadly, his ears still drooped. He pushed open the door and turned to his assistant.

"Wait here for me, ok?" he said before turning and going into the hut, closing the door softly behind him. He turned around and saw the inside of the hut. It was mostly bare, but there was a bed in the far left of the small room, with a round, wooden table in front of it, with a wooden stool beside it. An old CRT television was to the right of the bed, facing it so the occupant of the bed could watch it lying down. It was on, and showing grainy footage of the INS, the Intergalactic News Service. An orange and grey avali was lying in the bed, watching it with glazed eyes. A pile of storage drives lay beside the television, and with a shock, the doctor realised that Thorinair was re-watching old news feeds.

Thorinair looked horrible. His fur was matted and caked in what appeared to be blood and saliva, and some parts seemed to be going grey and some patches had fallen out altogether. His feathers were no better, bent and greying and falling out. He had his arms loosely around his stomach, like he had a stomach ache. Clumps of dried spittle ringed around his mouth, and his large eyes were bloodshot.

At first he seemed not to notice the doctor, but suddenly, he bent double and shrieked,

"IT HURTS!" He wailed, tears streaming down his face,

"IT HURTS, IT HURTS, it hurts... it hurts......" he slowly trailed off into silence, before lying back again.

Suddenly, his hand shot out and grabbed the doctors arm,

"Hello? H-Hello? Who are you!? Why are you here?! To hurt me?! AH IT HURTS!" he elapsed back into sobbing.

A tear crept to the doctor's eye to see a fellow avali like this, but he sat at the edge of the bed, avoiding sitting on the dirty, stitched together rag that was the duvet. He found the Avali's hand, and held it tight in his, offering the little comfort he could against what was to come. He hoped it was doing anything; Thorinair seemed almost insane.

Suddenly, Thorinair slumped back in his bed, his eyes closed, taking ragged, weak breaths. After a while, he looked up at the doctor sadly.

"D-Doctor? Is it you?" he asked, and the doctor was scared at how weak his friend's voice was.

"Yes Thorinair, it's me," he said softly.

"C-can you make the p-pain go away?" The bedstriken avali asked, and the doctor had to choke back a sob when he said:

"No Thorinair... I- I can't," He hung his head, but still had not let go of the avali's hand.

Thorinair sighed a ragged sigh, "what's c-causing this?" he croaked.

"You know what happens when a lucified colonist doesn't get his shots, right?" the doctor asked rhetorically. Thorinair nodded slowly.

"It destroys them from the inside. It destroys the tissue and eats away cells. You're being... being eaten from the inside..."

He didn't want to have to tell the ugly truth to Thorinair, but as the doctor he felt it was his duty to tell his patients what was going on with their bodies.

"D-do you... have any lu... any luciferium...?" Thorinair asked hopelessly, and the doctor saw a tear slide down Thorinair's cheek when he slowly shook his head.

"The next supply shipment that has luciferium in isn't for another 10 weeks, by that time..." he trailed off. Both him and Thorinair knew what the silence meant.

Thorinair sighed, "It- it'll be quick and painless...right? T- the injections are meant to be that way, yeah..." he whispered, almost to himself. The doctor steeled himself for crushing the Avali's hope.

"We... don't have any lethal injections..." he tried to say tactfully, but his heart ached when he saw what appeared to be true fear slide across Thorinair's face. He wasn't going to die as peacefully as he hoped.

"How... how am I going to die, Doctor?" he whispered hoarsely, his voice tight with fear and pain.

"...cutting," replied the doctor after a pause. Thorinair's face didn't change. The doctor sighed sadly and got up, giving his friend's hand one last squeeze before standing and placing his medical bag on the small wooden table. He knew Thorinair's eyes were following his hands, so he tried to be gentle in his movements; the avali on the bed was on the brink of madness; there was no need to send him further into insanity.

He took out a numbing patch, and a scalpel, wrapped in tissue, and a small roll of cotton. He went and sat back on the edge of Thorinair's bed, taking his hand in his again, for a few seconds. He then let go and gently grasped his friend's right wrist, tilting it up towards him so the arteries were facing him. The doctor sighed and gently applied the numbing patch.

"I'm putting this on so you don't feel anything," he explained, while he waited for the patch to take effect. After a few seconds, he gently removed it and put it to the side, confident in knowing that Thorinair couldn't feel anything in his right wrist. Now came the hard bit.

"Do you want to... look away?" The doctor asked, and Thorinair nodded and shut his eyes tightly, tears leaking through at the corners.

Turning back to his friend's wrist, the doctor took a breath to steady his hand, and slowly lowered the scalpel to Thorinair's wrist, smoothly and cleanly cutting into the walls of the artery.

Almost at once, an arc of red, warm blood lanced from the vein, splattering the doctor's coat and the dirty rag that covered the bed. Quickly, the doctor wrapped up his scalpel again, and took out the roll of cotton, but not before the artery had spurted out a couple more splashes of blood, each one slightly weaker than the last. The doctor made a few more surgical incisions on Thorinair's wrist, to make it easier for the blood to drip out of his friend's body.

He then loosely wrapped the coton around Thorinair's wrist, loose enough to soak up the blood, but loose enough so it wouldn't stop the wound from closing. The doctor knew that the cut was too large for it to clot naturally. He then gently placed his friend's frail hand back down to a natural position, palm down, lying beside Thorinair's bed stricken form.

The doctor gently sat up and placed his things back in his medical bag, before standing up and slowly making his way back towards the door. Suddenly, Throanairs uninjured hand shot out again and grabbed the doctor's wrist again. Tyrin choked back a sob at how weak his friend's grip was, and he knew it would only get weaker.

"Wh... where are you... you going?" Thorinair asked, and the doctor noticed how he had started slurring his words. He only had minutes left.

"Thorinair, I- I have other patients to take care of..." Tyrin trailed off, aware of what he was putting his friends through.

"So you... you're going to leave me here... all alone...?" Thorinair whispered, staring into Tyrin's eyes. The doctor hung his head in shame, but he knew that other people needed him.

"Is there any... anyone free?" Thorinair whispered, scared, and started sobbing weakly, quietly when the doctor told him there wasn't.

"Everyone in the colony is busy... " said Tyrin quietly.

Thorinair's hand fell away from grasping his friend's hand, and the avali slumped back into his filthy bed, coughing and sobbing quietly. Tyrin had to hold himself back from asking his friend to save his strength.

"I never thought... I'd die alone..." Thorinair whispered quietly. Tyrin felt his heart ache for his friend, and he went and sat back down on the bed again, rubbing his friend's hand in an affectionate way.

"there , there... it'll all be over soon..." he whispered, as kindly as possible.

Thorinair sobbed again, his whimpers getting weaker with every breath. To Tyrin, it was almost as if he could see the life draining from his friend's body.

"I... I don't want it to be over..." Thorinair whimpered, "I don't... I don't... I don't want to die..."

"Don't fight it," Tyrin whispered, getting up slowly and tucking the dirty blanket over Thorinair, who's breaths were now even more ragged and shallow. Tyrin lay his friend down like he was sleeping, and he noticed how Thorinair closed his eyes... as if he were relaxing...

"Goodbye, Tyrin," whispered Thorinair, calling the doctor by his name, and Tyrin felt a sob well up inside him, but this time he didn't force it down.

"Goodbye, Thorinair,"

Sobbed Tyrin, and he let the sob break, feeling tears slide down his cheeks. He bent down, and kissed Thorinair on his forehead, before getting up again, picking up his bag, and leaving the hut of his dying friend.

Outside, the assistant was still waiting where Tyrin had left him. When a tear-stained Tyrin came out of the hut, the assistant looked confused, as if to say 'why are you crying?'. The assistant curtly handed Tyrin a tissue to dry his tears, before gesturing at his coat.

"I will get that cleaned for you," he stated curtly.

"You will do no such thing," Tyrin growled, which only confused his assistant more.

"But it is dirty, and it would be unprofessional for a doctor to be seen wearing a bloodied coat," explained the assistant.

"You really don't understand, do you?" growled Tyrin, steeping close to the assistant, making him shrink back, before Tyrin continued:

"I don't know if you realise, but we lost a colonist today. I lost a friend today," Tyrin growled,

"And you really don't care, do you? Well goddamn you. You're just fresh out of an academy. You still think everything is still a simulation," Tyrin was on the verge of shouting at his assistant, but kept his anger in check.

"Well guess what, this is the real thing. We're hundreds of light years away from civilisation. And you're not ready to have people depend on you. You better toughen up, because people's lives depend on you. And today someone lost their life. It wasn't your fault. You're lucky. I had to kill a friend. I didn't fail him, but I still killed him," Tyrin poked his assistant in the chest.

"Would you have gone in there, to look upon a dying friend, to sit there, and _kill_him? You could leave him, let him die in agony, or you step in, you kill them, and they're better off? What if that was someone you loved?" Tyrin finally lost it, raising his voice, and he saw his assistant cower back in fear, a tear sliding down his cheek, and suddenly Tyrin felt ashamed of himself. He sighed, and bent down slightly, sniffling and setting his bag back down. He straightened up and put his hand on his crying assistants shoulder, and Tyrin saw how scared his assistant really was.

"I.. I'm sorry," Tyrin said quietly, putting his arm around his assistant's shoulders, trying to remember the fellow bird's name.

"Nezani, wasn't it?" Tyrin asked softly, and the assistant nodded.

"I... I have a girlfriend... back on avalon," Nezani murmured, "I- I don't think I could have- have..." he trailed off, and Tyrin nodded.

"It's ok, I didn't understand, but now I do," Tyrin whispered, comforting his assistant,

"I forgive you," Tyrin raised his voice back to a normal level,

"I'm not going to wash this coat, but I won't wear it when I'm treating patients; I'm not stupid. Today I had to kill a friend, and one of the only things I have to remember him by is the coat I wore while I killed him. It's his blood on this coat, and my hands, and I won't clean it." Tyrin stated firmly.

"I'm going to keep this coat in remembrance of Thorinair, and as a way of showing that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind," finished Tyrin, before adding with a smirk:

"And this way, at least I'll always have a bit of him on me," he chuckled. Nezani giggled and straightened up, before going with Tyrin to their next patient, both of them crying and laughing at the same time, their tails held high in good humor rather than sadness, as they had both made friends with each other, and knowing that, even if they might seem cruel, they are doing good work for the colony and its colonists, and that knowledge enough should make anyone proud of what they do.