meadowlarklogs | (OPEN) I'm gonna leave my body (moving up to higher ground)

[ Headlights on water on a dark road. A car that drives like silk purrs under your palms and roars as it swallows whole another shallow bend in the cliff road. Billy! What've you got for me? (Voices sound so different on the inside. You might still recognise it, if you've heard it before.) Billy never answers. The world explodes into violent motion - up is down, down spins left, left reels away. The car that drives like silk screams as it swallows you whole. Black.

Black becomes white. White so bright it blinds, white so bright you hear it, a single piercing note. Black. Black becomes peace. Black becomes pink, orange, orange become white. White becomes medical turquoise and the beating of your heart as you regain consciousness and your eyes find focus.

You are laying in a hospital bed. Ahead of you is a wall of glass. Ahead of that is the New York City skyline, red cranes filling the space between you and its high rises. Between you and the glass, your hands rest suspended in little cradles. They are unrecognisable. Swollen, held together in various places by stitches through burst skin. Held together in every place by a metal scaffold, pins standing out from the bones. ]

a) [ The door to your room opens and in swans a man in dark scrubs, attention still on the hallway he's leaving behind, clean-shaven and wearing the tail end of a grin that dies on contact as he catches sight of you. His expression pinches briefly in distaste. ]

Sorry, wrong room.

[ And then he makes as if to leave. ]

b) [ Through the morphine or the dream haze, you become aware of a hand on your shoulder, carefully soothing over your hospital gown. Look, and you'll find nobody there. But still the persistent sensation of a gentle thumb shifting fabric over your clammy skin. Can it help you? ]

Edited 2020-08-30 22:43 (UTC)

[You got it all wrong, doc. Maybe somewhere, there's a guy with hands in traction, maybe he was there just a second ago, but when he stirs, he's a shirtless fucker who's maybe thirty. His gut's all bandages, the rest of him scraped up and tattooed and just a little busted.

There's a glaze to his eyes, confusion in his face. A bed out of a prison, a hospital around it looking clean as a whistle, a goddamn bartender looking at him like Sam Drake's the last person in the world who's supposed to be here.

That last bit, the bartender part, that's what he latches onto.]

Ey--Chichita Panamá. You know that one?

[ This is why he hates the ER.

Stopped in the doorway there's a very tangible moment of deliberation, forward momentum not quite put to bed, but after a second too long he pivots back into the room. The look on his face doesn't speak of much patience. ]

What?

[ You walk into a guy's room one time and suddenly you're expected to hold a conversation. ]

If you need water, the button goes through to the nurse's station.

Nah--over there.

[ He waves at the cabana bar over against the wall, the one that looks like it was jammed into the side of the hospital by a giant child experimenting with building blocks. The thatched awning droops over the bar and all the liquors behid it, incongruous and well-used all at once. ]

Grab the--[ a wince, glancing down at his stomach ]--grab the seco.

[ His attention slides from the man in the bed to the bar against the wall and back again. There's barely a shift in his expression - no, if anything, he looks more unimpressed than he did before. Actively irritated by the desecration of the space. ]

This is a hospital. [ Obviously. And yet it seems to bear repeating. (Around them, the sounds of hospital comings and goings amplify: murmuring voices, beeping machinery, hustle and bustle.) He glances down at the bandaged gut of the man on the bed, imperious. ] And I'm not sure your insides can take much more abuse.

This? Ehh.

[ It's a flesh wound, he wants to say, but he knows it isn't. When he's done here, he'll have twin triangles on his left side: one on his back, one on his front. ]

How many shots'd they get in, doc? Stopped counting after the first one.

[ Stopped feeling it after the first one. He'd just gone cold all over, nothing penetrating his mind except Nathan's face and the taste of blood. ]

I'm not convinced your insurance has what it takes to cover the cost of me checking your chart.

[ Except— except something about that seems to have crossed a line. Or bridged a gap. The man in dark blue scrubs jolts slightly where he stands, the kind of minuscule spasm that wakes you up after a dreamt-up fall. There's a flicker of a frown pinching the space between his brows.

A sharp breath in snaps him out of the pause, pulling his general demeanor back together, but instead of going for the door or the chart or the answer he crosses to the bar. Rifles through for the seco and returns with it and two plastic hospital water cups.

He sets them both down on the room's little cupboard, pours one out for patient and self and passes one over. ]

[ His laughter's incredulous. ]

Who the hell has insurance?

[ One more reason--of many--not to return to the USA. Never mind the way he's going to be in Panama for the foreseeable future. As soon as he gets word to Nathan that he's still in here, as soon as they do the inevitable breakout, he'll be back to bumming around Latin America like a champ.

He takes the liquor offered but doesn't drink. Clear as water and ten times as strong, and even though he knows he's in prison, knows he's in a hospital, he's thinking seco doesn't exist anymore, Panama's gone, this isn't real. So he just looks down into the cup, thoughtful and a little confused. Getting shot'll do that. ]

Now, you get some pineapple juice, some grapefruit juice, that's a chichita. Make you one, maybe, when I'm outta bed--but I need something from you first.

[ There's a surreality to all this that doesn't stick. He's not quite here, not quite there, a man between two men and two worlds. The sense that he's missing something, that there's an understanding outside of his reach— forgotten knowledge, rather than knowledge never acquired.

Stephen stands and watches the patient stare into his drink, suspended in another kind of uncertainty, one harder earned. He doesn't drink either. There's nothing in that cup designed to make things clearer. ]

Mm? [ A certain shift to the attitude here - caution, bordering on concern. Is that it? Maybe remorse. ] What is it?

I gotta write a letter to someone.

[ Two someones, actually, but as long as one of them gets the letter, reads it, then that's enough. ]

You get me paper and pen and send it out for me, you don't tell the warden, I'll make you the best drink you tasted in your life.

[ This isn't how it went down--Panama's gone, none of this is happening--but somehow, he's trapped in the role anyway. It makes sense only as far as dreams make sense, brimming with an internal logic that feels unimpeachable while he's in it. ]

[ It takes nothing to set the pen and paper down on the bedside table and spin it, wheel it in to cross over the bed as a ready writing desk. He's holding a clipboard now, the paper he's provided headed with the info of Metro-General hospital, the pen he lifts from under the clip to set down beside it some non-descript thing that could've come from anywhere.

There's a grimness to his expression that doesn't waver. Knowing something is profoundly wrong but not in what way or how to alter it is jarring, even when everything's fine. Even when the man in the prison - hospital - bed with his guts bandaged in and his bar sticking out of the wall is waiting to write a letter to sneak past the warden in exchange for reward, and the New York skyline sits just the other side of a wide wall of glass. ]

I haven't got all day.

[ The words come unprompted. He doesn't mean to say them, but he knows at the same time that he's a busy man. They fit. It's fine. ]

Won't take long.

[ Sam tries to sit up a little more, winces, and does his best from where he's at. His handwriting might be a jot messier than usual, but it's still surprisingly legible cursive:

Surprise, little brother--

They patched me up.

Sic parvis magna

It's generic on purpose, and as he holds it up for a glance over, he still worries it's too specific. But it's probably the best he can do for now--anything more than that, especially if he hints at Nathan breaking him out, and it'll never leave the prison walls.

Once he's folded it in thirds, he writes an address on the front, one that'll ensure it gets to Victor Sullivan, if no one else. Here, doc, take this. ]

You think you can pop that into a mailbox for me? Give you an IOU for the envelope and the stamp.

[ Is this another dream-within-a-dream? Another strange half-shared memory like her own had been? Glimmer isn't sure where she is or what's happening, but there's a rising sense of uncertainty. Panic. She shifts in the bed, her eyes trying to focus on the unfamiliar hospital room. ]

Who's there?

[ A quiet voice, then. Scared and small. ]

Mom?

[ A squeeze, recognition, the absent hand pressing fingertips more firmly. Even then they leave no visible trace, no evident dips in fabric. For a second it seems like that's all that might come of it, but-- ]

Hey.

[ A female voice, soft but stretched out with breath and worry, coming from nowhere and sounding close, sounding distant, sounding everywhere. ]

It's okay. It's gonna be okay.

[ The voice is familiar, but also not. It could be her mother--though it could be anyone else, too. Glimmer feels the faint panic rise and then start to subside. The touch, the reassuring presence behind the voice... It helps. ]

Mom, I'm sorry.

[ There's a waver in her face, unhappy and anxious and relieved all at once. ]

There's so much I need to tell you.

[ The presence remains, thumb stroking a persistent rhythm, but the voice speaks no further. Waiting, maybe. Words get in the way when what's needed is a listening ear.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in empty blackness and unheard by the room, the same voice reaches to nudge at the consciousness of another, firm as it is gentle— "Stephen."

Inside Glimmer's hospital room, the air above the seat beside her bed ripples strangely, like light on the water. ]

[ Glimmer turns towards the comforting hand. Her vision still feels distant, unfocused. This is a dream, right? Has to be. Because Angella isn't here. She couldn't be.

Could she? ]

I'm trying to be as good a queen as you were, but I don't... I don't feel ready yet. Even after all this time. I...

[ She struggles for a moment, tries to find the right words. ]

I've made mistakes. I put all of Etheria in danger. I trusted people I shouldn't have.

[ Her voice drops, quiet and sad and barely a whisper. ]

I wish you were still here.

[ "Stephen."

He's deep in a nothing kind of sleep when she reaches him, lost in tar - the solid black of a long-ago unconsciousness, of anaesthesia, of morphine. Christine. Finally, he begins to pay attention. To listen.

Opening his eyes into this particular dream is only rarely worth his while. Better to stay here in the blackness, just listen to her. But knowing there's somebody waiting for him, somebody he hasn't seen in—

I don't feel ready yet. That's not Christine. Focus tightens and fights to sputter out in equal measure. I've made mistakes. I wish you were still here.

"Stephen."

Out through the glass window the day begins to cycle through stages, sun moving across the sky in fast-forward as the day goes in moments from noon to the beginnings of dusk. Pinks and oranges and pale blues back the silhouetted buildings in the distance.

The hand on Glimmer's shoulder gives another firm squeeze, moves to soothe her upper arm, doing all it can to bring comfort as she lays there, near-immobile, missing somebody it cannot bring back to her. ]

[ Glimmer slowly lapses into silence, not sure of what's happening here or why any longer. All she knows for now is that she is somewhere warm and someone is comforting her. She misses her mother. She misses home. She misses everything that used to make life normal.

What if she never sees it again? Fear, grief, and anxiety ripple outwards from her, overwhelming in this liminal dreamspace. ]

[ Finally, he wakes. The pressure of the hand is gone from Glimmer all at once, and into the oppressive emotional landscape enters a different presence.

It's not usual to find himself in the chair instead of in the bed. For a few startled moments he stares out at the New York skyline in dusk, and as dreams do the visual stretches and yawns until he could almost be sitting in the sky itself - then it occurs to him that he isn't in the sky, he's in the room. And the emotion in the room, though not alien to the space, isn't his. He feels oddly calm but still the waves of harder things move through him.

He glances to the side and sees her. Oh. Oh, dear.

There's a hazy lack of panic in dreaming, but it's still a concern to find a young woman trapped in his position. Worse to realize with a drop that this is no longer a solitary dream. He's sharing. ]

Hello.

[ It's careful, a hesitant greeting from the chair by her bedside where nobody had sat moments before but he now does, intending not to startle her. ]

[ Glimmer's eyes feel heavy. Despite that, she lets them flicker open. Or half-open. She can only barely make out the room around her now and she is aware of Stephen's presence. He's a stranger and there's a brief ripple of surprise. ]

Wait... where's mom?

[ Ah... about that.

The things she'd said in his absence start to drift back to him with more clarity. He tries not to let the sheepishness make its way onto his face and give that breach of privacy away too soon. ]

I— uh. Don't know.

[ It would be cruel to tell her she was never here. And who's Stephen to say? If they're sharing a dream, whoever she felt here could just as easily have been a creation of her subconscious as of his. ]

[ Glimmer hesitates, the hazy fog layingover her mind slowly starting to melt away as memories reassert themselves. Mom isn't here, it would be impossible for her to be here. She's gone. There's a faint sound and Glimmer grips the bedclothes with one hand. She feels weak and feeble--helpless. It's just a dream though, isn't it? ]

She's not here.

[ Glimmer swallows. ]

She couldn't be.

[ She couldn't be.

He doesn't need to reach out to touch her to experience that same helplessness. The absence of someone, a "Mom" whose face appears differently in two minds but still conjures one in both. It's been a long, long time. She hasn't faded as much as she might have were he anyone else. ]

I'm sorry.

[ He means it. For her and for him. Loss is not something that can be unfelt, and he hadn't intended to be the one to summon ghosts today. However much a comfort they are in the moment, it's not his place to decide for somebody else whether they're ready for the slam back into reality that comes when they leave.

Or perhaps he's only sorry that he broke the spell. That she couldn't have instead sat with her mother until she woke, experienced that comfort for as long as sleep lasted. ]

... Would you like some tea?

[ It's incongruous, but tea is a gentle act of transition. A different kind of comfort. An offer to move out of the moment slowly and without rush - with something warm. ]

I...

[ Her grief feels fresh, raw, and overwhelming for a brief moment. She fights it though, tries to shuffle it back into the box it came from so that it can't simply roll over her. It takes a few moments of silent focus but at last she seems to come under control. She takes a breath, shaking and uncertain. ]

I think I'd like that.

(OPEN) I'm gonna leave my body (moving up to higher ground)

I felt a break in a sacred place where your hands don't heal. (tw: graphic injury & collision)

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