come_sailaway | [CLOSED] Move him into the sun -

Entry tags:

[CLOSED] Move him into the sun -

Who: Arthur and Crichton
When: The morning after the event
Where: Cabin 127
Summary: Mistakes, it turns out, were made.
Warnings: Death and trauma will be all over this one, including a flashback. Also there's always a possibility that Arthur's strong frustrations with being disabled will come up.

He died, and it hurt the whole time he was dying.

Maybe Crichton saw Friday bring in the corpse -- wide-eyed, contorted of jaw, comically sunburned -- and tuck it into the folded-out sofa-bed as if to sleep. Maybe he slept right through the whole thing alongside a dead body! We're honestly not sure which is existentially worse.

Either way, the moment the clock ticks over to 6am, Arthur screams and curls up and grabs at the sheets and he's not falling? "John!" He's not falling. "John!!" He's not falling??? Fuck fuck fuck fuckf uckfuckfcukfuck fuckfuckfuck he just grabs white-knuckled on to the sheets with a lot of strangled whimpering and shaking.

In a moment he'll be present enough to realise his abdomen hurts, no doubt a symptom of trying to sail off the edge of the world with stitches in. The fine pink lobster sunburn has vanished as if never there.

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Well, he was going to try and sleep in this morning to sleep off his hangover, but then somebody had to wake up screaming.

"Arthur?! What the hell?" Yeah, someone was a little too smashed at the beach party to realize his roommate was dead, dead, and not just dead drunk. What a pal.

"I'm here. I'm right here. It's okay." Crichton is up out of bed in a panicked flash. Good thing Arthur can't see that he's in nothing but his whitey tighties as he comes to the side of the couch.

"What's going on? Are you okay... shit, are you bleeding again?"

"Crichton?"

Arthur makes some attempts at grabbing him, because Chrichton is more solid than bedsheets. But if Chrichton is here then--

"The ship? I'm- I'm- I'm back on the fucking ship? What the fuck? What the fuck?"

"Yeah. It's me. You're in bed in our cabin."

He puts his arm in the path of Arthur's flailing so the man has something to grip onto, only one arm though because the other is in use massaging his forehead between the eyes.

"Okay. Slow down. What happened?"

"We went- oh my god. We went over the fucking edge. Where are--"

The hand not gripping Chrichton -- gripping him, we might add, as if his arm is the only safety rope of a man hanging over a canyon -- starts waving and patting in the other direction, but logic quickly dawns that if the other two were here they would've said something. Which leaves two possibilities, one vastly worse than the other--

Urgently: "Chrichton-- do you know a Peter? Or - shit - or a Steve?"

"The edge? The edge of what? The railing?"

He's going to ignore how much that grip hurts. Thank goodness he has this splitting headache to distract him.

"Arthur... those names are a little.." Never mind. "I think I met a Steve in the ice cream shop here. Why? Are they in danger?"

"The fucking world."

His voice goes a bit sideways there, like an instrument played too hard. He is forcing his breathing to slow down though, so, swings and roundabouts!

"We all went over the edge of the fucking planet."

Arthur starts getting up onto his hands and knees, still holding onto Chrichton's arm.

"Uh. Come again?" You did WHAT?

He'll do his best to support and guide Arthur while he tries to get up, but Crichton's mind is still trying to wrap all the way around what he's being told.

"How? How the hell did you do that? We were on a beach getting drunk. Are you sure it wasn't a dream?"

"No, of course it wasn't a-aaajesus."

That would be the moment where Arthur lets go of Chrichton's arm, gets up off of the bed, and jostles his torn stitches. The bite on his stomach has not been numb for nearly a week now.

"Ffffuckingchrist." The pain is sharp and abrupt, like a punch to the gut. It makes his voice flute, and he hunches over and sits right back down on the bed.

"Arthur, goddammit!" Crichton's instinctively putting an arm around the man to try and help make sure he actually lands on the bed when he sits.

"Your stitches... did you tear them?" Yeah, he knows the sound of pain when he hears it.

"What the hell am I going to do with you?"

"God damn it. I must have."

As quickly as it spiked, the pain has faded to a sting, but he knows that doesn't mean it won't happen again. So in a probably unprecedented act of common sense that will probably never be seen again, he doesn't stand straight up again. Shit, shit, shit, wasn't dying in the void enough already?

"All your hard work," he says, a weak joke.

He's so proud of you Arthur. If he could, he'd hand you one of these gold cartoon stars that are swirling around his poor throbbing head.

"Yeah... you think you're sorry now. Wait until I try patching you up. I got the mother of all hangovers. This is your one chance, you can ask someone else to stitch you this time?" That's if you can find someone on this ship who both knows how and isn't also hung over to all hell.

It finally occurs to Arthur that maybe screaming at the top of his lungs might have been a little hard on his roommate. "I'm sorry, I didn't- I didn't think. You must have just gotten to bed."

A pause. The question of who should be his doctor is a little different this time around. Hmm, the unknown stranger, about whom Arthur is a lot less paranoid than he was when he arrived... or the familiar friend, who just drank far too much and sounds like he wants nothing more than to go back to sleeping it off?

"...can you recommend anybody?"

"It's okay. Nothing some coffee and an Advil can't fix." He's no stranger to rude awakenings. He does appreciate the apology, though.

"I actually do have someone this time. Her name is Tendi and she's from, well, space but from a much more advanced and well-equipped ship. She's a medic so she'll know what she's doing." She also seemed remarkably level-headed in the face of...all this. So, he trusts her not to freak out. She was the inquisitive type so she'll probably have questions but he'll see what he can do to head her off.

"I'm going to give her a buzz on the phone so just hang tight there for a second."

Crichton will whip out this fancy future technology phone and fire off a text message to Tendi: Hope I'm not waking you too early. I need a favor. My roommate Arthur pulled some stitches out. I'm no medical officer, so I was hoping you might be willing to come check him out? Cabin 127. Thanks.

"Alright." Arthur can't hide that he's impatient to move, stitches or no, but he stays in place through a miracle of god and self-control. They will have come back just like him. He can't very well find them if he's doubling over in pain every three minutes.

He tries to think when he would have pulled the stitches. When they went over the edge, surely, but that leads him to remember the drop, and the screams that came out of all three of them, and the moments when he thought they would all hit water -- water that would go over their nose and ears and mouth -- choke their voices -- and involuntarily he imagines a dripping sound, and tinny rivulets, and the gentle crash of waves against the ship's hull takes on a different echo, as if falling onto tile --

He doesn't so much remember as have the memory slammed up, in full colour, in front of his eyes, as if he never even lost them. It happens fast.

He's playing the piano. He has to stop playing. He plays as if possessed. He can't stop playing, because he knows what comes next. But if he stopped playing there might still be time. He keeps playing.

He can see the pencilled notes, and the reminder to himself that he wrote and forgot above a scribbled treble clef; the clutter kept on the piano's top; the one chipped white key which had a mug dropped on it but which still works. He can feel the pedal creak under his foot, and the resistance when it reaches its lowest point. He can smell the cold shepherd's pie, on a plate nearby, that he forgot to stop and eat. He can taste the little hunger-buzz on his tongue that means he should have eaten it. He can hear the music. He can hear the unnatural quiet of the house.

Arthur's hands move, alternating between gripping the bedsheets and shaking, and tapping them as if they're keys; his face is a mask of anxiety. The air itself presses down in foreboding, like a ceiling bowed low by a flood. He pleads, "Stop," at the level of a whisper. "Stop."

The message is sent, so he slips the phone away into his pocket just in time to turn around and see Arthur with his hands spasming, whispering to himself desperately.

Cold understanding grips Crichton around the throat, closing off his air. He's seen that faraway haunted look reflected in the mirror before. He knows those sounds, the kind he makes when he's dragged into the throes of old horrors.

"Arthur," he says the name soft, but firm. "Arthur, come back. Listen to me."

He reaches for one of the man's hands when next he moves to grip the sheets. Warm fingers wrap around Arthur's, pressing them together, attempting to still them.

"Listen to my voice. It's John. Can you hear me?"

There's a response on the phone from Tendi, that simply says, "On my way." And sure enough, before too long, you can hear running up the hall, and there's a knocking at the door. "Hello? Commander?"

Arthur's face doesn't change; tears have started rolling down it, going more or less from 0 to 100 in a heartbeat.

He finally leaves the piano bench ("Please, hurry, please," because he knows what's at the end of it, even though he knows what's at the end of it). The floor under his feet is hardwood, the sound of his footsteps on it clear. But there's-- something else too?

Arthur's shaking on the bed, breathing fast and uneven; his hand struggles under Crichton's, because he can't stay here, he needs to move, it might be too late, it's already too late. Crichton's exact words don't come through, but he is aware of something, audible but distorted like a voice heard through deep water. Solid in a way the vision isn't. One or two words shine brighter than the others.

The memory continues ruthlessly, but it also wavers just a little, as if drawn over his other senses on tracing-paper.

He starts to shake his head no, confused. He doesn't want to be followed. He doesn't want anybody else to see.

Edited 2022-09-24 13:02 (UTC)

Crichton can feel the buzz of his phone in his pocket, but his hands are too full to check. He assumes (hopes) it means she's coming. And the relief that washes through him when her voice comes through the door is immediate.

"It's open! You can let yourself in!"

He doesn't want to leave Arthur's side when he's shaking like this, afraid that if he lets go the man might do something to hurt himself while trapped in what Crichton can only assume is a very strong flashback... that, or he's having a complete mental break. That would make Tendi's arrival even more timely.

"Please hurry. Arthur's..." What? Losing his marbles? "In bad shape."

His attention goes right back to his poor battered friend. Pressure on the shoulder had helped last time, so Crichton tries again. Using the hand not currently trying to still Arthur's fingers, he grips Arthur by the shoulder and squeezes. "Arthur, I know you've been through a lot but you need to come back. Come back to me. You're on the Serina Eterna, you're in your room, you're safe. We're going to help you. Try to nod if you can hear me."

Like a nightmare after you've woken up, it still tries to cling to him. He even fights against rescue for a moment, because he's not seen it through to its end, and she's at the end, and he can't abandon her. But the hand on his shoulder is more solid and warm than anything he imagines reaching for. The voice -- Crichton's voice. It's Crichton's voice -- is more real than the splattering of water. That's Arthur's name. That's the name of the ship. Crichton's going to help.

The vision is in tatters around him. He manages to nod.

Tendi pushes open the door and quickly walks in, setting her medical kit on a table as she leans over Arthur, her tricorder out as she begins to scan. "What can you tell me about what happened?" The Tricorder beeps and hums, basic medical data beginning to flow past the screen.

"Ok, first things first. This should help with the pain at least." Tendi takes out her hypospray and gives a dose of anesthetic. "Now the wound. Once he's stable, we can start work on the more in depth problems." Tendi begins to work quickly, cutting away the torn sutures, as she begins to pull the wound back together, the regenerator healing the lacerations as she slowly moves across his stomach.

"What's his history? Is this something psychological, or did something attack him?"

"Crichton, who the fuck is this?"

Aaaand Arthur's back in the room!

"Oh, sorry! I should've introduced myself, but it seemed like it was an emergency. I'm D'vana Tendi, Medical Ensign. Treating you right now with some medical tech from my time, the wound on your abdomen should start feeling a whole lot better really soon. What's your name?" Tendi talks as she works, keeping her cheery tone as she sutures and heals the wounds.

Crichton's chest finally relaxes enough for him to get a full breath. Thank God, Arthur's back in the present.

"She's the friend I told you I was going to call. It's okay, you can trust her." Is he basing that strongly on the fact that she's Starfleet? Yes. But is he wrong?

As far as answering her questions about Arthur's history, he's going to keep it vague for his roommate's sake. "He showed up here with these wounds. I did my best to stitch them with my admittedly limited training. It was either that or nothing since he uh... didn't want to go to medical." Can you hear that bus he's throwing you under, Arthur?

"I'll let him tell you the rest of the story."

"Jesus christ," says Arthur hoarsely, scrubbing too late at his eyes and face. This is a lot! It's a lot to come out of one of your worst memories to find an unseen stranger poking and prodding you! It's a lot!

He knows what happened. It's not the first time it's happened. He thought it had stopped happening.

Physically drained and emotionally punch-drunk, he just. answers. quietly and obligingly.

"Right. Of- of course. The stitches... the stitches held until I- I- I- I made a stupid attempt at escape and... fell. I suppose I tore them in the fall."

"Ok just don't move, we're almost done with that part." Tendi brings the tools across the final cuts on his abdomen, and gives a nod. "There we go, all your cuts fixed, no problem at all! Do you have any other injuries or scars that I can clean up for you as well?"

Tendi begins to scan closer, bringing the medical probe over his head, carefully scanning around his eyes and forhead, moving around to the back. The readings are...strange. Medicaly, it's fine. No damage to the eyes or occipital lobe. In fact, it's too fine, in a way. The activity in that area of the brain is very very high, almost a static, as if it's being overridden.

"This is...strange. I've seen some things...sort of like this, but nothing to this level. It's almost like a Vulcan mind meld, but...way more intense."

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cw, a trauma flashback starts here

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