Distance Me And Make Me Whole
Dark.
Light.
Lightbulb. Flickering.
Wheels on linoleum.
Metal doors open.
Metal doors close.
Squeaky wheel.
Flickering light.
Voices distorted.
The world came in compact sentences, and Q knew no more. Vaguely, a thought came to him, a plan. Human. Wolf. Change. Virus. It almost made sense, but the words came like pulling water from a deep, deep well. He watched the strange faces in masks more than he tugged the rope.
“He’s burning through the anesthesia. Up his dosage.”
Blurred shapes.
Deep voices.
Dark again.
But not just dark this time. There was warmth: faint but unmistakably there. It wound around his head, it held his waist, it moved when he did.
“Hey, Q-man.”
He knew that voice. Knew the way it rasped around its syllables, the way it picked up and dropped new phrases.
Looking up between curls he could almost make out Lorie’s face. Distantly, he felt the muscles of his lips tug upwards. “Lorie...”
“You okay?”
Q could almost see the beautiful laugh lines on Lorie’s face. His fingers drew closer in want, looking to feel the smooth creases of the vampire’s skin. The laugh he drew from Lorie was accompanied by raindrops spilling against the roof of the treehouse. “Should I not be?” Q thought he said.
“You’ve been out for a while now. I was starting to worry you wouldn’t want to finish our movie marathon. Neighbors is up next.” Lorie’s laugh lines faded and Q’s fingertips spread across his cheeks.
“I’m fine,” Q murmured. “Tired...”
The creases returned, and Q mirrored their cause - small as the smile was. “Gotcha,” Lorie said, “We’ve had a long day. Hittin’ those movies like it was our job. Oh, and the magic tricks. That was tiring.”
Q nodded, but already he felt his eyes beginning to shut. Fingers still to the warm skin, no, it had never been cold, not fully, he leaned his head against Lorie’s chest. Ear to shirt, he breathed deep as Lorie’s arms shifted around him. “Love you...” He was sure he said.
“I love you too, Q-ster.”
He could fall asleep like this, Q thought. To the sound of the rain, the gentle feel of skin to skin...He could.
Pain sprang through his shoulder, drawing tendons and muscles apart. The points of several jagged needles digging into flesh, he screamed for relief but the sound remained trapped in his chest.
“Q?” Lorie called, worry stretching his voice and the creases of his mouth. “Q? What’s wrong?”
But he was arching his back, pushing away, he was putting hand to blood, the red, red blood that should have flowed forth in streams. Streams like.
The stream of the park he was in.
He’d landed on his face. Stubby legs not yet begun to grow. He’d pressed nose to dirt, his hand in the stream. Early frost, driven into the water for shelter, pricked at his tiny hand. “Help me!” He’d cried. “Mommy!”
His shoulder throbbed, and with no way to stop it, it pumped a virus ever closer to his heart. Veins began to warm up, eyes began to open, fists curled in the mud and the dirt. He gasped for air, but his lungs refused it. “Dad...” he wheezed.
For a moment, Quillan Albright thought he heard footsteps in the distance, but the pattern was too erratic. He called for it, for the footsteps to turn, to see what had been done. See the pain on his back, the pain on his shoulder, see the puddle of crimson he lay in. “Please...Please...”
But the claws that dug the earth were of no friend, and the last Q saw of it was fur disappearing into the brush.
He was alone.
For his lungs, he tried to turn on his back, but for his back, he stayed on his stomach. With each breath he labored, pressing the fabric of his clothes further into the scars that were already forming. The burn of the mark turned cold, hot, and cold again. His blood pushed forward, and the searing marks sent a thousand needles more into his skin. His blood slowed, and a sickly relief set in - the kind that only grows after pain.
At the edges of his vision, shadows danced. He could barely make out the trees that surrounded him. The one that he’d sat under just moments before. The one that he’d put his shoe by to make sure he wasn’t going in circles. The one with the broken branch he was so sure once had a bird’s nest. They all began to blur before his eyes.
“Pl...ease...”
The trees were unmoved, as rooted as he.
He closed his eyes to them and conjured images of his father, of his mother, of the Christmas they’d spent together. Warm by the fire, wrapping paper discarded in rivulets around them. They’d sung songs, they’d eaten, they’d said they loved one another.
Something new stung him now, a tear that had escaped his tightly clenched eyes. It rolled down his cheek, leaving a salty smear free to drip into the scratches on his cheeks.
He called names he did not know.
“Ro...wan...”
“Lo...rie...”
Darkness once again.
“His heart’s stopped. Get me the defib.”
Darkness still.
The shades melded as one, ‘til neither was indistinguishable from the rest. His hand in front of his face would have made no difference. Was he floating? Standing? He couldn’t tell.
A burst of light.
It left him blind, hands to eyes, blocking out the light of day. He, the child. He, the teen. He, the adult.
Something was pulling him, but something had a hold on him. It twisted his wrist, it snapped at his bones, it snarled in his ear.
Another burst of light.
He saw the trees. He was taller than them now, looking over them. He saw his body, saw the little boy with his fist in the stream. He saw the blood spreading.
Another burst of light.
He was older now, making friends in the woods. Always the woods, the trees called him back. But something was wrong, so very wrong. It was too dark for little children, the night had come upon them. The moon skulked from behind a cloud, and little children should run.
Another burst of light.
He was training. A younger face than the one he knew now. “Good, very good,” he praised him when he dodged. “Feel everything, and channel it.” His fist hit the sand dummy. One for each promise his father had broken.
Another burst of light.
He’d finished school now. His cap and gown, his diploma in hand. His father in the audience, somewhere in the blend of faces. This was what he wanted, this is what they both wanted. He was somebody. He was-
Another burst of light.
And another.
They came faster now, playing out a dull thud that changed the scenes. He saw the day he set foot on the Isle. He saw the day he crashed Rowan’s car. He saw the alpha he once knew. He saw the mess they had become.
He saw a magic trick. He saw a happy boy. He saw linked hands and locked lips. He saw candles and fireworks and rings.
He saw his friends, all sitting along the grass. Explosions dotted the sky, each more colorful than the last. Shiloh. Ishmael. Jade. Stasia. Izzy. Everyone. He counted the faces, counted the hearts. But the more he counted, the further they drew from it. The picture faded, twisting at the ends until even them ost familiar had become distorted.
“Wait...”
He stretched his hand for them, but his other was still held shut. It tried to twist him around, to turn him from the scene. So he stretched his free hand even further, just beyond his fingertips, if he only tried just a little more...
His fingers found a familiar warmth, a dim one, but one that still pulsed with a life of its own.
Slowly, the lights around him began to grow, the grip on his wrist began to slip, and he found himself in a room of nothing but light. “Lorie?”
“Wake up, Q,” Lorie told him, earnest eyes looking through him.
His voice echoed, walls Q couldn’t see bouncing the words back until it was nothing but overlapping wishes for him to wake up. Wake up.
Wake up.
And he did.
Q the quiet.
Q the determined.
Q the werewolf.
He woke up in the ICU unit as someone was being wheeled away.
