Riko hasn’t wept in years, but standing outside his pod for– what must be hours– no, days– he feels his edges crumbling. He’s about to cry. He really is. What the fuck.
Afterburn Arc: 📍Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet (ongoing series)
<< Main Masterlist
Purgatory
Riko is on his eighth attempt, and he still can't get the door to his pod open. It would be hilarious, if he didn't honestly feel like he was dying.
He stares at the mocking red light on the door access panel, dull-eyed. Tries again.
Another beep. Red light. Again. Red light. Again.
It feels like purgatory. Time stretches meaninglessly.
He thunks his head against the door, and the impact reverberates through his skull. It feels light and empty, as if someone has packed it with hemo foam.
Riko hasn't wept in years, but standing outside his pod for-- what must be hours-- no, days-- he feels his edges crumbling. He's about to cry. He really is.
What the fuck. He's been stabbed, blown up, shot at by a sniper, glared at by Mish with her deadly laser eyes... and this door is the thing that finally crushes his will. This fucking-- goddamn-- cursed-- fucking-- fucked--
He drops his field pack on the floor next to his still-muddy boots and rolls his head on the door in anguish.
"Come on, man," he grates. "Get it together."
He takes a breath, working himself down from the heights of despair. His fingers don't feel like they're part of him, but he reaches them out toward the door panel again. Tries the code, carefully.
Red light. Beep.
He's going to die here.
He considers the possibility of folding himself onto the floor next to his field pack, in the corridor in front of his pod, and simply expiring.
Riko imagines his dorm mates stepping over him on their way to their shift. The cleaner mopping around him, shoving his bag closer to the wall to make way for that squeaky bucket on wheels.
He pictures Mish finding him. Would she cry? No. She'd be so pissed. She'd more likely kick him in the kidney because he'd promised to water the plant she gave him, and of course, he had to go and die just to get out of doing this one simple thing.
"It's not my fault," he mutters. "I'm trying my best."
Red light. Beep. Red light. Beep.
Purgatory. Stretching. Endless.
Finally he gets it right. He doesn't even know how. Green light.
The door slides open.
The relief almost undoes him. The urge to cry with hysterical relief rises. Is wrestled down.
He walks carefully into his pod, dragging his field pack in with him like a dead body. His head is a balloon, floating in untethered from the rest of him. He imagines it bumping against the low ceiling of his pod, making hollow rubber sounds.
He stops and stands in the middle of the pod, feeling out of place. Is he in the right room? He thinks so. The plant Mish gave him is on the desk, browning, a mere whisper away from death.
Riko feels a sudden kinship with it.
This is his room. But the light is weird. He always set it to low, but now it's too bright. And it's flickering. There's an obnoxious buzzing. He can't figure out where its coming from.
Time moves in staccato. He thinks he might be falling asleep between blinks.
It’s too cold in here. Or hot. His skin crawls.
He just needs sleep. That's all.
His boots are still on. He should fix that.
He drops onto the cot. The impact feels like a punch. The springs squeal despairingly, like a small creature being murdered. The sound grates against every nerve. And then he can't remember what he was supposed to--
Boots. Focus.
It takes him several long seconds. He lifts one foot, clawing his fingers around the fabric of his pant leg and dragging it up. Brings his foot to his knee. Fumbles at the laces.
His fingers lock and tangle.
Purgatory again. He'll be stuck here forever.
They'll find him here, mummified by the facility air filters, his fingers tied in knots in his bootlaces, dried and desiccated like his plant.
"We didn't notice anything," his neighbours would say, "There was no smell, nothing." And Mish would say, "That fucker said he'd water the plant, I knew he couldn't be trusted--"
He finally jerks the boot off, and drops it. It lands hard on the floor. A dead, hollow sound.
The other boot waits for him. Dread fills his chest, like dark water rising, taking up all the space between his ribs and under his sternum.
"Let's go," he grits.
He reaches for it. It's so... far. And getting further. Reality stretches like taffy.
The room tilts. Slow and wide, the floor rushing away from him, the walls stretching up and up and--
"No-- No, we're not doing that." He grips the edge of cot, grinding his teeth together, hard enough that he thinks they might be sinking into his gums.
The moment passes.
"Okay," he says cautiously. He reaches again for the boot.
He's bent over his knee, fingers trying to make sense of the laces, when a bright, red drop falls on the laces. A big, fat splat.
His hand goes up reflexively to his nose. "Ahhh fuck-"
He looks at himself in the mirror across the room. The lower half of his face is red, and blood has dribbled down the front of his shirt.
"Fuuuuuu-- not this again. Come on."
He tilts his head back. The light flickers.
Unfamiliar... It isn't the sickly grey non-light from the overhead panel.
This... shimmers. Dense and radiant and alive.
There are iridescent colours exploding impossibly in the space above his desk.
They are... His eyes cross, trying to make sense of what he's seeing.
Fireworks.
Explosions of light in his tiny, grey room. Luminous and layered and deep.
His brain stutters and twists, trying to understand the spatial logic of what he's seeing. It must be a projection. Or... or a hologram. Somehow installed in his pod as a prank. Someone must have... This must be a-- a--
Slow, silent bursts. Huge. Taking up real, three-dimensional space. Gold radiating outward. Rose pink. Ice blue. A deep violet. Impossibly saturated colours, searing themselves into his retinas, unfurling like violent exhalations.
They unfold with weight. Layered over each other, suspended in the sudden and immense darkness of his room.
His eyes open so wide he can feel the stretch of them in his face.
The hand he's holding to his face drops forgotten, onto his lap.
“Wow...” The word slips free before he knows it. His face is unguarded, held open by wonder.
He feels his jaw fall open. He must look stupid, but he can't bring himself to close his mouth. Because this-- this is--
It's real. He can see the reflections of the colours on his furniture. His eyes track the light as it ripples across old shapes... his desk, the wall, his field pack. Ordinary things made radiant.
Even the sad little plant has caught the kaleidoscope and is throwing a flickering shadow on his wall. The multiple shadows cast by his discarded boot are dancing in rainbow hues across the grey expanse of his floor.
And... he can feel the light on his face. Soft, jewel tones pressing into his skin with gentle weight. Flickering slowly across his skin. Rolling gently across his cheeks and forehead and neck.
Something unlatches inside him. Small. Vital.
A pause. A moment where the slow blooming intensity of colour bursts peter gently out. And then--
The fireworks multiply.
He watches, rapt.
They fill everything. Flowering bursts stacked atop each other, now too fast to follow. Silver, gold, then blinding violet-- each explosion bigger, more enveloping, swallowing the last. There is no pause or negative space between them. Light. Expanding. Crashing. Brighter--
His bloodstained fingers twitch on his lap.
So bright. So bright!
His eyelids flicker.
He tilts sideways. Slow, like a tree going down. The cot catches him. The springs give, then bounce once, gently.
Blood slips down his cheek in a wide arc. His throat moves meaninglessly.
A violent spasm. The cot rattles.
Slowly, his arms lock, hands curling into claws. His spine arches. Eyes roll back.
The bed frame shakes violently as his whole body convulses.
His wrist slams into the rail. Shoulders twist, legs kicking against the foot of the bed. He whips his head to the side, sending red splatting onto the wall.
Metal rattles under him. The cot jerks so hard that it moves across the floor. The boot still laced to his right foot kicks violently, sending the laces lashing back and forth.
No one comes.
He seizes alone, in a dim room, under flat facility light.
🎧 Accompanying music for this fic.
Afterburn Arc: 📍Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet (an ongoing series)
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Note: Yasss Riko is baaack. This is one of my favourite arcs. I really hope you guys enjoy it!
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@deerslayer14 // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump (personal space, what personal space?)
His nosebleed spatters an erratic pattern on the white floor. Behind them, his dragging feet smear it into a broken trail, like a painter drunkenly wielding a brush.
Featuring: QPR, collapse arc, panicking caretaker, medical whump, whumperless whump
CW: Febrile state, mental confusion, seizures, nose bleed
Afterburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ 📍Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet (ongoing)
Cold Spray
RIko's neck is arched, his eyes rolled back in his head. He is convulsing where he lies, stretched halfway out into the corridor. The blue blanket has bunched uselessly under him, absorbing none of the impact as his elbows and knees jerk and thud against the floor.
Mish’s heart is pounding. She's seen dozens of people seize before.
But this is Riko. Riko shuddering against the floor, Riko arching in her grip.
Her mind flashes to the injectors she saw in his med kit. There was an anticonvulsant-- For a frantic moment, the urge to grab it and jab it into his thigh is overwhelming.
No.
She doesn't know what he's on. Doesn't know what's causing the seizures. She can't afford to make guesses.
The seizure lasts just under a minute. She knows because she times it.
Riko's last spasm sends his leg kicking out inside his room; something crashes unseen behind the half closed door.
“Riko?” she calls, and she hates how her voice cracks. He opens his eyes but they don’t track her. His throat moves without sound, his Adam’s apple shifting under blood going tacky.
She reminds herself that he's a patient and that she's a nurse.
But all she wants to do is sit here and hold him. She grips him hard, and her palms remember the sensation of his muscles bunching spasmodically against them.
His nose has started bleeding again. Blood is trickling into his hair, falling freely off his face to drip onto the floor. She can't stop looking.
"Stop it," she tells herself. "Get up. Move."
She forces her muscles to activate. Pushes herself up. And against every instinct, she turns away from Riko.
Help. She needs to get help.
Someone has to be here. They can help her lift Riko, carry him--
She bangs on doors, leaving red smears on them. Her voice comes out tight and compressed; "Help! Anyone! Someone--"
Nothing. Everyone is at the cafeteria for dinner. They’ll be here in half an hour, but right now the corridor yawns wide and vacant.
A cleaning bot hums along the seam of the wall in the distance.
Behind her, a soft scuffle against the floor. The sound of Riko starting to convulse again. The hiss of the door trying to close on him.
There is an emergency comm unit near the showers. If she runs, she can get there and--
A door cracks open down the hall. It's Grav, leaning his hefty frame out of his pod.
"Grav!" she gasps. "Riko! He--"
He takes one look at her face, flushed, stricken-- and looks beyond her at Riko’s body spilled halfway out into the corridor, his limbs twitching, blood running slick down his neck.
“Shit,” Grav says succinctly.
Behind him, Mish makes out the form of a woman, coming to the door. “Grav?” the woman says.
A head pops out. Grimma.
Grimma the facility nurse.
She's bra-less in a too-big t-shirt, black lace panties showing under the hem. Her hair is not in her usual severe bun, instead hanging loose and tousled around her face.
Mish's brain does a skip and a stutter.
Grav and Grimma. Wait till Riko hears about this.
Grimma's eyes snap to Riko. “Shit.”
And both of them are moving immediately, sprinting down the corridor.
They drop down next to Riko, tilting him onto his back. And even though Mish knows they have never officially worked together on a team, they act in tandem, as if they've been practicing.
Practicing! her mind howls, with inappropriate hilarity. The voice she hears in her head is Riko's.
They scan him quickly, the hands of a nurse and emergency med tech moving with experienced speed over Riko.
“Seizing,” Grimma says. “And burning. What the hell happened?”
“I-- I don't know-- I was trying to get him to the showers--” Mish says, tripping over herself.
“Good call,” Grimma says. “Grav, lift.”
Riko has gone still. They hoist him up, unevenly. His legs crook awkwardly, as if he's a broken toy.
They move fast, his arms slung loose around their shoulders, his skin searing the back of their necks. He hangs like a dead weight, his head swinging limp between them.
His nosebleed spatters an erratic pattern on the white floor. Behind them, his dragging feet smear it into a broken trail, like a painter drunkenly wielding a brush.
Ahead of them, Mish pushes the door open as they reach the communal showers. Riko is propped in the corner of the nearest stall, his head lolling on his shoulder.
Mish yanks at the showerhead, aiming it at his slumped figure. Swings the knob violently all the way to cold.
The blast of water hits him full on.
He jerks, limbs snapping up gracelessly; a puppet whose strings have been brusquely yanked.
“F-uck!” he yells.
His voice is high and furious, startled and cracking on the syllable. His eyes are wide and wet as he looks at Mish with a look of such abject betrayal--
Her heart clenches painfully and her knuckles go white around the showerhead.
Then his head sags, and he crumples sideways, sliding down the tiled wall. His legs fold awkwardly under him, his arms limp and extended across the tiled floor of the shower stall.
The water pelts down, uninterrupted.
His clothes go translucent, plastered against his skin. His bootlaces dangle into the drain with the weight of the water.
Mish starts to shiver. She watches as the blood on him washes away in pink sheets across the tiles, going around her work shoes.
And then, again.
His hands twitch first, and then his fingers splay and claw into shapes she has never seen Riko make. Seconds later, he goes into full-body convulsions.
He thrashes violently, his back arching. His jaw is clenched so tight it changes the shape of his face. His head jerks repeatedly, and she drops hurriedly to her knees beside him. She grips his head between her palms, trying to keep it from slamming against the tile.
Her knuckles are getting bruised.
Mish lets out a breath that sounds like a sob. But it's not. Because she's not crying, she's not. She's a nurse, this is a patient, she needs to get it together, this is just a patient--
“Hang on, Mish--” Grimma is already at the wall panel, slamming the emergency intercom.
“We have a medical emergency in the communal showers, level B12-- seizures, possible hyperpyrexia--”
Grav has picked up the showerhead and is keeping the water coming. She's completely soaked now, and there's blood pinking the knees of her uniform.
Mish holds him until he goes still again, and this time, he looks so gone that she has to press her shaking fingers into his neck to assure herself that his heart didn't stop.
He looks absolutely awful, like a bad copy of himself. As if someone ran out of colours except chalky whites and bruised greys and tried to paint him with their non-dominant hand.
She can see a sliver of his eyes through his lids, and she knows he's unconscious. Still, she peers past the clumped lashes, trying to see if she can find any spark of him in his eyes.
Blood is leaking out of his nose, spilling over her hands.
She's not a nurse anymore. She's just... she's just holding on to him.
She wonders if "fuck" is going to be the last thing he says to her.
+++++++++++++++++
The med team arrives in minutes. She tells them as much as she knows, which is nothing. Except the number of times he seized since she found him, and for how long.
They roll his sodden, limp body onto the gurney and strap him down, and as they push him out the communal showers, she makes as if to go with them.
Grimma steps in her way. Mish tries to go around her, but Grimma puts out her hands on her shoulders and grips hard enough that Mish stops.
"Mish, don't," she says.
"I have to go, in case-- maybe I can help, if they need extra hands, I can--"
Grimma shakes her head. "Mish, they've got him. They'll take care of him."
Mish's gaze follows the gurney as it is wheeled out of sight. Riko's face is white and insensate under the oxygen mask, his head tilted back. The last thing she sees as the door swings shut behind the gurney is his one bare foot, next to his boot, which is still laced onto his other foot.
"I need to go with him," Mish says. "He-- he needs his sock."
Grimma's eyes drop to Mish's hand, curled in a death grip around Riko's dripping sock. The one Mish had pulled off him as he was being strapped onto the gurney.
Grimma's gaze comes back up to Mish's face. It is strangely blank and distant.
"Don't do this to yourself. There's no waiting room where they're taking him. You'd see everything," Grimma says.
Mish blinks, as if waking up. She looks sharply at Grimma. "I'm a professional nurse."
Grimma purses her lips, and then says very kindly. "Not right now, you're not. You're his friend. And you're in shock."
A thick, soft towel comes over Mish's shoulders, enveloping her.
Grav.
He layers it over her, and holds her gently from behind.
Mish feels herself start to shake in his embrace. Her shoulders shivering. Something rattling loose inside her.
He holds her for a long moment. A slow squeeze, and then he lets go.
He hands a towel to Grimma, who accepts it, and starts to wrap it around her waist. She speaks quietly to Grav as she does so, they both look at her.
Mish feels like a child being discussed. Her fingers grip tighter over the sock, and she feels water being wrung out of it. She bends her head to look.
The runoff is pink. And Mish shudders, a convulsive, full-body shake that feels like she's a dog trying to shake off water.
Grimma is right. She mustn't go with Riko. She couldn't watch and not do anything.
"I'm going to go with them," Grimma says. "I'll let you know immediately when I know anything certain."
Mish nods numbly. Grimma gives Mish a shoulder squeeze, and then walks out the communal showers, still barefoot, a towel wrapped around her waist.
Now Grav's arm is around her shoulder, and he's guiding her out the door too. But they turn right, back towards the pods.
The cafeteria crowd is trickling back in now. Mish can see where some of them had accidentally walked over Riko's blood spatters, leaving footprints. They are hushed and wide-eyed, watching as Grav walks her down the corridor.
She's dripping water, leaving waterlogged footsteps in her wake. They are diluting the blood on the floor.
She's ok. She's fine. It's just water.
Someone is standing outside Riko's door, staring at the blood smeared on the floor in front of it. He looks up at them as they approach, concern plain on his face.
"What happened? Is that Riko's blood?" he says.
Grav makes as if to walk Mish past the room, but she stops. "I need to go in," she says.
Grav looks at her. "Did you leave something in there? I really don't think you should--"
She pauses. Worries her lower lip.
"My dinner's in there," she says. "Could you grab it for me?"
Before Grav can stop her, she steps forward and keys in the door code. The door slides open, and the man from the corridor comes up next to her, craning to look in. Mish can see the bloody cot from where she's standing.
Grav steps in, and pauses, looking around. He sees the trays she left on the counter, and grabs them, carefully stepping around the smear of blood on the floor in the shape of Riko's face.
"That's a whole lot of blood," the man says. "Is he ok?"
"No," she says. "That's from his nosebleed. I found him. He was seizing."
She turns and looks at him, and something in her face makes him say, "Shit."
And he goes silent.
Before Grav gets to the door, she calls to him. "Hey," she says. "Could you also grab the plant?"
She watches him glance around again, and reach over to pick up the plant, balancing it on top of the trays. He steps out, letting the door slide close behind him.
"Let's go," he says to Mish.
"Thanks," she says. "I don't want him to come back and find it all dried up."
She lets him guide her down the hall towards the elevators back to her floor.
"Hey, uh," the man says as they walk past him. "I'm glad you found him."
"Yeah," Mish says softly.
"He's, uh, one of the good ones," the man says, somewhat lamely.
Before the elevator doors shut, she sees the little cleaning bot trundle up in front of Riko's room. It pauses in front of the smears of blood and plays its teeny cleaning melody.
It makes something twist up inside her. Riko had whistled the same tune after spilling coffee all over himself.
It had made her laugh.
The bot glides over the blood, leaving clean floor in its wake. In a few seconds, it will be as if Riko had never bled there.
Afterburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ 📍Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet (ongoing)
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Note: The cleaning bot is a paid actor.
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@deerslayer14 // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump // @hot-rangers-in-chains (staring at my taglist through foliage with binoculars)
She wanted to see him off, but he had said goodbyes gave him "the wibbles". When she had frowned at the word, he added, "You know, the feeling a tightrope walker gets when they’re about to step onto the rope, and they suddenly think something’s going to go wrong?"
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Afetrburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ 📍Charmed ▸ Ballet
Charmed
The sound of running water fills her tiny room. Mish strips out of her damp, blood-streaked uniform and dumps it into her sink, tearing open two uniform decontamination packs and squeezing them over the blood-streaked fabric.
As the basin fills up, she zips open the bag Riko's clothes are in and starts pulling out the sodden fabric. His undershirt, dribbled with gore all the way down the front, is cut crookedly up the middle and over the shoulders. His uniform trousers are scissored up each leg. Even his boxer briefs have been cut through.
They are an eye-searing, electric blue.
"The brighter, the luckier," he had explained, when he'd dropped an orange pair of briefs on the way back from the laundry level. "Don't laugh, this pair saved me from a blast. I woke up with my teammates trying to loot my body."
That pair had been so violently orange, they might have been radioactive.
None of the clothes she's pulled from the bag are salvageable.
Of course they aren't. She hadn't expected them to be, but she feels a twinge of grief looking at them, imagining the medics pulling the shredded fabric out from under him.
There is a bright purple stain seeping from the side pocket of the trousers.
It's the candy from the vending machine after the emergency room shift, bleeding a scaldingly bright purple dye from being subjected to all that water.
She stares at the sugared mush in her hand. It feels like weeks ago when she picked up the cheerful little pack off the floor and handed it to Riko.
Mish is pretty sure the purple is going to stain her skin.
She wipes her hand off on the ruined fabric and looks to see if there's anything else in the bag.
One final item. A single sock.
She pulls it out.
It is whole.
Just a small nick on the elastic edge, like someone had been about to shear through the sock, then changed their mind and pulled it off instead.
Mish stares at it, her fingertip grazing the interrupted fabric.
She feels inordinately grateful.
Her vision goes blurry. She looks up quickly at the ceiling, her eyes catching on the brown stain right next to the light panel.
She blinks with irritation. She had put in a request for a replacement panel weeks ago. Every time she looks at it, the glare from the light makes her eyes water.
Her hand comes up to wipe her eyes. But then she remembers her purple-stained fingers and stops just in time.
When her eyes stop threatening to spill over, she gathers the other matching sock, the one she had brought up with her from the showers, and puts them both in the sink with her soaking uniform.
She turns off the white noise of the running water.
"Okay," she says, to the empty room, standing there in her underwear, her hand purpled with cheap food dye.
"Let's go."
+++++++++++++++++++
Wern is surprised to see her when she turns up at the emergency room in a fresh uniform, her damp hair tied back in a braid.
"Mish!" he exclaims, spotting her at the bio-waste bin, where she's dropping off the bag containing Riko's ruined clothes. "What are you doing coming back here?"
Mish gestures behind the nurse's station. "I think Riko left his vest back here. I thought I'd look."
Wern's face changes. "Oh shit, yeah, Riko. Is he okay?"
Mish shrugs. Facility news travels like an airborne pathogen. She wouldn't be surprised if the whole facility knows by now.
She crouches to look under the counter, curling her fingers around the edge for balance. "I don't know. They had to put him in a pod."
Her head is ducked under the counter, but she hears him let out a sympathetic hiss.
There it is. The vest. Someone has shoved a crate of documents in front of it. She can barely see the edge of an olive green shoulder sticking out behind the box. Mish's hand closes around it and pulls.
Wern leans against the counter. "How about you? I heard you were the one who found him."
The vest snags on the crate.
Mish thinks about how she missed all the signs that had been right there; how she forgot to be a nurse when Riko started seizing. The way her voice stuttered when she tried to communicate what was happening.
She yanks hard.
The vest is finally in the light. The camera lens glints up at her from where it's strapped onto the shoulder.
"Getting shit done while I wait for news," she says.
"Okay," he says. Wern presses his fingertips over her knuckles, then releases the pressure.
He doesn't say anything meaningless like ask her to stay positive, or assure her that Riko will be alright. There's no need for platitudes among people in their profession.
She stands up, the vest in her grip.
He smiles, his gaze on her hand. "Whoa, what's that?"
Mish glances at her neon purple fingers against the drab olive of Riko's vest.
"Food dye," she says. "Really stubborn. Wouldn't come off with regular soap."
"Oh, you know what," Wern says. "There's that surgical soap at the disinfection station down by the medbay at A16. I swear that stuff erases freckles."
Mish shifts the vest to her other hand and studies the purple hue on her fingers. It's darker in the seams of her nails and the creases of her knuckles.
"I think I'll leave it," she says. "Might turn out to be lucky."
+++++++++++++++++++
In hindsight, Mish should have paused before she breached the camera password.
She did it without thought. The flimsy protection protocol gave way easily.
Now, she stares at a video playback of Riko on the day he'd shipped out on his field assignment, and her chest constricts. He looks so... normal.
She hears Riko's voice, too close to the camera; "-- let me just make sure the camera battery is still--"
It's one of those all-perspective cameras, so his face is distorted and comically wide in the footage. She can see he's still in the Facility here, and in fact, she's there too, her head ridiculously large and her feet tiny in the distance.
She always forgets how he's taller than her. She so often feels bigger than him.
Mish taps on the option for the footage to split-screen. Her face and his, side by side.
Her voice speaking over his; "When are you back? This is such a last minute--"
His finger obscuring the lens as he taps it. "Yup it's fine, these things last forev--"
The footage freezes, indicating the recording had cut out.
Mish remembers the day. The abrupt assignment. Him in his room, pulling out field gear that hadn't seen the outside of his locker for months.
She wanted to see him off, but he had said goodbyes gave him "the wibbles". When she had frowned at the word, he added, "You know, the feeling a tightrope walker gets when they’re about to step onto the rope, and they suddenly think something’s going to go wrong?"
She'd rolled her eyes. "There's no such word."
Long fingers, wiggling dismissively at her. "You wouldn't know," he had said airily. "It's a circus thing."
The last time she'd seen him was when they'd walked together down the main corridor. He turned left to go up to the transport bay, and she turned right toward the medical wing.
She was trying her best not to say goodbye. She had promised she wouldn't. So as they approached the crowded juncture where they would split, all she had said was, "I'll water your plant, don't worry."
And his face had taken on such an abruptly guilty look that she raised her hand automatically to smack him, because of course he had forgotten all about the plant.
"Ow," he said, clutching his bicep, and then they were at the junction, and he was stepping away from her, swept up by the stream of people.
She had turned as well, her body automatically orienting toward the medical wing, as if this was any other day, as if she would see him later at lunch--
She couldn't.
She couldn't do it.
She stopped in her tracks and turned back to face him, her mouth already open-- but he had beaten her to it. He was already facing her, walking backward down the corridor to the transport bay elevators.
He jabbed a finger in her direction. "I knew it!" he yelled. "Weak!"
"Come on, let me do it, it feels weird!" she had yelled back.
"Don't! You said you wouldn't!"
Someone bumped into Riko. He didn't let it interrupt his backward trajectory.
People in the corridor milled between them as the distance grew, obscuring their view of each other.
"Come on, Mish, be strong!"
He'll be fine, she had told herself. He was fine before you ever met him.
She had to say something. She had to.
The crowd opened up for a brief moment between them and she saw him. He was almost at the elevator.
"Riko!" she yelled.
"No Mish, don't!" His voice climbed an octave. Hands clutched dramatically at his hair, like an overwrought vid performer.
She took a deep breath.
"What colour is your underwear?" she shouted.
She saw his face go still, the cringe drop from it. And then he smiled so wide his eyes squeezed almost shut.
"Pink!" His screech cut through the corridor.
The crowd's murmur faltered. People whipped around to look at him, just as he cheerfully hooked a thumb under the waistband of his uniform trousers and yanked it down over his hip to show her. Several unfortunate nurses, and even a couple of doctors, caught an unavoidable flash of his neon-pink underwear.
It was such an obnoxious shade of pink it leapt the distance between them and jabbed her in the eyes.
Mish saw one doctor turn with a jerk and blink rapidly like he'd been sprayed in the face with chemicals.
"Ow," she saw him mouth.
And then the elevator doors closed, Riko trying to throw her the middle fing--
Mish stood there by herself in the crowded corridor, a laugh burbling up, imagining Riko showing his middle finger to closed elevator doors.
She shook her head fondly. "Fucking clown."
She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and turned. She'd see him in 10 days. He'd be fine.
++++++++++++++++
The screen shows Riko's still frozen face, mid-blink on one half of the screen.
She gazes at his image; the insouciant smirk, the lack of shadows and hollows on his face, the spark in his eyes.
She puts a tag on the timeline, marking it "Subject before field deployment".
Her own visage is on the other half of the video, partially obscured by Riko's fingertip covering the lens, her one visible eyebrow fixed in a look of... What had it been? Annoyance? Worry?
Had she somehow known something would happen?
The next clip is days long. The camera had been left running pretty much the entire duration of his outfield deployment.
The AI flashes text on the screen: "Tag significant events as chapters on timeline?"
She taps "yes", and the timeline populates with chapter markers.
Whatever happened to Riko, or whatever he did to himself… the evidence is going to be in there.
And she is going to find it.
A relevant DVD extra: No Such Word
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Afetrburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ 📍Charmed ▸ Ballet
Author's note: Felt like this was a strange, liminal chapter. But every time I tried to shorten, delete or merge it with another, Riko and Mish screeched "NOOO" and insisted it had to exist. I am literally just doing whatever my blorbos instruct. There is no free will. I am sorry.
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@new-deerslayer // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump /// @hot-rangers-in-chains /// @genuineformality /// @whumpy-daydreams (Deep, deep inhale to breathe in your scent. Aaaah.)
"Right..." Riko says. And he pauses, trying to gather his thoughts to say the next part. "Do I get to say no? Or... or make a different call?"
Note: No real CWs for this chapter. This one's mostly setup and might feel a bit expositiony.
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Afetrburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸📍Ballet
Ballet
"You ever worked in one of these regional trauma hubs?" the man asks them, on the flight in. His flight suit is dark blue, and there's a grinning smiley-face patch amongst the ones on his uniform that mark him as a flight medic.
It is dark outside the windows of the air transport. Far away in the horizon, the final band of gold gives way to the press of night. Most of the flight medics have gone quiet, heads tucked down, rocking gently in the minor turbulence.
Riko turns from the window, shaking his head. "Frontline, and a couple of casualty clearing centres."
He checks the give of the camera on his vest, assures himself again that the activation button is locked down in the "on" position.
Martenn and Xyller, the other levy medics on the flight, shake their heads too.
"Rappon city paramedic," Xyller says.
"Rural hospital," Martenn says. "And a few disaster relief deployments: Postro, Copitron and Naygal Town.”
Riko is impressed. Rappon is one of the most violent and volatile inner cities on this side of the war. And Martenn has named the last three major disasters of the last four years.
"Right," Mr. Smiley says. "So... imagine 20 inner city emergency rooms, on a major disaster day, sending their worst casualties to you, 24/7."
Another flight medic snorts. Her hair is braided tight against the sides of her head in the typical Jombian style, so Riko isn't surprised when she brings up her hand and twists it in the sign for "understatement". There is a slight scoff in the inflection.
"They're flying into Zenith,” she says. “Try 50 emergency rooms. And they're all on fire."
"Descriptive," the first flight medic grins. "And accurate. So eat, sleep and shit when you can, not when you need to."
Xyller puts up his hand, like he's a student in class. "There's this guy called Hallen? Seems he's got quite a reputation."
"Best patient survival rates in any trauma hub by far," the Jombian flight medic says. "Nobody comes close to Daddy D's numbers." Her fingers swirl upward in an expressive sign to indicate “beyond belief!”
"Daddy D?" Riko says, and his mouth quirks in amusement. "Sounds like a vid performer. Or a pimp."
In the dark quiet of the shuttle, one of the flight medics snickers. Another shifts in his sleep.
Mr. Smiley teeth are bright in the gloom. "Well, if he gives you a good report, your career is pretty much set for the next couple of years," he says.
The Jombian flight medic nods in agreement and jerks her fingers decisively downward in the sign for "confirmed".
"Meaning?" Xyller asks.
Martenn speaks up. "People fight for a stint under Hallen," he says. "If you have Hallen sign off a Zenith rotation, doors open up. Your pick of competitive postings, your specialist training applications go on the top pile, senior clinicians take notice of your name..."
Xyller's eyes go wide. "Whoa," he says. "All that for a 10-day deployment?"
Riko smiles and shrugs. "Guess we lucked out."
The Jombian flight medic glances at him, her eyes shadowed in the low light. And then she crooks the sign for "poor thing."
+++++++++++++
The deck tilts under Riko's boots as they make their descent. Out on the tarmac, a man is standing alone in the vast dark, his face lit by the handheld pad he is holding.
The landing gears activate, sending jagged vibrations through the unlit interior. As the whine of the engines modulates and pitches up, Riko puts up a hand against the bulkhead to steady himself.
The pilot's voice is scratchy and distorted over the intercom: "Welcome to Zenith. Good luck."
All the personnel on the craft are standing ready near the doors. One by one, they each tap a dongle on their shoulder.
Riko is right next to Mr. Smiley, so he catches the man murmur quietly to his shoulder-mounted dongle, "Hi Zai, missed me?"
The flight medic tilts his head for a moment as if listening. Whatever the device says back is projected so narrowly as to be inaudible to Riko.
"Roger," Mr. Smiley responds. "We'll take good care of her."
The Jombian flight medic holds her hand up, flexing her hand to sign, “ready, brace, ready, brace.” A thump shudders up through the craft as it lands.
Out on the tarmac, floodlights come on.
Riko had thought the man on the tarmac was by himself, but the floodlights have revealed a small army of people and drones surrounding him, in neat contingents.
They stand still in the bright light, unnervingly silent and intent.
Xyller turns to look back at the flight medics. "Why are they--"
“Waiting for eyes to get used to the light,” Mr. Smiley explains.
“Also, waiting for ramp extension,” the Jombian says. She pats the braids on the side of her head perfunctorily, tucking a stray strand back in.
The whine of the ramp hums under their feet. And then, they feel more than they hear it, as the ramp touches down on the ground.
As if a race starter gun has gone off, the people on the tarmac surge into action.
The Jombian flashes her hand out, “launch, launch, go!”
Riko and the rest of the off-boarding medics have barely stepped out onto the ramp, and people in overalls are already running up it, jostling past them. Mr. Smiley gestures the new levy medics to the side, away from the tide of activity.
"Hallen will come for you afterward," he says, pointing at the man with the pad, who is stock still, like a rock in a stream, as the operation swirls around him.
"For now, wait here." Mr. Smiley points down at the ground, and Riko looks. There is a faded yellow box painted on the tarmac.
"Enjoy the show," he says, grinning, and then goes loping off to join the rest of the flight medics.
Riko feels like equipment, parked safely out of the way.
The sides of the craft are levering open, and Riko can see the people who had run up the ramp swarming around the pallets and the boxes inside. There is the clack-clack-clack of metal buckles closing, and then a coordinated shout of "Starboard, tier one, clear!".
In a graceful logistical ballet, the pallets and boxes are lowered out of the craft with hydraulic lifts and maneuvered neatly onto delivery drone vehicles. Each one swivels elegantly out from under the shadow of the craft and whizzes noiselessly toward the large building behind them.
The last vehicle drone hasn't left yet, when the coordinated shout arises again: "Port side, tier one, clear!"
The same thing is happening on the other side of the shuttle.
Mr. Smiley jogs up to an area with patients on gurneys, where the rest of his flight medics have gathered. Records and equipment are being handed over, and the flight medics are being briefed on the patients they will be caring for on the flight out.
"Starboard, tier two, clear!"
Hallen taps an item on his pad and flicks it forward. Twenty metres away, a small group of drones immediately breaks off and moves under the craft, opening up access panels in the belly of the shuttle. They start pulling spent energy units out, replacing them with fresh ones.
Another flick, and contingent of cleaning drones glides into position, to stand by at the ramp. Some of them trigger their disinfection sprays in preparation, sending mists of water into the bright air; pssh-pssh-pssh. A rainbow wavers briefly over them.
"Port side, tier two, clear!"
Now, the sides of the craft are closing up again, and the logistics personnel are trooping out urgently, boots thumping on the middle of the ramp. The cleaning drones swivel and roll up into the craft, skirting the outside edge of the same ramp.
From inside the shuttle comes the hiss of disinfectant spray, the rising whine of scrubbers and the roar of venting air.
Hallen flicks an item on his pad toward the flight medics. They all start tightening the restraints on their patients, tucking in blanket edges and gathering close against the sides of their respective gurneys. One after another, the lights under the gurneys turn green as grav plates activate.
By the time the last flight medic taps on the dongle on their shoulder, the cleaning drones are already back out on the tarmac.
Hallen gathers his fingers, and slides them across the surface of the pad, toward the shuttle. The first team of flight medics starts pushing their floating gurney up the ramp.
Six patients are hovered past. Amputees, burn victims, a woman who looks like she's missing half her cranium.
Mr. Smiley's group is the last to board. He flashes a grin at Riko and the other levy medics, offering a thumbs up as they go past. The Jombian medic wiggles her fingers near her mouth in a sign for "luck, luck, luck."
She jerks her head back at him, surprised, and he catches a glimpse of her pleased smile as the door closes.
The shuttle's engines rise in pitch.
The power drones slam shut the last access panel and clear out, followed closely by the hover sled with the spent energy cells. One of the drones is holding an energy cell to its centre mass as it trots out from under the air transport's shadow.
The engines had never cycled down, and now, mere minutes after it had landed, the shuttle rises into the air again.
+++++++++++++
Hallen does not look like a vid performer, or a pimp. He's a small, muscled man, with grey hair cropped close to his skull. He holds a quiet, severe gravitas that presses down on all of them.
He looks each of them over in turn and studies the documents on his pad.
When it comes to Riko, Hallen holds his gaze on him for several seconds longer, studying him with cool, slate-grey eyes.
"How long have you been civillian side?" he asks, and Riko realises this is the first time that they have heard him speak. The man's voice is mellower than he expects.
"Five months, sir."
Hallen lets out a hum, his eyes skimming the pad. "Let's see if you've gotten soft," he says.
Each of them is handed a document on a backlit device.
"Read this carefully. To indicate agreement, press your thumbprint on the AI dongle," Hallen says.
Riko studies the gadget clipped on his document device. It's the same small unobtrusive widget he'd seen the flight medics use when coordinating with Hallen. Rounded and low profile, the only identifiable feature is a tiny lens mounted on it, and a clip on the back.
The document itself is a standard agreement for such deployments, with an added clause for agreeing to participate in testing "prototype technology, diagnostics, medical procedures and therapeutics".
Martenn must be an infernally fast reader, because he asks about it before Riko has gotten to the end of that paragraph.
His voice is quizzical. "Prototypes?"
They all jump when, instead of Hallen, a smooth female voice answers.
"Zenith is an operational evaluation site. Emerging medical technologies are routinely trialled here under active deployment conditions."
It takes them a moment to realise the voice is coming from the dongle clipped on Martenn's document.
Xyller looks at his dongle wonderingly. "For example?" he asks.
The same voice is now coming out of Xyller’s AI dongle. "Like the Zenith Artificial Intelligence you are currently interfacing with. My function is operational coordination. I provide patient sector data, manpower allocation, task prioritisation and resource optimisation through continuous awareness of staff location and activity."
Riko tilts his head. "So... you tell us where to go and what to do?"
"In part," it replies. "I provide operational recommendations based on sector load, staff availability, competency and projected workload."
"Right..." Riko says. And he pauses, trying to gather his thoughts to say the next part. "Do I get to say no? Or... or make a different call?"
"Yes," the smooth AI voice says. "Operational recommendations from this AI may be overridden by clinical judgement."
Hallen catches them looking at him, and nods in confirmation. "It's supposed to assist you, so you can better apply your human and professional experience in patient care. All the prototypes and experimental tech here serve that singular purpose."
Riko feels his shoulders relax. He can get behind that.
He presses his thumb to the surface of the dongle, and it makes a little trill. The document flashes green.
The rest do the same.
Xyller and Martenn pin their dongles to their right shoulders, and Riko is trying to decide if he should do the same.
"It can go next to your camera," Hallen says. He glances at the steady blue light. "How long have you had it logging?" he asks.
"Since before shuttle descent, sir," Riko replies.
Hallen lets out an approving hum. "Five months civilian side and you haven't lost all your good habits."
Riko flicks the lock so the power button is accessible. "Should I power it down?"
Hellen pauses, considering it. "Keep it on," he says. "Would be interesting to have proper field-camera data against the AI logs. The dongle's video feed isn't forensics grade."
His AI dongle requests a new thumbprint to sync with the camera. When he does, they both emit matching chirps. "Handshake success," the AI says.
"Hang on to your flexpad," Hallen instructs, demonstrating why it's called a flexpad as he folds his up into a strip and wraps it around his forearm.
And that is it. Their intake process is done in minutes.
Hallen points them toward a large, central building. “Now go be useful,” he says.
"Sir?" Martenn calls out as Hallen turns away. "Who do we report to?"
"Instructions will be issued as and when required," Martenn's dongle says out loud.
They watch Hallen walk away.
"So... I guess we go see what needs doing?" Xyller ventures, after a while.
They jog up to the side of the building, and the moment they turn the corner, they can hear the familiar sounds of an emergency floor. But massive. A low rolling roar, like an air transport passing by far above.
Riko feels the noise in his bones and molars.
Even after the flight medics' warning, and their own individual experience working triage, the intensity of what they encounter when they round the corner has them stop in place.
Riko can't tell what he's looking at exactly. Just that it's loud and busy and huge.
The resonant rumble is the noise of a multitude of voices, simultaneously multiplied and diffused by the expansive layout. The urgent Brownian motion of staff bodies across the floor looks like chaos.
"Shit," Martenn says plainly.
It isn't any sort of proper facility. Just an immense, cleared-out warehouse, fitted with rows and rows of cots, so many that they seem to disappear into the distance. Almost every bed is occupied.
Riko blinks rapidly, getting his bearings. At first glance, it looks like one of the casualty clearance centres he's worked in. Just bigger. And messier. Because there aren't any hubs or coordination nodes that Riko can see. It doesn't make sense how anything is organised--
He frowns. Something tugs at him.
And all of a sudden the logic jumps into focus. They are not organised around anything because something is coordinating them.
There is a spike of commotion about 20 meters away, where a doctor is struggling with a crashing patient. Instantly, seemingly magically, as if there is some sort of psychic command, three nearby staff immediately drop their tasks and move quickly toward the emergency.
The doctor is still fighting to save his patient's life, but now with the manpower he needs. Around him, there is movement from across the sector as people relocate to step into emptied roles, or spread their attention to encompass their neighbour's patient.
Now he knows what he's looking for, Riko sees it happening in a multiplicity of layers across the entire floor. The scale is boggling.
This isn't anarchy, it's... it's layered and complex, and mathematical and... fuck, Mish would know what to call it. Something impressive. Something with the word stratified in it. And dynamic. She'd make it sound impressive.
This was what the Zenith AI meant.
Hearing about it was one thing. To see it was another.
"Shit," Riko breathes. It's... beautiful.
Now that Riko can see how the place operates, other things jump out at him.
Like how the bare concrete floor and stripped down facilities are overlaid with infrastructure.
Add-on service beams run overhead at regular intervals, sending compact bundles of power and data cables into utility columns that serve each patient sector.
Mobile medical equipment is docked neatly around the base of each column, rapid-charging for the next use, and large overhead status displays show sector loads and incoming casualties.
There are three state-of-the-art modular operating theaters taking up the back of the warehouse, their smooth, pristine shells looking shockingly incongruous in the industrial space.
But for all the elaborate choreography, Riko also takes in the signs of an operation that is severely understaffed.
The staff have the dead-eyed look that speaks of prolonged lack of sleep. Rumpled uniforms. A drone carrying meds and equipment arrives by a patient, and there is no staff to receive it.
Xyller's eyes are wide. "Uhh, Miss AI... where do I go?"
Their dongles chirp. "Standby. Integrating new profiles into operational network."
Riko glances at the flexpad wrapped around his forearm. Like Xyller's and Martenn's, it is scrolling rapidly through their data as the AI plugs them into the network.
Riko glances at the room, and he immediately sees a number of emerging gaps. He responds with body-level memory, his hands already up, snapping on gloves.
He taps Martenn and points him toward a nurse who is wrestling down a flailing soldier. Xyller he sends toward a doctor whose nurse has been pulled elsewhere.
Their dongles chirp. "Assignments confirmed. Proceed." Their flexpads update with patient particulars and assignment details.
A tall doctor is striding across the floor. From the instructions he's calling over his shoulder at a nurse running to keep up, Riko reckons he'll need at least another pair of hands. He steps up next to the nurse and joins their little crew.
The doctor is surprised when he turns and sees Riko.
"Who are you?" he says. His eyebrows go up into a fringe that is lank and greasy. The lines on his forehead are etched deep.
"I, uh, I just came in on the shuttle," Riko says.
“One of Daddy D’s,” the nurse says.
“Oh, right, the civilian deployment…" the doctor says, and there's a note of relief in his voice.
"Right on time. Grab that tray, civi.”
Relevant DVD extras: Jombian Sign language /// No Such Word
Afetrburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸📍Ballet
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Author's note: This is the blasted chapter that I had to rewrite 4 times! But I once I got the POV right, all these additional details and characters started showing up. Which is usually a good sign!
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@deerslayer14 // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump /// @hot-rangers-in-chains /// @genuineformality /// @whumpy-daydreams (I'm so happy the whump distribution system brought us together.)
I'm writing the next chapter in the Afterburn Arc, but these little canon nuggets have been taking up brain space. Nobody asked, but...
⬩Mish gets notoriously hangry when she doesn't eat on time.
⬩Riko has perfect pitch. He picks up the operating sounds of appliances and whistles them back in uncanny imitation. Elevator chimes, ICU machinery, cleaning bots, door code confirmation beeps etc.
⬩But he will never sing or hum in tune. Only whistle. (There's an angsty story waiting in the wings about this.)
⬩Cold Spray is the second time the sock has made an appearance. The first time was in Plant. Blah blah blah allegory for how they are an inseparable pair.
⬩There really are no good pictures of Riko. He's always caught mid-blink, or there's a weird dust speck on the lens messing up the image, or he's caught in a motion blur as if the camera had caught him turning away... EVEN THOUGH HE ABSOLUTELY DIDN'T MOVE. This is canon across all the Rikoverses. (There's also another little fic waiting in the wings that mentions this.)
⬩Riko is an unapologetic liar. He will lie his pants off any time anybody asks anything too personal. Sometimes he'll drop a truth in the middle of the lie, but nobody will know it, because it as unhinged as the other lies he's telling. Eg: that he grew up in the circus. Fact: he DID spend some of his childhood in a travelling circus. His mother was having an affair with a circus staff.
<< Signal War
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@deerslayer14 // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump /// @hot-rangers-in-chains (are you getting enough enrichment? no, really, are you?)
Mish knows what "combative" looks like, when someone is half-sedated and confused and scared out of their mind.
Mish imagines Riko trying to pry himself out the pod, his fingers in a death grip around the lip of the capsule, while multiple gloved hands wrestle him in. Flailing at the people trying to contain him.
Featuring: medical whump, QPR, collapse arc, caretaker angst
CW: Aftermath of medical collapse
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Afterburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ 📍Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet
Unlaced
Mish's hands didn't shake when Riko was seizing. Or when she was holding his head so he wouldn't smash his skull against the tile.
They are shaking now.
She clenches them into fists, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.
She stares at them sternly. Stay still.
All she gets for her effort are shaky fists.
Water is dripping off the ends of her hair.
She squeezes her feet in her shoes, and water squelches up and out of the fabric and onto the dull, grey flooring of her pod.
There is a man in her room.
Grav insists on laying down towels. On the floor. On her seat. “So you won’t have to mop up later,” he says.
His eyes flick up at her, assessing her. She knows the look. The medic checking whether she can adequately care for herself.
"You don't have to do this," she says. "I'm not delicate."
"I know," he says, his hands smoothing out the towels at her feet. "I'd like to, though. Helps me calm down."
His feet are bare. So were Grimma's, come to think of it, when she'd followed the medics who took Riko.
“Do you want me to stay?” Grav asks her. He's still looking up at her from where he’s crouched in front of her chair.
She almost lets out the "no" too quickly. She makes herself pause a microsecond before saying it.
Mish feels so strange, having this hulking man in her room, taking care of her so gently... he's taking up so much space.
She wonders how him and Grimma fit in his room together.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a problem if they’re always occupying the bed—
And here Mish has to press her mouth tight so she doesn’t smile inappropriately.
After everything that has happened, the blood on her clothes, the stupid sock she insisted on holding on to and only just let go of… if she starts smiling like she's tempted to right now, Grav is going to think she’s cracked.
And that would be the funny part. Because she’s not flimsy.
A flash of Riko shuddering under her hands, bleeding onto tile, making choked animal noises-- Fuck.
"No," she says again.
She manages a smile. "Thank you for helping me with Riko. And for taking care of me."
Grav holds her gaze a moment more, looking no less doubtful.
"Grimma will have my hide if I can't convince her that I was absolutely sure you were alright before I left," he says.
"You can tell Grimma I was shaken but finding my footing by the time you left," she says.
And then she simply lets the moment draw itself out. Lets it get uncomfortable.
To his credit, Grav doesn't take the bait. He simply shifts on his haunches and waits her out. He watches, taking in her state. Studying her.
"Okay," he says finally, as if he's completed some internal checklist. He puts his meaty hands on his thighs and pushes himself upright.
"I'll leave you then," he says. "Grimma will be in touch via comms. Is your bud-- oh good, it's charged."
He's looking at the tiny device nestled in its charging slot on her bedside unit, blinking its tiny blue light.
Mish remembers her hands plunged deep in Riko's pockets, wrestling him to search for his comm bud while he squirmed away from her on the floor and insisted, deliriously, that he wasn't ticklish.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If she had brought her own, hadn't left it in her room, she would have gotten help for him sooner, wouldn't have had to drag him out the door...
She remembers the coconut thok his head made when it smacked into the door frame.
She presses her lips together again. She must not laugh. She mustn't.
A deep breath.
"I'll keep it turned on," she promises Grav.
"You should eat," he says, looking at the two food trays on the table. "I haven't had dinner myself, I could keep you company--"
Mish hates waste, but the thought of someone else eating the food she had brought to Riko's door, expecting to eat together and then finding him--
Mish's throat clenches.
It's Riko's. They were supposed to eat together.
"I need to change out of my clothes," she says, trying to sound normal. "I'm getting cold."
She stands up, letting the towel sag off her shoulders. Letting him see the blood on her uniform.
"Ah," he says. "Yes, sorry, you should, I'll let you--"
She feels terrible about the apologetic tone in his voice. She takes the single step forward in her tiny room.
"Thank you," she says softly, her arms wrapping around him. "For everything. You and Grimma both." Her clothes are leaving damp patches on his t-shirt. He is so broad her hands don't meet around his back.
"About that," he says, suddenly sheepish. "I know it's the last thing you should be thinking about, but if you could... you know, about me and Grimma, just--"
Mish pushes off him, and looks at him. The man is blushing.
Blushing.
The tips of his ears are so red she wonders if they'll sizzle if she touches them.
"Only person I'll tell is Riko," she says.
A series of emotions travel over his face, glacier slow, one after another.
Mish watches as he moves from wanting to negotiate, to thinking better of it, to remembering where Riko is right now, to arriving the thought that he might not-- that Riko might actually end up--
He eventually lands on carefully-schooled agreement.
"Okay," he says. "Only Riko."
And then he very kindly adds, "Tell him not to tell anyone else."
As though it's a given that he'll be able to.
Mish feels her throat constrict and her eyes prick at the possibility Grav is inviting her to entertain.
When the door slides shut behind him, Mish stands alone in her pod, staring at the towels on the floor.
She hopes they towel him down properly. He never did like being cold and wet. The time he got splashed by freezing med gel while he was fixing the pressurised goo pipes, he'd whinged about it for hours. Hours.
But of course they are going to keep him wet. They're trying to cool him down. Riko is going to hate it so much.
He's such a baby-- actually not really, he's only a baby with her. It's weird because he's fallen out of a catwalk before and walked it off with a shrug, and when Mish asked why he only whined around her he had said, "I'm only a coward around you--"
She wants to hack into the crit care cameras, to see what's happening. She wants to zoom in to his face, and see if he's awake. To see if he's still seizing, to see what meds they're giving him, maybe she can catch it if they slip up and make a mistake, and she can--
Mish realises she's spiralling. Grimma was right-- she's not a nurse right now. She's terrified, and she scared, and she wants him to be okay. She can't think straight. She just wants him to be okay.
It'll take minutes. All it would take is a minor security override-- She just wants to see if he's awake--
Stop. Stop.
She needs her mind clear. She needs to eat.
She fills her mug full of water and gulps most of it down. And then she trickles the leftover into Riko's plant.
Its leaves are green and perky. To his credit, he'd been watering it ever since she yelled at him about it, and she'd been taking care of it in the days he'd been away outfield.
Her hands are moving mechanically; she pulls out a food tray, sits down and peels the wrapper back. She spoons the food into her mouth. Chews.
Her mind starts to whir.
When she'd seen him at the vending machine, had he already been febrile? He'd certainly been pale. And there was that weird moment it looked like he'd been about to cry.
He'd been aphasic; stumbling over his words. She thought it was just the usual brand of Riko stupidity.
So post-ictal then? How had she missed the signs? She had thought he'd just been tired. Distracted.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How about before his shift in the emergency room?
She remembers how she and Niah and Grimma had been so amused at his clumsiness while he was gowning up, how he didn't see her even though she'd be waving at him. How his fingers had fumbled while he had taken off his medkit and his vest.
The vest.
The one that hadn't been in his pod when she had asked Grav to grab the food trays from Riko's room so she could look inside and check.
His room was small enough that she would have seen it if it'd had been there. The vest with the standard issue field cam strapped on it.
Mish puts down the spoon. She's only halfway through the dinner tray, but it's enough for now.
She had needed the act of eating to ground herself, and enough calories to get her through the next hour. Glucose, so her brain could think and remember and make sense.
The last time she'd seen the vest, Riko had tossed it behind the nurse's counter in the emergency department.
Riko hadn't been okay from the moment he'd stepped through the door.
She's going to find that vest cam, and she's going to find out what happened.
She is putting the tray aside, when there's a knock on her door.
When she opens it, Grimma is standing there. She's still barefoot, still in the towel.
Mish feels an awful wrench inside her chest.
"Is he--?" she starts.
"He's alive," Grimma says quickly.
Not "okay", not "recovering", not even "stable".
Just "alive".
It's not good, but it's better than what she feared she'd hear, after seeing Grimma turn up personally at her door.
Mish lets loose a breath she didn't know she had locked inside her chest.
"I wanted to bring you this," Grimma says. She's holding out a bag. Mish recognises it. The zipped bag they put patients' belongings in. The things that need to be handed over to someone else when a person becomes a patient.
The bag is heavy. The clothes are still wet.
"I brought his boot too," Grimma says, and she bends to retrieve something from the floor, behind the door frame.
Riko's boot, the laces cut. Mish stares at it.
How many shoes has she cut off people and yanked off them as she administered care? Dozens. She does it without second thought.
She hadn't been there, but she knows exactly what it sounded and felt like when they scissored through his laces.
She wonders if he flexed his foot when they pulled it off, the way one of her patients had done last week when she'd pulled off the man's bloody shoe. That patient hadn't survived.
Mish's chin wobbles. Fuck. Fuck.
"Hey," Grimma says, and she steps into the room. She puts the boot on the floor against the cabinet.
"You did so good, finding him when you did," she says, running her arms soothingly up and down Mish's arms. "You gave him a fighting chance."
Mish lets out a strangled noise, which she tries to wrestle down, but she nods. Her hands go tight around the bag of clothes.
"I hit him on the head," she whispers, as if she's in a confessional. "When I was dragging him out the door."
Grimma laughs. "So that's what it was about," she says. "They were putting him under the cooling grid, and he pulled Thea under the spray and told her, 'Mish was mean to me. With the door.'"
Mish smiles, relieved. She can imagine his peevish stage-whisper.
"He woke up? He spoke?"
Grimma's smile fades. "Just for a few seconds," she says. "And then he seized again, and they decided to put him in the cooling pod."
"Shit," Mish says. "So he's--"
"Yeah, induced coma."
"Shit," Mish says again.
There's a strange look on Grimma. It looks out of place on her, instead of her usually unflappable expression.
"What," Mish says. "Tell me."
Grimma looks at her, reluctance evident on her face. "It's not important," she says. "Really it isn't."
"Grimma," Mish says, insistent.
"They... had to submerge him as quickly as possible, and the sedation hadn't kicked in entirely when they put him in. So he was still awake, and..."
Mish takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "He fought."
Grimma nods slowly. "He tried to climb out. It took four med techs to get him in. He was... combative."
Mish knows what "combative" looks like, when someone is half-sedated and confused and scared out of their mind.
"He punched Blonter in the face," Grimma says.
Mish imagines Riko trying to pry himself out the pod, his fingers in a death grip around the lip of the capsule, while multiple gloved hands wrestle him in. Flailing at the people trying to contain him.
She can almost hear his animal sounds of distress as she pictures him pushed forcefully into the freezing goo, imagines his bare feet slipping on the bottom of the pod.
"It's a good thing you weren't there," Grimma says. "It was hard to watch."
"Yeah," Mish says softly.
Did he crane his head back to avoid the oxygen mask? Push his hands against the lid as they closed it on him?
Her hands are starting to cramp with how hard she has them gripped over the bag. She forces them to loosen.
Grimma rubs Mish's arms again. "Do you want me to stay with you?"
Mish shakes her head, and she brings a smile to her face. "You and Grav ask the same questions."
Grimma smiles back. "Speaking of which," she says, looking around the room, as if Grav might somehow be hiding his hefty bulk in her tiny room. "I told him to stay with you. Did the man just leave you by yourself?"
"I made him go," Mish says. "He tried to insist on staying, because he said you'd have his hide if he left me while I wasn't okay."
Grimma smiles, almost proud. "He's a sweet one," she says, and there's a tender look on her face.
"He really is," Mish says. "The both of you are really good together."
Grimma sniffs. "We'll see," she says nonchalantly. But a small smile plays around her mouth.
Mish is still smiling when she glances down at the bag with the clothes. There is pink water collecting in the corner of the bag.
Mish's smile fades, slowly.
Grimma gently taps her arms. “Riko is lucky to have you,” she says. "You really love him, don't you?"
Mish can't help it. She laughs. "I do. But not in that way."
Grimma tilts her head. "What do you mean? Is it just a physical thing? Because Riko has certainly been very vocal about your... activities."
Mish closes her eyes. It feels like an artifact from another lifetime, the ridiculous sex stories Riko has been inflicting on unwilling ears.
"We're not hooking up. We just tell people we are, so things are... easier," Mish says.
It's such a ridiculous thing to be talking about, but Mish feels such a sense of relief sharing it with Grimma. It's like the air she's breathing in is reaching the bottom of her lungs for the first time in hours.
Grimma is shaking her head. "That liar," she says, admiringly. "He had me convinced."
And she looks at Mish, "How did you keep up the lie-- oh, oh wait... You never confirmed or denied anything."
Mish smiles, hiding her teeth.
Grimma is shaking her head. "People will accept the most absurd things when they want to believe."
Mish grins. "If you tell anyone, I will leak your secret. About Grav."
Grimma looks at her with new respect. "Never pegged you for the crafty sort. You sly little minx."
They laugh gently into the moment. Mish feels a warmth rising up in her chest. It feels good that someone else knows.
"Okay," Grimma says. "I'm heading off. I'm available on comms if you need anything."
Mish nods, and walks her to the door.
"They will contact you if there are any updates on Riko," Grimma says, as she slides open the door.
And she stands there for a beat, her back still to Mish.
"Mish," she says slowly. "I don't know if I should be telling you this." And she turns.
The expression on her face is careful. "I figure they'll talk to you soon enough, since you're listed as his emergency contact..."
Mish cocks her head.
"You know Doctor Sorren? The one I used to date?"
Mish nods, recalling a tall, ice-blonde doctor, who had been devastated when Grimma dumped him.
"Sorren says they found something odd in his bloodwork."
Mish frowns. "How odd?"
"Odd enough that they ordered more tests," Grimma says.
"Do you think that was what made Riko crash?" Mish says.
Grimma shrugs. "That's all Sorren said. I just wanted to give you a heads up."
Mish nods, and Grimma is gone.
Afterburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ 📍Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Note: Sorry the follow up to this arc has taken a while! The story decided it didn't want to just be a recovery arc and exploded by way of chapters. And at one point I came up against my usual writing nemesis, the dreaded POV monster. I rewrote the beginning of one chapter FOUR times before it finally clicked. Anyway this part isn't very whumpy, but I hope it's still enjoyable.
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@new-deerslayer // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump /// @hot-rangers-in-chains /// @genuineformality /// @whumpy-daydreams (hello my darlings, I missed you so. Now say it back.)
She looks up at him, concerned. "Riko, that's not the... you're pressing the wrong button."
"Wha-?" he says, and he brings his finger up and looks at it as if it's the problem.
Note: If the previous chapter had you saying "how? what? why?", this chapter will regrettably NOT answer all your questions, but it WILL bring Mish into the picture! Sorrryyyyyy
Mish isn't supposed to be on shift, but like half the staff, she'd been jolted awake by the facility-wide announcement and pulled onto the emergency floor to help with the sudden influx of patients being directed to Hollowroot.
Almost all the staff have been activated, and they've even opened up the additional wing, something Mish has never seen before.
The emergency wing is in full overwhelm. Staff stride through the chaos and noise of patients in pain and confusion. Blood is being tracked across the flooring, so much so that the disinfection bot is having trouble keeping up.
By the time Mish arrives at the triage bay she's assigned, the patient has been stabilised, but they still need extra hands to finish up.
"Do you know what happened?" she asks Niah.
Behind her blood-speckled visor, Niah's soft features draw together. "Traffic drones went bonkers and crashed into the transit grid during peak hour."
"Fifty-three confirmed injuries," Grimma says. "And more coming, according to Grav."
"Shit," Mish breathes.
Niah leans toward Mish. "They're saying it was an attack. That it was retaliation for the military action at--"
Grimma interrupts her. "We don't have any confirmed information, so let's not speculate."
Niah nods amiably. "I'm just worried about Riko. Isn't he attached to some military outfit? Do you know if he's ok?"
Mish keeps her eyes on the patient's vitals. Her hands move with certainty. "Yeah, ten days outfield. He's back today."
Grimma glances up from her data pad. "Do you know who the team lead is?"
Mish's looks to the ceiling, just for a second, as she tries to remember. "Someone called Hallen? Halden?"
"Oh," Niah says. And Mish catches it when her eyes flick over to Grimma. Grimma's lips are pressed together.
"What?" Mish says.
"I heard his operation is... intense," Niah says carefully.
"He burns through people like jet fuel," Grimma says bluntly.
Niah glances at Mish. "But Riko was a field medic on the frontlines. So he's used to that sort of pace, right?"
Mish's hands slow. She's not worried. Is she?
She's seen him at work. He acts like an idiot half the time, but he works like a beast. She can't imagine him not being able to handle anything. This guy, Hallen, Halden, whatever, he couldn't run Riko down if he tried.
Mish shrugs. "Riko will be fine. He's like a roach. Unsquashable."
"Mish!" Niah exclaims, shocked. "That's mean!"
Mish grins. "It's not mean if it's true."
"Speak of the devil," Grimma says, jerking her chin at the entrance of the emergency room.
Riko is standing there, being briefed by someone in scrubs. He's in his field uniform, looking more washed out than usual, but fine otherwise. His kit is strapped onto him in that peculiar way he has always insisted was "better".
"Mish, Mishy, Mish, look, let me show you, it's so much more ergonomic if you strap it on like this."
A quick series of clicks as he deftly secured the buckles. "See? If you tighten this strap, then thread this strap to this part..."
Riko pushed the furniture aside to create space in the nap lounge so he could bounce in place, showing her how securely it was fastened on to his body.
"Look! No shifting. No jouncing. And like this, the straps even hold the vest cam more securely.” He waggled his shoulders enthusiastically.
“Secure! Fashionable! Aaaand if you need to run--" and here he emulated a ridiculous, lurching gait across the room, "you can pull your next injector like this-- and deploy it like this--"
He swung the injector through the air in a wide arc, making an epic swishing noise at the same time.
Mish had looked up from where she was sprawled on the couch, her data pad propped on her stomach. She sighed. "When would I ever need to be primed for frontline medicine?"
Riko stopped running on the spot, and his face flickered strangely. The good humour slipped from his expression.
Without looking, he slowly unbuckled his kit, the one he hadn't used since he'd last been outfield.
"Frontline deployments suck," he said quietly. "I'm glad you’ll never have to use any of my field hacks."
He pulled it off and looked at it for a beat, his thumb rubbing absently over a rust-coloured stain on a strap.
Mish looked at him, her face carefully neutral. And then, “Didn’t you come to the nap room to take a nap?”
A slow smile spread lopsidedly across Riko’s face. “A nap room. For napping. That’s crazy. What other insane facilities are there here?”
He tossed the kit onto the table, then sprawled himself onto the couch with his head on her lap. He had grinned up at her from under her data pad, and to his credit, had obeyed when she warned him not to distract her.
She’d been surprised that he fell asleep while she worked, only jerking awake when she accidentally dropped her stylus on his face.
“You're the world’s most violent alarm clock,” he had groused, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
The senior med is talking to him, and now Riko is being pointed to one of the trauma bays. He nods.
"See," Mish says, "He's fine."
"He does look okay," Niah says, relieved.
Riko unbuckles his vest and med bag, fingers fumbling slightly. He slings both behind the nurse's station. As he rolls up his sleeves, he glances around the triage floor. It takes him a couple of beats to find her even though she’s waving at him.
His eyes scrunch up when he sees her. He smooches the palm of his hand, and lobs the imaginary kiss in an overhand toss, over and above the mayhem.
She pretends to smack it out of the air. Grinds it underfoot.
He shows her the middle finger. She shows it back.
"Told you. Roach," Mish says.
"Aww, not a roach,” Niah says. “Maybe one of those cute little bugs, like, like a--"
"Stink bug."
"Mish!"
Riko gowns up, and here he has trouble with threading his arms through the armholes of the flimsy garment.
“You sure your boy is ok, Mish?” Grimma says, sounding bemused.
Niah makes a sympathetic noise. “He must be really tired.”
“Or malfunctioning,” Mish sighs.
The three of them watch him struggle with the garment as if it’s trying to eat him alive.
When he finally wrestles it into submission, he lifts his head to see the three of them watching him. Mish shakes her head slowly at him, deeply unimpressed.
He jerks two thumbs up at them with a grin, bright and stupid.
Mish rolls her eyes. “He’s only mine when he’s not being a toddler.”
Still, Mish keeps her eye on him as he threads his way through bedlam, almost tripping over the cleaner drone trying to trundle past. He squares his shoulders just as he is absorbed into the chaos of his assigned triage bay.
++++++++
Six hours later, Mish pulls off her gloves and tosses them into the bin, wandering out of the triage wing with the rest of the staff who had been pulled in to help handle the worst of the emergency overflow.
She finds Riko in the corridor, leaning his head against the vending machine. He looks deflated, his disposable scrubs crumpled and hanging off him as if he had tried to take it off and given up.
"Are they out of your favourite candy again?" she asks, pulling off her scrub cap.
He turns to her, and she's taken aback by how awful he looks. The bags around his eyes are so dark as to look like bruises, and his skin looks grey and parchment-like.
He grimaces at her in what she thinks is an attempted grin. "I can't get it out. It's right there, but the button doesn't work."
She leans over and looks at the button he's been pressing. His finger is pressed against the "cancel order" button.
She looks up at him, concerned. "Riko, that's not the... you're pressing the wrong button."
"Wha-?" he says, and he brings his finger up and looks at it as if it's the problem.
Mish leans across him and presses the button for RarrJuice, and a neon purple packet falls out of the machine.
She picks it up and hands it to him. "That bad, huh. The field deployment."
His hand closes over the packet, brushing hers. His skin is dry and rough, and his fingers stutter close over the packet in a strange, delayed way. As if he's a badly executed stop-motion animation.
"What? No. The vacation was absolutely lovely. Excellent accommodation. Gorgeous views. Superb entertainment. 10/10."
Again, that stilted grimace.
He looks at the candy in his hand, and his hand falls to his side. "Thanks, Squirrel," he exhales.
His shoulders sag further, and even the gown seems to hang lower on his frame. "I'm too tired to... to whatever."
"You look it," she says, frowning. "Go back to your pod. Sleep. You have a couple of hours before dinner."
His voice is flat and colourless. “That shift was hellshish— shellhish— ugh, it was bad. Super bad.”
Mish looks at him, taking in the off-kilter stance, the strange, almost-wince on his face. "Hey, tell you what, I'll grab you a tray and we can eat in your pod. No need to queue, sit in a crowd, or talk to people."
He's looking at her blankly.
"Riko?"
He blinks hard. Licks his lips. He looks like he wants to cry. She has never seen Riko cry.
He blinks again, squinching his eyes hard. "Yes," he says.
And then he looks at the candy in his hand, and his eyebrows go up in surprise, as if he's seeing it for the first time.
"Oh hey, look, guess the vending machine does work."
Afterburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ 📍F is for Functional ▸ Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet (ongoing)
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@deerslayer14 // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump // @hot-rangers-in-chains
A blood print in the shape of his profile stains the floor where his face had been pressed. Mish tries not to dwell on it.
And then a thought ambushes her: I have no good pictures of him. He looks so stupid in all of them.
Featuring: QPR, collapse arc, panicking caretaker, medical whump, medic whumpee, whumperless whump, reference to absurdly impossible imaginary sexual acts
CW: Exhaustion, febrile state, mental confusion, seizure, nose bleed
Note: Cracking my whump-authoring knuckles. Alright, strap in. Here we go.
Afterburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ 📍Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet (ongoing)
Something Stupid
The dorm corridors are uncharacteristically quiet. After dinner, they will fill with people socialising outside their pods, but for now, everybody is at the cafeteria getting their allotted calories.
Any other time, and she’d be trying not to trip over bodies leaning against walls with their legs stretched out into the walkway. Accosted by smirking people leaning out of their doors to comment on the food trays she’s carrying.
“Dinner with the boyfriend?” they’d say with a suggestive eyebrow waggle.
And Riko, doing pull-ups on his door frame, would snatch up the opportunity to yell back something stupid like, “Dinner and a good boink!"
Once, she'd come upon Riko physically blocking his next-door neighbour from escaping while explaining: "...and tonight we're trying out the Priest and Succubus Dalliance. If you smell sulphur and hear me screaming in Latin through the walls, don’t save me! It means the good part is coming up.”
The neighbour had looked at her with growing desperation, mouthing silently, "...help me."
If Mish had known he'd have so much fun when she asked him to pretend they were together, she would have asked him sooner.
And she has to admit, it has been absurdly effective. Nobody has tried to hit on either of them anymore. People have also stopped asking for details on their relationship, because Riko treats every question as an invitation to launch into one of his increasingly elaborate stories about their imaginary sex life. According to his tales, they are both world-class gymnasts.
The corridors are white and empty now. No slouching bodies to dodge, nobody to interrupt her forward momentum with bids for meaningless conversation. Nobody to trigger Riko's unhinged story-telling.
The trays are too unwieldy to hold in anything less than a two-handed grasp, so she doesn’t try to key the code to Riko's pod. Simply taps the door with her foot.
"Riko. It's me. Dinner." She waits.
Nothing.
"Come on, Riko, my hands are full. Open the door." Another series of taps. Harder now.
She frowns when the door remains unopened. He's never been a heavy sleeper; he must be wiped to be sleeping through this.
Still, she feels aggrieved as she shifts the trays so they're wedged between her torso and her arm, and starts entering the code to his room with the other hand.
"I'm coming in. If you're naked you better cover up your dangly bits," she says, as the door slides open.
It's dim and humid in his room.
He's on his cot, still asleep, his back to the door. His shirt is twisted half up his torso, and the bumps of his spine are visible in the low light.
She frowns, noting his weight loss. Good thing he isn't skipping dinner today, then. Not with her watching out for him.
She almost trips over his bag, which is laying on its side, discarded in the middle of the floor.
She hisses in annoyance, catching herself just in time not to send the trays to the floor.
She sets them on the counter a little louder than she has to.
"Riko. Dinner. Look, I even got you a pudding cup." She kicks his bag against the wall with her foot, making room.
He remains on his side, his ribs rising and falling visibly from where she is.
"Come on, Riko, you don't have to finish it all, but eat a couple of bites at least."
He still isn't responding.
His breath is whistling faintly. It reminds her of those overbred puppies with the squashed up faces. As a kid, her neighbour had one of those. And Riko sounds exactly like it.
A peculiar whistling grunt. Or grunty whistle.
"Come on, quit snoring. Eat now, sleep after."
His blanket is tangled at the bottom of the bed, and a socked foot hangs off the edge of the cot. His other foot still has its boot on.
It's the boot that makes her pause. Too messy, even for him. And, now that she thinks about it… in all the time she's known him, she’s never seen him sleep with his back to the door.
It only takes the few steps to reach him, and it gets warmer as she approaches. He's radiating heat into the air.
She puts a knee on the cot next to his hip and leans over his body to look at his face. It is half-shadowed, angled toward the wall. His chin is tucked towards his chest and his hair is plastered with sweat against his forehead.
Her brain can't make sense of what she's seeing-- because--
She freezes.
His face is painted red. Blood has fanned out over the side of his face, slicked down his neck to pool under his ear and jaw. His collar and the fabric covering his shoulder are entirely soaked with it.
There's even blood spattered on the wall, streaking down in thick red lines.
There's an instant where her mind is completely blank. A long, suspended moment where she studies the blood on the wall, sees how it's gone tacky, and how every streak gathers at the end in a tiny bead.
And then reality slams back. Time moves again.
She grabs his shoulder. "Riko--" It's so unnaturally hot that her hand springs open again, as if she's been scorched.
He flinches under her touch.
“Watch out,” he mutters darkly. “Everything smells like… metal…” His eyes flicker, but don't open fully.
She curses. She pulls at him so he's face up. He makes a noise like an animal in pain, and his eyebrows draw together. She pats his face urgently.
"Riko, shit, you’re really warm. Can you hear me?"
He blinks slowly. His eyes are glossy, too bright. "Mm," he says, like his brain is processing what she's said, instead of cooking inside the oven of his skull.
He's so hot. She can feel the heat of his face radiating through the space between them, prickling her skin through the fabric of her uniform.
She scrambles off the cot, goes to his sink. Drenches his face-towel in water and drapes it, dripping, over his forehead. He hisses like it is scalding him, lurching away from her. His hands are up, trying to push it off his face.
"Stop it," he mutters. "Not funny."
He bats at her hands, and she catches the towel before it can hit the floor. It's already warm.
Again, at the sink. She soaks the towel again, replacing the heat of the towel with cold water.
Her hands are shaking.
This time, when she places it over his neck, he jerks violently away from her.
"Hey hey hey," he says. "Fr' real, stop--" He tries to pull the towel off his neck, and keeps missing. By the time he finally makes contact and yanks it off him, the towel has lost all its coolness.
Mish holds it in her hand, staring at the fabric that has pinked with blood, taking in the speed at which the towel picked up his heat.
She puts her hand to his forehead, and then his neck. They are marginally cooler. But heating up again. So quickly.
Shit. Shit. His brain is going to turn to mush.
"Whoa," he says, squirming under her touch. "Wear your gloves, man."
She lets the towel drop to the cot, and starts tugging at him instead.
"Riko, get up. I need to get you to the showers."
She manages to wrangle him into a sitting position. His hair is matted with blood on one side, standing stiffly up in a way that would have made her laugh if she wasn't so scared. He wobbles precariously, gripping the edges of the bed.
“Hm,” he says, thoughtfully. As if the change in altitude has given him something important to consider.
He’s upright for all of two seconds, and then he starts tipping over the other side.
"Oop," he says, bemused.
She grabs him before he can fall fully on his side. Props him upright again and holds his face between her hands.
He watches her placidly.
"Riko, listen to me," she says, "I need you to help me, I need you to stand on three? Okay?"
He blinks slowly, beyond understanding. He looks at her as if her face is a puzzle and he's missing a piece.
She wedges her shoulder under his armpit-- so hot-- and counts to three, tugging him up with her hand around his waistband.
To his credit, he manages to get a foot under himself-- and then his knees fold, and he brings her down with him.
She slams into the ground with her shoulder, the impact knocking a grunt out of her. Riko is face down next to her. He mutters something low and quizzical into the floor.
She shoves herself up. Her shoulder twinges, and she knows it’s going to bruise later. But she barely registers it.
She needs to move him. She needs to call for help.
Her comm bud. She pats her pockets frantically, trying to locate it on her person.
Nothing.
And she remembers leaving it to charge on her bedside unit. She hadn't thought to bring it with her. Why would she? She was off-duty.
Riko's comm device. She has to find it so she can call for help.
She pats him down aggressively, pushing her hands into his pockets and rooting around inside them.
She hears him chuckle weakly. "I'm not ticklish. I'm not. Stop."
She pushes off the floor and goes hunting for it. All the room surfaces are empty of the small device. She pulls open his drawers. Nothing.
She even rummages through his med kit. Not there.
She kneels by him, putting her head low next to his. His hair has fallen over his eyes. She pushes it back so he can see her.
"Riko," she says urgently. "Your comm bud. Where is it?"
He blinks. His mouth is squashed sideways against the floor.
"Um," he says.
"Your comm bud," she repeats, as patiently as she can.
His mouth moves, mushed as it is by the position of his face on the floor. "It's..." he says. "It's the thingy... you put it in your ear." And he brings up his hand and taps the side of his head.
"...it's for talk-- for talky--"
"I know what it is, Riko. Where is it."
He frowns. "What? Where is what?"
Her desperation makes her clutch at him. "Riko! Pay attention! Where is your comm bud!"
He looks suddenly awake. "Whoa," he says, like he's trying to calm down a rampaging animal. "So cranky."
He pats her knee comfortingly. "Eat something," he suggests kindly.
His hand is hot against her knee. She's losing time.
She looks around frantically, her mind in overdrive. Her gaze snags on indigo fabric on his cot.
The blanket!
She yanks it off the cot, snaps it open on the floor, and rolls Riko brusquely onto it. He's a dead weight, all knees and elbows.
A blood print in the shape of his profile stains the floor where his face had been pressed. Mish tries not to dwell on it.
And then a thought ambushes her: I have no good pictures of him. He looks so stupid in all of them.
She gives herself a sharp shake and grabs the edge of the fabric. Starts hauling him toward the door. It hisses open and she lurches through.
A dull thwok resounds on the doorway behind her as his head smacks into it.
“Ow,” he says, mildly. The sound of a child surprised that physics can hurt.
She manages to pull him halfway out into the corridor. In the bright light of the hallway, he looks even worse. The blood on his face stands out starkly against the strange pallor of his skin. His pulse thrums against the skin of his throat, too fast.
The door hisses, starts to close on his body. Bumps into his midsection, hisses open again.
She tries to get him around the door. She can't.
She crouches by him, panting. Slaps his cheek.
"Riko. Riko."
A sharp inhale. He looks at her, eyes glassy. "Mish..."
His face folds slowly into concern. "What’s wrong? You okay?"
His hand finds her wrist, wrapping burning fingers around it.
“Riko, I need you to get up. Now.”
He frowns. "Now?"
The door hisses again, bumps into his side.
He looks down, annoyed. Slurring, "Hey, stop. Bad Mr. Shark, you can't--"
She pulls at him, "Riko! Get up! Now!"
His gaze swings up to her again. She can see his eyes drifting.
"Geez, okay," he mutters. "I'm coming."
He rolls slowly, Mish pushing to help. He shifts his shoulder to put an elbow against the floor. Pauses.
“Heh,” he says. His mouth quirks up in a half-smile, and he purses his lips, as if he's about to say something stupid.
"Riko, don't," Mish snaps.
"Nnn-" His eyes roll back in his head, and he goes down.
"Riko!"
His jaw clenches, a low sound caught in his throat.
He starts to seize.
Afterburn Arc: Purgatory ▸ F is for Functional ▸ 📍Something Stupid ▸ Cold Spray ▸ Unlaced ▸ Charmed ▸ Ballet (ongoing)
<< Main Masterlist << Signal War
Note: How many times can a person seize before their brain melts? Dunno 🤷🏻♀️ Let's all just pretend medicine is magic. OooOOoooOOooo magic.
Taglist (comment or DM to be added or removed): @stars-hide-our-fires // @hueningplushie //@deerslayer14 // @elvenarcane // @thelazywitchphotographer // @ziploc849 // @whumpacabra // @withdrawingramen // @starlit-hopes-and-dreams // @deadbvcky // @pumpkin-spice-whump // @hot-rangers-in-chains (mmm, you smell so nice)
