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@febuwhump day eighteen: time loop
Fandom: Twisted Wonderland
Relationship(s): Ace + Deuce, Ace + Riddle
Genre: Gen
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Further Warnings: Headaches + Migraines, minor throwing up
Rating: General Audiences
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
microcest prompt no. 040 - time loop
January 1st, 2025
Microcest: Weekly Multifandom Shipcest Microfic Prompts
Info / AO3 / Over 1k?: @macrocest / Oops Not Shipcest / @shipcestroleplay
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Daredevil (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson Characters: Matt Murdock, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson Additional Tags: Pre-Slash, Time Loop, Episode: s01e10 Nelson v. Murdock, Angst, Suicidal Thoughts, Happy Ending Series: Part 4 of Bad Things Happen Bingo Summary:
Matt finds himself stuck in a time loop after his argument with Foggy.
--
For my @badthingshappenbingo square “Time Loop”
Again and Again and Again
@badthingshappenbingo
Also on AO3
Prompt: Time Loop Fandom: Original Content Warnings: Blood, Mentions of paralysis, Fire, Burned bodes, Falling from a great height
When consciousness- or at least, it’s close, belligerent cousin- whacked Blaize over the head in a violent reintroduction into the waking world, he wished he could return to the blissful darkness that had been the result of… Something, he wasn’t sure what. Whatever it was, though, it left him with surprisingly little in the way of a headache, which he was not going to complain about.
Voices filtered in around him and he sighed, “I’m fine, I’m fine, not even a headache, what happened?”
The voices continued on, never breaking the flow of the conversation. Blaize opened his eyes and finally looked around, frowning deeply as he discovered himself in their old command room which had most assuredly been regulated to… He wasn’t sure. Something that Tatsumaki and Cala took care of.
What was even more unusual was the fact that his whole team was there, standing around a table that had long since been moved to the new command center.
“Guys?”
Again, the voices ignored him and Blaize finally pulled his attention up to the people in the room: Cala by the table, Daine lurking in the corner and- Tatsumaki, standing…
Blaize’s brain stuttered to a halt because Tatsumaki was standing.
This had to be some sort of hallucination, it had to be. It’d been months since the- since Tatsumaki- since they’d learned that the swordsman would never walk again, not without magic. Months since he’d been taken from them and left in Allen’s less-than-tender care, months since Blaize had begged Fallon to Turn Tatsumaki into a monster.
It had been months. At least a year, he thought, though he didn’t pay much heed to dates anymore. Not since Tatsumaki had taken over as secretary, negating the need for Blaize to even know what day of the week it was.
“Blaize, I don’t know if this is a good idea…” Cala was frowning at the map spread over the table.
That felt far too familiar, but before Blaize could answer, he heard his own voice dismiss her concerns, “Tatsumaki and whoever from Captain d’Myles’s team can handle it.”
“But they’ll be right-”
“They can handle it. Can’t you?”
Blaize didn’t have to turn around to know that the question was aimed at Tatsumaki. He remembered this. This was the day of the… It was the day.
He turned around anyway and came face-to-face with himself, looking distinctly annoyed and staring down the Japanese swordsman as if Tatsumaki couldn’t cut him in half in a blink.
Except Tatsumaki would never and the young man simply bowed instead.
Blaize wanted to scream.
He did. It did no good. He tried reaching for himself, to perhaps shake sense into him or just stop him from giving the order.
It didn’t work.
Darkness rose up around him like water and Blaize instinctively held his breath, but aside from a harsh cold, the darkness didn’t come remotely close to hurting him. It just surrounded him until he thought he would freeze solid and then it deposited him back into warmth and light and noise.
Blaize found himself standing next to a crouched Tatsumaki, soot streaked across one side of his face and blood on the other. His dark eyes were narrowed at something behind Blaize and he turned around on instinct, swearing softly as he took in the sight of the burning building and the scorched bodies in front of it.
“Is this what happened, Tatsu? What weren’t you willing to tell us?” Like before, Blaize’s voice had no apparent effect and he groaned.
Tatsumaki stiffened then, but he still didn’t look at Blaize. His attention was drawn to his left, to the investigator crouched there, soot smearing brown hair and Blaize still didn’t remember their name.
“We have to go in there.”
Tatsumaki looked from them to the building and then back, frowning, “It is going to collapse.”
His accent was thicker here, the ‘l’s not pronounced quite as fluidly and it was something Blaize never noticed and probably never would have if not for this.
“But we have to make sure the summoning is stopped!”
Tatsumaki gave the flames another look and Blaize could read everything in just his face alone, “The building will collapse.”
“We have to be sure,” and then the investigator was off and Tatsumaki was left looking surprised. He grabbed for his phone, dialing it as he stood to jog after the investigator.
Blaize heard his own voice on the other end of the line, just like he knew it would be, “What?”
“The building is on fire-”
“So? Finish the job and then come back.”
“Atherton-” Tatsumaki’s accent on his name had bothered him at one point and Blaize didn’t know when Tatsumaki had made a clear effort to ‘fix’ that. He shouldn’t have had to. Blaize swallowed against the spike of regret.
“Just finish the job.”
Tatsumaki hesitated and the phone clicked, line disconnected. Blaize had thought he had better things to do at the time. He hadn’t thought to listen, and Tatsumaki…
He hadn’t known what happened then, but he supposed he was about to find out, pulled behind the swordsman by something he couldn’t see or touch. It felt almost like rope around his waist.
Tatsumaki set his phone down on the sidewalk across from the building, “You will survive here, and hopefully bring others.”
Blaize looked around, but it seemed like Tatsumaki was talking to the little device he left on the sidewalk. He even patted it once before he turned and darted into the burning building, following the investigator that had long since vanished from sight.
Blaize followed, throat tightening in an instinctive reaction to the fire, though it produced no heat.
Not to him, at least. Tatsumaki, on the other hand, flinched away from the flames and after a brief hesitation, tossed his katana back onto the sidewalk where Blaize knew they’d find it later, miraculously untouched by the rubble. The blue lacquered sheath wouldn’t even bear scratches, though the same could not be said for its owner.
"Tatsu, I was wrong. Please just get out of the building.”
As before, the young man showed no sign of hearing him, calling out between coughs for the investigator. He stopped after a couple of calls and listened intently- and Blaize did the same. Above the crackling and hissing of the flames came an answering call that devolved into a scream.
Tatsumaki hit the stairs running.
Blaize jerked in surprise and followed him up- though it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter, not with the sudden constriction around his waist. He was surprised to find himself keeping up. He’d forgotten in the intervening year just how fast Tatsumaki had been. The reminder made his heart ache.
The floor creaking dangerously beneath them made his heart stop. Tatsumaki ignored the warning, leaping over a sudden hole in the floor with a move that looked far too practiced and far too complicated to replicate. Blaize, at least, could never get to that level of athleticism.
He was pretty sure he didn’t even want to try.
“Tatsu, please, please listen to me. Let’s leave. Turn around. This doesn’t do anything! They still die, and you-”
Tatsumaki showed no sign of hearing him and deftly dodged around a gout of flame that looked suspiciously humanoid in shape. It seemed like the swordsman recognized his as well because as soon as he was past the creature, his pace picked up. There was nothing in here to use as a weapon- everything was actively burning or too hot to touch and Blaize wanted nothing more than to go back to being ignorant.
He couldn’t feel the heat from these flames, but Tatsumaki’s fair skin was getting darker and the welts that appeared on his arms hadn’t been there before. He was slowly burning alive in here, searching for the other investigator to do as Blaize told him.
Blaize didn’t deserve that dedication.
He wasn’t sure that anyone did.
He swallowed a soft curse as Tatsumaki climbed higher into the building and stumbled over the first charred body. The swordsman also uttered something that sounded like a swear, albeit on that Blaize didn’t recognize, and knelt down to see if there were any identifying marks on the blackened skin or clothes.
He moved on when he couldn’t find any but Blaize lingered, looking at the distorted features, searching for even the slightest glint of a badge that would mean that this was the investigator.
No such luck. What he saw instead was the eyelids peeling back to reveal empty sockets, eyes destroyed by the flames- which should be impossible, the building couldn’t be that hot, Tatsumaki was still running through it- and the fragile skin tearing as the person moved.
Blaize shouted a warning before he could stop himself, but Tatsumaki was already gone and the invisible rope at his waist demanded that Blaize follow now. He gave one last look to the shambling, charred corpse- it had to be a corpse, no one could, no one should be moving around like that- and let the rope guide him as he sprinted away.
He caught up to Tatsumaki on the top floor as the swordsman stumbled to a stop, caught off-guard by the gruesome sight within.
Blaize was beginning to see why Tatsumaki had refused to tell them anything.
The investigator was dead, half of their face just gone, and their left arm blackened up to the elbow and twisted completely around.
The right arm was being chewed on by something that Blaize really thought shouldn’t be able to move even with magic- something scorched nearly to the bone but still moving like the tendons and ligaments that enabled movement were still attached and functioning.
Tatsumaki flinched back as the chewing stopped and the thing twisted around to look up at him, what little skin remained on its cheek sloughing off. They remained perfectly still in a stalemate until the skin hit the floor and then the thing lunged over the investigator’s body, an unholy screech coming from lungs burned beyond recognition.
When Blaize got back to his own time, the real world, he knew he’d be having nightmares from this. Gods above knew that Tatsumaki already was, and with good reason.
And, fuck. He’d been mocking them just yesterday, claiming a mental superiority because a fire shouldn’t have been that scary, not when Tatsumaki barely had any burns.
Which…actually didn’t make sense. Blaize frowned as he watched Tatsumaki dodge the creature- the swordsman had some minor burns but nothing compared to the thing chasing after him, nothing even compared to the investigator, who’s skin was slowly charring as they lay.
Then Tatsumaki’s dark eyes flashed white and the flames licking the corner of the room vanished, taking with them the smoke that had been steadily gathering, smoke that Blaize hadn’t really noticed until it was gone.
“Tatsu, what the fuck?!”
Predictably, he didn’t answer, still darting away from the corpse. It had slowed when the flames vanished but didn’t cease, driven by something relentless that Blaize couldn’t sense.
He rather thought that Tatsumaki could, though, given the way he seemed to be searching the room as he played keep-away with a monster. It persisted like that for a few moments, until Tatsumaki dove for a particularly blackened patch of ground pulled a pocketknife from somewhere and slammed it blade-deep into the floor.
Immediately, the room crackled with energy, loud and bright and violent, and Tatsumaki stumbled back as the floor heaved. Behind him, the creature made one final lunge and then crumbled into dust, as did the blackened parts of the investigator.
Tatsumaki looked at the glowing circle expanding from the knife and then at the doorway on the opposite of it.
Blaize didn’t need knowledge of the future to know that Tatsumaki wasn’t going to make it.
He tried anyway.
Blaize watched the ground crumble away in slow motion, watched Tatsumaki lose his footing and fall, watched the remnants of the floor follow him, pocketknife suspended in a free fall. The blade caught the light in a way that might’ve been pretty in any other situation and Blaize stared at it so he wouldn’t have to look at Tatsumaki’s expression.
The collapse of the building itself became a distraction when the knife was obscured by debris and he watched in horrified fascination as the walls screamed and cracked and tumbled down. None of it touched him as he and Tatsumaki plummeted.
The fall took forever, and the landing was…
It was quiet. Blaize couldn’t hear the rumbling of the collapse anymore, he couldn’t hear anything.
“Tatsu? Tatsu, please give me a sign that you aren’t dead.”
The ruined room they were in remained stubbornly silent.
Blaize gave himself one more minute to listen for the slightest hint of the swordsman and when nothing came, he started picking his way across the rubble, careful not to touch anything that he didn’t have to- and being unsurprised when his presence did <i>nothing</i> to disrupt the scene.
He could still feel the invisible rope around his waist, but it had gone limp and gave him nothing but a vague direction.
It was enough, and Blaize regretted his search as soon as he found Tatsumaki.
The swordsman was unconscious, blood trickling from his forehead and painting too-pale face in a garish red. His left arm was obviously dislocated, pulled into an unnatural angle and covered in scratches.
All of Tatsumaki was covered in scratches, actually. Scratches and dust, blood and soot.
And Blaize couldn’t see any sign of the most damning part of all of this. No one would, not for many hours, not until a weary surgeon came out and asked for his next of kin and told them all that Tatsumaki had two crushed vertebrae and would never walk again. The investigators at the scene could only speculate that he’d hit something going down.
Blaize was inclined to agree with them now, except that Tatsumaki hadn’t hit anything on the way down. He’d just hit the ground, landed on top of uneven and jagged rubble and that had been it.
He wouldn’t have even been inside if not for Blaize.
Blaize swallowed this thought and settled down beside Tatsumaki, prepared to wait with him until the paramedics arrived. It wasn’t like there was anything else to to-
-except darkness washed over him, as bitterly cold as before and deposited him outside a burning building, next to a Japanese swordsman and a young investigator.
This time, he was close enough to read the name printed on the investigator’s little name badge.
Jordan Parker.
That was their name.
Blaize committed it to memory as he reached out, “Guys, don’t go in there, there’s-”
“We have to go in there.”
Tatsumaki looked from them to the building and then back, frowning, “It is going to collapse.”
Blaize swallowed down sudden nausea at the repeated lines, voices and tone identical to what felt like only an hour before.
“But we have to make sure the summoning is stopped!”
Blaize didn’t need to look at Tatsumaki’s face this time, “The building will collapse.”
“We have to be sure,” and the investigator- Jordan- was gone, sprinting towards the building.
Blaize swallowed again, throat tight, and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to watch this again.
The rope around his waist tightened and he didn’t move until it tightened to the point of pain, until it gave him no choice but to follow.
So he followed, but he kept his eyes shut.
It didn’t stop him from hearing Tatsumaki call him, from hearing him set his phone down and toss his katana away from the fire, from hearing Tatsumaki’s footsteps just beneath the roar of the flames.
Somehow, the noise was worse without his sight.
He heard Tatsumaki yell for the investigator, he heard the scream, the sizzle of the fire thing that lurked on the ground floor, the groaning of the building itself.
He couldn’t watch this again.
Something cold and almost sharp forced his eyelids open in time to watch Tatsumaki kneel down next to the first blackened body.
Blaize prayed for Tatsumaki to turn back, to see the thing move, to get out of there.
He watched instead as Tatsumaki headed for the stairs again.
He saw the investigator’s body again, only this time, he had a name for them. He saw Jordan Parker’s body again.
And the thing munching on Jordan’s leg.
He watched it lunge at Tatsumaki, watched the swordsman lead it around in his final dance, watched Tatsumaki pull out the knife from absolutely nowhere, watched him destroy the magic Blaize still couldn’t feel.
Watched him tumble with the floor.
The pressure on his eyes made sure he watched Tatsumaki hit the ground, four stories below.
It released him to the unnerving quiet and Blaize wished that he could hear anything- or that someone could hear him, but the building, what little remained of it, was empty of the living save for Tatsumaki and himself.
And even then, who knew if he was even alive? He was beginning to wonder.
The darkness arose again and this time, it wasn’t a surprise.
It deposited him back beside Tatsumaki, just in time to hear himself order the swordsman to finish the job.
If nothing else, he wished that he could smack himself for that, for starting the avalanche that would thoroughly ruin Tatsumaki’s life.
But nothing changed. The rope around his waist dragged him behind Tatsumaki once more, pulling him through intangible flames and past things that shouldn’t exist or should be dead, heaving him up the stairs only to drop him again as Tatsumaki fell and fell and fell and fell.
He could trace the blood on Tatsumaki’s face from memory now. He’d figured out where the knife came from- up Tatsumaki’s sleeve, hidden in a tiny sheathe attached to his wrist.
He saw the flash in Tatsumaki’s eyes, the strange banishment of the fire, the brief confusion that followed before Tatsumaki pushed it away to keep himself alive.
Blaize half-wondered if it was worth it. Maybe the swordsman would’ve been better off if he hadn’t survived this.
The darkness swallowed him again.
Bad things happen bingo fill #8: time loop, as requested by @milesnsmiles and Ben and Juno, as requested by @geode-to-joy TWs: blood, death mention, vomit mention
"You took your sweet time getting here. What's the matter? Had something better to do?" Sarah Steel asks as soon as I approach the apartment. She's waiting outside of the front door, which strikes me as odd. Ma rarely went outside without a purpose, and the way she is leaning next to the door makes me worry that she was waiting for me. I have no idea what she means, but my stomach drops either way. She is angry at best, and furious at worst, and the best time to handle Sarah Steel is when she is out cold. It doesn't matter how long I've been out of this place, the fear of Sarah Steel that ran through my veins as a child doesn't go away easily. I don't see Ben anywhere in view and for some reason that sets off all of my internal alarms. The need to find Ben, to see him and know that he's alright pulls at everything in me. Ma lets me open the door to the apartment without a fight, but Ben isn't in immediate sight.
"Where is he?" I snap as my heart thuds in fear, feeling like it might burst out of my chest at any moment.
"It's been months since you've seen old Ma, and I don't even get a hello?" She asks instead of answering my question as she follows me inside. The door closes behind us and a small part of me wonders if I just cut off my escape route.
"Tell me where..." I start, and she cuts me off so that she can rant instead. I'm not sure what she means by it, but the dread I'm feeling grows as she trails me throughout my search of the apartment.
"...'it's alive!' and it wishes it was dead. Just like you gave me," she finishes.
"What the hell are you--?" I start, whirling around to look at her. As she monologues about having control over life, about rowing and paddling and oars, the panic in my chest builds. Ben isn't in the main room, or the kitchen, and he hasn't come in to check on us at the sound of our voices. I try the door to our room... his room, now that I've moved out, and it's locked. This isn't exactly unheard of, but for some reason, this time makes my skin crawl. "Ben? Benten? Are you in there?" I call, banging on the door. Sarah continues speaking, but I'm too caught up in the feel of my heartbeat thudding in my throat in an attempt to choke me. "Benten!"
"Why are you shouting?"
"Give me the key," I demand.
"Why? You know what's in there. I smashed your oar like you smashed mine," Ma explains. She says more, but that's the part that sticks in my ears and echoes in my brain. "Why!" I ask, but don't bother listening for an answer. If she did what she claimed she did, her answer doesn't matter anyway. I bang on the door once more, hoping against hope that she's wrong, that she's just hallucinating, or maybe she missed and Benten is still alive behind that door.
"I couldn't even do this right. No control left. Nothing," she snorts and shakes her head, as if any part of this is funny or even amusing. "I've been thinking about it, though, and I think this is better. Much better. Go see him, then. And see how fast the current takes you." She tosses the keys in my direction, and I'm too focused on getting to the right one to argue with anything she said. Sarah Steel has never been as important to me as Benzaiten anyway.
It takes me a few tries to get the keys in the lock and turn it the right way with the tears that have started to stream down my face. I know what Ma said and what she meant, but I can't help but hold out hope that she's wrong somehow. When I finally get the door open and call out for Ben, the first thing I notice is the blood. It seems like there is far too much for one body, a metallic stench filling the air. My stomach flips just looking at it and I worry that I will make an even bigger mess by getting sick. A sob tears its way out of my throat as my knees decide that they are done holding my weight and collapse to the ground. I lean over Ben's body, my hands shaking as I try to feel for his pulse. Based on the amount of blood on the floor, it's a useless endeavor, but I can't bring myself to give up on Benten just yet.
-
When I wake up the next day, I remember what had happened the day before. My heart stalls in my chest as I remember that I am now half of a pair, and not even the better half. I'm not sure how long I spend in a panic, my breathing fast and shallow as I remember the pool of blood Benten had been laying in, the way his blank and lifeless eyes had seemed to bore into mine. I stay like that for a while, my brain caught in a loop, until I hear the chiming noise of a message on my comms. I almost don't check it, too caught up in my sorrow to care, but something else in me urges me to check. It's a message from Benten, and that is what gets me sitting up to stare at my comms.
It's the same message as the one he sent yesterday, and as I read it over and over, I realize that it's more familiar than even that. This is... this is the last message I have from Benzaiten, but he died twenty years ago, not yesterday, even if sometimes the pain was so intense it felt as though it had. So if Benzaiten had died twenty years ago, what was I doing here, staring at his last message to me? What was happening that made me remember everything that had happened that day like it was yesterday?
My eyes catch on the message again, even though I haven't stopped staring at it. If this really is that day, maybe I am meant to stop it, to change what happened. What other reason was there for living the worst day of my life over and over again?
I dial Benzaiten's comms number, hissing a curse when the call goes straight to an automated message. "Pick up your phone, Benzaiten," I growl as his recorded voice tells me to leave a message. "Benten, don't go back to Ma's tonight. I don't know why you're not picking up your comms, but please trust me. Nothing good will happen if you see mom tonight." With that I hang up in frustration. I spend a few seconds staring restlessly at my comms before I fling back the bed sheets and climb out of bed. Maybe if I hurry, I can catch Benten and stop him on his way home.
A few hours later, running out of places to look for Benzaiten, I wonder if I should admit defeat and go to Ma's apartment. The need for me to locate Benten wars with the utter revulsion I have at the thought of willingly entering that apartment. But I've already stopped by Benten's workplace and the dance studio where he practices and teaches lessons in his free time, and Mick hasn't seen him today either. So I get back in my car and drive over, worry building up in my stomach. There's no reason for it to have already happened if I'm meant to stop it. I'm not sure if that is what's going on, but a small part of me I thought I had buried a long time ago hopes so.
When I get to the apartment building and up to the right floor, Ma is already waiting outside. Whatever little hope I thought I had dies, and I am struck with the urge to turn away. Something stops me though, prevents me from turning away even though I don't want to watch this tragedy happen. I've already done this, and recently even, but this feels so much more real than when I had the Theia Spectrum removed. Ma greets me with the same words as yesterday, the same self-centered rant that is her justifying the murder of Benzaiten. Even knowing how this scene ends, the panic and fear come rushing back, every bit as real as the first time this happened, decades ago. I rush into the room to find my brother sprawled out on the floor dead, the blood that should be keeping him alive pooling beneath him. I live through the whole scene, unable to look away until I wake up in my bed again to the chime of my comms and that same damned message. I'm not sure how many times I go through it, doing my best to stop the tragedy that I know is coming and yet never managing to prevent it. Instead I live through my brother's death over and over again, feeling it all blend into one never-ending nightmare, no matter how hard I try.
-
When the time loop is finally broken, I find myself lying in one of the beds of the med bay, the sight of Benten as I saw him last still imprinted in my mind. Nausea roils in my stomach and up my throat and I do my best to swallow past it. I feel like someone had dragged me halfway across the desert of Mars and then stabbed me directly in the brain a couple hundred times just for fun.
"Are you with us now, Steel?" Vespa rasps from where she is sitting beside my bed, checking some of the equipment there as Buddy hovers close by. The red of Buddy's hair catches my eye and I am hit with a much stronger and clearer picture of Benten lying in a puddle of his own blood and I turn my head to the side to retch. Nothing comes up, and the movement only makes me more aware of the ache that was my whole body and ratchets up the pounding in my head.
"Does that answer your question?" I grind out.
"Not entirely, but your terrible personality sure does," Vespa snarks back. She leans over and shines a light into my eye, and that feels like she had decided to make friends with whoever had stabbed me in the brain.
"Oww," I groan as I slam my eye shut, dragging an arm up over my eye for good measure. I retch once more, which only serves to make me feel even worse. "Are you trying to finish the job of whoever tried to kill me?"
"They weren't trying to kill us, Juno," Buddy corrects.
"Then what the hell happened?"
"There was a light hallucogenic in the air of the scene of our last heist. It was only enough to affect someone gradually, which is why we were all able to get out before it hit."
"But why?" I ask.
"Apparently our target was very angry at one of their guests, and the rest of us were caught in the crossfire. They posted a public apology on some type of forum a few hours ago."
"And that's supposed to make it all better that we... what? Experienced the worst moments of our lives?"
"I never said it was a good apology," Buddy drawls, and I suddenly realize just how close she is hovering to Vespa, at least a hand kept in contact with her the whole time. I wasn't the only one affected by the hallucinogen, although when I look around, I note that I am the only one in the med bay.
"How is everyone else doing?" I ask.
"They're about as well as can be expected, darling, given the circumstances," Buddy replies.
"You're the last one to wake up," Vespa explains. "Everyone else has been out of their trance for at least a few hours."
I grimace. "And why am I so special?"
"We're not sure," Vespa replies, leaning over to look at a screen off to the side. "Which is why you're stuck in the med bay for the rest of the night." She rises from her chair and brushes her hands together. "Now that you're up and your vitals are fine, we're going to bed," she says, grabbing Buddy's hand and moving towards the door.
"Hey wait!" I call out. "What am I supposed to do if I need something?"
Vespa rolls her eyes at me, but Buddy beats her to an answer. "We'll send someone in for you, don't worry," she says before she whisks Vespa out of the door. I wonder who they would send in, and then I wonder if I even have a preference. I feel too exhausted and wrung out to fight it either way.
I am thankful when there is a gentle knock on the door and it opens to reveal Peter rather than Rita or Jet.
"Hello, dear," Peter calls as he makes his way across the room, a thermos and package of crackers in hand. I can feel my body relax slightly and for a moment any visions of Benten in my mind take a backseat to the wonder that is Peter Nureyev. I can tell that they are still there, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, but they're quieter at least.
"Hey," I replied, feeling a smile pulling at the corner of my lips.
"Everyone was very concerned about you," he adds as he settles into the chair Vespa had vacated. "Rita wanted to come check in on you, but Buddy suggested you might want a more delicate touch. Rita did tell me to say, and I quote, 'he can fire me if he wants, I don't mind'. I'll admit to not understanding entirely what she meant..."
"It's fine, Nureyev. I know what she means."
"That makes two of us, I suppose." Peter's hand reaches out for where mine is laying limply, hesitating slightly, as if he is waiting for me to startle."I hate to ask it dear, but... did you want to talk about your ordeal?"
Just thinking about that question makes me want to cry or vomit, and I'm not sure which one would be worse. "No," I reply flatly. Peter doesn't react to that much, but he does stop reaching for my hand. My stomach lurches at that and my hand chases after his instead. I remind myself that I am working at not snapping at people when I am hurting, and that Peter ought to know he had done nothing wrong. "I would rather not think about it," I say in a softer tone. "But I wouldn't mind spending time with you."
Peter's mouth pulls up into the slightest of smiles, the corner of a tooth glinting in the low light of the med bay. "Of course, my love."
My face heats up slightly at the endearment and I grumble halfheartedly as I search for something to say. "Yeah, well... what did you do while I was still out?" I ask, genuinely curious about what Peter and the rest of the crew had been up to.
Peter's facial expression doesn't change, exactly, but I can see the tension in his body, feel the way he tightens his hand in mine. "It was rather unexciting, I'm afraid. After I woke up..." Peter pauses and I wonder what scene he relived in his own time loop. "I'll admit that I wasn't very good company at the time."
"I'm sure no one would be," I comment when he doesn't seem inclined to speak any further. "I can't promise that I'll be good company myself." I pause and add, "But I appreciate you sticking around anyway."
"Of course, my dear detective."
"Not a detective," I grumble as I sit up and cross my arms over my chest. His mouth pulls into the first real smile I've seen from him since I woke up at the common disagreement between us. "How is everyone else taking this? I asked Buddy, but you know how she is. How are Rita and the big guy doing?"
"Well, your former secretary seemed to shake off the visions fairly quickly. I must admit that she was the one who dragged me out of my room," Peter says with a flash of a grimace. "Jet seems to be bothered more by the hallucinogenic than whatever vision he may have relived. Vespa and Captain Aurinko--"
"Yeah I think I can just about guess how the two of them are," I interrupt. "They've been sticking together pretty close, huh?"
"There go those detective skills, Juno," Peter says with a grin that shows off the points of his teeth. "I haven't seen one of them without the other since I woke up."
I nod. "That fits with what I've seen of them. Jet is probably worried about maintaining his sobriety. And Rita... well, I'll check in with her when I'm free of this bed."
"That sounds like a decent plan, I'm sure she looks forward to being able to see you."
"Yeah," I say softly. "Hey, Nureyev?"
"Yes, Juno?"
"Do you uh--" I cut myself off and swallow hard with embarrassment, feeling my cheeks heat up slightly. "Do you think both of us could fit up here?"
"We can certainly try," Peter says as he rises from his seat and I scoot over to the far edge of the bed. It takes us a few moments to find a position that doesn't end up with one or both of us nearly on the floor and we settle with Peter laying on his back as I curl into his side. He has an arm wrapped loosely around my waist, and I can't help but think about how pleasant this is, how relaxed I am now that he's here, even if our physical positions aren't the most comfortable. Lying like this, I can imagine telling Peter about what I saw, about Benten's death and how I wish I could change it. Maybe not right this second when it still feels so fresh, but some time. Soon maybe. As long as I'm being indulgent, I imagine him telling me about his own hallucinations and being able to listen and comfort him in return.
