He does not wake so much as he resurfaces, bursting back into consciousness with a gasp befitting of a drowning man. While he may be on dry land the sheets tangled around him are nevertheless soaked, soured with the perspiration of him sweating out whatever it was they’d used on him this time.
Within a heartbeat Reinhardt is back on his unsteady feet, sheer blind rage anesthetizing him to the burn of bile in the back of his throat, to the creeping bone-deep ache that the impact of the dart had left wrapped around his thick neck. However long they’d put him out for, it hadn’t been long enough. The fire had only been banked rather than extinguished, ready to roar back to life at the first opportunity.
And roar it did, filling his head with so much white noise that he hadn’t even noticed her in the room. It wasn’t until he felt the press of her cool palms against the naked, overheated skin of his abdomen he even knew she was there. His little spider.
And just like that, the maelstrom is his skull is… Not silenced, but quieted. Ordered. The gravity of her presence forcing his thoughts into an ad-hoc organization as they fall into an unsteady orbit around the center of absolute calm she radiates like a star.
His little spider’s touch is gentle, the pressure of it insistent; While he may be raging like the lion that decorates his banner he is presently as weak as a kitten and it is almost embarrassing how easily she forces him back down onto his bed. The frame creaks in protest as he stumbles backwards, dropping back on to the mattress like a dead weight. He deflates as he slumps back on to his messy bed, the lion’s share of his anger transmuted into sheer hopeless confusion by the alchemy of her touch.
She had been there the entire time, from the moment they had brought him back to his room, to now. He had been out cold, but his rest had been anything but soothing. Widowmaker watched him toss and turn, brows furrowed, in pain, cold sweat dripping off his frame and staining the sheets.
Never left his side, not once, not from the moment they came in from that mission until now.
Widowmaker still wore the blood marks on her suit, and splatter on her face. Whatever it was, it triggered him badly, and had it not been for their relationship, she was certain that there would have been no way to get him back to Talon without further incident. He had crushed through those who threatened her, made quick work of them when that massive hammer met their frames. And then something snapped. Something went off, so much so that he turned on their own agents, with rage that she had not seen in a while.
They had measures in place, measures she knew how to administer. A vial of sedative so strong that it would even take him down.
What they did at base, well, she couldn’t watch. It reminded her too much of her own reconditioning. He was strong, so strong, and Widowmaker feared -lightly- losing him. This was good for him, or at least that is what she told herself, good for them. They had to get through this. Episodes like this were too much to handle for normal measures, and too risky.
Like vapor she was at his side, on the edge of the bed, hands on his, ice cold against burning skin that still glistened with sweat.
“You got upset.”, an understatement “I almost lost you...”
