Day 50: Chapel

[full-score.livejournal.com]

The last thing Claude heard was the Head Doctor's voice faintly filtering into the corridors of the ship before he found himself tucked beneath the sheets of his bed. It took a moment to register he'd even changed locations, but then he he abruptly sat up, fought the wave of nausea that washed over him, and felt the blankets beneath his fingers. The room. He was back in his room now. Under different circumstances, he might have wondered if last night had been some horrid dream, but the sharp pain in his eyes gave him a rude awakening. Hissing through his teeth, Claude buried the heels of his palms against his lids, only to discover two cold compresses had been taped over them.

"Good morning, Thomas," he heard the nurse's cheerful voice from beside his bed. Her sudden presence nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he sharply turned toward the source of the greeting, heart beating rapidly in his chest. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well today, but hopefully you can still enjoy some of the activities we have planned."

'Not feeling well' was a bit of an understatement. His hand hurt, his stomach kept turning with every movement, and it felt like someone had dumped a bunch of sand into both eye sockets. Right now, Claude just wanted the nurse to leave him be, but it didn't look like that was an option. Taking his uninjured hand, she gently tugged him out of bed, despite his protests that, no, really, he just wanted to stay in and sleep, please.

"I think getting out of your room a little bit will do you good," she told him. "I'm sorry your eyes are probably hurting, though. If you're ever feeling uncomfortable, don't hesitate to ask one of us for some pills."

"What about eye drops?" Claude asked tightly.

"Oh, no, too much of that could damage your eyes," she cautioned, and the sheer irony of the situation hit Claude so hard that it would have been laughable if he didn't already feel like crying right then. The nurse was as oblivious to it as always, however. "I know you usually go into the chapel during this shift. Would you like to go there again?" Claude didn't answered immediately, but that didn't deter the nurse. "Yes, I think that sounds best..."

In truth, he probably should have requested the sun room -- it was closer, for one, which meant the nurse didn't have to lead him as far of a distance. For another, lying down on one of their sofas sounded like a good option. But by the time Claude came to that conclusion, he was too stubborn to say anything, and he made his way up to the second floor, his footing slow, but steady.

The nurse deposited him on one of the central pews, next to the aisle, before leaving him to himself. Thankfully, it was still early in the shift. As he paused to listen, the room was mostly silent, save for the footsteps and hushed voices of the occasional staff member or patient who trickled in. But it was probably only a matter of time before others came. For some reason, the thought of being stuck in a crowded room made him tense, not necessarily because he thought anyone would pay him any mind, but because he simply didn't want it right then.

Somehow, the full implications of what happened last night hadn't sunken in: experiments, healing himself, the issue of whether he could actually go home after this, not being able to see, the ship, father. Instead, he just felt saturated with all of it, paralyzed by the horror of what they'd done to him, and the uncertainty of what it all meant beyond this moment. Claude took a shuddering breath, uninjured hand balling into a fist in his lap.

[For Guy.]

Comments

[kindalikedit]

Dean snorted. Yeah, one hell of a big, unconventional rabbit hole there.

He reached up, rubbing his cheek thoughtfully and glancing down at his hand. No sign of the burn from the sonic screwdriver. No bandage either. But he knew what he saw and considering that Sam had also experienced the same teleportation crap as he had, he couldn't just pass this off as him hallucinating or getting attacked by one of the trickier monsters out there. Well, he could try anyway, but Sam's experience with the doors matched his - except Sam had ended up back in the normal world and he...wasn't sure what he'd ended up smack in the middle of. Man, and there was still Peter to deal with too. And this stuff about "home" 'cause Sam had kinda glossed over his question there too.

"Look, I know what you're gonna think. And for the record, I still think it was crazy, but..." Dean paused and then chugged on ahead. "Basically I spent the tail end of the night getting chased by robots. And the Doctor showed me his time machine."

Sounded like an off the wall pickup line. If only.

Dean's mouth quirked as he shrugged. It was kinda one of those you had to be there moments. "Wasn't exactly all classy like a Delorean either. It was some kind of blue telephone box, but it was way bigger on the inside. That's why I was asking about it."

Probably better to skip the wardrobe and the pool. Or the medical bay the Doctor had stashed away. It did bring up the question of if the TARDIS was so big that he could actually forget what rooms where where - made a guy wonder if the Doctor had actually misplaced rooms somehow, which was mind-boggling in itself. That was kinda cool...but also scary at the same time, especially when he'd been raised with the attitude that if you packed heat, you better be able to find it when you needed it. Come to think of it, he hadn't recalled seeing the Doctor actually using any conventional weapons. No guns or knives stashed around the TARDIS, at least not anywhere he could see. While he wasn't sure what exactly that sonic screwdriver could do, it seemed kinda...small when you compared to the Daleks' death rays there.

Dean made sure to make eye contact with his brother, almost half challenging him to point out the obvious. Yeah, yeah, it sounded crazy, it was crazy. He got that. But it'd still happened and Sam deserved to know about it.

[boyking]

Sam had only been kidding with that last remark, but when Dean went on a little further, he couldn't help but think that it really did sound like what would've happened if someone decided to sci-fi up Alice in Wonderland.

He hesitated, stared, eyebrows raised. He nodded. "Yeah, that is crazy."

He paused again. There wasn't much you could say to robots and time machines that didn't obey the laws of physics. And a doctor, apparently. What? If he didn't know better, he would've asked if Dean had been tripping on something.

Actually, a part of him felt like asking that, anyway. Seriously, this wasn't even a case of sorting stuff out. He was just baffled, plain and simple, and it was rare he ran up against something that made as little sense as this. Even the Trickster, the first time around—even that had given them a couple of leads to go off of, and that case had included a freaking alien abduction.

Letting out a slow breath, he said, "Maybe wherever your friend came from, that's how things are. You know, like we have demons and he has, uh. Robots."

It was an easy explanation, a cop-out almost—that's just the way it is—but Sam knew, too, that sometimes, it was better to accept things at face value and go from there instead of driving yourself crazy trying to figure out how the hell something was even possible. Because the truth was, it wasn't as though he had a good explanation for why all those things that should've belonged in a mythology book on a library shelf, why they were real. They just were.

Telling himself this was simpler than getting his mind to accept it, though. He rubbed the corner of his eye. He had a crapload of questions for Dean, but now wasn't the time to start chipping away at that. He needed to do it in a place where he wasn't surrounded by people, where he could actually think without the low chatter of the patients buzzing in his ear.

"I think I should come find you tonight and we can talk this over. I wanna start putting our information together, make sure we're both on the same page."

[kindalikedit]

Dean wouldn't call the Doctor a friend, but he figured when you spent the night running through a real life Indiana Jones knockoff and dodging Dalek death rays that it had to count for something. Like the "holy shit, we survived" kinda bond or whatever. Christ. Normal guys, they went out for a drink, watched a game. Maybe called it a night or kicked back another beer. Only here could friggen robots count as water cooler talk.

"Works for me," Dean said, relieved they were heading back to familiar territory. "I'll bring what I got. Maybe we should trap your room like mine, just in case. Never know."

And that was just on what needed killing, where they'd spotted each suspect and where to go from there. It would've been a challenge even with the Impala and a safe spot like their motel room. Here it was going down differently and Dean figured that they'd have to draw some lines and figure out what they could realistically hunt down and gank, and what they might have to leave off until they were better equipped. Nevermind trying to figure out where the end of this breadcrumb trail led and just what the head honcho really was. He refused, flat out refused to think of this as 'cause of a person. It was a thing. There was a difference. People were dicks, people could do their own brand of evil shit, but this was something else entirely.

Especially if there really was people getting jacked across continents or this "other world" business of Sam's. If Dean was going out on a limb and believing the Doctor being a time traveler, then that was even more scary. What could jack someone armed with a time machine like it was nothing?

He suspected they were in way, way over their heads. Dean also knew that it didn't matter. There was a job here and they had to at least try. Crossroads deal or not, it didn't matter. This was just too big to consider strolling away from.

Dean watched Sam. If this wasn't, y'know, possibly deadly, he would've said this was right up the kid's alley. Sam had always liked researching and just knowing stuff, even if he'd also made sure he could shoot worth a damn between reading and soccer as a kid.

"What about that Ruby chick? She got anything new?"

[boyking]

Sam shook his head. "Salt line's good enough. We need at least one space looking kinda normal."

Which was half true; what if there was someone who didn't know about any of this stuff that wanted to talk to them or they needed some kinda information out of? You could hand wave that stuff, make excuses, sure, but it was a little easier to get someone to trust you enough to spill what they knew when you weren't hedging around why there was a freaking protective circle graffiti'd on your ceiling.

And then there was Ruby. Main reason why he was hoping to avoid the whole thing, obviously, but that. That, he was not telling Dean about.

"Your room's all properly decorated, right?" he went on, an air of I'm just being practical underlying the words. "We can just use yours."

Besides, he wanted to swing by Ruby's along the way, and it'd be simpler to do that if he wasn't waiting for Dean to come by. He would've liked to have her there, even, along with Dean, but the inevitable uneasiness he would feel having the two of them around each other wasn't close to being worth it. But he remembered bouncing ideas off of Ruby, too, over breakfast or in the car or late at night in bed when he couldn't sleep and Ruby didn't need to sleep, and while it hadn't been the same, it was...

Anyway.

Speaking of Ruby.

"I haven't spoken to her in a couple of days or so. I could catch up with her later today, though, see what she knows."