ways_infirmary | (no subject)

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Adjusting the collar of his leather jacket nervously, Harper came into the infimary looking ragged and exhausted, but he wasn't there for himself for once. Clutching a note, written by the hand of a second grader, in his hand so hard it was crumpled, he looked around the room for someone in particular.

On the one hand, he wanted to stay completely uninvolved. He liked his hide. It was a nice hide, and he wanted to save it. He liked his brains too, and didn't want some hideous zombie thing to eat them (he'd dealt with zombies before back on Andromeda and they sucked).

But he couldn't just drop this. Much as he was loathe to admit it, he y'know that this thing sometimes. A little nagging voice that told him to do stupid things even though he didn't really want to.

He was pretty sure the hip new slang the kids were using for them nowadays was "conscience."

He wanted to see what was up with this kid, and-and protect her or something. The idea of a kid having to deal with that nightmarish place, a place even more terrible than Boston, even more terrible than Dunwich when things screeched in the night and prowled in the woods...

So that's why, against his better judgment, he pushed the door open and pounded into the infirmary with a worried look on his face, boots clomping.

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Hank glances up from his desk and smiles.

"Good to see you up and on your feet, Harper."

He looks curiously at Harper, noting the changes. It had been awhile.

"Yeah, I know, crazy eye, it's been a while, good to see you too--is there a kid here?" he asked, a little breathlessly. "A little girl, named Alessa?"

Hank nods. He is an X-man, most of his conversations are something like this.

"Yes, we do. How did you-"

he breaks off and stares at Harper.

"Did she pull you in too?"

Rolling his eyes skyward in relief, he said, "Okay, so I didn't go crazy. This is good."

Hank nods.

"Yeah, and we arent the only ones. At least one or two others that I know of."

he stands.

"Come on, I will show you where she is. I dont know if she will be awake, but if you want to talk to her, you can wait there a little while, as long as you promise not to talk loud. She is very...snsitive, even more so when really awake."

He turns and leads the way. Alessa's bed is a ways back and there is a half-closed curtain around it as well as a chair next to it.

"Gotcha." Then he said three words he had never said honestly in his life until now, "I'll be quiet."

In a lower voice, he asked, "Have you figured out what's going on?"

Hank sighs.

"Sopme sort of psychic abilities, reinforced by past experiences, but soem of it is nightmares too and... honestly? It will take magic and a good psychologist to tell you exactly what happened. All i know is she somehow managed to bring people into the nightmares, which are infected with those monsters, but as the monsters get killed, she seems to get better, even have periods of wakefulness... at least I think that is what does it. I could be completely wrong."

"So she's a psychic, but had some hellish childhood that messed her up? She doesn't mean to drag people in, does she?" Harper asked.

"I dont think she knows she is doing it when she does. Something happenned beyind the things I have seen in the world, or whatever it is. Something that made her even less aware than she would have been."

he opens the curtains at Alessa's bed and nods to her.

"There she is."

Not quite the girl from the bar. That is, the resemblance is visible, but this version is covered in burns and bandages.

Still, she smiles slightly.

"you came..."

Harper managed to bite back an 'Aw, geez, kid...' at the sight of her burns, but only barely.

He wasn't so pretty himself after all.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm here," he said quietly, taking a seat next to her bed.

"I'm sorry... I can't stop it happening. But the bad lady..." Her expression darkens with anger.

"The one who got me? Look, it's, eh, it's okay. I got away from her--I've been through worse. Way worse." He tilted his head at her, not sure really how to word what he was saying, but he went on. "I, uh, I heard you had--I heard that you had a sad life, and I can commiserate with the crappy childhood thing, kid."

A little more passionately, he went on, "I really can."

She nods sadly. "i saw your mommy... and daddy..."

His lips went taut at that, pressed together so tightly that they went white for a moment.

In a very quiet voice, he said, "They weren't really like that, y'know? They weren't...that's just what I'm afraid they'd think of me. Were yours like that?"

A pause. "Or were they the ones that hurt you?"

She nods, looking down.

"she wanted me to give birth to god. cleanse the wicked and make everybody happy."

Harper's eye sparkled, the light of monitors and whatnot reflecting on it.

The other eye was cold, dead plastic.

"Kid, I'd say God is dead, but what's not ever alive can't die."

He pushed his hand through his hair.

"And even if there was, a good friend of mine made it real clear to me that anything that wanted you to hurt like this to make other people happy ain't no God that ought to exist."

"I thought it'd be better if I died," she says in agreement, "when I thought about how many people would suffer... but Daddy came and he stopped it."

She pulls a sheet of paper and a crayon from nearby and starts on a drawing of that symbol again.

"I don't want god to come here..."

"Yeah well, you don't have to be a mother to anything if you don't want to. You can be whoever you want to be."

Except for Miss Tarn Vedra or an Pan-Galactic Gymnast.

"There are people here who can help ya', too, if you can't handle it alone."

She nods.

"max and hank are helping... and daddy helped, too."

"Yeah, well, now you got me, too," he said slowly and ponderously, not sure where the hell this'd come from.

But upon thinking about it, he knew.

(He cowered behind the crates, hoping against hope they didn't see him. He'd dropped his loot back at the junkyard in his efforts to jump the fence and run, but that wouldn't matter to them. Even if they wouldn't kill him, he'd suffer for it, he knew.

"The little piece of rat-shit went this way."

Most people had this ludicrous fear that someone chasing them could hear their heartbeat.

Nietzscheans really could.

"Someone's behind those crates, and his heartbeat's going crazy, can't you hear it?"

They'd dragged him out into the middle of the street.

"No! No! Leggo! Leggo'a'me! Leggo!"

"You think you can just take what isn't yours, filthy kludge? Do you?"

"I didn't take nothin'! I didn't take nothin'!"

They tore the back of his already ragged and threadbare shirt open.

It was the first time he'd felt the sting of a neural whip. It adn't been the last.

"Help me! Somebody help me! Stop it! Oh God, stop, please stop!"

It was hard to get the words out, what with all the twitching.

No one came. Who would, other than his parents and they'd already used their 'save our kid's life' card. It'd been a one-time use for them.

"Momma! Mooooomma! Daaaa!"

They left him in a pool of his own urine, sweating and bleeding, and sobbing quietly.

After that, he joined Bunker Hill, even though being in one of the gangs was damn near suicide. But if it was one thing he'd learned, it was that no one else gave a shit.

The hundred or so people that'd watched him get beaten and gone about their business on the busy Boston street had been proof of that.)

A calloused hand moved awkwardly to her head and he started smoothing her hair, just like his ma used to pet his.

She closes her eyes, relaxing a bit at the gesture.

"it hurt you."

"Look, kiddo," he said earnestly. "When I was twelve-years-old, the only two people that could protect me from anything couldn't protect me anymore, and then it was pretty much Seamus Z. Harper versus the entire universe--and the universe always kicked my little, mudfoot ass."

Fingers threading through her hair, he said, " I, eh, can handle hurt. That scared the crap outta me, to be honest with ya', but I survived, and I'll be okay."

"life hurt you." She looks up at him.

"it was like where I am." Only more people.

At that, his hand paused, and he had the same watery, tight-lipped expression as before.

"Yeah," he finally said, his hand petting her hair again. "Yeah, it did."

He looked off to the side for a moment, then hung his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I had a lot of people I cared about and I lost damn near every one of 'em." Looking up, a cold, steely glint in his eye, he explained, "Some of them to monsters...most of them to people."

She nods in sympathy.

"they don't stay. even if I try to keep them. people take them away."

"Funny thing about being a survivor--if you're good at it, in the end it's just you."

He bent down and lowered his voice, the shadow of a grin on his face. "Lemme let you in on a little secret, though--I'm a survivor, too, just like you, and that means I ain't going anywhere anytime soon."

A small smile spreads on her face.

"Hank takin' care of you alright? Is everything healing up yet, or..."

Or was there some horrible magic thing making her stay burned and wounded?

He noticed the wheelchair folded on the other side of the bed, and wondered if she had to use that all the time.

"it's been seven years." She looks at her hands sadly.

"until god is born..."

"How'd you get burned in the first place?" A horrified pause as he digested what she'd just said. "You tellin' me you're stuck like this until you give birth to some crazy imaginary god?"

Only...he was now thinking that maybe that god wasn't so imaginary...

"mama..."

A wince at that.

Then his brows furrowed as he thought carefully. "Seven years? You've been like this for seven years?"

She seems to have lost track of the conversation.

Her breathing speeds up.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Alessa! Calm down. Your mom ain't here. She ain't here! Calm down!" He didn't stop petting her hair.

Her hands clench, crumpling the drawing, and she curls in on herself with a sob.

Nonono, he couldn't take this, this was way beyond him, he couldn't--

(The babies were crying, as he injected them with cardiac glycosides, shutting down their little hearts.)

Instinct took over.

(He buried them in old supply crates, but he scavenged for blankets to wrap them in, he always made sure they had a blanket wrapped around their little cold bodies.)

It was like holding Nassan, poor kid, sicker than he'd ever been on Earth.

Only gooier, but that was okay.

"Sshh. Sshh. It's okay," he said, now sitting in her bed and cradling her in his arms. "Sshh.

He cleared his throat and sang quietly, out-of-tune. Mama Harper's baby boy was an engineer, not a singer.

"Siúil, siúil, siúil a ruin
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciuin
Siúil go doras agus ealaigh liom
Is go dte tu mo mhuirnin slan..."

There's a ragged gasp for air.

Her hands curl against his shirt.

And then, she relaxes, slipping away from this world and back into the nightmares inside.

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