ways_infirmary | (no subject)

(no subject)

"Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
With my three wishes clutched in her hand..."

Simon finally hooked him up to a morpha -- morphine, whatever it's called here -- drip once the nerve block wore off and the supposedly unidentifiable opioid had left his system. Gaeta's half-drowsing, eyes closed in a vain attempt to sleep outright; the pain's still too great, though, and the exhaustion more prominent.

And if he sleeps, that means he can't do the only thing that's worked so far.

"The first that she be spared the pain
That comes from a dark and laughing rain..."

The words are a little roughened with hoarseness, a touch slurred by morpha -- but his voice still rings clear through the infirmary.

[ooc: for continuity's sake, all threads now take place before Boyd's and Simon's.]

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Yeah, right: this guy's worse-off than he thought.

"I shot you in the leg." He shrugs, a little helplessly, and offers over the water bottle again. "I've only been in this place like... three days. And before that, stuck on Caprica."

He's hedging his bets that this guy will recognize the name. "The only things I've shot out there haven't been people. Just toasters. Maybe you're confusing me with someone else."

Stuck on Caprica.

Patiently, one inch at a time, those words navigate through the fog in his head, landing where they ought to land some moments later. Gaeta blinks.

The darkness isn't wholly gone, but his voice has lost its harsh edge; excessively neutral, he asks, "How long's it been since the Colonies fell?"

At least that's a question he can answer. "Three weeks, man. It's been frakking crazy out there."

He's still not sure why this guy thinks he shot him, but he would take a godsdamn oath and swear he hasn't shot a single human.

"Been on the run, up in the hills near Delphi. Frak of a game of cat-and-mouse with those godsdamn toasters." Letting out a sigh, he brushes back his hair. "You said... you said I shot you? I swear to the gods, man, I didn't. I would never. I'm just a lucky frakking ball player who didn't get killed when everyone else did."

He almost misses the rest of Anders' words. Gaeta stares, close to uncomprehending.

"Three weeks," he repeats, and then, "Oh, gods." He drags a hand up to push it against his face. "Frak me. Frak me."

This is not happening. This is not something he is even remotely equipped to handle right now.

Wow. He...

He has no frakking idea what this guy really thinks he did and no frakking idea what to do. Either way, he feels terrible about it. Instinct leads him to crouch by the guy's bedside, rest a tentative hand on his arm. It only stays there for a second.

Something is really off. Really wrong.

"You... you want me to just go?" Or maybe there's some way he can help. Something he can do, something he can say. "Or stay and see if we can figure this out?"

Gaeta's too worn down to pull his arm away, but immediate tension rushes through him when he feels Anders' touch.

(you want to know who's in charge?)

He splays his fingers over his eyes, trying to block out the light. "There's nothing to figure out," he says, exhaustion overlapping the diminishing anger. "You're from three godsdamn weeks after the attacks. I'm not."

Gods, this is what Gaius must have felt like when Gaeta ran into him here, so very long ago.

Questions, man, every frakking statement here leads to more and more questions. And this guy, he's in pain, that's obvious, and it's not his place to press for answers.

But he has to ask anyway.

"You're not? When are you from?"

Like that's a question that actually makes sense in any world or worlds anywhere? He doesn't think so.

"Three years after."

Maybe if he weren't drugged half the frak out of his skull, he'd say that less bluntly.

Then again, it's Anders. Maybe not.

Gods, three years? At least that means... that means he survives, because--

"Hey, this is completely frakked up. Tell me your name."

He's sorry he doesn't know this man, doesn't know what he did to him, doesn't know anything. And he's not sure he does want to know any of it. One thing he's godsdamn sure of, he hasn't just and isn't about to shoot the guy.

"Or... or at least tell me what to call you. For end of the universe purposes."

There's a sick, hollow, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, like someone just knocked the ground out from beneath him. There's nothing about this situation that feels right, but not in the all this has happened before way that's been eating away at him since he got here. This is almost worse.

For a deeply uncharitable moment, Gaeta considers offering the most ridiculous pseudonym his brain can concoct. Or, better yet, a number, just to frak with Anders' head a little.

He doesn't have the capacity for that, either.

"Felix," he mutters, and follows it with a long sigh. "Just...call me Felix. Frakked up doesn't even cover it."

"Felix. Hey, man. For whatever happened? I'm so frakking sorry. I... I know it probably doesn't count for much of anything, but..."

But it's all he has to offer. He already feels guilty as frak, and he didn't even do anything. Not that he knows of, and he has a really hard time imagining himself in any situation where he'd... except they've been going after toasters with a vengeance, but that's different.

He doesn't want to know.

"Is there anything -- anything -- I can do for you?" Can someone even make something right if it hasn't happened yet? Or if it has, and he couldn't possibly have even done it? Felix says he shot him in the frakking leg. What can he possibly offer that'll make up for... for...

Oh, gods.

There's an earnestness to Anders' apology, and writ large across his face, that Gaeta never expected to hear or see.

(Not just from him, but...from anyone, really, as of late.)

It softens another inch of the anger. Gaeta isn't at all aware, though, of how much wariness has risen up to replace it, like a kid waiting for the schoolyard bully to punch him again. "You still offering that water?" he ventures at last.

Edited 2012-04-01 03:31 (UTC)

The...

"Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure." He twists the cap off, hands the bottle over, careful not to be rough with it or... or spill any of it. "Can I help you sit up a little, or... or find a straw or anything?" He knows they have them at the bar.

Right now, he'd get Felix anything he wanted, and he doesn't even know the guy.

"'M good."

He thinks. He has to give it a try, at least.

Gaeta manages to push himself a couple inches higher: not really sitting up, but it'll keep him from spilling the water everywhere. He wraps both hands around the water bottle, clasping it as tight as he can to keep it steady.

A couple drops run over the sides anyway. Gods, why can't he make his hands stop shaking?

"Here." Reaching forward, he steadies the bottle, his hand over Felix's. "You're doing great." When he nods it's a go-on-and-drink nod and he's not lifting the bottle for the guy. Just making sure it doesn't spill all over the place, 'cause he doesn't see anyone here to... to clean up, to change the bedding, none of that.

Personally, he's not sure how anyone could have not followed the sound of Felix's voice. He swallows hard, pulls his hand back, nods again. He's out of words. If he knew the details of the situation -- if he'd done what Felix said he did, what that... that poor leg or what's left of it is evidence of -- would he feel better or worse? 'Cause he can't see himself shooting anyone unless there was damn good cause.

But he doesn't know the details and doesn't want to know. This place, it's an intersection of worlds, of time, of space. What if... what if Felix isn't from his world at all, but some... some alternate version of it? Or maybe he's just grasping at straws: he doesn't know, but that'd sure as frak make him feel a whole lot better.

Despite himself -- or, rather, despite what he knows, despite the almost three-year gap dividing him from Anders -- the look he gives the other man after you're doing great is a little flat. Don't condescend to me, it says.

Still, as if to make up for it, he does mumble another brief, "Thanks," before swallowing down a mouthful of water.

...And another, and three more, more hastily than he intends.

Gods, he had no idea he was this thirsty.

"Easy, man, easy." He's actually in a pretty good position to give the advice: he's been in the hospital enough and he knows the routine. "Don't want to make yourself sick."

He knows, he knows: no one wants to be told what to do, no one wants to need help, no one wants to... to be explaining the frakked-up laws of physics about the end of the universe to someone he thinks just shot him in the frakking leg. Especially when they're on so many painkillers. That much is obvious. Probably, he should just go. Leave Felix in peace, but if he said he didn't have at least a little morbid curiosity about the whole thing, he'd be lying. And he's a terrible frakking liar.

Three years. Three years is... it's a long time by anyone's standards. If the colonies hadn't been nuked, he probably would've been done with his pyramid career within three years. What would he be doing? Coaching, maybe, or doing gods know what. Something good, he'd like to think -- that's what he was primed to do, that was always his plan for life after pro ball -- but he never saw himself as the kind of guy who'd go around shooting peoples' legs off. But the colonies were nuked, and nothing that's happened since makes any frakking sense.

"Hey, Felix. If you don't mind me asking, which planet are you from? There aren't a whole lot of people at this place who've even heard of the colonies." He gives a wry little laugh. "Never thought it'd make me homesick."

Gaeta gulps down one last mouthful of water. It sloshes a bit uncomfortably in his stomach, and for a terrified moment he wonders if Anders is right, and he's about to make himself ill.

(Ill from a bottle of water. Gods. As if he didn't feel helpless enough already.)

"Picon," he says. Blink and you'll miss it, but a flicker of sympathy lights his eyes at the mention of homesickness. "Grew up in River Junction, maybe twenty minutes outside Fleet HQ."

Small frakking universe, man, small frakking universe, but it makes him smile. "Me too. Not River Junction, though. About a half hour outside of Perkinston, harbor town called Ocean Valley. That's before I moved to Queenstown." Probably, Felix doesn't give a good godsdamn about the shit from his past, about his family history or any of that stuff, but it's still nice to talk to a fellow Pican. He almost asks if Felix engaged in either of the national sports there, running or boxing, but that... that's bad form, with the leg thing and all.

"You know the bar here has Picon Ale? The good kind in the green bottles."

More things he never thought he'd have to go around missing, godsdammit.

"Yeah?" The twitch of a smile lingers just a fractional amount longer, this time. "Had a cousin in Queenstown. You ever run into a Joel Gaeta?"

Probably not, he surmises. Queenstown was a pretty big city.

(Gods, listen to him actually making small talk with Anders.)

"And yeah, they've got everything," he goes on, trying to shift to make himself a little more comfortable. "Mostly just stuck with ambrosia and Virgon Brew though."

Joel Gaeta, Joel Gaeta.

"No, I don't think I know any Joel Gaeta. I only lived in Queenstown for a year, my last year of high school. Pyramid kept me pretty godsdamn busy." Pyramid and that job he took working nights so he could afford the place to live after his parents died, but he isn't gonna go into that now.

But...

"Virgon Brew? I never really developed a taste for it, but ambrosia? I can drink that any time." Had some with Kara just the other day. Maybe when Felix is feeling better, the two of them can sit down together and...

...or maybe not. Yeah. He's getting a little bit ahead of himself with that one, he thinks. Supposedly, he shot this man in the leg. Drinking together? Probably not on the agenda.

Gaeta exhales a small breath. "Used to drink ambrosia a lot more than I do now," he says.

(Did, now. Morpha and alcohol, he knows, do not play well with one another.)

"Kind of lost my taste for it a while back after a bad night -- " or an exceptionally good night, by Racetrack's standards -- "but some of it's come back."

"Man, that'd be rough." How many times was he right near the ambrosia factory? It isn't -- wasn't -- that far from Caprica City. "You know what they say about the stuff, it's the drink of the angels."

He can't help but wax pretty frakking nostalgic for the way things were: it was his life, just like it was the life of billions of people who didn't have a say about the way things ended up. He's one of a lucky few who survived, through sheer opportunity, through sheer force of will, through sheer dumb happenstance. Whatever it was, he's glad he did.

"And here I am, bending your ear about home. If you need to rest, I can leave you be." He almost apologizes again, but he doesn't know what for. Talking to a guy on heavy painkillers? He doesn't think he's been taking up too much of Felix's time or anything, but he does think he genuinely likes the guy.

And he's still really sorry for whatever happened. Maybe even more sorry because it's so out of his control. But they all lost control three weeks ago (or three years ago) when the Cylons attacked, and nothing's ever gonna be the same again. One of these days, he'll have to embrace that.

"Rest might be a good idea," he admits, very quietly.

But...he hasn't talked about Picon to anybody else who grew up there in so long. It quenches an entirely different thirst, one he knew even less about than the dryness at the back of his throat.

"Just don't know if I'm gonna manage it." Gaeta tries to shift in his bed again, one hand unerringly seeking out his right thigh. "Anders, look, I'm not -- "

The thought's a little too complex to complete: he's not sure this is a good idea; he is still so angry, even if he's banked down the worst of it; he never thought Anders was that bad a guy until the mission broke down, and this Anders is from so far before that maybe he could still hold to that, if he tried; right now, he may be too weak to try, and he has no idea when he'll be strong again.

Gaeta rummages out one of those thoughts.

"You're not the only one who's homesick." He wets his lips. "So, I mean."

(He doesn't know what he means.)

Frak.

He watches Felix's hand move to his thigh and... follows the obvious line down to where the rest of his leg ought to be and can't imagine a scenario, not a single godsdamn one, where he might've caused that. Unless it was an accident, but it sure as frak doesn't seem that way.

No idea, no idea at all.

"I guess" -- he starts, but swallows back the bigger thought, about how it doesn't really matter if they're homesick because there's no home to go back to -- "that's warranted. It's hard, man, all of it." Including whatever happened three years from now, but for all that this place warps the physics of time, he can't even think that way. He can't. Maybe he's just not evolved enough as a human being to take that kind of cognitive leap, or associative leap, or intuitive leap or whatever the frak he ought to call it. He never majored in physics after all.

"But sleep, that's probably a really good idea. I could sit here and bore you and tell you about all the times I found myself waking up in a hospital, but I'm guessing misery actually doesn't love company and never really did."

It's all pretty weak, but he doesn't know what else to say, except for one thing. "I'm sorry. About your leg, and if there was anything I could do about it, I... really would. So if there's anything you need, or if you want to... to talk about Picon or hear what it's like right now on Caprica or... play a game of cards or shoot the shit or anything, let me know, okay?"

This place has ways of getting messages back and forth.

"Or I can stop back in and check and see how you're doing. Later, or tomorrow or something." He doesn't even know why he's offering. It's not like he knows the guy, but he feels responsible for whatever it is, even if it was caused by some nebulous other version of himself from some alternate reality.