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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"My name is Ganymede," he answers, curious at the look on the man's face but glad that the turn of conversation seems to have taken the jolt of pain from his mind. "I lived on Olympus as the gods' cupbearer for nearly two thousand years by my count. And as Zeus' consort," he adds, not sounding particularly thrilled about that part of the job description.

"May I ask yours in return?"

Oh.

It's...not a name he recognizes, but right now, Gaeta can't tell if that's due to the drugs or not. Zeus, though, that he recognizes without question -- and Olympus as well.

(Not to mention the stories of Zeus' reputation and fondness for mortals.)

"Lieutenant Felix Gaeta," he says. Deliberately, he holds back the sir this time.

Those stories, at least most of them, Ganymede can confirm for the Zeus he knows. Amorous does not even begin to cover it. "Felix is a name I know," he says lightly. "And you are military?"

"Yes, s -- yes," he says, in a hasty course correction away from another sir. "I serve in the Colonial Fleet."

...Served, maybe. His throat tenses again as the possibility occurs to him: even if he's just a bridge bunny, the injury might be severe enough to warrant a discharge.

You don't need two working legs to read a DRADIS screen, he tells himself, as firmly as he can, but the morpha washes away the thought before it can stick.

"...Which colony?" comes the question, from someone obviously not familiar with the world Gaeta's from, or really even the word to begin with.

He shakes his head, the movement barely visible.

"Colonies," he repeats. "The Twelve Colonies of Kobol."

It's a moment later that he smiles, but only a little. "You're not from an Earth like mine, are you?"

He huffs a tiny breath. Weeks ago, it may have been laughter.

"No," he says. "I'm not. I'm not from anywhere near Earth."

"Where are you from, then?"

Ganymede feels fairly certain it will bear almost no relation to his home.

"Picon, originally. 'S the twelfth of the twelve."

His fingers tighten infinitesimally on the bedsheets.

"Been living on a battlestar for a while though. A spaceship."

"We...barely have space travel on my world. It's only just been possible to break into orbit," Ganymede says, shaking his head.

"Yeah, I've heard," he says, mouth quirking again. "Seems like everybody I've met's from Earth. They're all impressed I'm in space."

Meanwhile, he's impressed they're living on Earth.

"You could come see it," he says easily. "When you can. I live in California, where it's very pretty." But quickly he amends, "If you like. I shouldn't assume everyone does."

Ganymede studies Gaeta for a moment, quiet. "What is it like to live in space?" He has no idea how long it's been since he started saying that, instead of among the stars.

With either one of those statements, he doesn't know where the frak to begin.

"Cramped," he says at last, very quiet -- and a touch bitter. "Difficult. Exhausting. It's not a whole lot of frakking fun, you know?"

Case in point: the missing half of his leg.

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