He
dreamt of a
large bird with light-blue, man-made feathers and blue
human eyes, with
purple
wings so thin they were almost transparent and a beak that
tapered to a
needle-sharp point. It flew
around his
room, close to the ceiling, small, concentric circles,
round and round. Every time
it passed over his head it made a
shrill, squawking sound like a man screaming in pain.
He watched things
change shape when he was awake, and saw colours constantly
shifting
through the
spectrum. He wasn't sure what
was real
and what wasn't, couldn't swear to the decoration in his own
quarters
or the
patterns on ceilings and floors he walked passed everyday.
Michael had brown eyes, he remembered.
But
he only knew because he did
remember. Sometimes when he
looked at
them now they were green, or blue, or changeable like clouds
passing
over a
puddle.
He
often tried to
walk through doors that weren't there, or look out of
portholes that
were only
in his mind. He smiled at
people who
didn't exist, reached for drinks he'd only imagined.
It would drive him crazy if he let it, but
he'd survived something so terrible that a few moments
standing staring
at
walls and daily smiles at absolute strangers weren't going
to finish
what Clarke's
men had given a damn good shot.
He didn't mention it
to Stephen. Blood tests had
already
proved the psychotropics weren't leaving his system and what
else would
be
causing reality to alter so regularly like that was how it
usually
behaved? So he kept it to
himself, the
things he saw, the things he didn't quite believe, and
instead believed
only in
the things he could touch and feel; physical sensations, of
the soft
fur of the
bear on the floor by his bed, of the hot water that pounded
his skin
when he
crawled into the shower at the start, middle and end of the
day, the
ironed
cotton of Michael's shirts when he spread his hand on his
chest and
concentrated on his heart beating. And
sometimes
even those sensations were lies to himself, he just couldn't
be sure
when.
Reality
and
imagination, shifting across one another, changing places.
#
Had
there really
been an explosion?
Sitting in chaos
and wreckage he stared down at the dark rose blossoming
vividly in the
front of
his crisp white shirt. A thin
shard of
glass protruded from the centre of the flower like a
gruesome stamen,
black
drops falling from it in slow motion to the mesh floor
between his
parted legs. He couldn't feel
anything;
not the slicing
pain he would have expected, not the glazing euphoria of
blood loss,
not the
panic which should surely have accompanied such a
devastating injury. Lifting a
trembling hand he poked the sharp
glass with a careful finger, cutting himself as he did, his
skin
skidding
across the razor edge as a particularly forceful shudder
took a hold of
him. Putting his finger to his
mouth he
sucked the blood, licked the cut, and still couldn't feel
anything from
the
wound in his stomach.
He
heard shouting
somewhere, a long way off, and he listened for a while.
Male and female voices, calling out words he
couldn't quite place. Not his
name
though, and he didn't think to respond.
They were looking for someone else, probably,
someone who'd been
hurt. And who was to say if
they were
real? He was probably imaging
them. He'd decided he
couldn't be hurt, not really,
because he was feeling okay. There
was
the shaking, sure, his whole body was shaking as if the
station was
trying to
tear itself apart underneath him. But
there
wasn't any pain and it had been a long, long while since
he
hadn't been in
pain. It was a great relief,
an
incredible release when he'd had so little over the last
couple of
months. So he relaxed;
putting his hands
either side
of his legs, palms up, he leant back against the heated
hull and closed
his
eyes, taking a deep, relaxing breath.
Maybe
he could sleep, and maybe he wouldn't dream of the blue
bird with the
purple
wings.
~
"John? JOHN?!"
Michael yelled,
shouted, screamed into the red-hued black of the wrecked
observation
deck. The computer's last
registered
location for Sheridan
was on this deck
and he knew John loved to come up here and stare out at the
stars as if
their constancy
was the only thing he could really trust.
But it had been hours since the explosion had torn up
through
from the war
room, ripped out the ceiling (the observation deck floor),
torn through
the
walls, torn apart the massive strategy AIs used in the
Shadow war and
the war
against EarthForce. There was
no sign of
him. The only motive for the
bombing was
destruction as far as they could tell and no one had claimed
responsibility
yet. For the time being their
immediate
focus was on those caught up in it all.
The injured were being pulled out and taken to MedLab
as quickly
as the
rescue team could work. But
Michael's
fear was for their off-duty captain, caught up in a
terrorist attack
certainly
aimed at him, if not personally then politically although
the lines
between the
two had become so blurred they barely existed any more.
"JOHN?"
Stephen picked his
way through the twisted metal and smashed glass, burnt-out
wires and
blackened
electrics. The emergency
lighting was
all they had after isolating this section of the station
from the grid
to
prevent the rest of Babylon
5 losing power, and the shafts of white from the flashlights
the
emergency
teams were using to see by criss-crossed each other over the
scene of
devastation.
Two
bodies were
found, one in two halves, sliced apart by a pane of glass,
the other
crushed by
the falling ceiling. Neither
was John
Sheridan. Michael's voice was
starting
to fail him and Stephen took over, calling his name.
He should have been in MedLab, should have
been overseeing the medical effort from the epicentre, but
after
spending the
last couple of months of his life keeping John Sheridan
alive he wasn't
going
to allow something so trivial, so banal, so everyday as a
terrorist
bomb to end
it all.
Michael's
flashlight caught on something small, something tiny in the
massive
chaos. A glint of white, a
reflection off
a shard of
red glass sticking out of what looked right then like a
third dead body. "John….
STEPHEN!" He yelled over
his
shoulder as he clambered across the burnt landscape.
John
was slumped against
the hull, unconscious, bleeding from the right side of his
head. Michael pressed cold
fingers into his crooked
neck, relief flooding him. Not
dead yet,
but his pulse was almost random and barely strong enough
to push
whatever blood
was still in his arteries any distance around his parched
body. A low groan of pain
marked Stephen's arrival,
from the doctor rather than the patient, and as he knelt
carefully next
to John
he made a call to a medical team to join them.
Both the head
wound and the slash through his stomach were field-dressed
with the
shard left
in place, blood and saline were set through IV and an oxygen
mask was
placed over
his nose and mouth. Once it was
done and
he was ready to be moved to MedLab, Michael looked up from
John to
Stephen and
for the first time saw that he was silently crying.
~
Why John hadn't
called out for help when the rescue teams were searching
came up later
- much
later - as Stephen sat with his pale, hurting patient in one
private
corner of
MedLab 3, at a time of night when the station was as quiet
as it would
ever be;
the markets closed, the bars empty, the command crew
watching the
monitors and
logs with hands wrapped around long mugs of coffee as the
minutes
ticked slowly
by and nothing much happened.
"I
didn't
think it was real."
John had more stitches
in his already damaged stomach, two in his head, and more
drugs in his
already
ravaged system.
"You
didn't
call out to us."
Despite being on
the edge of exhaustion, John's accusing glare was as
accurate as it had
ever
been.
"I
didn't
want to die."
"Are you
sure?"
"I'll
pretend
you didn't ask me that."
Stephen flexed his
thumb on the back of John's fingers - this physical contact
had become
second
nature since his rescue from Mars; holding his hand meant
that in the
event of
a sudden, unexpected flashback it was more difficult for him
to reach
for the
nearest PPG if he had to untangle his fingers first.
The first time he'd almost shot Michael in
the head before turning the weapon on himself, and that was
with a
parade of
injuries including several smashed bones in his hand.
They weren't taking any chances.
"What
made
you think it wasn't real?"
Sheridan
shrugged minutely, his eyes
closing. "Nothing's real, is
it? Everything changes shape
and colour all the
time." Stephen didn't
understand. He wanted to ask
more but John looked as if
he couldn't string another sentence together.
A minute later he was proved wrong.
"Do something for me?"
Quiet, but definitely spoken.
"Anything." He
knew he would.
"If you see a
blue bird with purple wings and a beak like a knife, keep it
away from
me for a
couple of hours? I really need
to
sleep."
They
were a long
way from the finishing line, Stephen realised at that
moment, further
than he'd
ever believed they could be. |