(Sits between For
a Day of Laughter and Serenity)
Pinpoints
by elfin
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.