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Emotions Legend
[quote][b]Solenis (Feb 12, 2002 02:11 a.m.):[/b] [i]"EXHALE!"[/i] Cold...and then nothing. Dark moved around her like a quilt and she turned towards him, warm living dark that cradled her to himself and kept her safe. She didn't want the light. Light meant awareness, return to the pain of reality, but she was drawn to it, regardless. The dark offered silence and peace, freedom from discomfort and struggle, but a single desperate reaching moment told her all she needed to know. It wasn't really him, however much she wanted it to be. The dark had only herself and her memories to offer her. Gabe was in the light. The ascent was slow and difficult, and when she woke she found herself alone in the small hospital room. Her muscles would not obey her demands to rise. An unreasoning sense of loss overwhelmed her, and she wept. Her distress did not reach the level of logic. She had no reason to think him dead or wounded; something deeper assured her he was alright, perhaps close, perhaps in the next room. That little rational whisper had no effect on her emotion. It was far too simple for such a reasonable thought to make an impression. She was alone, and so she wept, and loneliness put her back to sleep. The next time she regained consciousness her nose was stuffy and her eyes itched, but she was far more aware. Even the low level of illumination in the room made her wince, and she was still blinking the black spots away when she noticed warmth on her hand. She knew it wasn't Gabe even before he spoke, but anything was better than alone again, and she made herself focus. "How are you feeling?" Gerard Muraida sat comfortably at the side of her bed. A half empty glass of tea stood on her nightstand, and a small desk lay dark under an old paperback book. Her voice felt rough, unused, but she didn't bother giving herself time to acclimitize. "Where's Gabe?" He smiled gently. "He's fine. He's down the hall, actually, and according to the attending nurses, a very obstinate patient. They had some trouble getting him to lie down long enough to recover. Luckily, he wasn't really conscious until late last night. He's very interested in seeing you." Sol relaxed slightly, and then shoved the covers out of the way and swung her feet towards the edge of the bed. At least, that was what she had intended to do; in reality, she managed to push the covers down to about her waist level and shift a little. Her uncle had time to grin and shake his head before he reached out to stop her. "Whoa, no way. You stay where you are. You've had a pretty bad shock, you know. Vacuum is nothing to play with. You should see your face. Some of your smaller capillaries broke. You'd fall over if you tried to stand up right now." His idiotic grin got wider. "Gabe did." Sol settled back against her pillow resentfully. "I suppose it would be pointless to ask you to get me a wheelchair." "I thought you might want to talk for a bit first. A lot's happened since you jumped out of the airlock. That was a little...extreme, don't you think? Just to pass a test?" Sol looked at him expressionlessly for a few moments before replying. "They stock them in the utility closets in the hallway. I could probably crawl that far." "Sol, there's some things we need to discuss first -" "Actually, this bed has wheels." "You're being unreasonable." "Could you move your chair?" "Hale has been arrested." That gave her pause, and she ceased attempting to push the bed around the man long enough to look at him in some concern. "We still passed, didn't we?" He succeeded in pushing her bed back into place. "Yes, though there was some dispute at first." She nodded and began to examine her surroundings for something she could use as a poling device. The IV had wheels - that wouldn't work for poling, but it gave her another idea. She carefully pulled her legs up and dropped her feet over the edge of the bed. Muraida was right; there was no way she could stand unaided in this condition. Her muscles felt like weights she had only peripheral control over. Bemused, the doctor did nothing to stop her. "Aren't you even a little interested in the reason he was arrested?" Sol didn't stop to answer him this time, gingerly testing her muscles and inching towards the edge of the bed. "I can think of seven excellent reasons he should have been arrested at the moment, and all of those were within the last six weeks. If I was going to ask you something [i]interesting[/i], I'd ask you what changed their minds." She put a toe against the floor as if testing the temperature, slowly let her foot down to rest flat against the cold tiling. Her arms weren't much better than her legs, but she did manage to grasp the IV pole securely with both hands. It was the first time she'd seen anything of herself since she woke, and she blinked in surprise. The backs of her hands were pale, and the under the surface of her skin was shot through with fading red spiderwebs in random patterns up past her elbows and out of sight. She released the pole and turned one hand over to inspect the palm. "It's not permanent." Her uncle's gentle reassurance irritated her out of her momentary reverie, and she looked at him a trifle coldly. What did he think she had been doing the past two years? This was ugly, but it was relatively painless, and it would go away. She'd had worse, and she wasn't in the mood to be coddled. Muraida's face hardened a little under her stare, and he shifted forward in his seat, but he took her motionless silence as an opportunity to continue. "Hale voted to pass you," he said sternly. "You should be grateful. He was under enough scrutiny as it was; he didn't have to do that. If he hadn't, your career would have been as good as over." "It is over," she said shortly. "We're walking." "You're..." The look of astonishment on his face was almost satisfying, and she responded to keep her initiative as she braced herself to struggle to her feet. "Walking. After graduation, we're gone...and since I think Hale probably didn't go to any great lengths to arrange a ceremony - " The doctor regained his speech in time to place a hand on her arm, preventing her from rising. "Sol, do you know what you're saying?" The urgency in his tone leaked into his fingers, and his grip on her arm tightened. "You can't be serious. You just completed the hardest training course we have. You've qualified for the highest level of the SOTF. What are you going to do Earthside, Sol? Dig ditches? Carry garbage? They don't like deserters down there, Sol. They know how much you cost." "I didn't ask to come up here, doctor. Neither did Gabe. What we [i]did[/i] ask for was a transfer. We could have been cartographers, scientists, [i]anything[/i], as long as we got to see the stars. We never wanted to be in Scorpion. We didn't want to be SOTF, but Hale wouldn't let us go. You heal people for a living. Would you rather be a ditch digger or a killer?" She glared at him, but he did not drop his eyes. "Those are the options Hale left us with. He wanted killers, he's got two of them. We have better things to do." His face was set, and his hand did not move. "One of them." "What? Don't tell me they failed Thoth and let Riya pass. They were supposed to evaluate the teams. Thoth...she's alright, isn't she?" Sol felt an unwelcome flicker of concern at the thought of Thoth dying or becoming handicapped during their final exam. She'd never known the girl very well, but there had never really been time, and she and Gabe had spent little of it in the cell until Hale had forced their hand. She certainly bore the girl no ill will - she was a hard worker and a good soldier. She never even considered the possibility that good luck had brought Riya to harm. "No, Thoth is fine." Now that he was certain he had her attention, he let her arm go, but did not back away. "They're detaining her for questioning, but I have no doubt they'll find her innocent of any complicity." Sol kept her face blank and her tone flat. "Complicity in what?" "Kuniyo Kinoshita did fulfill the first requirement of the final, as I understand it. She collected the schematics for our [i]Excalibur[/i] corvette. She also killed two technicians and escaped the station with those plans in a small military transport that deviated from its flight plan almost immediately after departure. She hasn't been seen since." Sol absorbed this for a few moments. [i]Riya. Free. Riya the killer, Riya the shade, Riya the nightmare. Free. And Gabe and I unconscious while she -[/i] She was on her feet then, quickly enough to startle her uncle backwards and nearly out of his chair as adrenaline came down on her weakness and broke her free of it. She threw herself towards the doorway, felt the IV pull free, heard her uncle scramble to his feet behind her as she made the hallway. The hallway listed, and her right shoulder hit the wall as she staggered, but her feet kept moving, and Dr. Muraida didn't catch up with her until she had fetched up against the next doorway in the hall. The chart display and the hallway were spinning, but she could read well enough, and she made out [i]Gabriel, Hunter[/i] out of the swirling letters on the door. It did not respond to her clumsy palm, and her uncle caught up with her before she could fall completely. He took hold of her elbow to steady her and she twisted away and grasped his wrist, slammed his hand against the palmpad with desperate accuracy. He grunted in pain and fell back as the door slid open, and she stumbled inside. Gabe lay peacefully asleep, the same strange bloody spiderwebs under his skin that she had seen on herself. His hair was mussed, and there were bruised circles under his eyes. Her momentum carried her to his bedside, and she clung to the rail there long enough to see the gentle rise and fall of his chest before she lost her grip and sank down to the floor. Gabe did not stir. Warm, strong hands helped her to rise, but her knees wouldn't lock and she began to fall again. She was lifted, settled onto something soft and flat, another bed, and she felt someone tending her arm as the IV was reattached. Her uncle appeared at the edge of her hazy vision, rubbing his wrist ruefully. "I told you you'd fall over," he said with a wry grin. "Want us to put her back?" "What for? Just leave them in here. Maybe they'll get some sleep without having to be tied down." The bed moved then, but not far. Her eyes refused to stay open, but she was certain it wasn't far. Sol tried to speak, to thank her uncle, but her body was already half asleep. There was a quiet metal clink, the sound of rails being moved, and then silence. Warmth touched her left hand, squeezed, departed. Worried and reassured, she sank back into the darkness.[/quote]
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