2024-08-31: Heat and Cleansing
- Log: 2024-08-31: Heat and Cleansing
- Cast: Liam 7-020, Lucine Azul
- Where: The Ra Mari II's Medical Bay
- Date: U.C. 0099 08 31
- Summary: Eight hours after a colony drop, Liam keeps vigil over Lucine, and grapples with the fact that the worst day of his life happened all over again. It has happened again, and will keep happening, again. What can he do, in the face of this despair?
It's been eight hours since the sky fell, and Lucine still hasn't come back. Her body rests on a bed in the Ra Mari II's medical bay, swaddled with blankets, and surrounded by monitors. IV lines trail across her bare right arm, delivering electrolytes and essential nutrients to her bloodstream. Tubes and wires thread through and around an oxygen mask, providing liquid food and regulating her breathing. Electrodes stud her scalp, connected to a monitor displaying rhythmic delta waves. Her skin is pale. She's barely moved on her own.
Liam sits at her bedside, damp bath sponge in hand. A shallow pan of cool water rests on a table beside him, along with Lucine's hairbrush. The medical techs gave him a few simple tasks: washing her face, brushing her hair, helping them when they move her into a different position. All of them are small gestures, but they give him something to cling to in the face of bottomless despair.
"I love you, Lu," Liam says, for what feels like the thousandth time. He touches the sponge to her forehead, as if anointing her, and then rubs it back and forth across her skin. "I'm here. I promise, I'm still here."
Like before, Lucine's eyelashes flutter as Liam speaks. She's there, undeniably, and she's responding to his voice, as well as his touch, as if she knows he's there. Or, at the very least, she senses it innately, and responds to it on a deeper level, despite not being fully conscious.
Liam cups her cheek in his hand, and cleans the sleep from her eyelids. Those little micromotions--and the signals on the EEG--are all the reassurance he has that she will ever wake up. There's no signal on his phone. No one else he knows is anywhere nearby. He hasn't felt this alone since the weeks after Dublin. "I love you, Lu," Liam whispers. The thousand-and-first time, then. Tears slick his eyes yet again. "I'm still here."
It's not enough. The weight of what he witnessed--what he could not /stop/--is too much to bear on his own. It settles on him now, in an old, familiar pattern. His hands clench into fists. Water drips from the sponge, and trickles down Lucine's cheek. Liam's tears join it a moment later, spotting his beloved's face.
And that is how the nurse finds him minutes later: cradling Lucine's barely-responsive form, and sobbing.
~*~*~*~
Liam stands at the bathroom sink, gripping its metal sides. He takes deep, measured breaths, just like Dr. Hinoki taught him, but it still feels like he's steering a sinking ship. The nurse brought him water and a meal tray, and under their watch, he ate his first meal since he landed. They saw him to a restroom, and told him to shower. Liam did as instructed, again, but he didn't make it three minutes before his thoughts began to swirl through the shower stall. He's sobbing, again.
It's more of the same. Another crop of horrid, vengeful spacemen. Another colony drop. Another massacre. Another loved one stolen from him, and the only mercy there is that Lucine /might/ wake up. It's never the ones who cause this who suffer. /It's never the ones who cause this who suffer/.
Liam tries to picture a quiet, moss-draped garden in the Irish countryside, but all he can see is the face of the world, blossoming impact clouds. He can't tell anyone who really did this. Nothing would change if he did. Nowhere is safe.
There is no refuge for him in this world.
Someone knocks at the bathroom door. Liam's heart leaps between his teeth. As he tries to breathe, the nurse's muffled voice addresses him.
"Liam?"
The seconds tick past as Liam tries to regulate his breath. After ten, he manages: "...Yes?"
"I'm sorry. We're here. You know that?"
Liam swallows around the lump in his throat. "...You shouldn't have to be," he whispers. "The world shouldn't work like this."
The nurse takes a moment to answer. When they do, their voice is almost as raw and pained as his. "It's fucked up." A pause. "Which is--why you gotta take care of yourself. Those motherfuckers in penthouses in Pendrago and Dakar, and in the Orbital Ring, none of them think you're worth anything. Which is why you have to value /you/. Okay? You have to take care of you."
Liam doesn't know what to say to that. His old scars have been ripped open, and the grief bleeds again. He wishes his mother would hear him crying, and wake him from this nightmare. He wishes his parents could hold him.
How does he care for himself, when doing so feels selfish?
"Okay," Liam says, in a tiny voice. He does what the nurse tells him. He reaches into his bug-out bag and pulls out the pouch of toiletries. Liam pulls out a can and a safety razor, and gets to work.
He's done this almost every day for over a decade. He cups his hand beneath the faucet, and lets the icy water pool in his palm. He raises that hand to the crown of his head, tips it, and pulls it backwards. Water slicks across his scalp, and drips down his forehead. Next comes the shaving cream. He pulls the cap off with a faint 'pop', and sets it aside. He sprays cool, pine-scented cream into his hand, and runs that hand along his head, covering every inch of coppery stubble.
Then comes the safety razor. Liam slides the guard off, and fixes his gaze on the mirror before him. He raises the blade to his brow, just above the surgical scar, and lets it glide over his skin. He makes smooth, gentle strokes, and washes the blade clean between each of them. The sink slowly fills with blobs of thick white cream, and countless flecks of coppery hair. Once his head is done, Liam repeats the process on his jaw and upper lip. He holds the razor beneath the tap, and snaps the guard back on once it's clean. He rinses the sink. He puts razor and shaving cream back in the pouch, leaving no trace of himself behind.
Liam runs his hand across his bare, damp scalp. Lucine will ask what happened, but he'll tell her the truth. Doing this felt right. A step back, perhaps, but right nevertheless.
He eases himself back into the shower, and turns on the hot water. Heat sluices across his body, bright and cleansing. In this moment, Subject 7-020 feels something akin to peace.