Briseis (spoil_of_war) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2010-07-17 21:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | achilles, briseis, patroclus |
WHO: Briseis (and then Achilles and Patroclus)
WHEN: Wednesday night through to Friday night
WHERE: An unnamed Las Vegas hospital and hotel
WHAT: The aftermath of Set's attack [directly after this]
WARNINGS: talk of violence
On the cold cement Briseis had been pinned to watch her lover die as Set left them, the knife through her hands impossible to escape. David bled out, gasping for breath, and all Briseis could do was lie there uselessly. She'd done nothing to save him, nothing to save them both.
People came running but all of them too late to stop it happening, David's eyes glassy and his chest still, his blood soaking through into her clothes. An old woman tried to get Briseis to turn her face away from David but she fought against her, still begging him to stay with her, to keep breathing, to be okay, even though she knew perfectly well it was too late.
Her own pain - as much as it was - seemed like nothing compared to the idea, the sheer knowledge, that David was dead, and yet it was her own pain that took over, her body unable to take it and sending her into unconsciousness.
She woke in an ambulance where a paramedic was talking to her quickly and calmly, but his words were like ghosts passing her by. "Where's David?" she begged, trying to look around, to just see him for a moment. "Where is David?"
"Please, miss, just stay calm, alright?"
Briseis didn't want to stay calm. Briseis only wanted David. She had to fix this. Had to make this right. David couldn't really be dead, because Briseis wasn't ready for it. She'd had a plan that involved telling him everything so she could be with him on his death bed, decades in the future. But not now. She wasn't ready yet for fate to snatch him away from her. Her throat caught with sobs and she wanted to curl in on herself, unable to even do that in the ambulance. Still the paramedic was talking to her, trying to ask questions, but she couldn't even start to think of replies.
They took her into surgery to repair her hands and afterward she drifted in and out of drugged up, nightmare-filled sleep, where Egyptian landscapes moved past her at speed and Set caressed her cheek like a disturbing lover with the smile of a lunatic. He whispered secrets she wasn't ever to remember and his kiss on her lips, even as she struggled, was like ice.
Finally she woke properly in late afternoon light, confused about where she was and why. Her throat was dry and her eyes felt like burning, but those things she noticed secondary to the constant throbbing she could feel in her hands. Lifting them slowly in front of her face and looked at the bandages, blinking back tears as she realised that what she'd dreamed was true. Set really had found her, and David-
Briseis couldn't allow herself to think it. She blocked out what she thought she knew. She let him be alive.
"Hello?" she croaked, but her voice was barely audible. She cleared her throat and managed it a little louder, her voice echoing around in her own head and making her dizzy. Slowly she reached for the blanket to pull it back but found that the very movement made her cry out with the pain through her hands. A whimper and she tried again, this time facing the pain and putting her bare feet on the ground.
The hospital corridor had people moving all around her and Briseis passed them in her gown, something inside her hollow and cold, her hands hanging at her sides. "Excuse me?" she asked at the desk, swaying slightly on her feet. The nurse behind raised her eyes from the paperwork and looked shocked. "You're supposed to still be in bed," she said, coming out to help lead her back.
Briseis found she was letting the woman, a little too tired to really fight against her. "No, please," she murmured. "I have to find my boyfriend. He came in with me. He's hurt." He's hurt. I'll find him because he's hurt and he'll need me.
"Just come back to bed," the nurse said kindly, bringing her back into the room. "Oh, you've torn the IV from your hand."
Briseis looked down at her wrist, seeing now a thin trickle of blood that had escaped and stained the bandage. "Oh," she said distantly, staring at it. "I broke it." The nurse kept talking as she helped Briseis into bed again. Briseis was upset that she'd torn out the IV. She probably needed to keep that in. They probably wanted it there. She interrupted the nurse and asked, again, "my boyfriend? I need him, my lady." No, not the right wording, but that probably wasn't important now. No reply from the nurse, no help.
When the doctor was finally brought to Briseis he spoke in a clear and steady voice, and explained exactly what had happened. He told Briseis that the police would need to speak to her soon, that they were confused about how someone had possibly driven the knife into the cement through her hands. He also told her that the man who had been brought in with her ("David," she corrected with, her voice catching. "His name is David.") had been pronounced dead on arrival.
Briseis couldn't breathe. Despite the fact that it made her flinch and grimace and the doctor told her not to, Briseis gripped the sheets and screamed out in agony, unable to now deny what she'd already known. Dead. David was dead. He was dead and it was all her fault, all the fault of monstrous gods and how could she keep breathing when she'd seen David bleed to death beside her? How was she supposed to- How could she-
She doubled over, sobbing and screaming and tearing at the bedclothes around her, until the doctor had called for a nurse to come help restrain her, something which Briseis wouldn't abide and she struck out at them, screaming for David. She wanted to tear down the world around her and she'd start with these people trying to hold her to start with. She wanted to burn the earth to cinders and leave nothing to live just so it could understand her pain. A sharpness in her arm, a whimper, and then blessed blackness once more, this time without Set's leering gaze above her