InsaneJournal

Who:Cisco and Ray
What:The day after the rescue
When:Keeping him company when Ben went to shower. I.E. the only time he briefly left his side
Where:The medical area
Warnings: Mentions of kidnapping and trauma
Status: Complete


Cisco had been with Jemma for just about a day but it'd been a quiet one. He hadn’t really found his voice since everything happened. She was keeping him thus far on the good drugs so the nightmares stayed at bay for the most part so far. He was a bit shaky when Ben got up to leave and go shower though, he stood to try to follow but was stopped by one of the nurses. “He’ll be back.” The man had made the mistake of touching him though. Cisco could only look frustrated. He didn’t know this person. The very last thing he wanted was to be touched by anyone he didn’t know. There was physical push back. Cisco pushed the guy off him, every single bone in his body was tense. But still no words exchanged.The nurse was startled by the reaction and did step back.

If he had energy left he might have opened a portal, but there was just nothing that happened when he made the attempt. He looked down at his hands and then back up at the man who was bracing for another attack close to the doorway of that room. The only sounds were that of the nurse backing into a tray of tools and those tools falling over.

That Hydra woman’s touch came to mind, that false sense of safety caused him to back up. Where the bracelets had been on his wrists had left marks on his arms. They’d been fused with him and had been hard to remove. Likely to leave scars, but the worst ones would be the mental ones to get over. His memory wasn’t great of the last few days, but the bits of memory he did have left him without a voice. The only one he’d really spoken to was Ben. He tried to speak to others, he just couldn’t find the words.

While Ray hadn’t expected Cisco to be up and about, he also hadn’t expected him to be staying in bed obediently. But to see him up and apparently shoving the staff? That was nowhere on his spectrum of expectations. Checking that Dan was okay, he crouched down to help pick up the fallen equipment, before warily approaching his friend. He knew Cisco had been through a lot, or guessed that he had from the condition he was found in. Plus if his own experience in HYDRA’s clutches was anything to go by, Cisco’s mind and body would be in recovery for a while.

"How are you doing?"

The other man hadn’t expected it either apparently. Cisco himself had just reacted. His brows furrowed with all kinds of confused emotions as he watched it happen in front of him and stepped back. Burying his hands in the pockets of a hoodie Ben had brought, he backed away as far as he could get in that room. Like he wasn’t sure if this was real or not just yet. Was that actually Ray? Or was it another drug induced illusion? He didn’t remember a lot from the last few days, but he did remember seeing things that weren’t there. He wanted to respond, but he couldn’t find the words. Fine was the one that came to mind, so he reached over to the desk nearby and picked up the white board that had been left behind and wrote it out.

Obviously his state of mind was not very fine, but that white board wasn’t that large. Dan just stood in the doorframe for a moment before informing Ray with a small frown. “He has barely spoken a verbal word in the last couple days so we left that there.” The man was a little flustered by the encounter though and was ready to leave them to whatever they did. Maybe Ray would have better luck than he had. “If you can, attempt to get a vital read. Jemma could but the last one was yesterday. I can’t get one now and we’re just trying to release him.”

The way Cisco backed away from him gave him cause to frown, but he somehow managed to keep the expression from his face. Instead letting his look remain neutral, even as he took a seat in the chair so recently vacated by Ben. He noticed the whiteboard before his friend used it, just as he'd noticed when they rescued Cisco that the other scientist had been unusually quiet. He hoped this was just the way Cisco was processing his trauma, and not a permanent side effect of whatever HYDRA had done to him while he was their captive. "Fine, but non-verbal?"

Looking across at Dan, he gave a little nod at the information, but looked surprised at the request. "I'm not really that kind of Doctor." Ray started to explain, "But I can try." He'd been left in charge of the med bay on the Waverider often enough, so perhaps he could get those vitals, if Cisco let him close enough. It would be a whole lot easier if he was wearing ATOM, the HUD could read Cisco's vitals for him.

“More like..selective.” The man frowned a bit as he straightened up his jacket. “I know I know, but at this point we’ll try anything.” He knew Ray was more science than doctor. But maybe that would make things easier on the other man if that was how he was reacting. “He still has a voice, he’s just…not utilizing it. We can’t really see a physical reason he shouldn’t be.” Cisco was struggling to process everything that had happened.

He watched the two carefully and sharply like a hawk before lowering down to sit against the wall he’d chosen. When Ray questioned his “fine” he did make a face at him. One that wasn’t was very clearly not fine. One that was torn in confusion. The next thing he was writing on that white board didn’t make sense either. More equations like the ones on the wall of that lab they’d found him in.

The numbers meant nothing except they were the last thing he clearly remembered doing. Brows furrowed in frustration as he gripped that pen. Dan could only shake his head for a moment, “He has moments of clarity. Then it’s this.” He looked over at Ray with a sort of empathetic look and headed for the exit. “I’ll be back, maybe if it’s just you here it’ll be better.”

"I see," Ray’s concern showed in his eyes despite his attempts to keep his expression neutral. He could feel Cisco watching them, and as he looked across at his friend, he caught the strange expression. After Dan left, a quiet filled the room which was only broken by the occasional squeak of Cisco’s pen. From his seat, Ray couldn’t read anything the scientist wrote, so instead he asked; "What are you working on?"

After a long moment of that silence, he frowned and looked up from that board. “Don’t know.” Finally words, though they weren’t the usual cheerful warm ones Cisco was usually known for. They were confused and tired. “But it won’t stop. Keeps going on in my head. Like a never ending formula.” The board was then held up, there were various coordinates but none of them seemed to have any sequence or rhyme to them. Nor did they match any on Earth itself. None of what he wrote seemed to make any sense at all. “I keep hearing them.”

A small moment of relief came when he heard his friend’s voice, however alien the tone. Getting up from his seat, Ray moved closer as the board was lifted, eyes scanning over the numbers and symbols written there. "Hearing the coordinates?" Ray wasn’t sure if that was the right question to ask, but it seemed a pertinent one. It was usually a bad sign when a person started hearing voices. Sitting against the wall a little way from Cisco, he puzzled over the figures again. "They almost look as if they could be temporal, or other-dimensional in origin."

He didn’t move away when Ray did that. In spite of his own internal squirmy feelings of being in that medical place to begin with. “I don’t know what it is.” He admitted as he handed it over and put his hands on his knees for a moment as if to make himself smaller in that space. “I don’t know what any of this is.” Confusion and loss were just written on his face. He could still talk at any rate, but the words were strained. “There were others.” He looked over at Ray with a little frown.

“Not with me..but before.” Hydra had known about his breaching ability. The pain they’d issued was very specific to breaching.

Taking the offered board, he puzzled over the coordinates in silence for a moment or two. He wasn’t anymore enlightened than Cisco as to their meaning, but something about them was almost familiar. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on it. "It’s okay, maybe just write them down when you hear them, and we’ll try and work on them together, the whole science team. I’m sure we’ll figure them out eventually."

"They’ve been gathering people with breaching powers? What for?" Ue was equally panicked and angered by the revelation. He knew Hydra were evil, all Nazis were, but he’d naively thought they couldn’t be quite so bad after their supposed destruction. Where were they getting the resources?

Cisco just wrapped his arms around his knees and leaned his chin on them with a bit of a shrug. “Maybe. Or I’m just going to lose my mind.” He looked up at Ray with a bit of a frown, not really sure what to do or how to think of everything. Everything was overwhelming.

“I don’t know..I kind of blacked out after that.” More accurate was nearly died, but he didn’t mention that part. “I just remember they said..” He had this sort of haunted look though and couldn’t finish the sentence. “I don’t know.” He ended it abruptly as he looked over at Ray with a small frown. “Everything hurts.” Physically everything still stung from those portals being forced open against his will. It left a mark on him internally.

"We wouldn’t let you lose that, Cisco." Ray smiled across at his friend, hoping he knew how much everyone cared for him, even through the muddled thoughts in his head. They’d help him with his recovery just as they’d pulled together to get him out of that awful place.

"It’s okay, we’re already looking into them. Truth be told I don’t think the people native to this world ever truly believed Hydra had gone. They just keep coming back." Concern came to his face then, wondering why Cisco was being discharged if he was still in so much pain. "Isn’t the analgesia working?"

He gave him a sort of sad smile as he nodded. He didn’t want to sit on that medical bed, so he remained more comfortable on the floor instead. It was better. He’d had so many panic attacks associated with that alone that they stopped trying to force him on it. “They’re roaches.” Roaches that just kept showing up when the world thought they were gone, they lived on.

“Starting to…this is…different.” He frowned a little as he looked down at his hands. “Like some kind of mental pain I can’t place. It’s heavy. I remember opening portal after portal..so many I couldn’t keep up.” Like something he’d not felt before so the best word he knew how to use was hurts like physical pain. “I don’t know what they were looking for, or what they made me do. I’m…not a lot of help in the answers to this department.” He gave a sort of frustrated laugh as he leaned back on the wall there.

"Yeah, they’re just like roaches." Ray had managed to swipe some data from the computer at the facility they’d broken into, hopefully it would come in useful in figuring out their plans.

"I think you should probably talk to a professional. Maybe Leo if you’re not comfortable with a complete stranger." He gave a small smile, hoping to reassure his friend. "Don’t worry about that now, just try and focus on you for a while and give yourself some time to heal."

At some point Cisco would want to know all the information, but right now was not that point. All he wanted to do was be around people he knew and trusted. Ray was on the short list for the time being. Perhaps that list would grow, but just now he was keeping his circle fairly small.

“No strangers. Yeah..Leo just..” He trailed off not completing that sentence and shook his head. Not now and probably not ever with the strangers if he could help it. He just sort of gave a weak smile. “Thank you..sounds kind of insufficient right now but…Thank you, for everything.” Cisco was still pretty nervous being there, but at least with Ray around he was comfortable talking again.