InsaneJournal

Day 24 - Morning
Who: Chris & OTA.
What: The zombie-flu has strange effects on magical beings...
Where: Starting at the gym, but ending up at the library.
When: Day 24 - morning, 6:37am.
Rating: PG. (Is there a rating for length? :x)
Status: Active.


It was probably for the best that since being bitten, Chris kept drifting in and out of consciousness. When he was conscious for any stretch of time he kept going back to what might happen to him. Death, or worse. It seemed everyone was in agreement that they were going to ignore his pleas for them to kill him before he turned, and Chris didn't have the strength to go off on his own to keep his new friends safe from the threat he was so convinced he posed. The whitelighter hybrid had raved almost hysterically until his voice had given out, and it had been difficult for him to speak much the rest of the afternoon and night, mostly just because of the pain. He couldn't deny that it was nice to have someone there each time he opened his glossy eyes, whether it was Rose or Connor or Lexie or Elliot. He was pretty sure other people had been roaming around the gym too, but either he didn't have names to go with faces or his mind just couldn't come up with them.

Even if they didn't talk it helped having someone near, having a friendly presence that he could lean on, literally if he needed. The concerned looks in his direction didn't go unnoticed either, though it would likely be days before he could properly make sense of everything he had seen and heard over the last few days. His fever finally broke late in the night, though that didn't mean the delusions were gone. He'd jerked his body off the cot at least once, convinced the comforting body close to his was again a dead one.

His mind was still turning on such thoughts as well. It was a dark landscape. Even darker than the world he had known most of his life. There weren't the living dead there, least not in zombie form. Chris had been haunted plenty by his mother's ghost in his dreams since her murder, but never like he was right now.

He was in the throes of a particularly vicious nightmare, the sickness acting like a poison that wouldn't let him wake himself up. He kept seeing Piper die, only to come back, not as herself but as the thing he had been confronted with in the unnatural dark. That sickening form kept approaching and he couldn't move, couldn't do anything but watch her come and watch her kill him. It was his fault, it had to be. He couldn't save Wyatt and somehow this was his fault. He screamed but Leo didn't hear him. Or worse, didn't care enough to come. Chris was alone, and he couldn't even save himself. I just want to get away. Anywhere but here. Anywhere, anything has to be better than this. The smell of decay made him gag and he felt like he was drowning, choking on fluid thicker than water could ever be. Gods, make it stop! I want to go home! I want to get away, someone help me get away...

And it had really only been a matter of time before the illness raging through his body proved to have an effect on his magic. He had seen it happen to others when under a spell or curse or sickness, and if he'd been in his right mind for long enough he might have warned Rose and Connor that something could happen. Something he couldn't control.

His tortured subconscious couldn't send him home, but it could move him elsewhere in Vas. And as Chris pleaded in the nightmare, lips forming words but no sounds coming out in the physical world, those tell-tale shining lights would appear, swallowing his form and in a matter of seconds he would disappear from the gym. If someone was awake to see it they could try and grab at him, but it would make no difference. He would reappear moments later in the musty library, groaning as his weakened body slumped against one of the walls.

And after five or ten minutes sickly green eyes would slowly crack open, one hand clutching the blanket wrapped around him closer as he stared into unfamiliar darkness. This, he was almost positive, was not the gym. Or was he just hallucinating?