"To thine own self, Watson."
Five very loosely connected pieces for trope bingo (round two): 24-hours to live, snowed-in, amnesia, fork in the road, future fic.
You can sign up for round three, which runs through 2014, at trope-bingo dot dreamwidth dot org
Dusk had slid into night, as best she could tell from where she hid. Her phone battery was almost depleted, but at last check it had been seven hours. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't stop reliving the moment the glass shattered and horror filled his eyes. Up until that point she had believed him that the vial they grabbed from the storage unit was inert, the volatile compound still among the hidden caches on their list. She'd slipped on the stairs and the heavy glass door swung shut, her on the side with the shards and the smell. His picks were already flipping tumblers as she got up, and she threw herself at the door before he could finish.
"No! You can't — if you open it now you'll be contaminated too! We need a hazmat team." The fumes were making it difficult to keep her eyes open, although closing them didn't stop the burning. "Go! I can't—" She drew her arm up over her face as the coughing began. "Go Sherlock!"
She saw him mouth her name as he pulled out his phone and let lose what appeared to be an impressive volley of curses when there was no signal. He jammed it back into his pocket and flicked a glance toward her, stricken and one hand outstretched toward the glass between them, and then he turned and ran.
She stumbled back away from the stuff, as far from it as she could. The ceiling fans overhead would distribute the material through the room all too efficiently. Her eyes were still streaming and she had no idea what the lethal exposure might be, but if only through placebo effect, she felt better on the other side of the room from it. There was a shiny puddle on the floor amid the broken glass where it fell. Almost like mercury, although the color wasn't quite right and she couldn't focus to see it clearly. No matter. Right now, she wanted to hide from it more than anything.
She wiped her eyes and looked around to see what was here she might use. A stack of battered wooden pallets, a tattered and stained olive green tarp, good, and a couple of trash bags full of who knows what. She stripped off her shoes, pants, and coat, grabbing her phone from the pocket, and then paused, weighing her options. It was cold but not freezing: Hypothermia would be possible but not certain before help came or…. Whatever the hell that stuff was, it was caustic; her entire upper respiratory system felt inflamed. Every second she delayed meant more exposure. On the other hand, it was quite possible there was nothing she could do to protect herself from it. Fine. Keep the socks and shirt. Another moment's hesitation. And the sweater. She ripped open the trash bags, dumping the desiccated contents and stuffed one inside another, then squatted down on a third bag laid over the pallets with the tarp pulled over her head. Crouched under the tarp, she pulled the doubled trash bags over herself. Inside that, she pulled her arms and head inside her sweater so she could imagine the wool filtered out whatever the hell might be trapped inside the other layers with her. She bent her knees and stretched the sweater over them trying to cover as much of herself as she could.
Now she just had to try not to hyperventilate until they came to get her out of there.
Seven hours of putting every meditation technique she'd ever learned or heard of kept the panic at bay, although the first hour or so had been shot through with adrenaline bursts at every sound. It was a relief to feel the exhaustion rise up past her ability to push it aside. It was getting harder to ignore the anxiety over how long it was taking for help to come; unconsciousness would make the time pass so much easier. Everyone who knew her knew she loved sleep. It was one of the things she did well, and despite life-long ridicule and disdain for always making it a priority, she was not-so-secretly smug about all the science that proved its many physical and mental benefits. The fact that nothing else in her life had ever mattered more than getting enough sleep was irrelevant. Certainly not pitiable.
Except now it was no longer true. For the first time there were things she desired more than a good night's sleep. She was shy about it, almost embarrassed by not wanting to miss out or be left behind, choosing to affect exasperation and exhaustion instead. There was little doubt he saw right through it, but they each played their parts in the game of Watson Wants to Sleep, and she felt shy about that, too. But now, after hours of willfully ignoring her exposure to possibly lethal doses of god-knows-what, she was long past any professional pride at wanting to be found alert and ready for action. She tipped over to lie on her side, head and bent knees still tented inside the straining sweater, hands together and slipped under her head. She was so tired.
Panic jolted her awake and she struggled to roll upright as she coughed. Her eyes were watering again and her nose burned. The stuff was heavier than air, apparently, pooling at floor level, and still potent. At least the hours spent huddled in her makeshift shelter weren't for nothing. Or hadn't been, until changing positions had exposed her again to whatever was circulating underneath the stack of pallets she sat on. She indulged herself with a brief flare from her phone: 12:41am. Over ten hours now. Everything ached. No way to know if that was from spending hours curled up in a ball or an effect of the chemical. Or the cold; fear had kept her warm at first, and then numbness set in while she slept, but now she couldn't stop shivering. Hypothermia would likely lull her to sleep again soon enough. She was almost too tired to care as she leaned her forehead against her knees and closed her eyes.