Disclaimer: They're Cloud 9's, not mine, though I'd like very much to rescue Mega from them after seeing that became of him.
Note: This is sort of a continuation of the Infinite Loop series, although it contains actual moving of the plot forward rather than a soliloquy and maybe a flashback. I'm making it its own thing. You don't have to read Infinite Loop to read this. Infinite Loop doesn't make much sense in its own context, whereas this hopefully does. Technically, it's an AU, since Mega is, you know, not dust. Jay's apparently been taking the happy pills. Spoilers for the last season. I might be mixed up about where everyone was at the time of the completely illogical meltdown.
The concept that I am waking up at all occupies most of my first few moments of consciousness. The fight with Ram's program was not an event I had any reason to have expected to survive. But here I am, I say to myself, and begin to wonder about the important concept of where 'here' must be. Not wanting to open my eyes, I delegate the responsibility of collecting data to my other senses.
My everything aches, from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toenails. There are minor flares of agony in my head and in my lungs, but the pain tends to fade into a giant, fuzzy mass. Beneath me, I feel a hard, slick surface, with nothing but my Techno uniform between myself and it. After a few more moments of this introspection, I realise that the ground is moving slightly, swaying from one side to the other in an apparently random pattern. There is a worn quilt covering me, the scratchy cotton escaping through various tears in the thin cloth. This is an old object, I muse, either long-loved or recently scavenged from a trash heap.
The quilt does not smell like trash by any stretch of the imagination. The warm cloth smells like mothballs and sweat and soap and the ghost of the perfume of an old lady, but not like trash. The uncomfortable lump of fabric my head lies on carries its own familiar scent, something warm and pleasant that I am unable to trace successfully. The air around me is an all too familiar combination of salt and water and fish, a smell I have always known but always hated. Half by instinct, I press my face into my uncomfortable pillow, where it's much more pleasant.
The low murmur of familiar voices is all around me, none of them exactly over me, but none of them too far away. There are a few I recognise easily, like Ebony's perpetually angry purr, and a few I haven't had the misfortune to commit to memory. I infer from the sound of Ebony's dulcet tones that wherever I am, I'm not in Heaven. Another sound adds to this impression, the sharp screech of a seagull. I'm no theologian, but I have always been convinced that there could never be any seagulls in Heaven. Beneath the voices of human and creature, there is a slow, rhythmic hushing that I find to be strangely comforting.
The inside of my mouth tastes like salt and copper and rust, faded but enough of a presence to be annoying.
Very, very reluctantly, I open my eyes a fraction of an inch and stare into a field of pale gray camoflauge. Slow as an approaching glacier, I inch a hand up to trace an aching fingertip over the warm teeth of a metal zipper. A bitter smile stretches my dry, broken lips painfully. Jay's jacket. The mysterious angel-smell, Jay's smell. It's a good thing I'm dead, or else I might choke to death on my own self-pity. I close my eyes again as a pair of black combat boots come striding into view, making far more noise than I am convinced is really necessary.
"Mega." Ah. If there's one voice that can sound like a heavenly choir even when my head feels like it's been beaten in with a hammer, it's Jay's. I think I'm going to be sick. "Mega, are you awake?" Bless his heart, I think he's actually concerned for me. For his sake, I push a strangled groan of assent past my parched throat. "Are you in pain?" Resisting the urge to roll dry, scratchy eyes that he can't see anyway, I ignore the protesting muscles in my neck and nod. "Where does it hurt?" His voice, warm and worried and definitely closer to my ear than it had previously been, startles the sarcasm right out of me.
"Everywhere," I sigh painfully, cracking my eyes open to get a close-up shot of his knee.
"Look at me," he orders gently but firmly, and I struggle to comply, pushing myself onto my back with a sound that I am ashamed to admit comes out something like a whimper. There is a black, tan, and blonde smudge hovering concernedly above me. "Can you see okay?"
"No," I whisper hoarsely, and squint as his expression changes sharply. Jay seems to be either horrified or nauseous. Smiling a little despite myself, I swallow dryly and elucidate. "My glasses?" The lovely blur moves away from me, searching somewhere outside my limited field of vision. I have to fight the urge not to back away as his hands dive dowards my face, appearing faster than he's probably moving. Then warm plastic settles across the bridge of my nose and my blindness is cured. I catch myself thinking of words like 'miracle' and 'angel', much to my chagrin.
"And now?" He asks, concern touching me like a stab wound with a branding iron. Yes, I think, I can see the colour and the warmth in your eyes now, I can see heartbreaking little lines etched into your face from too much care too young, I can see a sliver of the ivory of your teeth between the coral of your lips. I don't say any of this.
"Yes," I say instead, opting, as ever, for effeciency over poetry, "I can see now." The smile he gives me is warmer than any expression I had expected to see directed towards me. It stuns me into silence, and a little sting in my lips tells me that I'm half-smiling back at him. Jay's smile was one of the few Earthly things I was sure I would miss in the oblivion that I had always imagined would follow my death.
"Good." I shut my eyes, painful from the exertation of seeing, for only a minute, and feel a flare of warmth against my forehead. "You're still a little hot," he informs me gently, his hand moving away too soon. "Anything in particular hurt?" There's an uncomfortable burning in the pit of my stomach, but I know that feeling well enough after years of it that it doesn't concern me.
"My eyes. My head. My throat," I cough a little, hoping that might help matters. It doesn't. A hand rests on my shoulder, a soothing touch even if it isn't meant to be. I can't say that my pain goes away entirely, but I will admit to feeling a bit better.
"Do you need to rest?" There's a question I have a ready answer to. Now that I find myself fully awake and apparently alive, I couldn't possibly imagine returning again to the half-dreaming world.
"No." I manage to shake my head a little, scratching my cheek on the teeth of a zipper on Jay's jacket. To prove my strength of body and spirit, I force my eyes open and push myself up onto my elbows. Strong hands grab my elbow, my wrist, and help pull me into a sitting position. I lean back against a stack of milk crates and stare expectantly at Jay. "Tell me what happened."
"Well, I guess it was... after your fight with the program?" He looks askance at me, and I realise that he wonders if I have any memory of this. I nod. I remember the battle all too clearly. "Everything started shaking and going all to pieces. I ran into Slade and everybody coming from the hotel, and they told me what had happened. I asked if anybody had checked your pulse or anything. They said no. I didn't think a person could just die from something like fighting a computer inside his head, and I... couldn't leave you there to get blown up..."
"So you went back for me." My vision blurs again and my voice cracks. My eyes aren't dry anymore. Being in such a state has done away with my emotional defences, for the most part. I have to look away from Jay before I do something stupid like actually start crying.
"I went back for you," he affirms, quietly. "If they weren't one hundred percent positive you were dead, I wasn't about to leave you there, helpless, to get exploded like the rest of the city." I'm a bit chagrined by the use of the word 'helpless' in reference to me, but something else about what Jay said catches my attention.
"What do you mean, exploded like the rest of the city?" Under control again, I look at him. My surprise overrides the little catch in my breath.
"I mean exactly what I said."
"The City exploded. As in-" Raising my hands, I make a gesture that almost turns out mushroom-cloud shaped. Jay gets the message despite my clumsy communication.
"Yes." I can't help it, my jaw drops. I'm as stunned by this news as anybody, and my shock seems to confuse Jay.
"Why would the City explode?" It comes out as a growl, sounding far more fearful than it probably should have. That hadn't been part of the plan. No sense in ruling something that wasn't there anymore. Jay looks disappointed.
"I was hoping you'd be able to tell me that." The frown mars his face so that I almost am inclined to make something up just so I can give him some sort of an answer. I'm not that kind of person, however, and so I don't.
"Quite honestly, I have no idea." Logical processes in my brain begin to turn rusty gears, getting my ponderous-feeling brain back up to my usual speed. Very quickly, I find a gap in the equation of my personal reality. "Where is this place, then?" I already have my suspicions, but I'd prefer to hear it from Jay. I only hope I'm wrong.
"On a boat, in the middle of the ocean." He sounds about as enthused as I feel. There are times I hate always being right, and this is one of them. More questions line up inside my head, all vying for a position at the beginning of the queue.
"Where are we going?" It seems to be the most prudent question and, I would hope, the one with the most straightforward answer.
"I'm not sure." Again, the prospect of a journey without a destination seems to gall him. He looks pale, uncertain, and, now that I consider everything fully, probably a little bit seasick.
"Well, how long have I been out?" This is the second most important question, and one whose answer ought to be far less esoteric.
"Three days, five hours. I couldn't tell you how many minutes." His precision makes me crack another grim smile, sparking another little agony of protest from my dry lips. He smiles in response, and it becomes clear now that he had been making a joke. "Seriously, though. About three days." I nod slowly, absorbing this information.
"Who else is on the boat?" I'd like to know what allies I might have around, though, knowing what kind of company Jay tends to keep, I probably don't have any. I remember the voice, and cringe. "Besides Ebony."
"The Mallrats. Some friends from Liberty. Ram." He laughs a little, and I suppose he must have caught something of a sickened expression crossing my face. If I didn't already feel so unpleasant, I might be inspired by a bit of mortal dread.
"Why am I still alive?" The question is half-sarcastic and half-serious. It's like the saying goes, why do I need enemies when I have friends like that? After three days of me lying unconscious, I'd have thought someone would have tried to kill me. I know I would have done.
"Because I wasn't about to let anything happen to you, not after what I went through to get you out of the City." Although he puts some effort towards sounding cavalier, and succeeds to a certain degree, I can nevertheless pick up a tightness in his throat that hadn't been there before. I can't tell whether it's the strain of duty or of care, but it gives me hope. Myself, I turn, press the side of my face against the milk cartons behind me, and focus on my breathing, in and out, in an attempt to calm the unusually riotious wave of emotion.
"My guardian angel," I murmur under my breath, mostly bitter sarcasm but with enough soft sincerity that I begin to doubt if my brain hadn't been somehow damaged in my battle with Ram's creation after all. I have always viewed Jay as an angel, in the deepest parts of my mind, though usually as an avenging soldier of heaven rather than a messenger of mercy. I've just never told him as much out loud. Jay looks at me strangely and I wonder if he hasn't misinterpreted my term of endearment. Or worse, if he's interpreted it correctly. He doesn't give me much time to wonder, and for that I am grateful.
"Think you can stand okay?" I consider this. Oddly enough, you know, I think I just might be able to. But, for once, I don't think I can manage alone. I keep my head down but hold my hands up, in a silent entreaty that shames me for no good reason. I know I'm not expected to be better instantly, and I know I can't heal myself and get on with my life, but I hate asking for help, and now, entire seconds later, I'm still sitting here looking like an idiot. I look up, and he's standing over me, looking at me strangely.
"Help me," I tell him through gritted teeth, managing the strength for a command but not the strength for a plea. At long last, he gets the message and he takes my hands and he pulls me to my feet. The world goes a little fuzzy and black-spotted around the edges and I think I might be clinging to him. And I think he might be clinging back, even though it's probably just White-Hat Jay shining through again.
"Are you sure you're going to be all right?" His breath is warm, and right next to my ear, and God help me, I look up. I'm a cliche, lost in his eyes. I think just this once I'll allow myself to assume it's me he's worried about, my own uselessness that makes him look so softly. If I move an inch I'll be kissing him, but it might as well be a mile. I can't do it. I'm sure right now we look like lovers exchanging vows of fidelity, but the old maxim is true, the truth does hurt, and the truth is that he hates me. I remember it now, though I have always known it. I've always looked at him with rose-coloured glasses, seeing in him those things I want to see. When he looks at me, I see reflected in him those things I myself feel, not the things that he feels. The kindness he shows me is only the kindness that he shows the world, even his enemies. I am his enemy. The reality of it is, and always has been, that he hates me, that the only kind thing he feels for me is pity.
I wish I was dead.