Pain

Created on 12/1/13, 7:39PM

Theme song: Rabbit Heart, by Florence and the Machine

The Nakai—he didn't know exactly how he knew the word, it had just come to mind at the sight of the creature that had haunted his nightmares as it slunk its way between the shadows in the corridor, probably thinking that he didn't know it was there—made a high, sharp screeching sound that lit terror in his veins like wildfire and sent pain sharp as knives stabbing behind his eyes.

Crouched behind a wall of tanks clouded with horrors he didn't even want to imagine—he didn't have to, he couldn't have thought up the butchered, half-decaying, falling apart, blood-soaked things if he'd wanted to, and he would never be able to escape them, their reaching hands, eyeballs hanging by threads, skin patch-work quilts of failed grafts peeling off to reveal naked organs underneath—his heart hammering in his chest so loudly he feared he would be discovered, he clutched the pipe he'd found, the only thing keeping him sane at the moment, the only reason he knew this wasn't all a dream, that he wasn't still in that tank, because he remembered—he remembered dreaming, and waking up, and the excruciating pain that had followed that he'd learned to shove to the back of his mind enough to focus on the images that were flooding his eyes—he remembered that Colonel Young had switched minds with the alien—a different one, one that he'd never seen before—that he'd broken him out of the tank, that Chloe was on board somewhere, that he had to find her before the Destiny jumped back into FTL—

Another gurgling shriek from the creature, its pitch too high to bear, cutting through his head, making the world go fuzzy around the edges as he struggled past the pain and fear the sound tore through him, making his knuckles turned white around the pipe, fear turning him into a rabbit, forcing him to curl in tighter into the shadows while the world spun around him, pressing himself farther into the corner he'd found, his forehead pushed into his knees to drive back the scream that wanted to tear up and out his throat and into the air.

If he screamed, if he made any sound, they'd find him again, and he'd go back in that tank, and he'd never be able to breathe again, and he'd drown, and he'd never get back to Destiny again, and he wouldn't be able to save Chl—

Chloe.

Chloe.

His thoughts of terror and fear crashed into silence as he realized that he wasn't the only one the alien was looking for.

Another shriek, drilling pain into his skull and speeding his heart until it felt like it would burst out of his chest. He couldn't breathe. Water, on his skin, in his hair, in his lungs. Vile things swimming in rivers the color of shattered glass raining down from the sky burning with flames rolling out in mushroom clouds over valleys teeming with life so green it burned his eyes and clawed at his ears.

But beyond the rush of remembered images—torn from his mind, from his soul, each one ripping out chunks of himself, stretched on bleeding veins and tendons dripping crimson and grey invisible to anyone but him—there came a sound that was far more human than any memory associated with the aliens.

A voice. A whimper of pain.

Chloe.

A low, threatening growl that reverberated through the floor and up his spine, shaking loose all the thoughts that had started to reform into a shape that made sense. Pain stabbed anew behind his temples, sending tremors wracking through his already shivering body until he thought he would fly apart at the seams, at the hole in his chest they'd created so he would never be able to escape.

He could feel their hands on him again, holding him down, as they cut into him while he was awake, whatever chemicals they'd used to keep him alive burning down into his veins and through to his bones with sharp cutting knives that tore through his senses until the world around him dissolved into darkness and flecks of consciousness smudged and bleeding with agony he never wanted to bear again. Then he was drowning again, and this time he didn't care if air ever entered his lungs again.

Until the sound of something striking glass ripped him from the darkness and shredded any attempt to return.

He flinched, sure that he was about to shatter as surely as the tank had, and the pipe almost slipped from his grasp, one edge connecting with the floor with a scraping nails-against chalkboard screech that sent pain washing through him. With a gasp of terror, he clutched it back to his chest, his eyes stretching wide as he struggled to pierce the darkness that lurked before him with his gaze, horrified that he'd been found out, fear and pain worming their way like twisting bugs through his skull until the world almost faded to black again before his eyes. His lungs and throat burned, darkness dancing before his eyes as he struggled to draw in oxygen past the terror that had clogged his throat and the numbness spreading throughout his body like ice water in his veins.

Shouting, human shouts, reached him from the distance the world held between them. Memories that weren't his exploded behind his eyes. Colonel Young. He was going to destroy the ship. He didn't want him to escape. He wanted him to drown as he was torn apart piece by piece. He didn't want him to tell the others that he'd been abandoned on that planet that didn't even matter anymore. He was going to blow up the ship. They had to get away. They had to get off the ship before it was destroyed by the very thing that their lives depended on.

The darkness receded, drawings its reaching spider fingers from his brain until he could think again, could feel the cold of the floor beneath him, the solidness of the pipe still clutched in his hands. And the one thing that mattered.

"Chloe."

The word came out as a gasp not even audible to his own ringing ears. The room swam before him, the darkness still fading, slowly slowly clearing his mind, the snarling of the Nakai burning his nerves to cinders, and the smell of blood reaching his nose, sharp, and metallic, and grating, and harsh, and cloying, and red.

Spots danced before his vision.

Fighting through the urge to let the pipe fall from his suddenly freezing cold hands—because he could feel it, again, the alien's neck beneath his fingers, frail and burning and dying, and screaming, and shrieking and gurgling and clawing at him and thrashing beneath his hands—he shoved himself to his feet.

Too quickly.

The world spun around him, and he crashed to the side, only managing at the last moment to remain upright with the pipe still clenched so tightly in his hands he was starting to lose feeling in his fingers.

Dropping down into a crouch to shelter behind the wall of glass tanks that he wasn't going to look in, his mouth snapped shut to cut off his breathing entirely so the alien couldn't hear the way each breath was ragged and etched with horror, and crept forward as his ears strained to catch noise that would tell him where Chloe was.

He had to get her to safety. They had to escape before it was too la—

The scene jumped abruptly into his sight as he reached the end of the tanks, and he struggled against the impulse to throw himself back into the shadows, to give into the instinct to save himself, the terrified, scared, scarred part of him screaming that he just give up, just run, run before it's too late—but another part, the part that gripped the pipe with all the strength left in his aching bruised battered and bleeding body, bared its teeth to the last and tore the rabbit to shreds until there was nothing left inside of him but the darkness and the adrenaline surging through his veins.

Chloe was on the ground, one hand raised shakingly to ward off the blue-skinned skeleton and tendons alien that stood over her, its face twisted into a snarl, one hand reaching out for her head, a transmitter gleaming in its translucent fingers.

He could already see the way the blood would well up to the surface on her brow from the two needles that bit down into your soul itself, the way her face would twist as memories and information and bits of her were torn and ripped bloody from her skull, the way her scream would do nothing but fill her lungs with water as her hands beat uselessly against the glass of the tank that would be the last thing she would ever see before the darkness consumed her, too.

His body was moving before his mind even had time to catch up, launching him forward, a lion roaring its shattering voice to the sky, teeth bloody and claws extended and mane flying, the pipe gripped in two hands thrown over his shoulder to swing forward with as much force as he could toward the alien's head, where he knew it was weakest, where he knew the cartilage-like structure that served as their skull would cave in on the soft tissue of the brain, crushing it and stabbing it and squishing the very life out of it until it ceased to exist.

The blow connected, jarring up the pipe to rip it from his numb hands and down his spine until the ringing was spread throughout his whole body even as his feet impacted with the floor, the alien so close that he could almost feel the water pouring in over him again, and imagined groups of them converging on him again, too many to fight off, too many reaching hands and stabbing fingers and screeches and shrieks to bear. It was still standing, one hand lifted to its head,

The pipe was in his hands again faster than the time it took for him to realize he'd dropped it. He lifted it to strike again—

—But never got the chance.

An explosion rocked the world around him, slamming into him in a wave of heat and noise and light and pain, knocking him off his feat and tossing him through the air to slam against the wall, his thoughts left behind in the space he'd occupied moments before, trying to convince his limbs that they could still reach Chloe, could still shield her from the blast and the space that was about to come crashing in to suck the air from their lungs and destroy the world around them and turn it into a different sort of darkness from which he knew there was no escaping or turning back or smashing of glass to end it.

Then pain exploded in the back of his head, shattering all thoughts and banishing the world to blackness and nerves burning with agony and flashes of light that blinded him and sent pain searing through his mind as he curled in on himself, hands clutching at his head where he could feel something warm and sticky and wrong spreading out across his skin, sticking to his hair and itching and clinging and bleeding out memories and pieces of his soul along with it like the stabbing of twin needles above his eye.

And then—before he even had time to process the fact that he was still alive, that time had passed, that the ship is still there, that the stars hadn't come rushing in to sweep them into oblivion, that Young hasn't destroyed it—hands were all over him, pulling at his arms with their translucent slippery stabbing bony skeletal hands, screeching at him and growling, shredding his mind into ribbons with pain and horror.

He screamed.

Struggled.

Lion's roar turned howl of agony and fear and animal desperation, he kicked and clawed and bit, memories still falling out of his head, they clung to his skin, his hair, clutching at him, warm and sticky and red, trying to stay, to keep the darkness at bay, making his hands slippery and blinding his eyes in waves that bled over and down his face even as he struggled against the arms pressing in on him, slamming him to the floor, pinning him down until all he could do was scream his fear and agony to the sky.

Raw and harsh and ringing in his ears he screamed, unable to move, to curl in on himself against the hands still holding him down, he screamed and thrashed even though he couldn't move, the lion and the rabbit within him both demanding it, that he not go down quietly, that he struggle and thrash and bite and claw and kick and scream his way into the darkness that was descending toward him, clawing its way forward inch by inch from the memories falling from his burning aching and shattered skull.

He wanted to scream forever, wanted the darkness to have to fight to take him in its claws, but his lungs gave up the cause before the rest of him, and he was forced to succumb to silence and stillness as his arms and legs gave in and retreated with his voice back into the darkness.

It felt like forever passed, and he drifted in and out of the nothingness that lurked at the edges of his mind.

Then the world exploded into movement, the stabbing arms and hands and fingers clawing at him again, lifting him into the air, lifting him up,and stetting him down on some surface, before the hands swarmed again, and he would have screamed if he'd been able to, he would have lashed out again if he'd been able to, but he was trapped in his broken and bleeding mind, unable to move, unable to cry out with the terror flooding through him, demanding that he fight, demanding that he flee, that he do something, as one of the hands touched his face, his eyes, lifted them open—

—And then a light was stabbing into brain like serrated knives and needle points and shattered images torn from a bleeding consciousness, and the rabbit in him screamed to life, forcing him to twist his head away, to escape those descending fangs that would drain the life and memories right out of him, and he wanted to scream, thrash, kick, but all that managed to escape the chokehold fear had on his throat was a pathetic whimper that he couldn't even hear over the screaming in his head.

"No," he gasped, clenching his eyes shut so tight that explosions of color and light burst behind his closed lids, his arms straining against the hands holding him down, head twisted into the surface beneath him, "No, please, I'm begging you—"

His voice choked off into silence as his lungs struggled for air, shoving fistfuls of oxygen down his throat in ragged gasps that were coming too quickly to do anything but make his slow suffocation all the more unbearable.

Fingers, stabbing bony skeletal and squishy, on his head, in his hair, skittering over the hole where his memories were still oozing out, paused over the top of his neck and sent terror racing through his veins.

The shrieks and whoops and screeches and clicks and gurgles of the Nakai beat at his ears from every direction, pulling at him, twisting him, shredding his insides to pieces with horror that could not be equaled.

This was it. This was the moment. They were going to kill him. The darkness would descend once and for all, and he would disappear into it and never return.

A jolt of coldness hit the back of his head, and ran with tingling spider legs down his spine, through his entire body, poisoning his blood with ice and shutting off all feeling in his arms and legs and skin at the same time that sensations began to assault him—the solidity and softness of the surface beneath his back, the gentle warmth radiating from the hands that still held his wrists and ankles, the ceiling above him when he finally dared to open his eyes, the soft and ragged breathing of others around him, the whisper of voices not so far away, a familiar humming almost to low to hear...

Destiny.

A blurry faced leaned over him, eyes visibly wide even in the dim light of the storage room.

A voice he knew he should recognize whispered to him, soft and gentle as though speaking to a frightened child, the words blurring together into strings of nonsense, going in one ear and out the other without pause in between for his brain to catch up with what they meant. But nonetheless, the words started to slow his heart's frantic race until it no longer felt like it was trying to break out of his ribcage and leap out of his chest.

The air around him was cool, the lights above flickering every now and then, and his mind slowly started to piece together what was going on and what had happened and what he had done.

Slowly, the whispering voice began to meld into words that managed to penetrate the fog in his mind.

"Nicholas?" his eyes focused on the face looking down at him with recognition, then, a few moments later, confusion, and then an all-consuming horror that was of a complete different sort than before. Tamara Johansen, the ship's medic. "Dr. Rush, can you hear me?" There was concern in her voice.

He swallowed. Averted his gaze. Choked on the lump that was suddenly stuck in his throat.

"Y-yes," He whispered hoarsely. Shame heated his face. "Y-you can release me now, Lt. Scott." His words were barely above a whisper.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young man who'd had him pinned to the ground exchange a glance with the medic. She nodded, after a moment of clear hesitation. The weight on his arms and legs eased up, then vanished.

The last of the panic-laced adrenaline in his veins evaporated at the returned freedom of his limbs.

Tamara was talking again, her voice soft and calming, saying something about the team that had last gone off-world, that they'd brought something back with them that caused hallucinations—a tick, she said—that there had been one on him, that whatever he'd seen had been a dream and nothing more, that he was safe now, no one was going to hurt him, that she'd removed the tick and he was safe and he was on the Destiny, he was home, that he'd hit his head in the explosion when Lt. Scott and his team had opened the door, that he had a concussion, that no one blamed him for what had happened to Camile—Wait, what had happened to Camile? He wanted to ask, but couldn't find the will to open his mouth and stop the flood of information falling from the medic's lips—that she would be fine, and all he had to do now was rest and in no time he'd be fine, too.

One of his arms was lifted gently, with soft, human fingers. He realized that his eyes had fallen shut. He blinked them open. Tamara had a capsule of what he recognized as 'Squiggler' venom—Eli had been the one to come up with the name, and it had stuck—and was about to inject him with it.

He cringed at the sight of the needle, twisting his face to the side again and hunching his shoulders up. It was an automatic response that made him feel weak, especially with Lt. Scott and the other soldiers who already looked down on him right there. But no one said anything, and the only thing that changed was Tamara's hold on his arm, which loosened—not that it had been tight in the first place—and turned somehow calming. Like she were laying a hand on his shoulder for comfort.

"This will only hurt for a moment," She assured, her eyes on his and widened just a bit to show her sincerity, her mouth forming the smallest, reassuring smile, asking him to trust her, "I promise." she said softly.

The needle was under his skin and injecting the sedative before his shot nerves could even understand what the small piercing pain that lasted a moment—just like she'd promised it would—meant.

His hand lifted weakly, "Wait..." He whispered, but it was too late.

The world already staring to blur around him, outlines going jagged and fuzzy, his eyelids suddenly too heavy to keep open.

His arm was lowered to his side by kind and gentle hands, and a small bandage taped over where the needle had bitten into his skin.

Is Chloe safe?

The words tugged at his lips, begging to be spoken, his shivering mind replaying again the image of her drowning in a tank.

The darkness was swirling closer, the world and its sensations fading away piece by slow piece, leaving room for the confusion to overtake him again.

And as he finally descended into the darkness, peacefully, this time, because he knew there was no need to fight this sleep, because it was safe, his last thoughts were of the girl he wasn't sure if he'd managed to save.

Finished on 12/3/13, 12:38AM