The med bay's gurney isn't the most comfortable of beds, but Jamison supposes it's better than a pine box.
Exhaustion strings through his every muscle in a deep, persistent ache, and yet adrenaline surges too thickly for him to succumb to sleep. His consciousness hangs right at the hypnagogic cusp of slumber and wakefulness, and if he tries his very best to focus, he thinks he can discern shifting amalgamated shapes as they bleed across the white light of the overhead halogens. All of him yearns to sink back into the dark where everything isn't quite so blinding, but his heartbeat is a deafening cadence clashing in the film of his ears, and it keeps his mind restless, ragged, scattered.
The unrelenting pain in his side doesn't help.
He thinks Mercy might have mentioned something about the body's reaction to extreme injury, although he could be mistaken. When she'd been watching over him (it had been her, right?), everything seemed to somehow plunge beneath the weight of the waves, her voice a watery and indiscernible thrum disinterred from a forgotten fissure in the ocean floor.
He does remember Roadhog. He remembers his hook, thrust outward and cutting through in a jagged whip of black, wresting him away—and he remembers the explosion, the fire and force and suffusing plumes of smoke. And then he remembers pressure. Tight, shuddering pressure. He remembers familiar blue pressing down as if it meant to crack open the ground beneath him and sepulcher his body amongst scorching pavement and crumbled stone; guarded, protected, safe.
And then the rest seeps in: the abrupt assault, the coursing barrage of bullets and hellfire, the cacophonous clamor and the earth-shattering pandemonium as sides of buildings were shorn, and all of it closing in with her in its very center. Yes, he remembers now: white hot bursts of epinephrine, jets of mania through his bloodstream, the cry of havoc tight in his lungs, all constraints thrust to the wayside.
By all rights, he should be dead—and yet he isn't.
"How are you feeling?"
Jamison swallows, throat as parched as summer asphalt. He cranes his head to the left upon the pillow and squints at the shape blotted at the edge of the gurney.
Blue. Not quite the same shade as before—it must have been long enough for her to change into something a little less bloodtinged—but still a vivid, gorgeous blue nonetheless. Her dark hair drapes in a long, jet river down the curve of her shoulder, and he recognizes the auric glint of her eyes. Despite perfect lineaments, her finer features (he remembers: high cheekbones, tiny beauty marks, prominent nose) are lost amidst the blur.
"Never saw the sun shine brighter," he manages, although it doesn't quite sound like it should: cracked and crooked and husked, shaking off lingering necrosis. "But I won't say no to a drop of water."
The slightness of a smile sharpens through the haze. "I think that can be arranged."
Jamison isn't sure how long it is before she returns. He seems to slip in and out amongst the harshness of the med bay lights, the occasional jolt of his pulse tipping him back into consciousness. If her footsteps could be heard over the distant hum of the facility's machinery that pervades the empty silence, his senses aren't clear enough to discern the drone from the staccato click of her heels.
Eventually, a soft weight dips at his left shoulder. The warmth of her palm cradles behind his neck and coaxes him forward, the glittering crystal in her other hand refracting muted azure through the water glass. The liquid is cold against his lip and his side protests any movement with stabbing pangs, but he still sips with eagerness. Relief comes with every icy swallow.
"I'm very glad to see you well. Doctor Ziegler patched you up, but everyone was very worried for a while. Especially after that considerable blast." Satya lowers the glass to a bedside tray and lets him sink back into the pillow. "Are you always so attracted to unfortunate accidents?"
"Don't talk about yourself like that. Won't stand for it." Thirst slaked, he sucks in an uneven breath and attempts a grin. "Not at this rate, anyway. Might be a while before I can stand at all."
A beat of silence ticks by, shock and awe, and then he thinks he can hear her snicker. "Are—are you positive you're all right?"
"Junkrat ain't that easy to get rid of." Desiccation lingers in his throat, and he clears it in a wracking cough. "Suppose I got you to thank for that. You saved my neck, didn't you?"
"I played only one part. Roadhog drew you from danger and Doctor Ziegler treated your wounds."
"But you're the one who kept me in one piece."
She pauses for a long moment, as if lost in thought. "Yes, I… I suppose that is one way to put it. The shield closed over you and the barrier behaved as designed, which prevented any further damage. Had it been worse, it would have been unsafe to move you. I am not certain what would have happened then."
"Appreciate it," he says. "Though I can't really thank you proper like this."
"It isn't necessary to thank me. This is what we are supposed to do, is it not?"
"Probably." A commanding heaviness tugs at his eyes, and he lets them flutter closed as he basks in her presence. "Still, doesn't mean I can't think of something. Just have to give me a bit. Everything's a little hazy."
Impulse bound, Jamison reaches out to her with his left hand, palm splayed open. When the silky feel of her hair kisses his fingertips, he lets a lock or two curl around his thumb. It's so wonderfully soft; such a jarring comparison to the lancing stitch beneath his ribs and the aches in his muscles and all the sharp ridges and angles patchworking him together.
He is so very glad she's safe.
"If you really wish to thank me," she says, a hushed and tranquil promise, "you can do so by getting better. You won't return to your full strength if you don't rest. I don't think I need to remind you that all of our demolition expertise pends on your health."
It is hesitant at first, but her fingers begin to comb through his hair. Gentle chills skip down his neck as her nails scritch along his scalp in small circles, starting at the top of his widow's peak before threading through mussed shocks of blond. Every now and then she pauses to scrub down to his ear, tucking aside stray pieces upon the pillow, and then returns to a slow, steady caress through the rest.
Gradually, his pulse reclines from its hammering haste. The tender touches of her fingertips continue in calming patterns, tracing along his hairline and up through disheveled strands and down in between the roots, and he leans into every movement. The dire need for rest burns back behind his eyelids, and if he weren't still absently coiling sable ringlets around his own fingers, preoccupied by the sheer satisfaction of touching her, of hearing her voice sculpted in concern, of being so close, he wouldn't be able to resist.
"You are still fighting it, aren't you?" Her tone is accusing, yet amused.
Jamison cracks one eye open. "What gave you that idea?"
"I'm not certain. Is it perhaps the very obvious and frustrating fact that you aren't asleep just yet?" Her palm slides over his forehead to cover his eyes, blotting out the room's sharp, prickling light. "Focus on rest, please. You need it. If not for your sake, then for the others. They do rely on you, you know."
"Mm. Maybe." He lets his hand droop back down to the sheets. "Can't make any promises."
"I assume that is as close to an agreement as I'm likely to get. It's better than your usual stubborn approach, at least. A marked improvement, all things considered. Still…"
A pensive sigh exhales beside him, and then the pleasant sensation of prosthetic fingertips parting through his hair ushers tiny jolts of frisson across his scalp. Her palm still lies warm and soft and dark over the bridge of his nose, as if to somehow protect him from the room's stark white intensity, and the faint fragrance of her soap enfolds him in a strange kind of tenderness, reminiscent of hot summer nights and warm rain showers and shy moments kept close in sequestered secrets.
"You madman," she murmurs. "What on earth were you thinking, throwing yourself into danger like that?"
Fatigue has long since settled in, but when he shifts his head to the left, he still manages a brief glimpse between her fingers. Satya peers down at him with a crease in her brow, the vibrant sapphire of her saree crest upon her like a watercolor halo. The bluish glow from her palm filters through: the barrier, the pressure; the familiar, guiding light.
"Better me than you," he says.
Silence follows, but she does not stop. The delicate movements capture all of her missing words and scrub them through blond snarls and charcoal tips, letting them pool into him with every press of her palm. It asserts a command he can almost hear: Don't you ever do that again, a command he has no intention of obeying, not as long as she's near.
Jamison slowly sinks into sleep, content, her fingers still tangled in his hair.