Theseus falls asleep with Leta sitting on the bed, holding his hand. When he awakens, she is gone, and he just has time to glimpse a blue coat in the doorway and a flash of ginger hair before he's acutely aware of the agony in his midsection and he's gasping, curling in on himself and squeezing his eyes shut. There's a hand on his shoulder for a moment and someone calling out and he wants to beg them to stop shouting, but when he tries the words won't come and all that he manages is an unsteady moan of pain.
In the following moments, he's only vaguely aware through the splitting pain in his head and the ache in his stomach that someone is pulling at his arm, rolling him onto his back. He's in bed. Why doesn't he remember being put into the bed? He thinks he remembers Leta sitting there, but he doesn't remember the process of being put there and it's more distressing than it should be. The lip of a bottle of some kind is at his mouth and he swallows whatever it is without protest, praying that it's something to ease the pain. After that, he welcomes the blackness that swallows him up.
Everything is dark, and the blackness is so heavy, and Theseus cannot feel his hands. All he wants is Leta, and he's constantly reaching for her and never finding her, though sometimes he can hear her voice and she seems to be so close so why can't he find her? Sometimes he opens his eyes and he thinks he sees Newt, and then he swears he only blinks and opens them again and his brother is gone. Just like Leta. Once he thinks he sees Travers in the doorway, hears him speaking sharply to someone, but maybe he's a hallucination too.
Always there is something cold on his forehead - he thinks a cold compress, or wet rags, but he can't tell anymore. Sometimes there is a bottle at his lips again and someone is trying to get him to drink, but it hurts to swallow and he tries to tell them that he doesn't want to drink, all he wants is Leta, and why isn't she there? Has she left him?
He dreams, and they are nightmares that fill him to the brim with terror. He dreams of Newt falling from one of his dragons during the war, of his baby brother hitting the ground and lying so still. He dreams of the war, of the bullet that had gone through Graves's midsection and red and yellow and green jets of light flying through the air, of sweat soaking his clothes through and hastily penned letters to his brother and parents reassuring them that everything is just fine when it couldn't be farther from it. He dreams of blue fire that consumes Leta, burns her away to ashes before his eyes and he's screaming endlessly, and then there is suffocating silence all around that makes him want to tear his hair out because he needs something to hold onto.
When Theseus wakes again, Leta is still not there, but his brother is, sitting in a chair at his bedside with his head in his hands and a little green bowtruckle poking its head from his pocket as always. Pickett, he remembers dimly through the dull throbbing in his skull. Nothing hurts quite as much even more, although the pain is still there. Dull, quiet now. Not quite numbed, but close. It's better than it had been before.
"Newt?" His voice is hoarse to his own ears, and his brother's head jerks up at the sound of it, an emotion Theseus can't identify with any certainty etching itself into his expression. Relief? Worry? Both?
"You're awake," he breathes, gaze skittering away again briefly. "The Healers said you'll be alright - they've gotten the antidote in you now, but the poison was in your system too long and - well, you know, it'll take a while for it to - yeah," he murmurs, eyes lifting back to his face. It's a struggle to focus on Newt's words, and Theseus realizes vaguely that he's having a difficult time focusing on anything at all. Perhaps a side effect of whatever they've got in him? It's disconcerting.
"Where is Leta?" He doesn't remember making the decision to say the words, but they're out then, and something shutters in Newt's expression for reasons he's not sure of - at least until he speaks.
"Leta, is, ah." It's as if he doesn't want to answer, but then - "She's a suspect, you see, and she's - they're interrogating her now."