Yes, I am actually updating this regularly now, no long waits... hopefully. It depends on how busy I get. I originally wanted this chapter to be longer, but I thought the storyline I had in mind would be a bit boring, so here's chapter 4! Please let me know what you think of it.
Well, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters from the Sarah Jane Adventures. I'm just playing with them for a bit.
PS: This is an updated version
Chapter Four
"Luke?"
It was dark. Everything was incredibly dark... and painful. Everything was incredibly painful. My body felt like it had been ricocheted from the skies until I'd crashed down to the bottom of the ocean, where the pressure from the deep blue sea would crush my lungs until all the air had been squeezed out from me. Then my body felt like it had been flung from the depths of the cavernous ocean, where my freezing skin would tremble and shiver as howling winds whipped at it. My entire body felt like a war had raged on top of the skin, whilst the inside felt crushed and smashed beyond repair.
My mind felt empty. It was a place where I'd known the memories of my friends and my family. Now, all I had were useless pieces of information – facts and figures – which would never win back the hearts of those who once loved me, who I still loved, I thought. But if I was to be honest with myself, I didn't know whether I loved them anymore, whether I could love them. I'd tried to make amends, but they pushed me away.
"Luke?"
No, of course I loved them. That kind of feeling doesn't just disappear overnight, can it?
It was in the darkness that their voices called to me. They sneered and laughed and jeered in my direction, calling me 'freak', 'know-it-all' and 'easily replaced'. At one stage, I saw their faces, clouded and misty in the darkness but it was definitely them. They were smirking, snorting in derision as I pleaded and begged for mercy. They were sadistic, voices dripping in hatred at the mere sight of me. My mind was crumbling at the foundations; all I wanted to do was scream so loudly for help until someone helped me... anyone...
Please! Can anyone hear me! Please, I can't do this anymore... I can't...
Then, the cold ocean covering my skin turned dry and warm, shielding me from the onslaught of the wind until the battering air ceased. The film of water I thought was shielding my body turned into smooth fabric, wrapping me snug while I began to feel sheets in between the fingers of my right hand. My left hand, however, was slightly raised and far warmer than the rest of my body, clutched in the grip of another warm object. The surface below me felt soft and springy, even though I couldn't make myself move to test that theory.
Then things became... weird. There was something large was stuffed down my throat. It was both uninviting and extremely welcoming at the same time as it pumped air inside me – it did make me gag, though, and I thought I would choke if the oxygen it was feeding me stopped. Annoying things tugged underneath the skin on my hands and cold wires sometimes brushed against my chest underneath a thin, paper, long-top of some kind. A high pitched beeping ran unanimously with my heartbeat that droned in my ears. I could feel myself return back to reality.
"Luke?"
The voice. It wasn't Sarah-Jane, or Sky, or Rani, or Clyde. It was familiar, sending sparks of fear down my spine that became fuelled by the choking feeling from the tube down my throat. Why did I recognise it? I couldn't move.
"Luke? Are you okay? Are you waking up?" The voice asked, sincerity apparent in her tone.
It was definitely a woman. Her voice was too youthful to be that of an elderly person, but was mature enough to rule out a young girl or a teenager. Definitely a woman, a woman who I knew... I wished that my brain could work quicker.
"Luke, I can feel you moving, are you okay?" She continued to ask, trembling.
"Hmm," I groaned, slightly shaking the numbness away in my head so I could think clearly. Why couldn't I recognise her?
"Luke!" The woman called.
Then I realised why I remembered her. She was the person I had been trying to forget for a long, long time now. Mrs Wormwood.
"Hng," I started, but realised the tube was blocking all forms of speech. The machine that controlled the beeping increased rapidly as panic set in my veins. I could only struggle underneath the sheets.
"Hey, it's okay. I'll get that out," Mrs Wormwood said gently. She let go of my hand and took care of the thing that had been put inside me to keep me breathing. Wait, why did I need it anyway? It's a natural instinct to be able to breathe whilst unconscious, why would I need a machine to help keep me alive?
Oh – the crash. The bright yellow bumper of the car had folded in on itself as that tree suddenly halted all the momentum that the speed of the car had built. I remembered losing control of the acceleration and the steering of the car, feeling the safety of the seat belt slide away, and I remembered my body being flung through the glass that shattered and dug and scraped into the pores of my skin. I remembered everything, the pain and the searing slashes across my body, how I could barely eyes open from the blinding light of the sun, how battered and misshapen my body felt and how everything grew numb until I thought I'd faded away into nothing.
What was going on? Why was she visiting me in hospital? Did Sarah-Jane know about this?
Did she even care?
I pushed those thoughts away from me as the sickly tube was removed from my mouth, the feeling of flowing air being sucked in under my own command made me temporarily forget my own problems until I managed to look up to Mrs Wormwood's gentle smile. She propped herself back into her seat, clasping her hands together, and waited for me catch my breath.
I stared at her with wide eyes, shocked and slightly terrified to see her so close to me while I felt so weak.
"Why are you here?" I choked out, nearly spluttering the last word.
Mrs Wormwood remained calm, keeping her serene smile. "Really, Luke, that's the first question you want to ask."
"It's the only one I deem important," I replied with a hoarse voice.
Mrs Wormwood chuckled at my sentence. "It's good to know you haven't lost your capability of speech," she remarked.
I swallowed down my nerves, hoping my throat wouldn't be so dry. "Why are you here," I repeated.
"Okay," she sighed, readying her position to explain. "I've been watching you from aback, Luke. I didn't want to interfere with your life, approach you in anyway, until I thought you would be ready to see me again. I've only been on Earth for a few months – the escape from the alternate dimension took a long time and weakened me extremely so – and I've only ever seen you at Oxford. Your work there is unparalleled, but I could see how happy you were there so I thought I should leave you alone to live your life without me walking in and spoiling it.
"Then I watched Sarah-Jane and those friends of yours, Clyde and Rani. They all seemed to miss you terribly, but I could see how they continued the life they led before, saving this precious planet as best they could. Your video calls between everyone grew less, few and far between, and I felt... disappointed."
I narrowed my expression, trying to take in everything. Mrs Wormwood had, effectively, been stalking me and Sarah-Jane for months. It was definitely beginning to freak me out, considering everything I'd learnt about the behaviour of a typical human stalker and how society had grown to fear them. I felt like a rag doll in a dog kennel; she would only have to start to play with me until I became a shredded, tattered form of myself if that side of her suddenly became... alive.
"Then Sky turned up. I could see how she enhanced Sarah-Jane's life now that you were gone, and Clyde and Rani seemed to get along together better with another person to watch over and protect. Another person they could help teach. Sarah-Jane seemed more in comfort now that she had a girl instead of boy," she continued. "Then I saw how horribly they were acting to you when you showed up back to Bannerman Road. I thought you could sort it out, so I left you to your own devices until my scanner alerted me that your car was driving the opposite way to Oxford.
"I found the wreckage, but I knew you couldn't stay in a normal hospital, or they might find out about you," she said, raising a hand to gesture my gaze towards the room.
I returned my sight back to her whilst she looked around the room for a second. She was wearing a delicate green dress which highlighted her summer-red hair. She'd pinned her bright hair into a makeshift bun to the side of her head, some strands trailing down her neck. She was paler than the average human, and didn't seem to be wearing any make-up shown on advertisements. She looked tired, really, like she'd been up for days on end, but if her fatigue hadn't of shown so easily on her human façade, I would have mistaken her to be pretty, I supposed.
"Do you know what this place is?" She asked as she returned her hands to her lap.
Slight dizziness tumbled my ears as I shook my head too vigorously.
She continued on: "Well, Luke, this is my... home, I suppose. I found this building abandoned, disused, and I had nowhere else to go. I created a space for myself, somewhere I could live while I left your life alone and this world has some surprises, I can tell you."
She was drifting into monologue, but I listened intently.
"When I found you, I didn't know what to do, so I brought you here. I knew a mere bed would not sustain or help your condition, so I sought out all the medical equipment this planet could offer me that would help you recover. Once I did, I hooked you up, changing where the machinery was on your body as I learnt more about what was keeping you alive."
"Wait, are you saying you stole this stuff?" I questioned, my eyes glazing with worry. "Someone could be dying out there."
"Yes, I did steal it, but the equipment was not being used by anyone, I made sure of it," she answered composedly.
I straightened my back. "But someone could have been involved in a crash or something, and could be needing this exact equipment right now and-"
"Luke, calm down," Mrs Wormwood said, getting up from her seat to push me gently back against the pillow of the bed. "I made sure no one would need it. I placed an order for a set of this equipment on the hospital board; I knew you would have reacted this way once you knew."
I gaped. I may not have been able to see my own face, but Mrs Wormwood's reaction to my expression told me everything. She was smiling, resigning herself back into her chair as I calmed myself down.
"I know. You weren't expecting that, were you," she said.
"Sorry, I-I just didn't think you would do that for me. I didn't think you could even do anything like that for me."
Mrs Wormwood just smirked hesitantly and shrunk her body down until her entire position was squished into the chair. If I hadn't been in so much pain, I may have felt sympathy for how uncomfortable she may have felt in that sunken state, but I didn't. All I could feel was the burning of my lungs, the compression in my chest that made me feel like my body was going to collapse and the dizzying motion playing out in my head.
"It's okay, Luke," she said. "Just know that I would do anything for you," she almost muttered.
I nodded, snapping my eyes shut as new pain flared down the side of my waist. The whole notion of reality was spinning inside my head, and I felt so nauseous; I had to throw up.
"Luke, are you okay?" Mrs Wormwood called, her voice only a faint whisper as something dark and looming graced my vision. The spots where all the needles and IV plugs were pinned into my body became beacons of pain as my eyes fluttered open and closed, trying to find a way to relieve myself of this pain.
"I'm going to put you under, okay? Luke, can you hear me?" She said again, fainter. I was drifting. "Luke, please answer me!" Inside the ghosting whisper, I heard her voice shrill into panic.
My vision turned dark, but I was confused whether it my own eyes turning down the brightness or whether it was Mrs Wormwood's shadow crossing my body as she reached for something above my head. Then, a soothing, numbing feeling spread across my left arm, then my right arm, chasing into my chest as pain frantically motioned in every beat of my heart.
"Please don't fall asleep for three weeks again," I heard Mrs Wormwood whisper as I shut my eyes close and gave in to the sentient chemical which had driven my body to slumber.
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