Title: One Foot in Rosslyn
Spoilers: Season five season finale
Pairing: Josh/ Donna… sort of
Genre: Angst and kind of romance and kind of tragedy.
Summary: "They shared each other; each other's punctured lungs and broken bodies."
Germany was dank and rainy and far too green. It hurt his eyes, even in the middle of the night. There was grass on top of the houses, and it added to his strange, up-side-down disorientation. But the air smelled clean and it woke him up after a twelve hour flight of which he had slept none. His eyes were tired from reading all the emails he had been to busy for when he thought that she was healthy. And his brain was stranded in Gaza; in the roads and in the fields, lost in foreign color.
The hospital was fine. The nurse was fine, and the military doctor he spoke with was fine. His stomach was not fine. He had never noticed it quite so much, but every since Rosslyn, after the three weeks he spent in the hospital, after all the medication and latex gloves and that smell like baby powder and the white attacking his eyes, even walking into a hospital waiting room made his insides do a little flip. And now he was not in a waiting room, he was on the third floor, outside the doors of critical patients, getting informed about metal bars in peoples bones and deflated lungs and blood clots, and he just about lost it right there, all over that too-white floor. He thinks the only reason he didn't was because he knew it might have slowed him down.
Sitting in Donna's room was a like having a C-clamp gradually tightening on his stomach, and as soon as the doctor had left he'd picked up a trash can and set it down next to his chair, just in case. Every few minutes he'd press the knuckles of his right hand against his tightly closed lips and take deep breaths in through his nose.
There was no music, but there was rain tapping on the plastic window, and by god there were sirens in his head.
He wished for someone to talk to, so he talked to Donna.
"You're not a fragile girl. You look it sometimes, but you're not. I know you're going to be fine, I just like it better to be here then to be over there, where no one knows anything. I spent four hours trying to find out where you were, what was happening to you. I saw your picture. It may be chauvinist, but you looked beautiful with that tan scarf around your head."
That was the wrong thing to say, Josh thought, but then he laughed, because it's not like she could hear him or anything.
Josh ran a hand over his stomach and felt the scar that had raised there. He felt a sudden, strange affinity to the creature lying in the bed. They shared each other; each other's punctured lungs and broken bodies. It was something they had in common, something that connected them, bullet to bomb. Past to Present.
He comforted himself by remembering that after the initial shooting he had felt no real fear of death. He hadn't had the consciousness for it. It was likely that she didn't either. Josh wondered to himself if he had accidentally lied to her, a moment ago, about knowing she'd be fine. He thought that if he did lie to her, he must be the most pathetic thing alive, because she couldn't even hear him. He had lied to a woman who couldn't even hear what he was saying. He lied to himself.
Time to stop doing that, Joshua.
"I want to start again." he began. "I love you. I should have told you that the first day I met you and every day after that. Then maybe things wouldn't be like this. Then maybe, by now… we'd already hate each other." he breathed.
That much was true.
fin
Spoilers: Season five season finale
Pairing: Josh/ Donna… sort of
Genre: Angst and kind of romance and kind of tragedy.
Summary: "They shared each other; each other's punctured lungs and broken bodies."
Germany was dank and rainy and far too green. It hurt his eyes, even in the middle of the night. There was grass on top of the houses, and it added to his strange, up-side-down disorientation. But the air smelled clean and it woke him up after a twelve hour flight of which he had slept none. His eyes were tired from reading all the emails he had been to busy for when he thought that she was healthy. And his brain was stranded in Gaza; in the roads and in the fields, lost in foreign color.
The hospital was fine. The nurse was fine, and the military doctor he spoke with was fine. His stomach was not fine. He had never noticed it quite so much, but every since Rosslyn, after the three weeks he spent in the hospital, after all the medication and latex gloves and that smell like baby powder and the white attacking his eyes, even walking into a hospital waiting room made his insides do a little flip. And now he was not in a waiting room, he was on the third floor, outside the doors of critical patients, getting informed about metal bars in peoples bones and deflated lungs and blood clots, and he just about lost it right there, all over that too-white floor. He thinks the only reason he didn't was because he knew it might have slowed him down.
Sitting in Donna's room was a like having a C-clamp gradually tightening on his stomach, and as soon as the doctor had left he'd picked up a trash can and set it down next to his chair, just in case. Every few minutes he'd press the knuckles of his right hand against his tightly closed lips and take deep breaths in through his nose.
There was no music, but there was rain tapping on the plastic window, and by god there were sirens in his head.
He wished for someone to talk to, so he talked to Donna.
"You're not a fragile girl. You look it sometimes, but you're not. I know you're going to be fine, I just like it better to be here then to be over there, where no one knows anything. I spent four hours trying to find out where you were, what was happening to you. I saw your picture. It may be chauvinist, but you looked beautiful with that tan scarf around your head."
That was the wrong thing to say, Josh thought, but then he laughed, because it's not like she could hear him or anything.
Josh ran a hand over his stomach and felt the scar that had raised there. He felt a sudden, strange affinity to the creature lying in the bed. They shared each other; each other's punctured lungs and broken bodies. It was something they had in common, something that connected them, bullet to bomb. Past to Present.
He comforted himself by remembering that after the initial shooting he had felt no real fear of death. He hadn't had the consciousness for it. It was likely that she didn't either. Josh wondered to himself if he had accidentally lied to her, a moment ago, about knowing she'd be fine. He thought that if he did lie to her, he must be the most pathetic thing alive, because she couldn't even hear him. He had lied to a woman who couldn't even hear what he was saying. He lied to himself.
Time to stop doing that, Joshua.
"I want to start again." he began. "I love you. I should have told you that the first day I met you and every day after that. Then maybe things wouldn't be like this. Then maybe, by now… we'd already hate each other." he breathed.
That much was true.
fin