AN: Takes place very early on-the first time there was a real problem, I should think. The birds sucked, but that was more a 'I may not see him again', not an 'oh god he could die at my feet' situation.
The Puppeteer Patient 120402-There's a reason I only see my cousin in a public place. It's safer, it really is, bless her...creative...soul.
Christineoftheopera-You all were asked nicely to get out. You refused. The shotgun was justified, and it could have been worse.
When she was thirteen, she had some silly fantasy of nursing her crush (at the time it had been a boy named David Marlowe) back to health after…oh, the situations varied, but the popular ones were an animal attack out in the middle of nowhere or an escape from being kidnapped. Somehow. She'd never gone into great detail about the unimportant parts.
They had always been…unrealistic, really. Situations aside, she'd had some idea of his collapsing gracefully in her arms (she somehow wouldn't drop him despite their weight difference) and insisting, through delicate mouthfuls of blood, that everything was fine, just fine, and not to worry. And they'd gotten worse from there.
This is nothing like that. Oh, he drops gracefully, all right, because he's a bastard and looks better than she does when he's sick, and she somehow manages to not drop him, but it's a close call and she does go down a little rougher and faster than she'd like.
The similarities end there.
Fantasies never mention the feeling of warm, dead weight or slick blood that washes over everything like spilled juice. They don't mention the panic of not being able to find signs of life, or the ridiculous relief of finally realizing that he's still breathing, if only just.
They don't mention the need to call for help and being unable to because they'll take her to jail and if he dies she'll have to live with not being there, with not…
"Kitty."
She thinks he might try to reassure her and she wants to laugh, wants to time-travel and tell her thirteen year-old self that it's heartbreaking in real life. But he doesn't try to reassure her. He just takes a shuddering breath and…stops.
The one good thing about this whole situation is that their first-aid kit is much more extensive than other people's, but getting it open proves difficult with bloody, shaking fingers.
In her fantasy, she was calm, collected, capable of murmuring soothing nothings to keep him calm. In real life, it takes so much work to make her lips form his name.
"Jonathan…"
He doesn't respond and she remembers that fantasy-Kitty would have taken a moment to smooth his hair back, to comfort him. There's no time for that now.
Fantasies, she decides, are very wrong indeed.
When she was thirteen years old, those fantasies always led to her sitting by his bedside (the bridge was always washed out or something, preventing those pesky doctors from ruining everything), reading and helping him get through a fever.
Those ones, it turns out, are somewhat accurate. They're just much less fun in real life, because he barely knows his own name, let alone hers, and as such will not calm down when she tries to soothe him.
"C'mon love, you're all right."
He says nothing, only tries to pull away from her, his eyes glassy and not-at-all lucid.
She cuffs him to the bed for his own protection.
When she went through her folk story phase, she'd imagined a Banshee coming to claim his soul. Fortunately none appear in real life, but he hallucinates his grandmother come to drag him to Hell and will not be quieted. She sedates him when his pleas for mercy threaten to break her heart beyond repair.
She ends up slumped over his bed and when he wakes her with an affectionate hair-ruffle, she thinks they never mentioned the headache and the backache and the dry mouth. The little quirk of his lips says that he's lucid.
"Would you mind uncuffing me?"
Somehow that had never come up in those fantasies of hers. 'I love you', maybe, 'thank you, sweetheart', sometimes. Maybe even a teasing, 'you look terrible'.
She gets that last one when she leans over, sure her boobs have shrunk a size from being smushed against the mattress.
"You look terrible."
"You look worse, for once."
"Mm." He melts back into the bed, eyes already fluttering shut. "Glad to hear it, Kitty."
He's asleep again almost before her name leaves his lips and she sighs.
Fantasies are horrible liars, and if she ever gets a TARDIS, she's going straight back to slap her thirteen year-old self upside the head.
THE END