souffle_girlek | Post-Zombies, Post-Bones

Post-Zombies, Post-Bones

Oswin didn't get far once she and Autor returned to the bar - the doctor she'd seen before had spotted her almost before she could properly get into the infirmary. His plaintive grousing about how he'd just set everything to rights, couldn't she stay uninjured for just a little while, just for him is very distracting - the upper registers of her hearing return almost before she can set herself up to be properly worried about the exam.

The concussion, on the other hand, earns her a stay overnight, and no amount of pleading or nerves will get her out of it. He gives her an option - she can have pain medication and can sleep on her own terms in a quiet section of the infirmary, or he can sedate her now and keep her under constant machine surveillance. Either way, unconsciousness and staying in the infirmary are things that are going to happen here.

She chooses option 'a', after asking one of the rats to leave a note with Bar for anyone who might be looking for her.

So now Oswin (having commandeered a fair number of blankets) is making a somewhat half-assed attempt at reading to pass the time. Mostly she's staring at her book (Pride and Prejudice, if there was ever a time for Fitzwilliam Darcy, this is it), and occasionally making it far enough to turn a page.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"... Yeah? So is he really a punk pirate? Does he have a parrot? Does he make people walk the plank?" Oswin grills brightly, because really, that might be one of the best things ever.

"No, no, ...," Clint considers the last question, tilting his head. "... Sometimes?"

"Brilliant." Oswin grins, because frankly, theorizing on a punk pirate from Clint's world is much better than thinking about the shambling dead or spending the night hovering above a land that looks like the one she just barely escaped. "You should tell him about the parrot."

Clint huffs an amused breath. "As long as you don't tell him I laughed."

"Deal. Though I don't think you're much in danger - I mean. He was shooting zombies, and I... was mostly flailing at them. A lot. I don't think conversation is a likely thing, do you?" She asks, scrunching her nose. Sure, she runs into people who are heavily armed entirely too often, and usually it's a quite literal running-into, but odds are there won't be long talks over tea with the leather-bound pirate.

"Oswin," Clint says, and his tone is serious, though he's smiling around his eyes. "The one thing I know you're absolutely going to do, at any given time, is the unexpected. You'll probably end up dancing with him at Cinderella's ball, or something."

"What, by standing on his boots? He's a tree." Oswin protests, having never seen Steve Rogers up close. "I will look ridiculous."

...

This is not to say she wouldn't do it, no.

...

Clint's brow pinches slightly.

"Okay," he says. "That mental image was my fault." The idea of Fury dancing with someone on his boots is kind of... disturbing. "Anyway, he's a solid guy, follow his lead in a catastrophe, and try not to get into any catastrophes. Please.

"How bad was your concussion?"

She makes a face at him for his plea for her to stay out of trouble - it's not like she goes looking for these things.

"Bad enough, I guess." She shrugs slightly, not really up on her 'classification of concussions'.

"... Don't remember getting here." Frankly? That's the most worrisome thought running through her head right now.

"It happens. Something about your brain not storing new memories until it's over the shock." He squeezes her hand, gently. "You seem real enough to me," he says, voice lightly teasing. If he was a hallucination, that wouldn't matter much.

He hates hallucinating.

But where, where did you get the eggs and milk for the souffles?

She pales precipitously as her brain (the poor rattled thing that it is) makes the not-so-difficult jump to the completely wrong conclusion. We could perhaps blame it on the medications, or the healing damage. That would be... polite.

It's a dream, Oswin. You dreamed it for yourself because the truth was too horrible to face.

"... You okay?" His eyes flick up away from her briefly to see if he can spot the doctor, just in case; other than that, he keeps his eyes on her

She tries to reassure herself that of course this is real, it must be real, there have been other people, but she's stuck over the idea that there's a gap, a severe gap in her memory, a gap she can't explain away, one the exact size and shape of another gap that she wishes she still didn't remember the contents of.

"I'm. You'd... where is he? Where's the Predator?" That's the wrong word, but it's the one that slots into place, the Predator who comes and takes away all the safe places to hide. "I... I thought..." She thought she'd escaped, but really. Really Oswin, a magical bar that just happened to show up in the nick of time?

Of course it isn't real.

Oh.

He tries to parse what she thinks is happening, what will help without jarring her too badly. This is what he gets for not asking questions. "He's not here," Clint says, gently. His tone isn't reassuring, not really; it's the tone of someone who wholly believes what they're saying. "What's going on?"

"No, of course not, he ran." Run you clever boy. "He got away. He's safe now." The accent is still hers, but the phrasing (and the calmness of it) belongs to a different girl, or rather, the other girl, the impossible one.

"Though." Her grip tightens, and she gives Clint a bit of a broken smile. "I should get points for thinking up someone who wouldn't leave me here." She gives the door a worried glance - there's no defenses there, that's not good.

"You aren't, are you? Going to leave? It's just that, he already did, and... well. If I have to die, I'd rather die as me. And I don't know if I can keep them out anymore."

Edited 2013-11-11 09:28 (UTC)

"I won't. I'm real, but even if I wasn't -- that's not what I do."

He's not -- entirely sure what she's talking about. She told him that the things attacking her were hard to kill, but he's not entirely sure what as me means. Mind control?

"You want me to sit between you and the door?"

She shakes her head, her gaze flickering to the door every few minutes.

"There aren't any defenses, and they'll be... quite desperate. It's a bit selfish, but I don't want to see it when they kill... I would want to see them coming. So I can... I don't know, there has to be something."

He gives her an easy nod of acknowledgement. "Move on over, then," he says, setting down the carefully wrapped Walkman (he can give it to her later, it was just in his closet), "and I'll sit on this side. You could read me some Pride and Prejudice?

"I'm very good at watching doors."

She nods, and smiles - relieved and resigned all at once, exhaustion from injury and medication tugging at her movements.

"Don't worry, won't be long." She assures him (or herself), as she picks up her book, and finds her marked place.

"You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason for my journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I come." Oswin starts, her natural tendency towards mimicry lending Lady Catherine an extra especially supercilious tone.

The Lady Catherine has long since been sent off with a flea in her ear by the time Oswin slows, and stops, giving the door a very confused look.

It's.

Still there.

Clint is warm and solid beside her, the bed dipping a bit under their combined weight. It's... she knows she's a genius. But could she have imagined this?

...

She has to have, right?

...

Why is the world still going?

Clint's arm has found its way around Oswin's shoulder during her reading. When she trails off, he glances away from the door, to what he can see of her face. Nothing's changed in the doorway, for him.

"Oswin?"

There are no harsh, metallic voices. No explosions.

"I... don't know where I am." She admits, quietly, her voice small and, oddly, more timid now that she isn't completely assured that she is shortly going to die.

She sounds exactly--down to her accent-- like like Clara Oswald. That's not important, right now, but it makes Clint take an extra moment to reply.

"We're in Milliways," he tells her. "It's a weird bar that people from everywhere go to. You have a room here, but we're not in it. This is a medical center -- you're here for the night because you knocked your head into something earlier." He squeezes her shoulder, lightly. "You doing okay, sweetheart?"

"And... you're real. Really... real." It's less of a question, more of a reordering of mis-filed data. Slowly the absolutely shameless flirt blushes in sheer embarrassment - seriously, her brain is faulty, it is broken, can she trade it in for another?

"You must think I'm very silly."

"Well," Clint says, and he's grinning a bit, because this is... a relief. "I don't want to say you're not, but this isn't why."

"Oh stars." She groans, covering her face with her hands. Of course, she's making no effort whatsoever to pull away, so one imagines that the embarrassment is not terminal.

"I swear there was a time in my life I might have reliably been called sane."

Post-Zombies, Post-Bones

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)