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.

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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."

Clint watches her for a long moment. He wishes he could make an easy joke about the worth of sanity, here, but he doesn't know her well enough to. And it's not something he knows. Depression, maybe, according to every third psych person they put him in front of (it kind of overblows the issue, in his opinion), but he's sane as can be.

"Nothing wrong with getting a little outside help," he says. He's been debating his words, and the next sentence shows the signs of it. "Dee's just about the most competent person I know -- I'm biased, but it's still true. She sees someone regularly." Clint shifts very slightly, as if suddenly uncomfortable. "And... war can fuck you up. Even if you're not a soldier. It probably should fuck you up, a little," he adds, quiet.

"I've had friends get help, and I've had friends who should've but thought they were too -- broken. No such thing, but -- your choices are yours."

"I... don't know if anyone can fix this. He couldn't." Or wouldn't. She's not sure which is worse, and which is more true. She does know that if she ever gets the opportunity, she's sure as hell not asking.

"Any of your friends have aliens try and rewrite them?" She asks, looking at pretty much anything in the room besides him. "Make the only defensible place inside your own head?"

Clint glances away from her (back to the door), in the hopes that'll help.

"Fixing stuff takes a long time," he says. He squeezes her shoulder lightly, again. "It's not like you can hack into it and turn on the electric fences against your own brain fucking around with you."

He's quiet for a moment. "Aliens are new in my world. We just figured out we've got them. But the only safe space being inside your head has been around for -- as long as people in shitty situations have, I guess."

She nods, tucking herself more firmly against him. She's not hearing voices, something she's ridiculously grateful for (and more than a little angry that she's grateful for), but unreality clings to everything like dingy scum.

"Should be able to. It's just... electronics." She makes a vague head-ward gesture of frustration, because she can build the perfect motherboard for her computer, but can't fix her own personal wiring.

"I'd forgotten. Before, back... there. That... about any of it, other than the crash. Purposefully forgot. Thought the inside of my head was real. Until it wasn't. So." The words stutter and stumble over each other, making their awkward way into the room.

"And I can't remember getting here. In this room."

Clara said something about the Wi-Fi hijacking people's brains, because people's brains are computers.

"Okay," he says, instead. "If you want me to, I can ask McCoy in the morning. He'll remember you, at least, and he might have video. If that'd make you feel better."

She nods, relief loosening the tension in her shoulders. Video would be best, of course (video from her own bots would be amazing, but none of them are up and running, except Autor's, which is probably filming the inside of a sock drawer) - any body horror she might have felt when watching something like that doesn't even compare to the reasons she very purposefully doesn't think about what happened when the Daleks caught her. Either way though, someone remembers. Someone real.

Even if he is a doctor.

"It would, yes. I didn't think of that." She remembers getting lectured for the hearing loss, but the memory is disjointed. Still, he was there.

"Well," Clint says, "you did just hit your head."

He presses a light kiss into her hair, and brings his arm back from over her shoulder. "I can stay, if you want," he tells her, "but if you're going to get any sleep, I should get back to my chair."

She groans at him, because sleeping is boring and she is so very over this room, and he's entirely right.

Bother.

"Well, I mean, if you don't have anything... that is, I don't want to..." There's no way to finish that sentence without sounding even more incredibly needy than she already is, so... she just stops trying to dance around it.

"Please stay."

Blink.

"But you can totally have the chair, the chair is fine, the chair is good, fantastic chair."

Blink.

Stars, just mute her now.

Clint does her the courtesy of not responding to her babble as he slides off the bed, but the look on his face when he turns to sit is distinctly amused. (He appreciates it, though. It's amazing how many people will take their right to his time as a given.)

"I'll be fine; I've kept watch in less comfortable places."

And with less entertainment. He's pulling out his MP3 player, where he has recording of some Louis L'amour books. All that he'd brought for her was a Walkman with a CD from the Bar with Pride & Prejudice on it. It's the only book he remembered her mentioning, and it's kind of funny to him that she already had it.

"Get some sleep, Oswin."

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Post-Zombies, Post-Bones

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