20.06.202X - Wake

 

Wake

Exhaustion. Humming fridges. Throbbing pain in her right shoulder. This time they were definitely aiming to kill. Was it because of the fucking pilots?

 

No clue. Fuck them all the same.

 

She’d retrieved another Humvee from Bedford, after Mishka calmed down and after the fog dissipated. Earbuds in her ears, welding slap-dash armor onto the front door, then suddenly, rotors, gunfire, pain, a hurried scramble to the safety of the storage lot.

She’d grit her teeth, then, fumbling for her tweezers with her left after pouring hemostate on the wound. 5.56 NATO.

Another souvenir to keep, mangled and malformed. The wound was deep, surprisingly so.

Thank God for FMJ.

She didn’t want to imagine what the damage would have been like if they’d started using hollow-points.

Don’t jinx it.

The sutures held, either way. The rotors disappeared eventually.
Then, a one-handed sponge bath for Mishka.
A piece of home-made beef jerky for lunch - she rarely felt hungry anymore, just tired.

 

Tired, tired, tired.

Maybe she shouldn’t have drilled Vera in the head.
Maybe she shouldn’t have started cutting fingers.
Maybe she could have helped.

What Vera had told her, legs mangled yet stoic, under threat of death yet kind, lying face down in the mud in the forest… that had shaken her. She’d mulled over it, over and over, looping the conversation in her head on repeat for the entire day. That, and the feeling of a .45 hollow point impacting her back plate.

Maybe she shouldn’t have worn that plate carrier after all. Maybe she should have just let the shot rip through her lungs and heart, maybe she should have died on the spot for what she did. For what she was about to do then. How’d it get like this?

Sayori sipped her coffee, cigarette wafting bluish smoke into the strangely-calm air. The AEBS had been promising light rain, but it didn’t seem to be coming any time soon. The skies were a bit cloudy at worst. All in all, it was still a beautiful summer’s day. She wasn’t going outside, though.

 

“The government is my enemy”, “drill a burst of 5.56 NATO into his head”, “we’ll secede, start a revolution”.

 

That was… four days ago? No, a week, maybe more. She didn’t feel like checking. The past few days had been… rough. Molding together. Gray haze, routine checkups, the “hangout”, the torture and murd

More routine. Wrestling Mishka’s shoulder out of place. The look of animal fear in her eyes when Sayori finally got the mask on her and started taping it to her face, the… everything. She hadn't slept much.

Her dreams weren’t that nice, anyway. She tried not to didn’t remember any of them, thankfully.

Wet snipping. There was still something gnawing at her, constantly, something she knew she should remember,
Smiles, Smiles, Smiles, shut the fuck up. something important, but she didn’t dare to, not now. Because if she remembered,
Blood oozing out of Mishka’s nose. if she let herself get caught up in that swirling morass now, then she wouldn’t be of any
Remember the fallen. Honor their memory. use to Mishka. She wouldn’t be of any use to anybody and so, she didn’t remember. She forgot.  She drank coffee and smoked Camels and checked up on Mishka now and then.
That was her job now.
That was her duty.

So, she whiled away the hours. Coffee, cigarettes. Routine checkups, new transfusions. A little Rivotril to keep Mishka docile. The saline was running out, they had maybe one or two days left before she’d have to hop in the car and look for more somewhere.

Bedford was a no, Rosewood or Lake Ivy might have been an option. Or the hospital in West Point, but the hordes…

Even making coffee or writing journals sent jolts of pain through her arm. She wouldn’t be able to hack it, not in this shape. Poorly rested, barely fed, mind alternating between sluggish near-catatonia and over-excited anxiety spirals…

 

Maybe she could pinch herself awake.

Pain.

Still present.

Fuck.

But then again, what was she expecting?

Waking up in the Rosewood clinic at the beginning of April, finally discharged, waving a final good-bye to Kate Atchley and all the others, before heading back to Japan for her final year?

Waking up next to Kate hugging her, telling her it was all just another bad dream?

Richard Cho slapping her awake because she'd been dozing off during shooting practice again?

Arnold shaking her awake and wordlessly handing her Prozac, patting her shoulder with his shovel-like hands before walking away?

Suddenly coming to, eating pancakes with Izzy and Rufus and Arnold and Harris and Erja, celebrating another mission well done?

Mishka berating her for nodding off at the wheel in her faint little accent?

No. This was it.

This was her life now.

Cleaning up the filth from a deflated balloon that used to be my friend. Shooting and torturing living, innocent human beings. Snipping fingers and earlobes off dead rotters because I'm under the delusional fucking assumption that maybe I'll get out of here and maybe the rest of the world is still fine and maybe I can heal from all the shit that's happened but…

 

I can't.

I can't escape.

The world is gone.

I'll never heal.

 

Mishka's gone and Izzy's gone and I killed the Conleys and I killed Vera and maybe I carried the whole fucking outbreak from Louisville to Rosewood and

 

RIVOTRIL – 1MG/ML – FOR I.V/I.M USE ONLY

She wrapped the ampoule in a sheet of toilet paper, then pushed outwards. A clean snap. The drawing needle was soon discarded among the rest of her medical sharps, and it didn't take long to find something smaller.

“BD Microlance 3 – Boston Dickinson SA”

26G x 1/2''

 

Careful, gentle, just like when she overdosed did the morphine. Pull the plunger back, watch the slow dance of the beautiful crimson bloom in the syringe, then slam it home. Not much, but still enough to knock the wind out of her for a few moments.

Tingles. Giggles. Drunkenness. Eyes feeling heavy. She sipped a bit of coffee, not much, just enough to keep her awake. Lit another cigarette. Then, she laid her head on the countertop, and just stared.

The blue stream of smoke from the lit cigarette was... oscillating, for lack of a better term – she wondered if there was a term for that. Maybe there was an entire field of science dedicated to studying the movement of smoke, like how earbuds getting tangled in your pockets was some kind of weird physics thing.
She couldn't quite remember – not that she cared all that much, either.

She was just waiting. Existing. Feeling curious enough to muse but too tired to think.

Another sip of coffee, uncomfortably bitter. Getting used to the taste of coffee had been a bit of a struggle in itself — she’d liked the sweet, cold, canned ones, the Robusta especially, but adjusting to drinking it hot and unsweetened had been a slow journey. Still… she didn’t quite trust the energy drinks, and with Mish and her ADHD she didn’t really want to use any Adderall or Desoxyn or Ritalin. Mish needed it way more than she did, although she did occasionally miss the smooth, euphoric buzz and overwhelming self-confidence amphetamines gave her. Maybe she could have crushed up some of them. Put them in saline, perhaps, let them dissolve and…

No. That was Mishka’s medicine, not her own personal stash. Mishka had brought her Prozac and Valium every time she’d found any after their talk at the lake, Sayori brought Mish as many stimulants as the girl would ever need, they…

Maybe Mish just needed some stims to get her out of her funk, maybe that was it? Sayori had pored over some of the patient files she’d found in the asylum, but… well, she wasn’t a psychiatrist.

 

In dire need of one, more like.

A lot of it was just nonsense to her, weird abbreviations and jargon, occasional stories that made her feel like a fake. There was some guy, George – or maybe it was Jorge? – something like that. Mild catatonia. Experiments with intramuscular clonazepam, intravenous clonazepam, sublingual, buccal, the list went on.

Dosages ranging from a quarter of a milligram to as high as seven… Sayori wasn’t a psychiatrist, but the whole thing seemed… weird to her, for lack of a better term.

Shouldn’t there be some kind of… “catch-all” thing for this? Or were they just playing with the poor fellow?

Still, the symptoms kind of matched Mishka’s — apart from the whole… disfiguration thing. Unresponsive, comatose, docile.

But… Mishka’s medicine. Maybe that would help. Maybe she could… maybe she could dissolve some Desoxyn, pull it through a micron filter, and…

No.

Bad Sayori.

Don’t drug sleeping girls with intravenous methamphetamine.

Maybe… a coffee would be in order instead. Sweet and creamy and hot, with maybe some cocoa powder and chocolate flakes in it, maybe she could find some whipped cream somewhere… sprinkle sprinkles on it and, and… then she’d give it to Mishka, and…

She giggled a little, and imagined Mish waking up and stretching, yawning loudly, her confusion turning to embarrassed delight at “breakfast” in bed… “romantic” was the first thing that came to mind.

 

Maybe the dosage had been a bit too high.

 

Mish was her Mish, that was for sure, but they were more partners in crime than anything else. Still… a hug would be nice. It might just have been the drugs, but she felt touch-starved all the same. The last time she’d had a proper hug was from Kate, in that tear-filled, hurried good-bye before she got on the evac helo.

She wanted something.

Skin contact, something like that, anything like that.
Like when Mishka was changing out her bandages.

That felt nice.

So, brewing coffee it was. Dark roast — she preferred light roasts herself — and a few tablespoons of cocoa powder in the filter, then a bit of milk, a few finely-chopped bits of chocolate from her stash bag, stir…

It looked… well, brown. Light brown. She fought against the urge to take a sip herself — this was Mishka’s drink, not hers. A small stupid giggle, arms outstretched above her head, God that feels good…

Hmm.

They had cinnamon in the cabinets, quite a lot… Maybe Mishka liked cinnamon? She’d never asked. God, Mish was her best friend, and yet she knew so little about her tastes... Maybe more milk? Some more chocolate? Nutmeg? Did Mishka even like milk? Maybe she was lactose intolerant…

Sayori yawned, and took a sip from her own cup, the red one. Red is nice. Maybe she could find a new red ribbon to put in her hair and leave the cap…

 

Ew. Bitter. Cold. The kitchen smells like a smoking lounge. I should quit. Don’t like the cough, and I probably smell, and… oh no, what if Mishka’s coffee is ruined? What if it just tastes like ciggies now?

 

She took a careful sip to confirm.

It was delicious.

Maybe she could bottle it and sell it in Japan after they got out? Buy a small production facility with the jewelry and cash, then…

The cart before the horse, again.

Just bring Mishka her fucking choc-coffee.

The door creaked open.

“Heyy, Mish…” Her voice was slightly slurred, still raspy from her stitched throat. Walking felt kind of unsteady as well, but she’d manage. “I brought you something nice… wanna know what it is?”

She already knew Mish wouldn’t say anything, but… it didn’t feel quite as heartbreaking as last time.

“It’s a chocolate, uh… coffee… thing.” A scratch behind her neck, a jolt of pain through her shoulder. “I’ll… put it down on the coffee table for ya.”

The coffee table was an honest-to-God mess. Snacks, dog tags, a half-eaten MRE she’d tried at some point (the pound cake was nice, at least). She’d brought in boxes and canisters of 7.62x51 rounds and piled them up around and on the table as well, and…

There was the little doll she’d made for Mish. 

It was kind of a sorry thing, in all honesty, twigs, cotton, a pillow-case she’d stitched up a bit, a smiley face drawn on in black marker.

Black stitching probably would have worked better, but… low energy.

Low energy, low effort.

She’d work on it later, now it was just time to set down the beverage, maybe order the snacks around.

A quick detour via the kitchen, an off-beige ceramic popcorn bowl, an intoxicated attempt at reordering the snacks in a semi-ornamental way, the still-steaming mug in the middle.

Then, she slumped down next to the coffee table, leaning against the bed frame, Mishka’s hand next to her shoulder. Sitting down made her realize just how tired she was — she looked up at Mish’s hand, and held it for a minute.

Warmth.

A sigh. She hauled herself up.

“Move over.” She mumbled to herself, not unkindly, and moved Mishka’s arm to rest on the sheets covering her chest, gently sliding the young woman over.

The bed was warm — no longer covered in towels. She'd changed the sheets, which had been a bit of a pain, what with Mishka lying there, but...

It was nice.

The same smell — scent? — as the t-shirt, just… without the slight coppery tinge. She’d washed the shirt — carefully — but it was never going to lose that smell.

This was much better.

 

Lying down next to Mish, squeezed in that single queen size mattress.

Like two peas in a pod.

She could stay like this for a while.

A long, long while.

And so, she did — slipping in and out of sleep, dozing off now and then, in that type of comfortable half-sleep you get into while still wearing some light clothing, not caring enough to pay the duvets any heed. Seconds, minutes, hours, enveloped in a fuzzy chemical embrace, feeling the warmth from Mishka’s body radiate into her own, and now even the young deserter — that poor, mistreated friend of hers — didn’t feel as lifeless as she used to.

            “...что…?”

Maybe I picked up more Russian than I thought?

Or maybe the head noises have been studying… heh.

 

It was raining now, the sound of droplets gently pitter-pattering on the handmade metal roof upstairs, the wind blowing drops on the slat wall of the trailer, small droplets coming in through the cracks in the wooden window barricade.

Need to fix that before the fog rolls in again.

Something touched the top of Sayori’s head. Gently. She heard a sniffle, then a sudden feeling of warmth enveloping her side.

This is a nice dream.

Better than the other ones.

Maybe I could try to dream like this more often.

Less violence and horrible stuff, more nice things.

Hugs.

Reading a book at a lake.

Hanging out after school with the girls.

Maybe Mish could be there as well, and Katie, and we'd tell them stories of what we did in Kentucky, and everyone would think I'd be the coolest person on Earth, and everyone in school would be nice to me and wouldn't write mean stuff on my desk or hide my gym clothes in the boys locker room...

She laid there, and pondered idly, eyes half-closed. At some point she must have turned around, and let her head rest on Mishka’s chest, snoozing comfortably.

In fact, comfortably enough to not notice the arm wrapping itself around her shoulders, or the soft, gentle breaths ruffling her hair, or the pair of tired — yet happy — mahogany eyes idly looking at her with a mix of confusion and curiosity.

If she would have woken up right then and there, she would most likely have burst apart into a cloud of happy thoughts. As it stood, however, she just wanted five more minutes locked in this embrace.

 

Just five more minutes.