and every sunrise / another morning light [Thundy]
Dec 12, 2018 5:07:30 GMT -5
Post by WT on Dec 12, 2018 5:07:30 GMT -5
The nurse, already well acquainted with Wander's worst habits, shoves ver down by the shoulder almost before vis feet hit the floor. Ve lands back on the table with a flinch of one hand toward vis wounded ribs and the wordless sound of vis lungs emptying, then strains forward against the hand still on vis shoulder, heartbeat frantic and arm braced to no avail at vis hip. "Eve—"
They bring the coiled end of the bandages up between their own face and Wander's, a hair to the right side of yanking Wander's half-wrapped arm along. "Do you want to use this hand again?" they ask, not sparing so much as a backward glance for the commotion across the room—a surgeon barking orders, machines blinking to life, Eve lying painfully still beneath the gale.
Wander cranes to see over the nurse's shoulder, squinting a little at unfamiliar machines. "What does that tube do?"
"Breathing. That's not your concern right n—"
Breathing. Wander pushes upward again. "Let me go—"
"She will be there," the nurse cuts in, deceptively soft and cool as a scalpel, "when you are done here. If we need to do this across the curtain, we will."
Without moving vis head, Wander turns between the nurse's steely gaze and the hands crossing in front of Eve, again and again.
On the sidelines, the Peacekeepers loom, silent and inflexible.
Ve slumps down. "Fine."
If they hadn't walked Wander through the same series of stretches yesterday—to keep the healing tendons separate, they said, which to Wander sounds like a fine problem to worry about whenever Eve doesn't lie bleeding on a table—ve would swear the nurse was stalling. As it is, the seconds crawl more slowly with each exercise: stretching vis fingers this way and that, pulling against obstacles, spreading the whole hand as flat as ve can against a board until ve grits vis teeth at a feeling like a scab ripping away from something that should never form one. Knowing objectively that cooperation will speed this along does nothing to calm the terrified, resentful drumming of vis heart.
("I think she's starting to wake," someone says in the background at one point while Wander impatiently presses one joint after another against popsicle sticks. Vis free hand twitches, looking for a spear far out of range, until ve makes a fist so tight the ring presses against the bone of the fingers on either side. They're helping, ve knows—Wander could hardly do any better, no matter how game a face Temple put on for vis amateur stitching—but instinct screams that no one who didn't fight beside them for a week should stand that close to Eve with sharp objects. Not strangers, not enemies, not even friends; if it's not Wander, it should be Temple and Bette—people who stayed with Eve until what they thought was the end, people who risked and reached and laughed and fought and kept watch for one another for days on end before that. People they can trust.)
At last—after holding Wander's arm just so, turning vis wrist just so—the nurse proclaims Wander better off without the sling and lifts their own hands in mock surrender. "Don't get in anyone's way. And move gently—Silksharp, I said gently," they finish in a snap as Wander scrambles off the table so quickly ve turns vis injured foot and has to catch verself on the table.
"'S'fine," Wander mumbles, pushing off the table, but ve does hold the arm close as ve sprints.
With the blood cleaned away and stitches in place, Eve looks both more stable and less vibrant than she did in those last few minutes on screen. Up close it's obvious that she's awake, though—pale and precarious and tiny, but awake. She's even smiling, partially hidden by the strap of the breathing machine but visible in the way her face scrunches above it.
Wander thinks of the Eve ve first met, timid and anxious in the Training Center, beaten and silent in the basket, and feels vis breath stutter with the realization of how unbearably lucky ve is to know what that smile looks like.
In the perfect version of this moment, it never happens; somehow, they both know each other and live safe at home, unscarred and unafraid, laughing together about something that only matters because their joy makes it matter. In the next best thing, Wander wraps her up so gently that it aggravates none of their wounds and so fiercely that no one ever bothers her again. In the one they get, ve smiles back and perches on the table beside her, not bothering to look to anyone for approval—let them complain—as ve folds vis feet into the tiny space at Eve's side and reaches to link the fingers that still stretch right through the hand not clutching a pencil.
"Good to see you, Eve" ve says, scanning her face as though it's the first time ve's ever seen it and grinning hard. She's awake. The whole country watched her die today, Wander watched her die today, and she's awake. She fell, and she's going to get back up. "Wish it wasn't—" ve waves vaguely around the room with vis left hand, holding back a wince as the exhausted muscles complain— "but it's so, so good to see you." Ve gives her hand a careful squeeze. "How you feeling?"
title songs are Beans on Toast's "Another Year" from Eve's death post and Rod MacDonald's "A Sailor's Prayer" from Wander's playlist description, because I had an emotion the moment I laid eyes on the opening epigraph on Eve's death post, but I wrote a not-insignificant amount of this while playing "Dead Hearts" by Stars instead, because while these kids are very much alive, a fun fact about me is that you can chop my heart in half by putting the line "they had lights inside their eyes" on pretty much any fanmix.
I took some timeline liberties (it's the Capitol, accelerated healing can be a thing, shhh), but shoutout to this musician fellow Robert Rich for blogging nearly a year of his recovery process after he tripped with a jug that sliced up his wrist. I'd never heard of him before finding that page, but I'm listening to some of his music as I type this, and it's neat stuff--do recommend if you like slightly chaotic ambient electronics.
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