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TITLE: Toccata in D-Minor
Toccata in D-MinorThe Day We Were Supposed To Die
Medical was quiet except for the faint beeping of the monitors by Tyr's bed and Harper's stasis unit. Dylan convinced Trance to take a break; Rommie could monitor her patients and alert her if anything was wrong. She didn't go to her quarters though, but compromised by laying down on one of the spare beds in the next room. He was sitting next to Anasazi, the brace was still on is leg, although it didn't hurt that bad any more, painkillers and nanobots doing their job. This nightmare was finally over. More or less. He laughed inwardly; Trance was definitely rubbing off on him. He honestly couldn't tell what was harder, fighting off the Magog or seeing the aftereffects of the invasion. Especially on Harper and Tyr. Seamus was still in stasis, Rev working on some sort of medication to keep the larvae dormant. Tyr was unconscious and no one knew whether or not he would wake up. Dylan closed his eyes; the events of the past hours running in his mind like a horror movie without a conclusion. * * * They limped off the Maru, Rommie guiding Harper and Tyr almost carrying him. The Nietzschean was bleeding heavily and the larvae inside him were making hideous sucking noises and still he dragged Dylan to the AG-lift and only then allowed himself to collapse. Harper started freaking out and Trance quickly sedated him. Tyr looked at her and said, pointing to his stomach, "Get. Rid. Of. That." And almost inaudibly, closing his eyes, "Please…" He slumped down, consumed by pain, the livid agony growing inside him. Rommie lifted him up on the stretcher and the drones rolled them off. In Medical, Rommie put Harper in the stasis unit and set the controls. Dylan was next. While she took care of him, Trance was getting Tyr ready for the surgery. She was almost crying. She was not a real doctor! Granted, she knew a lot but … As if reading her thoughts, Tyr looked at her: "Now is not the time for self-doubt, child. Whether or not you remove these parasites, you will succeed." "What -- what do you mean?" "You know what I mean." She did. So she got on with her work. All seemed to go well until she started to extract the larvae. Tyr screamed and almost bucked off the table. He was wide-awake and in so much pain he was going mad. The parasites absorbed the anesthetic and he suddenly felt everything that was done to him. Dylan made his way over there and held him down with all his might while Trance put the restraints on him. She gave him another injection and the pain seemed to subside a little. But that was it, no amount of drugs seemed to work, it was neutralized immediately by the larvae. "Get on with it, girl." "But…" "Do you enjoy seeing me suffer?" "No!" Trance was on the verge of tears. "Then save your crying for later and GET ON WITH IT!" Dylan stood on the other side of the table and took Tyr's hand in his. He didn't know what prompted this gesture, and he didn't know why Tyr accepted it, but he did. And so Dylan remained there for four agonizing hours, forcing himself not to pass out from the site in front of him, getting his hand crushed by the Nietzschean. Closer to the end of the procedure Anasazi lost consciousness. Dylan was grateful that Tyr will have some respite from his suffering, but Trance's quiet "No!" told him that it was not good. "What is it, Trance?" "One of the parasites was clamped on to his spinal cord. I am afraid when I removed it; it probably released some sort of toxin that went straight to his cerebral cortex. He is not simply unconscious, he is comatose." "What can you do?" "Nothing at the moment. I'll run some tests and see if I can come up with something. There is a good chance that his enhanced healing capabilities and resistance to toxins will take care of that. We just have to wait and see." She finished closing the incisions and covered the area with sterile bandages. "Thank you, Dylan."
He wanted to move but Tyr still held his hand in a strong grip and somehow Dylan felt he shouldn’t break the connection. So Trance pulled up a chair for him and he sat down, finally. His leg throbbed and he knew that Tyr crushed a couple of bones in his hand but the painkillers kicked in and right now he didn’t care. He was too tired to care. Trance brought Tyr’s bed down so he was leveled with Dylan and went to look at the blood work to find out what exactly happened. “Rommie, dim the lights, please.” The room darkened. Dylan closed his eyes and leaned back. He felt that he was trapped inside the nightmare and couldn’t wake up. Everything turned upside down. He would never admit it out loud, but he has grown not only to rely on his motley crew but to care deeply about them. He was worried about Rev Bem and his eternal guilt for being born. He was concerned about Beka and the weight of her past. Harper – he didn’t even want to go there now. But what threw him off balance was realization of how he felt about Tyr. For almost a year he tried to convince himself that he needed Tyr – that they needed Tyr for his expertise in the art of war. And with every transgression committed by the Nietzschean Hunt came up with more elaborate excuses as for why he shouldn’t dump his wayward Weapons and Security Officer at the next spaceport. Trance came back, quiet as a cat, adjusted the monitors and added something to the IVs snaking around Tyr's arm and throat. The liquid turned from blue to pale green. To Dylan's questioning look she answered in soft whisper: "The anti-toxin. It should start working in a few minutes. Don't worry, Dylan, he'll be fine, I am sure now. It will take time but he will be ok." She patted Dylan's shoulder and left. Dylan was tired but sleep wouldn't come to him. He thought about the events of the past year. Everything had changed. His life as he knew it was no more, his family and friends and his fiancée were gone and no matter how hard he tried to adjust he still felt like a fish out of water. His new crew was helping but still, it was hard. In his life as an operative in Argosy Special Ops he learned how to be alone, but he always knew he had family and friends to return to. Now he had no one. His train of thought was interrupted when Tyr moaned and moved. 'Good, he is coming to,' Dylan thought. And sure, Anasazi tried to sit up and Dylan barely managed to catch him before he fell. "Easy, where do you think you are going?" He gently pushed the Nietzschean back down and Tyr realized that he was too weak to fight or argue, so he complied. Soon his breathing became regular and Dylan assumed that he fell asleep. Hunt felt strange; he wasn't used to see his resident superman so … fragile for the lack of a better word. He looked at Tyr, thinking of the strange circumstances that brought and kept them together. He was never much into writing journals or keeping diaries, but he was a thinker. He found good listeners in Rommie and Rev, but these thoughts were too – not private, but too personal to discuss with anyone. Thinking that the subject of his musings is asleep Dylan spoke out loud. "You know, Tyr, since the day I opened my mouth to offer you to join us I was wondering why did I do that. I mean, I understand why I wanted the others – I needed a pilot, an engineer, a medic and a scientist. But why you? To use your own statement, what was in it for me? “I really had no idea at a time. It was in all honesty an impulse decision, something I usually don’t do. Funny how often you prompt me to do things I usually don’t do. “Now I think I know why. I realize that I saw too much of me in you. And the more I interacted with you, the more I learned about you the more I felt the likeness between us and the more I appreciated having you around. “On a number of occasions you have done things that in old days would have gotten you court-martialed. Hell, I would have been court-martialed for being there while you did what you did. And yet I let you get away with your deeds. I let you get away with taking Beka’s ship and going AWOL for three weeks when we had to go look for you and bail you out at the end. Plus I still don’t know what is in the crate you brought in and what kind of impact it could have for me? “Everyone was telling me that you were going to sell me out to Orca Pride. It looked like you were going to do just that. But you didn’t. And you left your mate behind. Now I know how that feels. I had lost Sara, found her and had to leave her behind again. I knew you wouldn’t accept my sympathy but I was willing to give it. “And then came the Battle at the Witchhead Nebula. I could have said that it was your fault. After all, it was your idea to teach Trance slipstream piloting. I haven’t. I know what it cost me to do what I had to do. But I can’t even begin to imagine what it cost you not to stop me. I am not stupid or naïve, Tyr, I knew you could but you didn’t. “That day your pain became my pain. When I saw you on the Obs Deck all I wanted to do was to stop your agony. I wanted more then anything to comfort you, to give you solace, to take that burden off your shoulders. I wanted to put my arms around you and absorb your sorrow. I knew you would never have accepted such gesture from me. So I just stood there and watched you cry for your people. “You have fought with me and for me since. And now I want the status quo, Tyr. I don’t want you to die. I have lost so much and so many, I don’t want to loose something – or someone-- I haven’t even gotten yet. Even though I am not sure that what I want is at all obtainable. I don’t want you to die.” Dylan stopped talking and rested his forehead on the edge of the bed. He took Tyr’s hand again and rubbed his thumb over the back of it lightly without even noticing. Tyr tried his best to keep his breathing even and eyes closed so not to break Dylan’s illusion that he was sleeping. After awhile he did drift off and his Captain shortly followed suit. Trance lifted herself on one elbow and looked at two sleeping men. She smiled; things were shaping up nicely after all. |
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