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parameddic · 4 months

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👀 oho

send me ‘👀’ for something my muse has said about yours to someone else / when they’re not around. (always accepting!)

@dirtylimerick a little thought experiment for you. a conversation that would lead to a hospital room.

"Heyyyy, TK."

TK was sitting at a little table close to the kitchen at the 126, nursing a mineral water, though really his fingernails were tracing out patterns and circles into the table's surface. Caught in a space that he had been caught in semi-regularly, since he got back. Only four or five months. It wasn't a super long time to be back on the job, and it was only six months since they'd pulled him out of a building he himself had set on fire (no better way to guarantee his family would find him), and since the man who'd taken him had died. So this was allowed, right? A little... spacing out.

His eyes lifted a little, and he found Captain Vega standing there, watching him, her eyebrows drawn. The rest of his family were off somewhere, playing some game in the rec room. He should join them. Most of the time, most of the time TK joined them and it was fine and he had fun. It was a good time. He loved being here and he loved his family.

Captain Vega was still waiting on an answer so TK said, in a voice that seemed outrageously loud for how much he was holding in at the moment, "Hey, Cap."

She took it as invitation, but TK knew she would. She slipped into the seat across from him and, not without a breath to ready himself (self-soothing), TK met her eye 'cause he knew she wanted something from him. It made something turn over in his stomach. Was she going to tell him he wasn't settling in right? Tell him she needed to cut her losses, he'd been out of the job too long, he wasn't part of the team properly anymore?

The worries were silly. He didn't bother to voice them 'cause there was no way Captain Vega was going to say anything like that. He loved her. (She loved him.)

"How do you think you've been settling in?"

"Good." Oh, this was a relief. Oh, this one was easy. He responded by coming alive a little, sitting a little straighter: this was not a question he had any doubt about whatsoever, "Seriously. I mean - drove me crazy I couldn't be here. Passed physical with flying colours, the guys are amazing, I would genuinely," and he meant this with his whole entire heart, he leant forward to show her this, laid bare, splayed, absolutely no-holds-barrred, "rather be nowhere else other than here, Cap." He loved this place and he had only enjoyed his time back on the job. Patients with all sorts of injuries, including things TK had experienced himself, this was part of the job and he loved it. Being able to do something in that sort of situation, having steps to follow, ideas of what to prioritise, and a team to do those things with? No, he loved it so much sometimes his heart felt like it was gonna burst out of his chest it was so full. "I love you guys. I love the work." Easy-peasy. No questions asked.

Tommy watched him. He knew that she believed him, but her eyebrows drew together even further, a furrowed brow like she was trying to figure him out. "And we love you, TK," she said, because this was what she defaulted to when she was still thinking - being amazing and sharing the love with such ease he didn't think she was always even conscious of it. "We're a family. It is good to have you back."

"Thanks, Cap." Yeah, he knew. The way he got a little bit quieter, ducked as though not quite ready to face it but oh-so-ready-to-bask-in-it -- he knew. The smile Captain Vega was looking for was there, vague and melty and so content to have been reached back for, like that. "So, um..." maybe when he'd first started at the 126 he might not have had all the communication skills in the world, maybe he would have made her do the legwork, let her get there herself, but TK really was pretty steady here. Back at the 126, with his loved ones and his job he adored, this was good for him. He tackled it directly: "When you sat down you - you seemed pretty worried?"

Captain Vega leant forward, elbows on the table, palms pressed together. Engaged in the conversation. "Should I be?"

He would have loved to know what she was fishing for, but instead he shook his head a little, and shrugged just a bit, "I'm really OK, cap. I mean... there are nightmares, but I get through 'em, and they're mostly stopping. And - it's like when I was shot? Like I know it happened but I'm not... I don't want to use, or push anyone away, I mean - I'm not playing right now," with the guys, who were laughing in the background, "but they invited me, I just didn't finish my water." He had been looking really hard for the red flags and he hadn't found any of them, actually. The things that he knew were signs that things were going wrong, that something wasn't working, had all remained exactly the same. A shrug with one arm, and he brought up his free hand, palm-up, empty gesture, "I mean, I don't think I'm fine. But I don't ... I don't think it's gonna. Scar me for life, yknow?"

She watched him. TK knew that she believed him about this, too, but she was paying rapt attention in a way that TK couldn't quite ... pick out (what was she looking for?). "Hm," she said.

... "'Hm'?" he asked, not meaning it to be as sassy as it sounded.

After a moment to consider she leant did pose the question, "What were you thinking about just now? Before I interrupted?"

".. What?"

"You were somewhere else."

Was he?

He traced his thoughts back, stepping around where Captain Vega had come in, to the thing that had been semiregularly sitting on the peripheral, waiting to be acknowledged. There weren't a lot of things about Cale Erendreich that he needed to revisit, actually, a lot of it was just... you know, you... playing guessing games wasn't going to get him anywhere and TK was not the sort of person who needed the answers as to why some cruel man decided to be cruel one day, like. Sure maybe they would help or maybe they wouldn't but he didn't care if he had them or not. Something bad had happened, his family had helped, and he'd survived. And now he was keeping going. He was pretty OK with that, actually.

But he hadn't been thinking about Cale Erendreich before Tommy had come in. He'd been thinking about the guy who took the photos. Sean. He'd been thinking about...

"Um..." this was, like. This was silly, right. "You know the..." (Tommy listened intently). TK shrugged. "I don't even know if it matters."

"It matters to me."

How do you put words to that sort of thing? They had only had minimal updates about the outcome for the other man freed from the cabin in the dead of night in mid-October. They'd been separated pretty quickly and he knew Sean had been interrogated for the photos and the... maybe the loyalty? TK didn't know what was there but he wouldn't have called it loyalty, but Sean had been speaking to police the last time TK had seen him, wrapped up in a blanket, naked, cold, with an oxygen mask on that he needed to keep taking off to talk, if and when he ever felt like talking. He'd kept looking at the body bag that kept Cale, until someone had moved it out of sight.

How long have you been here? Long enough.

He'd heard down the grapevine of emergency responders that Sean had in fact been missing for seven years. His family had disappeared around the same time Sean had.

Nobody had even thought to miss him. Nobody had been alive to.

TK had always known his family was coming for him, and he had never once doubted that even if they missed him the first time, the first dozen times, they would come back.

He had never wanted to see Sean Falco again, and he still really didn't want to.

"TK, talk to me."

OK. Um. "There was this..." a breath, "moment. I guess. Before I set the fire, Sean caught me." He had stopped TK from trying twice, at that point, trying different things, different ways out.

"'Sean'?"

"The photographer." They had seen the photos - all of the 126 had. This had, remarkably, changed very little in the way they interacted, and TK would be grateful for the rest of his life about that. "Um. I don't know if he knew what I was doing, but... he'd stopped me twice, before, different things, I thought for sure he was gonna stop me this time."

"And he didn't?"

"Every other time I looked at this kid he looked dead, Cap." How was this something he could express. "Just... see-through."

"That's... not unusual. I mean, bad trauma can do that. If he was there as long as we think he was, it could make sense for him to be dissociated. His brain was in survival mode."

"Yeah, but he helped me set the fire." For just a split second, a moment, there had been some colliding, sudden, crash-of-a-moment sort of thing where Sean had looked at him trying to rig the collar properly, for the electric shock to hit right, and he'd come to hold it in place for him. Like - there was-- something rolled again, in his chest, "The amount of courage that kid had, Cap. God, the amount of times he must have tried, alone, and it didn't work. And he's alone again in a hospital room? Under police guard?" It had been six months and the rehab was still slow and TK wasn't sure if Sean was ever going to be released and certianly he had no idea about the trial, what was happening with the trial, if there was even gonna be one. Maybe he'd get deported. If Sean had ever had a visa TK was pretty sure he'd overstayed his welcome.

"So..." Tommy said, slow, still piecing this together: "are you saying you... you want to visit him?"

"No!" hands loosely thrown up, barely really off the table (they came back down with two light thunks) but frustrated nonetheless. What was he meant to do about this?? "I don't know. Someone should. Shouldn't they?"

"I - I don't really think there's a 'should' about this, honey."

Oh, don't call him honey, he wasn't going to survive it. He took a breath in, head rocking to the side, eyes looking for something to hold onto. He didn't want to go. He did not want to revisit that part of his life or even really to feel much for a man who had helped to keep him trapped, to keep him tortured. TK did not want him dead, and he wished Sean a speedy recovery, but he didn't want to know him and he did really want to care about him, either.

TK did not have a follow up, so they sat in silence a little while. Tommy watched him. TK kept his eyes down, head turned away, thinking.

"TK," Cap said. TK peeked up at her, glum, but only 'cause she'd asked him to. "I can't tell you if you want to see him again. But I can tell you you've been zoning out like this for weeks. When did you start thinking about this?"

A few weeks ago.

They both knew the answer. He tipped his head (nodded a little, lips parted) to confirm it, but did not voice it aloud.

Captain Vega enunciated very carefully when she said this, like he might not understand, "You are one of the most compassionate and caring people that I know, TK. If your head is telling you you've gotta do something about this then maybe you should listen to it. 'Cause I don't think you're gonna be able to turn that off. And I think you'll regret it if you don't."

A long beat. He thought about it. Then: "What would I even say to him, Cap?"

"The truth." Like it was as simple as that. "That it was awful. And you're out. And you're glad you're both alive."

A swallow. TK looked down again. A little ashamed to be at this point and still talking about maybe going to see the guy, he admitted, "I don't think I forgive him."

Captain Vega reached across the table, to put her hand over both of TK's. The physical reminder that she was there. That she and the 126 were not going anywhere, even when he said things that he thought needed to be 'admitted', things he thought he needed to be ashamed of.

"Why don't we go together," she said. "Just to the hospital. You don't have to go to the room, you don't have to speak to him. Just to see how you feel."

Reeling, for a moment.

"You'd do that?" just to - what, to stand there with TK?

"Of course."

He didn't want to go. He didn't want to speak to him. He didn't want to be put in a position where he had to maybe forgive him. He didn't want to do this.

He thought again about that look, and the seven years, and the wild amount of bravery it must have taken to try again, and only because TK had asked him to.

"... Do you think Nancy would come?"

#ic #dirtylimerick #hummmmmms. humssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss #huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuums #hums

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