25. Release me from this curse I'm in/I've been trying to maintain/But I'm struggling

[voluntaryapnea]

[Open Spam]

[Hours after being returned to the Barge, Stiles is still trying to pull his thoughts together and struggling to do so. Physically he feels fine. But every now and then he catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. Any time he turns to look and see who or what it is, it vanishes quickly. He wants to chalk it up to the lack of sleep at the port.

Truthfully he's worried. Fleeting as it is, he's familiar with this sensation. This things aren't quite right feeling that's settled into his chest as he goes to check on Lydia in the infirmary, and then Dean at his room.

He checks in with Kira on the network, thankful she's now awake, and then goes to check in on the still coma'd Allison. Goes to check in on Scott and Liam. He makes his rounds on the Barge, rubbing tiredly at his eyes.

The feeling doesn't leave him as he grabs food from the cafeteria, sitting alone at a table because he doesn't feel like looking for someone to sit with.

Something isn't right.]

Comments

[lydiascreams]

[She's not actually hurt that badly. But for now, she's at the infirmary because her right ear won't stop bleeding. She doesn't get what happened, she's not sure why it's doing that.

And-- she's not always entirely sure where she is. Or why.

Lydia's just sitting on the bed, looking down at her lap when she sees someone approaching her.]

Stiles. [She smiles for a second, because she does recognize him, but then she looks around the room again.]

Did Ms. McCall say I can go home? [She's at the hospital, right? And then she lifts her hand to the bandage over her ear, and frowns.]

[semifreakingnormal]

[Scott goes looking for him; between stopping in at Kira's and seeing her wake and checking on...everyone he comes across, it's not surprising they miss each other at first. When he spots Stiles sitting alone at a table, though, he forgoes getting on line for food and instead drops into the seat adjacent from him.

There's something so old, so familiar in this, that he doesn't recognize something wrong. He just recognizes his friend, alive, looking well, and that's relief enough for him.]

Hey.

[There's an apology lurking in his voice, settled on his shoulders. For not being with him through it. The more circumstances need them in different places, the more he hates it.]

[surfaceshine]

[Dean, despite being one of the more mobile and capable members of the Barge population during their last ordeal, is not in great shape; he is, in fact, bad enough that even he admitted to it and accepted medical treatment without much of a fuss. He doesn't have a lot of energy left over for putting up a fight - it's mostly tied up with the intense nausea that hit him less than a minute after they were all pulled back onto the Barge and refused to let up even when he ran out of anything in his system to surrender.

Of the injuries he sustained, the categorically worst is the one he went in with: his still-healing hand from his reaction to the life he lived with the jaegers. It's been re-wrapped now, as have some of the worse cuts he accumulated at some point over the past five days; he appeared again at the end with slightly wider eyes and a cross hatch of freely bleeding cuts across his skin, wouldn't say where they came from, insisted that he was okay and he was. Until they came back here.

Now he's taking it easy on his repaired bed, mostly because he doesn't have many other options; after sleeping he can sit upright and does, but if he tries to stand or move, the vertigo puts him right back down again. So for now he stays put, sleeps off and on, and reads the network in short stints of five to ten minutes before he has to stop and close his eyes again.]

[fireincarnate]

[Jean doesn't realise, yet, that she hasn't quite escaped the haunted tower. She's clearly distracted - by pain and exhaustion, by the echoes of death in her head - but maybe eating something solid and warm will make her feel a bit more human.

She manages a smile, when she slides in across from Stiles.] Hey.