firstofitskind | MHA #6, Wednesday Evening

MHA #6, Wednesday Evening

In the aftermath of the Toymaker's defeat, the Kincaid-Price household had wasted no time in getting back to normal. Which included everyday domestic things like making dinner. Dinner with actual fresh ingredients that weren't scavenged from a nuclear wasteland or looted from an abandoned store or made of plastic or what have you.

Just a nice, normal vegetable stir fry. Liam had the bottle of soy sauce in hand, about to add it to the vegetables already frying, when there was a sharp, stinging pain at the side of his neck. The bottle of soy sauce clattered to the ground, forgotten as his hand came up to swat whatever it was away.

He sat in the operating chair in the Mothership's medical bay, watching with trepidation as the needle slowly approached. Sandoval hadn’t offered him any sort of aenasthetic, hadn’t even strapped him down. So it was up to Liam to stay perfectly still, keep his physical reactions under control, because even the slightest movement and the needle would miss its mark, hit the wrong part of his brain stem, and at best he’d be looking at permanent brain damage. At worst, well...

The glass shattered above him, sending the parasites in the incubation tank flying everywhere. Frantically, he brushed at the creatures that had landed on him, but one crawled up his arm and to his neck. A sharp pain, and he slapped his hand over where the parasite had been but it was too late. It had burrowed its way in.

"Get it out," Liam shouted, clawing desperately at his neck. "Get it out!" He struggled, fighting an unseen enemy, nails continuing to gouge his skin, welts deep enough to draw blood.

[ooc: for the girl, and posted early for SP. content warning for panic attacks, self-injury, possibly other things which i will note here if they do come up.]

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Verity came running out of their bedroom where she'd been folding a small mountain of laundry. The simple domesticity of that task hadn't stopped her from having a small armory nearby and at the sound of shattering glass, she'd snatched up a gun and pelted into the kitchen. "Liam!" she shouted, not worrying if the neighbors would hear. "Liam, where is it, what's attacking?!"

She looked around, searching for whatever the fuck it was attacking them this time.

She wouldn't have much luck, because there wasn't anything. Well. Nothing in the here-and-now, anyway.

"Get it out," he pleaded again. "Please."

Oh god. Something small that she couldn't shoot.

"Is it a tooth fairy?" she asked, unable to keep the dread out of her voice as she did. "Fuck, okay, we can get it out, I'm just going to need to get a few things to cleanse the wound when I'm done--"

She crossed to him, swapping her gun for a knife.

He couldn't breathe. Why couldn't he breathe?

Nothing felt. Nothing felt real. Except the sensation of the parasite burrowing into his brain. The feeling of the needle puncturing his skin, the implant spreading throughout neural pathways. But that wasn't actually happening. Was it? He wasn't sure.

His eyes were open but he couldn't focus. Everything seemed blurry and artificial. He could hear Verity, but her words were nothing but a jumble of sounds that held no meaning.

"Shh, shh, just stay calm," Verity soothed, unaware just how out of it Liam really was. She reached slowly for his neck, trying to gently brush his hands away so she could see what she was dealing with. "Breathe. In and out. One-two-three-in, four-five-six-seven-out."

He was trying, breath coming in wheezing, sucking gasps that nevertheless couldn't quite get air into his lungs.

When she finally managed to brush his hands away, she'd see-

Nothing. No bite mark, injection site, claw mark... well, unless you counted the scratches made with his own nails.

Verity frowned. Prodded at the spot with delicate fingers, just in case something had burrowed in and left an illusion. Checked his hair and under his shirt just in case he was mistaked about where it had gone in.

"Liam," Verity said, turning him around to look into his eyes. "Liam."

And then she did what she'd do for Sarah having some kind of panic attack. She grabbed his hands and thought Hey!!! as loud and sharp as she could. Liam probably wouldn't get the word the way Sarah did, but the sudden surge of emotion? Hopefully that would be a good equivalent of a glass of cold water to the face.

Which was going to be step two if step one didn't work here.

It worked, insofar as shocking him out of the flashback, anyway. He jerked backwards, colliding painfully with the kitchen cupboards.

"Ver- Verity?" His voice wobbled as he continued to struggle to breathe.

"I'm here, Liam," Verity said, not crowding up against him. Some people needed room when they snapped out of states like that. She did keep one of his hands though, trying to feel calm and peaceful down the link. "Hey. Hey. Keep breathing with me okay? Name five things you see right now."

Why was she...? He didn't understand the request, but did his best to comply with it anyway. "The. The floor?" This wasn't a test, Liam. At least not the kind of test where there were wrong answers. "The fridge. Soy sau- there's soy sauce all over the floor," he said, confused.

"Worry about that in a minute," Verity said. "Two more things. Right now. And then four things you can touch."

"The stove? And cupboards." The hand clutching hers squeezed it tight for a moment. "You. The floor." Was he allowed to name things twice? He still had no idea what was going on. "My shirt." His free hand went to the Global clipped to his belt. "Global."

"Okay now," she said, keeping her voice calm and measured, trying to get him to fall in sync with her breathing. "Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell."

When dealing with people having panic attacks, this was usually a good exercise. It grounded them in the present, in their physical senses instead of their heads.

Or it was so weird, they got confused instead of panicky. Either worked.

"Your voice. Mine. The fan." Well, it was more or less succeeding on the 'confusing' front. "The stir fry- I was making dinner?" And there he went, getting distracted again.

"That's only one thing," Verity said, sharply, trying to bring his attention back to her. "One more thing you can smell. And one last thing you can taste."

She was gonna kind of sidle over and turn the stove down, though. No reason to burn dinner.

"You." Or at least, he had been able to, when she'd been sitting right next to him. "Blood." The coppery taste of it filled his mouth.

As he went through the process of naming things, his heart rate had slowed and his breathing had evened out somewhat. That dizzy not-quite-real feeling lingered, though.

"Okay," Verity said, putting the kettle on for tea. He seemed like he could use it. Then brought him over to the kitchen table, pushing him down into one of the chairs. "You with me?"

Liam... wasn’t sure how to answer that. He knew where he was, yes, but it was like he’d taken a step back from everything that was going on.

He settled for shaking his head.

"Can you tell me what happened?" she asked, keeping her words soft and even.

"Implant," he told her. "I could feel it..." he touched the spot on his neck, distantly aware of the stinging sensation as his fingers made contact with the raw, bleeding skin there. He frowned, because that wasn't right. "Parasite. The bloodworm." No, that wasn't right either. Those things had happened, yes, but years ago.

"Liam, none of those things are here," Verity told him. "I checked your neck and there's nothing in there. I promise."

“I could swear,” he started, before breaking off, confused. “It felt real.”

"Liam, where did you think you were?" Verity asked, reaching out to take his hand. "When you felt it, where were you?"

“The Mothership,” he murmured, clutching on to her hand as if it were a lifeline. “I was back on the Mothership, and I had to be still, I couldn’t move, or- or the needle would miss.”

This seemed...bad.

"That wasn't real," Verity told him. "I need you to remind yourself that it wasn't real. You've been in the kitchen the whole time. I could hear you moving around, getting dinner ready for us. The Mothership is gone, Liam, remember?"

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