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She's stuck. Everything is stuck. The floor is thick glue and she tries to crawl above it, through it, to get to the glittering pills far on the other side of the room. They sit and twinkle, taunting her as she struggles and gasps on the floor, trying to inch her body towards them.
Come and get us, Linka. We'll make you feel good.
She sobs in desperation, pulling her body along the floor, which heaves and buckles beneath her. The glue holds her fast, trapping her arms and legs, squelching up against her t-shirt and her skin and her hair. Her clothing is stuck to her body, her hair is clinging to her face. Her shoes are gone. Her ring is gone. The pills are out of reach.
She screams in frustration and desperation, arching her back and thrusting her arms forward towards the glittering treasures that seem miles away.
She opens her eyes and glimpses Wheeler leaning over her. His voice echoes in a nonsensical reverberation of concern. She can't understand anything but the tone of worry, and for the briefest of seconds she realises it's not glue holding her down, but the thin runnings of sweat and nightmares.
"Help me," she gasps at him. "It hurts."
He frowns, and she knows he can't understand her babbled Russian. She tries again, but the dark sweeps in and she's in the glue again, trapped and helpless as the pills glitter brightly in front of her eyes. She reaches for them desperately, craving the sweet taste of their flight and effect; craving an escape from gravity and pain.
She can hear Skumm chuckling nearby, and she turns her head sluggishly to see him sitting upright on the floor, dropping Bliss pills down his throat one by one, his mutated face a giddy image of pleasure.
She slumps in exhaustion, watching him sit on the same floor that holds her stuck and helpless. Pills roll by easily and she reaches for them, but is too slow. She wails and watches them roll towards Skumm.
"I want one," she begs. "Please give me one. Just one."
He drops another pill easily down his throat, as though it is candy. It is candy. Sweet, dizzying candy that will melt on her tongue and ease all the ache and pain holding her down.
"Half," she wails, her voice high and thin with pleading. "Just half a pill. Please..." She inches towards him across the floor, which is turning to sand now, rough and hot and slippery. She sifts through it desperately, searching for lost pills.
Buried treasure.
She can feel their loss starting to rip and shred at her insides. Holes are starting to gape and burn inside her – little Bliss-shaped holes that need to be filled before she caves away into a bleached skeleton in the sand. She screams in fear and pain and reaches desperately for Skumm.
"Please!" she begs him. "I am dying without them!"
He erupts in a clatter of little green and yellow pills, all of them bouncing and jittering away over the floor. She scrambles to snatch them into her hands, but as she touches them they turn to powder and vanish. She starts to sob, scrambling around on her hands and knees, chasing the scattering mountain as the pills roll away.
The glue reaches up and snatches her back to the floor, holding her fast. She squirms desperately, trying to kick herself free from its heavy, cold hold.
She wakes again to see Wheeler over her, his hands on her shoulders. There is a bright red scratch across his cheek. He pins her firmly, talking to her in that same nonsense echo. Her mind can't grip the individual words, but she knows it's him holding her stuck, and not the glue or the sweat or the nightmares. Just him.
"Svóloch!" she screeches at him. Bastard.
She reaches out to claw at his face, knowing she must have done so before, but he catches her hand and forces it back down to the stretcher.
He gives her a shaky smile and the echo sounds pleading this time. Pleading and scared.
She closes her eyes and lets the glue drag her back down into the dark. The pills glow, but they are fewer. She is losing them. She sobs and scrabbles for them, but she is stuck again, trapped helplessly in a thick pool that grips her loosely and firmly at the same time. She watches the pills sink away around her, and each glowing light slowly dies.
She screams desperately, kicking and fighting to get to the last one, knowing that if she doesn't reach it she'll be stuck in this hell.
Her eyes flash open again. "Gospodi pomiluj," she gasps. God have mercy.
Wheeler is bent close to her. His hands have left her shoulders and have cupped her face, which runs hot with sweat and tears. His thumbs stroke the delicate skin below her eyes, tracing the shadows and the lines that have etched themselves there. She can feel them like bruises and blisters; like permanent scars. Like the little gaping holes in her body that are screaming for the right fittings of glowing pills; they are marks of pain.
"Help me," she sobs desperately, looking up at him. She kicks feebly, but the glue keeps her down even as she fights to stay awake.
He murmurs something softly, but it's all nonsense to her – or maybe she just doesn't want to listen. He bends close and rests his forehead against hers. Her legs twitch and shake, trying to escape and remind her tired, frightened mind that there are loose pills scattered somewhere and she needs to find them.
She sinks against the stretcher, fluid and heavy, her eyes closed and Wheeler's hands on her face.
"Ya hochoo oomyeryet'." I want to die.
His thumbs trail down her skin and she can feel the fire of him and the treacherous touch of his health and goodness burning on her. She cries and twists slowly and he whispers and tries to soothe her.
The nightmare of glue and darkness and glowing pills has gone, but the hell of consciousness is starting to plague her now. There are lights and memories flittering through her mind.
"Boris," she moans. She sobs and feels her heart break again and again, splintering more and more into sharper and sharper pieces as she remembers. Without the pills she will always remember him. She will always remember what she did. She needs the drugs to forget it all.
She shakes her head slowly, her eyes pressed closed against the light and the real world. There is too much pain, and Wheeler is forcing her towards it. It's cruel and sadistic. Her heart breaks again as she realises how deeply he must hate her if he's forcing her to abandon the sweet flight of Bliss and instead grip dark reality.
The echoes split and separate. She listens to him desperately, seeking clues that will lead her back to happiness. He calls her names he has never called her before. He prays, and pleads, and murmurs love softly.
She spins dizzily, still lost, knowing nothing so simple and soft could be her rescue from this. It will take something of steel and iron and divinity to pull her back from this knife-edge between two hells.
Drugged bliss and oblivion and sickness, compared to health and clarity and memories of horror. Either way, she loses.
"Ya hochoo oomyeryet'," she whispers again. She looks up at Wheeler and lets hot tears run from her eyes.
"You with me now, babe?" he asks, tracing gentle fingertips down her face. He's close, both for comfort and to keep her trapped back against the stretcher.
She nods slowly, her eyes wide. If she moves her gaze from his face she will fall again, back to the glue and the dark, helplessly stuck with pills crumbling in front of her.
He smiles, looking relieved. "Good."
Simple clarity. One word. Good.
So very Wheeler.
She wraps thin, trembling fingers around his wrist, holding his hand against her face. She tries to seek the words she wants to say in return, but there are hundreds of them, and all of them are upsetting. Prayer and death and sorrow and fear – things that add up to screams and tears.
He takes care to keep his left hand still – the one she grips so feebly and holds against her cheek. He lets his other hand wander slowly over her brow and the top of her head, smoothing her lank hair away from her face.
He seems in no hurry to talk, but she fights anyway, dragging words to the surface and forcing them out. They taste bitter and they feel big and uncomfortable.
"I am sorry," she whispers.
A small, sad smile creases the corner of his mouth. "I know. It's okay. I'm sorry too."
She frowns and her head aches as she tries to decipher his apology. He shakes his head and traces a trembling thumb across the lines of confusion on her face.
"We don't have to talk now," he says. "Do you need anything?"
She feels nothing but weight pulling her down. She is neither hungry nor thirsty. She is just heavy and sad. Her fingers tighten further around his wrist and she looks up at him pleadingly.
"Do not leave me," she says, forcing the words out of her dry mouth. "If you leave me I will sink. If you leave me, I will find Bliss..." Her voice cracks as she utters her knowledge of such weakness to him.
"I'm goin' nowhere," he answers bravely. It is false bravado, but despite the tone his words are full of truth, and she knows it. They glow warm in her chest and she feels each muscle uncoil.
"I am balanced between two hells," she croaks, trying to explain. "You could fall in with me." She feels obligated to warn him of the danger.
"I fell in with you a while back," he says. His breath whispers on her cheek. "No more nightmares now, okay? Just sleep. Don't worry. We're lookin' after you."
They are alone, but she senses vague silhouettes elsewhere, and the glow in her chest warms again as the chain designed to pull her back to the surface comprises itself of not one but four links. Wheeler, Kwame, Gi and Ma-Ti. The chain is made of steel and iron and divinity and it will pull her out.
She sighs and closes her eyes, shifting her cheek against the warm palm of Wheeler's hand. "I am not alone?" she asks, seeking final confirmation before she gives in to the dark again. "You will not leave?"
"Nope," Wheeler answers softly, his brow pressed gently against hers. "You're stuck with me."
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