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| Entry tags: | b7, fic |
Fic: Life in the ruins (B7)
Life in the ruins
It was dark when he woke up. Pitch dark. He felt around the floor in front of him and then his head. He was surprised to find dried blood clotting together his hair where. . . Well, best not to think of that.
By his best estimate, it took him about two days to dig his legs out from the rubble, which he did in silence. When he was finally able to move, he took a sort of personal inventory. He was alive, his legs worked to his surprise and, while bruised, did not seem broken. He was dehydrated and quite hungry.
It took about another day to search the areas of the base that were available to him. He was pleasantly surprised to find a storeroom with food and water. It seemed quite old and tasted a little stale, but did wonders for his mood.
He ate, rested and explored for something like a week before coming to a conclusion. He would have to try to dig back through the tunnel he had been trapped in.
He very quickly settled into a schedule. Each 'day' consisted of breakfast, four hours of digging, lunch, four hours of digging, dinner, a few hours of reliving his life outside this dark hole--imagining himself telling the story to friends or family.
After a few weeks of digging, he came upon another thought. He had assumed that there must be a way out on the other side of this rubble, but if there was not, then Servalan and Travis might be trapped, alive over there. He stopped digging for a whole day, but soon grew bored and decided it was worth the risk.
Once, he found himself cursing Blake for leaving him behind without thinking to check and see if the limiter had put him into a coma. He reminded himself, however, that he himself had told Blake and the others to leave him. He had been suicidal at the time, but now, having honestly faced his own mortality in the dark, he found that his life moved fine within its routine.
He wondered if he had gone crazy, but decided that craziness belonged to the great figures of the universe. Servalan was insane. She wanted power, not caring that power meant risk. Travis gave in to hate. Blake. Maybe Blake was crazy to do what he was doing, but at least he seemed to care about people. Well, that was another lifetime. This life was about this rock and about the chance that there was a door on the other side that led out to the light and the warmth of the sun. He smiled to himself and set about moving a little more rubble.