Chapter Text
They say that when you die your life flashes before your eyes. Things had flashed before Gally's eyes as he lay on the cold floor with hot poison in his veins and a spear in his chest, but he couldn't tell exactly what they were. Was it just the three years worth of life that he could remember, parts of his life before they had wiped his memory, or just some things he wished he'd gotten to experience?
Whatever it was, it wasn't comforting so he wasn't disappointed that it ended up being very short indeed. The pain, anger, and confusion slipped away into the blackness along with his sadness, curiosity, and hope. His struggle was over, but he never found peace.
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"Why me?!" Madison asked with a yelp as she tried to hold the boy down. "You know I'm not strong enough to help with cranks."
"He's not a crank," Fontain replied as he struggled to administer more sedatives. "He's immune."
"You didn't answer my question," she grunted as she wrestled with the boys thick arm, finally throwing all her body weight on it like an alligator tamer.
"Because no one else would help me with him, they said he was a lost cause and a waste of time and supplies," Fontain replied.
When the girl was silent for a moment too long he flicked his dark eyes up to her for a moment.
"Do you also agree I shouldn't help him?"
"I'm just not sure if this is actually helping him... or drawing out something painful and inevitable," she responded quietly with an apologetic wince, as the boy bucked beneath her.
"He survived whatever trial Wicked put him through, survived them pumping more of the flare into his system, and a spear to the chest- and I found him," Fontain, the doctor, was becoming more impassioned as he spoke and his spectacles fogged up briefly. "I think this boy has something very important to live for and I'm going to do my best to help him."
She eyed him for a moment but didn't argue. She had first hand knowledge of the wonders this man could work on lost causes, and the relief of being a lost cause reclaimed.
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Death kept getting interrupted. After stretches of warm, dark nothingness there would be bright, blurry, flashes of light and sound and pain.
There was the feeling of drowning even though he was parched and dry. There was the burning in his chest even as he had chills. There was the involuntary tightening and twitching of exhausted muscles that just wanted to rest. The feeling of his limbs being held down and restrained.
But there were moments when things were dark and he was at rest, but a voice still drifted through his head. It was like a melody he'd never heard before, a song with out words, just the music. He couldn't hold onto anything but it felt alright to just let it wash over him.
He had no idea if the things he saw were real, or at least which one was the reality. Sometimes he would see a cold, clean building with well dressed people, computers, and windows to a world that looked alright. Other times he saw a dark and dingy room, closed off from everything, two grungy looking people hovering over him. In both worlds he was getting poked with needles and being restrained, but only one world seemed to offer comfort and it wasn't the one he was expecting.
There would be a hand on his arm, not holding him down, just holding on, and sometimes he'd hear something he could make out.
"Keeping fighting and you'll be ok. We're here to help you," he heard.
Sometimes it sounded like a man and sometimes like a girl.
When he started hearing words he started getting more control of his mind. The visions would still flash out of nowhere but he could replay them, think about them, think at all. Remember.
What he remembered was everything he wanted to forget. The return of his mind was the return of his pain.
***********************************
"Are you sure he's doing ok?" Madison asked, her voice laced with concern as she used her sleeve to mop up another tear slipping from the boy's closed eyes.
He lay there, finally still after days of thrashing, the bruises he and Madison wore from it could finally start healing. He had really scared her a few times with a scream, a sudden jerk of his arm catching her in the face, the strength he would grip her arms with sometimes making some of her bruises look just like his hands.
But he had surprised her too, surviving not only his injuries but the procedures doctor Fontain had done on him. He had three bandages on his abdomen now and she was in charge of changing them and staving off infection.
"He seems sad," she added.
"Can you blame him?" Fontain asked, not unkindly.
"I just wonder what he went through," she sighed as her eyes roamed over his face even though she'd become thoroughly familiar with it by then. "If it was worse than me."
"Try not to think of it in terms of worse or better," he suggested, flipping the page in his book from the other side of the boys cot. "It's just different."
Another tear and a whimper escaped the boy and without a thought she grasped his hand and dried that tear as well, the sleeve of her shirt having a sizable patch of damp on it.
Fontain looked up at her, peering from over the top of his book. He saw her brows knotted with concern as she fussed over their patient and he smiled to himself.
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Gally felt the dryness of his throat first. For the first time his eyes opened of his own free will. They stayed open and he was able to see what reality he was in.
He was slightly elevated in a bed so he saw a concrete wall in front of him and a flickering fluorescent light on the ceiling giving off a sickly, pitiful glow. He was in the dingy reality and almost felt relieved. He looked to his right and hated the feeling of moving immediately.
There was a man sitting in a chair beside his bed. He had dark grayish hair in near corkscrew curls and a trim beard to match. He wore large glasses and was reading a book as he slumped to one side in his seat, his left ankle resting on his right knee. He must have noticed Gally's movement because his eyes flicked over to him, then back to his book for half a second before he registered what he'd seen. He shut his book with a thump and sat up properly as he smiled at him.
"Ah, you're awake," the man said and his voice was unexpectedly kind. "How do you feel?"
"Water," Gally croaked through chapped lips.
"Yes of course," the man said in a rush as he darted for something on a bedside table. "Careful, go slow or it won't be pleasant."
Gally felt the straw on his lips and took a greedy drink of cool water before the straw was taken away.
"What did I tell you?" The man said with just enough of a smile to say he wasn't mad.
Gally looked at him as the water ran down his parched throat before hitting his stomach almost unpleasantly.
"I'm sure you must be tired and confused," the man said as he brought the straw to Gally's lips again. "So I'll go first. My name is Fontain. I found you and brought you somewhere safe. You're with The Right Arm now, though I doubt that means anything to you. The important part is that you're safe."
The man paused to look at Gally as if to gauge how much he comprehended.
"I won't pepper you with questions just yet, but can you tell me your name?"
"Gally," he said, his voice stronger than before.
The man's face split in such a genuine and large smile that it was almost startling.
"Gally," he repeated. "Well, it is a pleasure to meet you. You've been here a little over a week, but we didn't know your name obviously. Madison was trying out all sorts of names on you, I'll be happy to tell her she wasn't even close-"
"She?" Gally couldn't help but question.
"Yes, she," Fontain's smile flickered just a little in confusion. "Why do you ask?" He leaned in a little bit, curiosity written in the slight creases of his middle aged face.
"In three years I only ever saw one," Gally answered, feeling his eyelids get heavier and his words slurring slightly.
"And before that?"
"I have no shucking idea," Gally admitted before his body relaxed, his heavy eyes closed once more and the darkness returned.