Chapter Text
Everything hurts.
There’s something in his mouth. Something hard and foreign. He tries to scream. Ends up choking instead. He struggles, fighting blindly against unseen enemies. There are hands touching him, too many to count. He bucks and finds that he can’t move his legs right. There’s something heavy weighing them down. He’s trapped, trapped in the dark with hands grabbing him and holding him down.
Sound penetrates the fog. He can hear alarms beeping and thrilling. Voices shouting. And something else. An animal noise. A loud, desperate keening. He fights harder. Needs to get away from all this madness. Needs to-
Everything dims. The noise disappears again. Then the hurt does aswell.
Aaron slips back down into darkness.
xxx
He fights his way back up to the surface.
There’s something in his mouth. It presses down on his tongue, forcing his mouth open. He gags and drools, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. He tries to move but finds that there’s something holding him down. No, not something. Someone. There are hands on him, forcing him down on the bed and there’s something in his mouth and he’s been here before, hasn’t he?
This has all happened to him before and now it’s repeating itself and -
“Aaron,” someone shouts. “Aaron, please, calm down.”
He knows that voice. He’s heard it before, at times like this. At times when the nightmares get bad and he can’t wake up by himself. That voice, it’s there to guide him away from the darkness. To take him back to a place where he’s safe. Where nothing bad can get to him, ever again.
“Look at me,” the voice insists. “Aaron, please. Calm down and look at me.”
Aaron tries to speak only to find that he can’t. Panic scratches at his brain but he tries to keep hold of the promise that the voice offers. The promise that things will get better if Aaron just, somehow, manages to pry his eyes open. Aaron’s always been good at pushing himself but what the voice asks for, it seems Herculean. He pants through his nose. Ignores the pain. Finally, his eyes open. The light hurts and he blinks. Tries to make out the blurry shapes above him. Searches for one face in particular. Catches a glimpse of gold and turns towards it. Drinks in the sight, even though he can’t make out the details.
“That’s right,” Robert says. “That’s good. Keep your eyes on me, love.”
Aaron tries. He tries his very best.
“Listen now,” Robert orders and Aaron listens, even as Robert's voice grows fainter and fainter. “You’re in the hospital. They had to intubate you. That’s why you can’t speak. But you’re gonna be fine, Aaron. You hear that? You’re gonna be-”
Aaron slips away again.
xxx
Pain drags him back.
He doesn’t know where he is, or what’s happened to him. Nothing makes sense. Nothing matters. Except for the fact that they’ve put his leg on fire. The pain, it rips through him. It tries to tear a scream from him but they’ve stuffed something down his throat. Filled up his mouth so that he can’t beg for help or mercy. Can’t beg them to stop the torture and just kill him. Aaron shakes. He cries. He ignores the hands that touch his face. The voices that get increasingly more loud and urgent. The light that shines into his eyes and the ceiling that moves above him as they roll him out of his room and down never-ending hallways.
xxx
His eyes won’t open.
“I love you,” his mum says, her voice thick and shaky. “I love you so much.”
Love you too, he thinks.
xxx
“The funeral, it’s next week.”
Whose funeral, he wonders. Who had died?
“I don’t know what to do,” Adam continues. “I just don’t know what to do, mate. Except sit here. Sit here and wait for you to wake up.”
His voice, it shakes with grief and hurt. Aaron wants to reach out, wants to wrap his arms around his friend and offer him comfort the only way he knows how. But he can’t even open his eyes. Doesn’t even have the strength to get his damned fingers to twitch.
His thoughts, they drift to Jackson.
xxx
“She’s a real slapper, but Gabby says…“
Liv’s voice trails off into nothing. She stares at him and he stares right back. Doesn’t like what he sees. His little sister’s huddled up in a plastic chair, Robert’s jacket draped over her shoulders and her knees pulled up to her chest. She’s not been sleeping. And her eyes, they’re swollen and rimmed with red.
There's something covering his mouth. An oxygen mask. He tugs it down, then licks at cracked lips.
“What’s wrong?” he croaks.
Each word feels like broken glass against his raw throat. Liv keeps staring. Her eyes, they’re welling up with tears and Aaron, he can count the number of times he’s seen his baby sister cry on one hand. It scares him. Much more so than waking up in a hospital bed. What if something’s happened to his mum? Or to Robert? Or to his sister? She doesn't look hurt, but anything could be hidden away underneath the bulk of Robert’s jacket.
“Liv,” he forces out. “What’s wrong?”
She pushes to her feet, Robert’s jacket crumpling to the floor. Underneath it, she looks fine. No bandages. No blood or bruises. Just Liv, dressed in jeans and a grey t-shirt. She disappears out of sight and there’s the sound of a door opening. There’s Liv’s voice, calling for Chas. For a nurse.
“He’s awake,” she’s saying. “He’s awake now!”
xxx
Aaron remembers the accident in bits and pieces.
He’d been behind the wheel, with Lachlan stuffed in the boot of the car and Robert sat next to him in the front, shouting a proposal at him and shoving a ring in his face. Then... then Aaron had woken up in the water. He remembers the cold, most of all. That and the agony, lancing up his body from his trapped leg. It had stolen his breath away. He’d been drowning in pain, as much as in water. It hurts even to try and remember, so he lets it go. Lets the broken fragments slip away, at least for the moment.
Chas and Liv, they fill in the gaps. They tell him that Robert had saved his life. Robert, for once, doesn’t say much at all.
"You alright?" Aaron asks him and Robert nods.
"I'll be better when you're on your feet again," he adds, offering a lopsided grin as Aaron keeps staring at him.
Next, Aaron asks about his leg. He remembers it burning, but can’t piece it together with the accident. They’d been under water. There hadn’t been any fires.
It turns out that the bones in his lower leg had shattered in the accident. The doctors, they had put him back together with metal rods and glue made of ground-up bone. It’s Liv who tells him that part, her nose scrunched up in disgusted fascination. The surgery should have fixed him only, instead, the pressure inside the leg just kept rising.
“That’s probably what you remember,” Chas says. “They say it's very painful. You couldn’t tell us, but…“
Her voice breaks. She rubs a hand over her eyes, smearing her mascara.
“They took you in for a second surgery,” Robert fills in. “Something called a fasciotomy.”
“It’s gross,” Liv helpfully adds. “Don't look.”
Later, Aaron makes the nurses show him. He regrets it right away.