lucetilogs | Draft Log #3: During v. 2.0

Hours later, and the cool of evening was a blessing to the man lying in the medical camp. He stirred and woke up after the sun went down, confused as to why he was lying in a white tent with forest smells and sounds filtering in. The last things Jack Sparrow could remember were flames and deafening noise and screaming.

The Elizabeth.

"Bugger," Jack mumbled. He tried to move and then realized that both arms, his chest, his head, and one of his legs were heavily bandaged. The tent smelled like medicine and disinfectant. There was a slow dripping IV hooked into his arm, supplying some sort of not-rum fluid to his body. There was no pain, mercifully; just an itch on the end of his nose that Jack Sparrow could not scratch.

Get the bandages and get gone. That's all she wanted. Find a quiet little corner and maybe a kind passer-by to help her wrap it around her ribs where the worst of the wound was and then let herself get better. She didn't dare seek out and ask McCoy directly; he might make her stay here, she thought. And she didn't want to be here. She wanted to be out and cracking skulls.

And that poor soul seemed covered in bandages, she thought. So Buffy crouched at the foot of Jack's bed -- Jack that she did not know was Jack -- and began pawing loudly through a small box of supplies. Gauze. Ointment. Little metal things to keep the bandages in place.

"Mmmph." Someone was in the room. Someone was in the room who might have decently scratchy nails, and perhaps who could get him a glass of water. Jack groaned and managed a sleepy mumble.

"'Allo? You think you could scratch a man's nose, mate? I'm a bit incapacitorial at present."

And two green eyes shot a terrible glance from just an inch or two above the cot's bars. Her fingers fumbled with a whole roll of bandages and they spilled out, careening across the floor. Unraveling. An unsanitized mess.

Very carefully, she shut the lid on the first aid box. Very carefully, she stood and very carefully she walked around to the pirate's side. Buffy didn't speak. Instead, she reached out and gently itched the tip of his now rather unmistakable nose. And she smiled.

Edited 2011-08-27 20:43 (UTC)

"Thanks, lad. What day is it? How long've I been here? Where are we? Everyone survive?"

A string of mumbled questions, and they barely scratched the surface.

Who had pulled him free of the wreck? How bad were his injuries? They felt bad. They felt very, very bad, from the little he could feel.

"Doctor McCoy alright? He here?"

"...I don't think there's a single one of those questions than I can answer." She dropped to her knees at the side of the bed. "Oh, no. Wait. It's Saturday. And the whereness of here is still up for debate."

She stopped scratching his nose and instead laid her finger gently on its tip. Too concerned to touch any other part of him -- she didn't want to cause any more pain.

Except: "I ought to slap you, you know."

"Buffy." That name broke from his lips with a kind of ragged relief. "There was nothing we could do to save her in the end." A lame excuse; Jack again tried to sit up and gave up once more.

"You alright?"

"I spent every fraction of a second up until you asked for your nose to be scratched thinking you were -- once again -- dead, Jack. Ask me again if I'm alright. I dare you."

But her own relief overcomes her indignation. Quieter: "Is there anything you need?"

"Sorry. M' sorry, Annie, oh I'm sorry, love. I don't. Water?"

The fingers on his right hand were unscathed, and therefore unbandaged, and therefore twitching like mad.

She watched his twitching fingers with her own increasingly twitchy demeanor. Her inclination to go and take her payment in blood from the enemy was no less fearsome but, unlike before, Buffy no longer wanted to give in.

"Water. You'll have it. I'll just be...hey, two shakes of a lamb's tail. Or even faster. One and a half shakes."

She stood.

"One shake," he bargained. "Please."

"Less than," she countered. And then she was gone -- carefully picking her way through the beds of the injured. She hated what the scene reminded her of. But Buffy pushed those memories out of her mind and sought out a great big supply barrel of clean -- if not terribly fresh -- water.

Edited 2011-08-28 00:25 (UTC)

Jack will take that opportunity to fall back asleep. Whatever medicine McCoy is giving him is making his mouth dry and making him feel utterly exhausted. Still, it is keeping the worst of the pain at bay, and if Jack even realized how badly he had been hurt, he'd be blessing the doctor every moment.

Eventually, she returned with a little tin mug brimming with water. She had drank the first portion herself -- stood over the barrel with a greediness in her drinking. But then she had filled it again and when she returned to find him out for the count, she tucked the mug neatly against the top right leg of the cot.

Surely, the lamb's shaking tail didn't count if his being asleep pushed the time limit.

Rather than murmuring a quiet re-greeting, Buffy set to work at her original task. The only reason she'd come here in the first place. She folded the hem of her shirt up high and began to spread salve on the thin gash.

The medicine was doing strange things to Jack Sparrow's brain. Crazy medicine. Crazy crazy McCoy medicine. The dream he was caught in saw Angelica at the mercy of her father, right at the lip of the Fountain. She was going to drink the poisoned cup.

"Angelica," the pirate moaned through parched lips. "Angelica."

He couldn't let her drink it; he could not watch her die.

Buffy was mid-wrap with a long stretch of bandage when the pirate muttered the other woman's name. Her fingers curled and her nails dug unpleasantly into her wound and she hissed -- twitching a foot and nearly knocking Jack's precious gift of water all over the floor.

The Slayer breathed in deep and let go of herself, the unfinished patch job just left like that, the edge of the gauze swaying there in the barest breeze that managed to sneak into camp.

"...Jack?"

The sound of his name on the slayer's lips did nothing to wake the drugged pirate. "No, love," he whispered. "Please."

She reached for that right hand but her fingers waggled uselessly above his. Hesitating.

"You're dreaming," she said all too quietly. Wake up.

A whimper as he watched her die; and then she transformed into a familiar golden-haired slayer, and he had to watch HER die as well---at the hands of the General. The locket, its dull gold stained with blood, dropped with the thud of a cannonball to the stony ground.

"H-hey," at that whimper, she leaned up on her knees and clutched his hand firmly in hers.

"I brought your water. Come back to me, Jack. Please."

"Annie." That reply was breathless, but not labored or terrified. Dark lashes fluttered, and then Sparrow cracked one eye open. A light blur represented where the slayer was standing by the bed. That pressure was his hand in hers. Jack tried to swallow and wet an uncomfortably dry throat.

"How many shakes was that?"

"Zero point three three three three recurring," she first pressed her free hand against her injury and supported herself thusly as she eased closer to the bed. Shuffling knee by knee until she could remove said hand and reach for the mug.

"...Want some help sitting up? Without it, you'll end up with more water in your ears than in your mouth."

"Aye...I'm not terribly sturdy at the moment, I'm afraid. I think I was smithereens, earlier. And Kennedy..."

Kennedy pulled me from the...

"Bugger."

Edited 2011-08-28 01:51 (UTC)

"You still kinda look like smithereens...just, y'know, if someone took those smithereens and wrapped them up like a Christmas present. Only instead of cute little snowman prints you have gauze."

She let go of his hand in order to ease him up into a sitting position.

"Archie what...?" Archie was easier to ask about than Angelica.

"Pulled me from the water," he finished. A pause as he eased into a sitting position with her help. It was the first time he'd sat up since the incident and his muscles felt sore and tight--the bandages pulled a bit at his wounds and that didn't feel at all nice, either.

"I think there were sea turtles, Annie."

XD

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