trans_9 | A House Divided [Epilogue]

Entry tags:

A House Divided [Epilogue]

The fighting had finally ended, but not before a lot of damage had been done. A number of people had been injured, but they were being treated now. Winchester had been subdued, but not before he saw the Yeerk dead. The rest of his group had also been taken down and cuffed, with two exceptions. The first being the mysterious redheaded fellow, who had disappeared during the melee. No one could locate him as of yet. The other was Katara, who because of both her age and her healing ability was allowed to helped the wounded, but under close supervision. They of the group were all sat at the edge of the area where the wounded were being treated, under a rather armed (and not at all happy) guard.

He had been informed about what happened to Claire, and while he was dying to rush down to the medbay to see her, he needed to see this through to the end. The fighting had stopped, the insurrectionists had been captured, but there was still one more thing he needed to do to finish this all off.

The doctors didn't need him in the way anyway.

He had sent out a message to get that last part kicked off, though, so that final part would be taken care of soon. Until then, Security was instructed to keep watch over Winchester's group until it was time to move them, and help patch up the walking wounded so the medbay could concentrate only on the more serious cases. He himself simply waited quietly, slightly away from everyone else, holding the pieces of the smashed Yeerkball.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Picard entered the city in rather dark spirits. He had heard about the fighting taking place, and heard smatterings of chatter from the sick bay and its attendants regarding several severely injured crew members. He didn't bother responding to the summons he'd received; he was confident that his arrival would be acknowledgment enough. At the moment, he was more concerned with maintaining at least the illusion of calm, despite the anger he felt on the inside.

That they'd gone this far, hurt so many, all for one prisoner, was beyond the captain's reasoning. The entire fight had been unnecessary, wasteful. His grip tightened around the metallic ball in his hand when he walked up to Leon, resting his free hand on the other man's shoulder. "It's over then, Mister Kennedy?"

"Sir." Leon's posture shifted a little until he was standing at attention. It was an unconscious action, something he reflexively did around any of his superiors. It also forced him to push back his worries about Claire, for the moment, anyway.

"It's over, sir. Or at least it will be once I finish delivering the prisoner," he reported. There was almost no emotion in his voice, it was easier to just divorce that part of himself for now just to do his job.

"Winchester's group, with the exceptions of Katara and one other, are being held over there. We have a number of wounded, but zero fatalities." Save for one smashed Yeerkball.

"I let this get completely out of hand..." He shook his head, more disappointed in himself more than anything right then. But he wasn't going to wallow, not when there was still something he needed to do.

And speaking of, Leon held out his hand for the Yeerkball Picard was holding.

"If I may...?"

"No, Mister Kennedy, don't believe that. You did well. Here." Picard handed over the Yeerkball gratefully, thankful to be rid of the foul creature. He knew it had to live in order to validate the concept of justice aboard the ship; that didn't mean he liked it.

"You handled a bad situation with all the grace you could, and all the force that was needed. Injuries are never good, or easy to bear, but there wasn't a single fatality, and the conspirators are now in custody. Take heart in that. Now, go deliver the prisoner, and then go see to Miss Redfield. That's an order."

"Yes sir." Leon took the Yeerkball, the one that had safely held Schmuz the entire time, from Picard, then turned to address his Security team.

"Chief, get ready to move the prisoners momentarily." Leon had a feeling Picard would want to address them first. "When you go, leave a small detail to assist the medics and keep an eye on Katara. When she's done here... have her wait in one of the interrogation rooms, unless the Captain has other plans for her. But I'd like to have a word with her before we decide what to do with her."

There was a minor change in his expression. He understood that he had to keep the Chief in the dark about this, but he really felt like shit about it.

"I'll explain everything in full to everyone later, I promise you that. For now, I want to get this godforsaken thing down into stasis and get this day over with.

"Jeka," he stated to his master illusionist as he walked towards the hub. He held up the pieces of the damaged decoy Yeerkball, "excellent work."

The damaged Yeerkball and the puddles that had formed on the floor where Leon had walked and stood vanished; as if they'd never been in the first place.

And they never had. With all of the tension and the fighting, no one had noticed that she'd slipped inside their minds and made them see -- and in some cases, throw, catch, and wrestle with -- something that wasn't actually there.

Jeka sighed softly. This really hadn't been how she'd wanted to make herself known in the crew. She slithered over to the red-haired woman who was in charge of the medbay.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked quietly.

Jean looked up from where she'd just extracted the bullet out of an unconcious Claire. Luckily the bullet had managed to not hit anything too major and once the wound was closed, Claire would hopefully make a speedy recovery.

Jean nodded toward where Jo was waiting somewhat impatiently for treatment. "If you have any medical training at all, I think she needs some help."

She began cleaning Claire's wound but suddenly looked up as a thought struck her. "Is the fighting over?"

There was a quiet that had come across the girl, as she continued to assist in the helping of wounds, which she had been at all day. If she were tired, she certainly didn't show it, but she also had lost any of the cheerfulness most people had seen from her in the past month. For Katara, there was little to show happiness about. She kept her feelings to herself now, preferring to focus them on healing the injured members of the crew, Sam's group and Leon's group alike.

Throughout the beginning, she hadn't wavered in what she thought. She believed in it as much as she could, because a slight waver and she knew she wouldn't have the heart to go through with any of it. Leon looked like he wanted a word with her, and she flat out couldn't even look the Captain in the eye. That she attributed to her earlier attack on fellow starfleet member James Kirk. The group lead by Sam were going to be put in a holding cell, and she knew that fate was her own and accepted it. One didn't make a decision like this and think she was off the hook because she'd helped the injured. Katara was grim in accepting that security on the ship needed its order, and that depended on knowing the rest of the staff knew they had nothing to fear from this "mutiny" again.

Two things haunted Katara as she finished her last rounds, and treated Xander, who had been retrieved by Sokka earlier, memories that made all of this more poignant: Hamma was one, of course. The Yeerk would always remind her of Hamma, whether she wanted it to or not. She saw her face in it, alive and warped from years of imprisonment, willing to use others for her own whims. She had haunted Katara for many months: she would be a forefront in her dreams later.

The other was Jaime, and how his face looked last when she spoke with him. How he believed in helping others, how strong he was committed to helping his fellow crew members. She'd heard what had happened: how Blue Beetle's "other: had crushed the supposed Yeerk, and how close he'd come to killing Sam Winchester. It would have been easy to blame Sam, who had injured many with the gun, or any of the others who had injured some of the crew: by now she'd gotten a pretty thorough explanation of who had done what. But Katara was far more sensible than that. The blame here she rested on herself, one of the few teenagers participating in this madness. If it hadn't been for Danny, how far would she have gotten?

And if Jaime had actually killed that Yeerk, there was no mistake about it: it might as well been Aang, forced to do it in the Avatar state. And that was nothing Katara would soon be forgetting. The guilt cut through her like a knife, deservedly so considering how little she was injured today. She had made friends today, but the rest of the crew would probably not be so forgiving, and Katara knew that was also deserved.

Wrong and right, the crew's safety over that aliens...the line was so blurred Katara couldn't help but understand both arguments, and in the end was so unsure about what she believed now she had to focus exclusively on helping the wounded to quell the storm in her mind.

The water in her hands may as well have been red. She'd seen enough of that
today to know it to be literal.

"A bit of field-medical, and what I've got in my bags," Jeka admitted. "But I'll do what I can."

She sighed and pushed her hair back, turning to slither off toward Jo. "Yes. The fighting is over."

(http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd304/mysterio2000/Sam%20Winchester/?action=view&current=Supernatural-supernatural-1429635-1.jpg)

The revelation that Schmuz--the Yeerk--was still alive hit Sam like a sledgehammer. He felt like someone had just dropped a building on him. His shoulders slumped forward and he hung his head in defeat, staring at an empty space on the ground before him. Inside, his stomach twisted in knots and his heart slowed it's beat until it was little more than dull, but strong, thumping in his chest, echoing in his ears so loud he thought that everyone could hear it.

It was over...and it'd all been for nothing. All the fighting, all the people that had been hurt, it had all been for nothing. Schmuz was still alive. Sam had failed.

The weight of his guilt and remorse for all those injured seemed even heavier now. There was no solace in knowing that he and the others may have just saved the entire crew further hurt at the hands of a Yeerk. There was no comfort in knowing that they had prevented anyone else from going through what he and other infested crew members had gone through. The threat was still there.

All those people had gotten hurt...over a decoy.

It took every ounce of will-power he had left for Sam not to bust into tears right there in the middle of city, where he sat on his knees, defeated, in front of the entire crew. He'd tried to protect them. He'd tried so hard. So hard that some of them had gotten hurt. Now he would have to face the consequences of his actions--as he knew he'd have to--but he would have to do so without the comfort of knowing he'd just spared them something awful.

And, he knew, he would have to do it alone.

"Good, then you can help Jo and then possibly help determine the priority of wounded crew members as they come in." She was positive a number of the crew had been hurt, there was no way they wouldn't have - not with all the violence that had erupted down in the city.

She paused, her brows furrowing and with a sigh got back to work on Claire.

Jo squirmed a bit, anxious to get out of the medbay and back down to the city. But she really did need to get someone to extract all the small pieces of salt rock that was embedded in her back. They probably weren't very deep, probably not even deep enough to where she'd need stitches or anything. BUT the salt burned like a mofo and she was ready for the stuff to be out of her.

She eyed Jeka as the snake-lady made her way over and shifted again. "Sam shot me with rock salt," she stated, her voice tinged with anger. She turned slightly so Jeka could see her back. "Jack@§§ shot me in the back."

"I'm sorry," Jeka said, leaning in to inspect Jo's back. "I wish I could have done more."

Rock salt? Okay, that was simple enough. And it didn't look too deep either.

"We should probably flush this out. Then something to sterilize it, then bandages. I can do that much. With your permission?"

"Mister Winchester," Picard began, locking a steady gaze at the young man, "I am terribly disappointed in you." His rage had dissipated a lot since speaking to Leon, and while he was still quite angry, disappointment was honestly the foremost thought on his mind.

"What the hell did you hope to accomplish with this, Mister Winchester? All this damage, several members of my crew severely injured, all to kill one tried and sentenced prisoner? Was his death so critical that it would be worth the cost of even one of the crew? How about two? Four? Ten? What did the prisoner's life equal among the crew, Mister Winchester?

"I can sympathize and empathize with your position, Mister Winchester, perhaps better than you know. That does not, however, give you any right to endanger my crew with your infighting and anger! People could have died here today, and a few nearly did. We have members of this crew currently in critical condition because you decided to turn the lower decks into a war zone.

"Your actions today were inexcusable. What was it that prevented you from being the better person in this and letting him proceed to his punishment, Mister Winchester? Was it anger at what the rest of his companions had done? Was it truly to stop one being from posing a risk to the crew? If that's the case, I would seriously recommend reevaluating who has caused the most damage to the crew of the two of you so far.

"You can think on that while you spend some time in the brig." When Picard turned away from Sam, he cast a glance at Katara. Unlike the glare he'd leveled at the young man, there was only sorrow in his expression now.

"I had thought you better than this, Miss Katara," he said, leaving the group to their thoughts while he spoke with Master Chief about what to do with all the conspirators.

Edited 2009-09-15 09:26 (UTC)

"You couldn't have stopped Sam from becoming a mental nutcase," Jo grumbled, hunching over a little bit to give Jeka better access to the wounds.

"Yeah, you have my permission," Jo said before gritting her teeth. She knew this was probably going to hurt a bit, but it probably wouldn't be anywhere as bad as the stinging from the salt.

And that was all that was needed to turn Katara to jelly. She turned from Picard, burying her face in her hands, sobbing softly. All these people today, hurt, critically injured, and she helped. Oh yes, she was totally better than the Yeerk now! If Aang ever saw her, he would be worse than disappointed, it would make him sad. And that would be enough to end any kind of killing in her heart. Once upon a time, it had been enough to stop her before.

Maybe it was to stop something like this from happening too.

"I don't like sitting out of fights," Jeka said, pulling a hose out of the wall as the table Jo was sitting on transformed into a sort of trough with a drain in it.

Water flowed out of the hose and across Jo's back, flushing the rock salt away down the drain.

". . ."

It was at this point in time when the effects of being stunned wore off from Ronon. Naturally, waking to find yourself tied up never goes down well, especially not for the proud Satedan. He caught the tail end of Captain Picard's lecture and it soon became clear to him that his was the losing side. What the hell had happened since he was stunned? The girl crying nearby and somber atmosphere was telling him that a lot more happened than them only losing. Ronon was almost afraid to learn the truth but he had to know.

".. Uhh.. what happened?" It was almost a whisper.

Edited 2009-09-15 09:44 (UTC)

"We lost," Katara murmured, sniffing. "A few people and a wolf got shot, and the Yeerk was never in that ball to begin with. It was a decoy. People all got hurt for nothing. No one is dead, thank goodness, but we're probably all going to go to confinement."

Jaime. I'm sorry.

The first thing Leon did when he arrived at Medical is put the Yeerk in its stasis chamber. He sealed it, activated the security around it, checked it, double checked it, then checked it again to be sure. A small war broke out over this damn thing, he wanted to be certain it was going nowhere.

Once that was done, he... well, he didn't break, but all of the things he was refusing to feel moments ago, he no longer had any excuse to shove aside. He leaned his head against a nearby wall, though he wanted to slam his head against it, repeatedly.

He screwed up. Badly. And a lot of innocent people, including Claire, got hurt because of it. He was going to be beating himself up over this for a while.

But right now, he was more worried about Claire than he was interested in punishing himself. He made his way to her bedside, standing near her, but careful to stay out of Jean's way.

"How is she?"

There were few things worse for a young girl than finding out her surrogate big brother had been hurt. Knowing such a person is even capable of getting injured is a bit like finding out the upbeat, reform-minded politician is secretly dealing planeloads of coke to several small, mud and village based countries or that your kindly pastor likes getting spanked on the weekends: In other words, disillusioning.

So it was with an anxious heart that Yuri had run to the medbay and managed to finnagle permission to check on Jaime with the right big and wobbly eyed look.

She found him lying there, groaning in his sleep in the bed. Bruises had flowered on the side of his face in a way that said one of those eyes would be swollen shut soon without some ice. Unfortunately she had no idea where to get such a thing and the doctors were all busy tending to more serious wounds so she just kind of stood nervously over him, shifting her weight from side to side.

Jean had caught Leon coming in with the Yeerk and she sighed, grabbing one of the alien tools to caterize the blood vessels in Claire's wound before using another one to close it up.

Glancing up at Leon, she offered him the same reassuring smile she had earlier given to Claire. "She'll be fine. Luckily we were able to get her up here before she lost too much blood. The bullet didn't hit any organs, so that's a plus. There probably won't even be much of a scar either thanks to the alien technology"

She began to steralize the incision and peeked over at Leon. "So you were able to get the Yeerk out of the city alive."

". . ." People were shot!? "No one was meant to get shot." Ronon's voice carried a growl and almost sounded like an excuse. And to think that this happened over a decoy. So the Yeerk was still alive then. He was angry with whoever decided to spray bullets at people and equally as disappointed with the outcome. Although truth be told, Ronon was expecting confinement whether they won or lost. This would have to have been one of the worst possible outcomes that could happen to them.

Ronon hung his head.

It's almost creepy, how quickly that bruising is fading, however. It all shrinks in towards the middle, fading to a purple-ish color, and then to that weird gross yellow-green color bruises turn when they're close to being healed.

It's actually not a long wait after that, maybe a few minutes that Yuri has to sit there, until he groans and reaches a hand up to rub the side of his head.

Without opening his eyes, he says, "Scarab...you need to start making the armor around my head thicker--"

There's chittering, and he abruptly sits up, eyes popping open, panicking.

"What did you do?!"

He'll pay attention to you in a minute, Yuri, but he's busy...freaking a little.

Jo winced as the water hit her back, and a loud, long string of rather colorful words escaped her mouth.

Sucking in a deep breath, she exhaled as she decided to focus on the conversation rather than what was going on. "Yeah? Me too. You know... I didn't think he'd actually shoot me..."

"It was Sam," Katara said, sighing. "They weren't deliberate, but most were from him. The only other actual shooting not from him was a guy shooting at a wolf, but I attended to her wounds."

Small consolation. Small.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 6

A House Divided [Epilogue]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Medical

no subject

Re: Medical

no subject

Re: Medical

Re: Medical

Re: Medical

no subject

Re: Medical

no subject

Re: Medical

no subject

no subject

Re: Medical

medical-yuri and jaime [open]

Re: Medical

no subject

Re: medical-yuri and jaime [open]

Re: Medical

no subject