[Semi-Open, Arrival] Dreaming Wide Awake

[oyedeng]

WHO: Naomi Nagata, James Holden, Amos Burton, a Rescue Crew and OPEN
WHAT: A woman falls out of space and onto Thedas. Some damage is incurred, some recovery time is needed, some reunions are happening. Also: Space resident's first exposure to snow.
WHEN: Covering arrival, quarantine/recovery and first steps in a snowy Kirkwall
WHERE: Wounded Coast, Riftwatch Infirmary, Kirkwall
NOTES: If you want to continue any CWs for description of/discussion of injuries sustained, pain suffered, Holden being a sap

At first, there is nothing. She floats, as she has done all her life, when the ring gate decelerates everything in an instant, and Naomi is knocked out cold.

Her dream is a simple thing. To stand aboard the Rocinante, to hug Alex, to touch her forehead to Amos', to hold Holden close. To tell them all she has to say, and to be welcomed back.

Instead, she comes to when she falls, thin body impacting on hard ground, vision flooding with flickering green, and beyond... the horrifying sight not of metal, not even of the darkness between stars... but of a grey, cloudy sky.

[ ooc: Closed and Open Prompts in comments below. If you'd like to do something else or discuss handwaving/continuing TDM threads, feel free to shoot me a message: inkcharm or Discord: inkcharm#4573.

Please also take a gander at Naomi's Permissions/CWs/Opt-Outs as well as her Info post. ]

Comments

[Open] Over a Period of Time in the Infirmary: Quarantine & Recovery

[oyedeng]

Naomi Nagata's bones aren't as dense as a human's should be, her muscle mass lower. This might not be obvious to most people on Thedas, although even they might notice that while she's not taller than any human should be, her limbs her thinner, the proportions a little off - a little elongated. She's a little lighter than her build suggests, too. Almost elven, though her ears are round, and the cut of her facial features is different.

She struggles, at first. Arriving in Thedas, going from no gravity to her first time on a planet exposed to regular gravity, her impact on the ground broke her, crushed her, hurt her, and in addition to the regular quarantine she also requires medical attention at first. The time in quarantine is a time of healing. Of staring at windows in open fascination - and perhaps a little terror. Her breathing is a little laboured at first, she's in constant discomfort and mostly bedridden. Not sick - it just seems like just being here is a physical strain to even just lying in bed, breathing. James Holden is with her often, and there's a softness to her face whenever that's the case. He makes it easy to ignore the pain, the discomfort - or to bear it, at least. And when he's not there, any company is a welcome distraction from the pain she's in, whether it be a crash course on Thedas or a healer checking in.

Before long, Naomi proves herself a headstrong woman pushing herself into walking on trembling legs. It's not that she can't walk or isn't well enough - it's that she walks like someone who feels five times as heavy as she actually is, and like she expects the ceiling to fall onto her at any moment. She might request some assistance with that at first. Sometimes, during that period of adjustment, she pushes a little too far - faints, when the strain of just moving about becomes a little too much, or else overbalances and scrapes her knees on stone floors. She curses everytime it happens. "Fuck" or "Sabaka" or "Kaka Felota" seem to be favourites.

There's progress though. A little more every day - she breathes more easily, she walks a little more steadily, she stumbles a little less often. Her body gets used to existing in gravity. The discomfort never quite leaves, and sometimes she still rolls her shoulders stiffly or hisses a little through her teeth in discomfort. "Unlikely that will go away," Naomi will explain if anyone asks, then smile wrily, fingers flexing on the hand with the green sliver of the anchor in her palm. "Nothing to be done about it."

[tender]

"You should take it easy," Derrica tells her, knowing full well Naomi isn't necessarily interested in that advice.

Derrica isn't a healer with extensive knowledge of anatomy. The concepts of what ails Naomi are a beyond her in some respects, but she can still ease pain and settle the strain on Naomi's body into something manageable. She's very gentle when she reaches for Naomi's hands to help her lever up off the floor.

"Next time, you can lean on me," she offers. "Save your knees, right?"

[oyedeng]

Naomi grimaces - more at the fact that someone needs to say this to her than the fact that it's being said. She reaches up, accepting the offered hand to get up again. Her entire body screams at her to cease, to yield to the pull of the floor. It's better than it was on her arrival - but better is not yet good.

"My knees would thank you." She snorts a soft, wry laugh. "So would I, of course. Hate to say it, but the help would be appreciated.

[tender]

"We'll try again after I patch up your knees."

There is still some discomfort in being in the infirmary. Isaac's absence looms large. Her own quiet worry over it is ever-present, but Naomi is easy to focus on. Derrica remembers Holden's face talking about her. It's one of the few things from the dream that hasn't stung to re-examine.

Derrica wants to ask her a whole list of things, but first—

"I've never seen a Rift do this to someone," Derrica tells her, as they collectively manage to ease Naomi back into a chair. "Wysteria Poppell is going to have so many questions about it."

This sounds like a joke, but it's kind of like a warning.

[oyedeng]

Naomi is glad for the assistance. Even more relieved that for the time being, Holden isn't here. She'd rather not have him see her pushing herself a little more than she should, while her body is still fighting with the gravity on the matter of crushing her bones and inner organs. His worry is appreciated - doesn't mean she wants to give him cause for it, though.

"Wysteria?"

Naomi picks up on the undertone in that joke, filing it away for later. Either nosy, she assumes, or else too chatty. It's a good thing to know in advance - Naomi has fond memories of working on ship repairs with Amos for hours with barely a word spoken between them.

"It's not the Rift, it's..." Gravity. It's being on a planet. It's being out of space. Naomi winces a little, forcing herself to breathe slow and deliberate when an ache throbs along her spine. "Imagine an object suspended in liquid..." Naomi stops. Frowns, shakes the physics lessons out of her head and restarts with: "You know how when you're in water with nothing under your feet, you float, or you sink slowly, but when you're on land with nothing under you, you just... fall? My people... we've lived in places where you sink or float, for generations. Our bodies aren't using to falling fast. It's like suddenly everything in you is so much heavier than before." Her expression darkens a little. Naomi bites her lower lip, then shakes her head a little. "I'm not built for places like this. For falling. Thin bones float easy, but aren't great to break a fall." And she never felt conflicted about it before, not until she fell for a man who comes from Earth, and who may not want to stay in space forever, and chose to love him anyway.

[tender]

As Naomi goes on, the furrow in Derrica's brow deepens and deepens.

The concept holds less of her attention then what Naomi is admitting to her: that it will be hard for her to exist here without pain. She turns that concern up to Naomi's face, watching her for a moment before taking a deep breath.

"Is there a way to help you? Besides this," she asks, in the same breath as her palms kindle into a soft glow. Derrica turns them to Naomi's scraped knees, easing away the marks with a slow pass of her hands over the skin.

There are times when Derrica thinks they just need a better, more experienced healer. But this feels like something beyond anything she's known, beyond what healers here have been taught or encountered. That worries her for Naomi's well being.

[venenifer]

One of her attending doctors is a smallish, straight-backed man with pointed ears, who doesn't smile much but does take a particular interest in the woman's... conformation, if they want to call it that.

"Have you endured some kind of serious illness?" he asks Naomi with quiet curiosity, standing by the fire as he steeps a cup of herbal tea for her.

[oyedeng]

Nothing that would count. Nothing that the medical standards of her time haven't fixed since - malnourishment and dehydration, hypoxia and other work place accidents - and therefore nothing she could share with someone working under this world's medical standards.

The thought of telling these people about the state of the art gel that can regrow limbs...

Well.

"Just some childhood sicknesses typical for my world, nothing serious or with long-lasting effects." And even those only suffered because they didn't have the money for vaccinations and other procedures.

[venenifer]

"And where is that? Your world?"

Brother Gideon is new to the organization, hasn't met most of its wide variety of non-Thedosians. The entire phrase 'my world' strikes him as utterly preposterous, but part of signing on as a physician in this particular war was to accept ideas he might not have normally.

"What sort of sicknesses are common to children?"

[oyedeng]

"Well..."

Naomi needs to stop maneuvering herself into situation that require her to explain space travel. Or gravity. Or modern technology.

"It depends a little. A lot of us can suffer from various forms of hypoxia - that's what happens when you don't get enough air. Deformations and resulting complications due to incorrect bone growths or brittle bone disease. Dehydration, undernourishment. Asthma, bronchitis, other things related to your lungs. Common colds, feversand stomach flus. Sometimes radiation poisoning. We have treatments for all of that, if people can afford to get them."

She shifts a little, wincing at a dull ache along her spine.

"As for my world... it's among the stars. Floating rocks and the ships we use to go between them. I imagine that's strange to picture."

[venenifer]

"That," and a long pause follows, as Gideon searches for any way to reasonably continue that sentence, "...is strange to picture."

He's silent for another long moment as he tries and fails to imagine what that would look like.

"What sort of ship sails in the sky?"

[justashotaway]

Laura rarely goes near the infirmary. She heals better than most, left to her own devices, and it carries the old stench of other people's blood. To her, anyway--others don't seem to notice or care. But she's been told to fetch bandages to take on a mission, and for all she might dislike the place, she does what she's told.

Her current objective is waylaid by the sight of a woman hitting the flagstones and saying something unintelligible. (Not Trade, nor Nevarran, Orlesian, nor any of the others she's familiar with. Not from the parts of those languages she knows, anyway.) People unable to walk aren't unexpected in the infirmary; since coming to Kirkwall, she's learned that its purpose is housing the ill. People unable to walk, unassisted by others, is more concerning.

She walks over, a pinscratch frown between her brows. Dark-haired, dressed all in black, a girl on the cusp of adulthood with sharp green eyes in a solemn face--she holds out a hand to the other woman. "You should look at your feet."

[oyedeng]

She's young - and Naomi can't help it, the way her mind immediately tries to gauge how much older is perhaps than Filip must currently be. It's a painful train of thought, and she steers away from it with some effort as she takes the girl's hand and pulls herself up.

Naomi's gaze drops to her feet, amusement playing along her strained and tired features.

"Does that help?"

[justashotaway]

"If you trip over them," she answers, looking down at the woman's feet as well. She has memories of being unable to walk easily, every step painful, from half a lifetime ago. Nothing really changed it except time.

Her attention returns to the woman's face, a head above her own. "And boots. Boots help."

[oyedeng]

"It's less the tripping. More... that I don't feel they're strong enough to carry me anymore." She flexes her hand around the anchor in her palm, bites her lip in thought. "Like I'm used to walking, and all of a sudden I'm wearing iron weights on me that pull me down, y'know?" Except, there are of course no weights. Just gravity, trying to become her archnemesis.

[justashotaway]

Laura shakes her head: she doesn't know. But the sense that your limbs can't be trusted to do what you ask--that, she understands. "Then you should touch the wall."

[acreage]

Holden stays close.

Hearing of her arrival had been a shock — something far beyond his most wistful hopes, especially after his dreams of late. But none of that shows now: in the infirmary, sitting on her bed next to her, a hand pushing some hair from her face with a gentle hand.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, for not the first (or last) time that day.

[oyedeng]

The shock is quite the mutual feeling. It's not that Naomi isn't thankful and grateful that somehow, someway, she found him and Amos here - it's just the where and the how that are still making her mind reel.

Naomi can't help but move her head a little into his touch.

"Heavy," she admits, and means that it feels as if the Roci herself is sitting on her chest, crushing down. She's in pain, and there's a lingering suspicion and worry in her that she pain will never quite go away - and that's the best case scenario, probably. Worst case, she won't ever be able to push back against the pull of gravity, and dies in agony. However... "Breathing's easier." She keeps her gaze on him - can hardly look anyway, truth be told. It's been long months, and she still has many amends to make. And still the very sight of him sits warm and comforting in her chest, like a longing she doesn't have to chase wildly at this moment.

[acreage]

"It'll get easier."

He sounds so confident, so sure, making a promise he has no business making. He has no way of knowing, of course. But it's already been getting easier for Naomi. And, bizarrely, he has faith in whatever it is that's pulsing through their bodies — power from the anchor shard, or lyrium, or magic. After all, he's still standing, several months and no meds later.

His hand moves downwards, skims her face and shoulder, to take one of her hands. One of these days, maybe, he'll believe she's really here. He'll stop fearing she'll vanish if he looks away, a sweet, short-lived dream.

But for now, there's this.

[oyedeng]

Naomi lets him drink his fill, in touches and in looks. He's older than she remembers him, if subtly so. More worn around the edges than dramatically aged, and Naomi finds she can hardly make herself look away either.

She cups her free hand around his cheek, thumb tracing over the stubble while her other hands curls within his, holding him back just as gently.

"I've missed you," Naomi confesses. More than she can say. "I was on my way home to you."

[acreage]

There's a smile that curls his lips, warm and easy, at her admission.

"I know."

Of course he does. Her struggle with the planet, her hair, her memories — all tells for what moments she remembers last. He hadn't even seen the vision of the protomolecule builders yet. They hadn't escaped the rings, seen the opening of all the ring gates. Ilus wasn't even a thought in anyone's mind.

But none of it matters to him. It matters as far as it matters to her, and of course it does, what she has and hasn't experienced. But she's Naomi, and that's all that matters.

"Seems to me like you made it."

[okayimin]

"If you bust your knees open, I ain't letting the mages heal you clean," Sawbones says, hands on her hips. A sharp contrast to some of her colleagues is Sister Sara Sawbones. Tiny and dense with none of the bedside manner one might prefer in a medic. "Honestly, you're as bad as any of fighters. You nearly cracked your skull last time-"

The scolding will continue even as Sawbones holds her hands out to Naomi. Too short to be particularly helpful with balance, but strong enough to give Naomi some momentum to get her feet under her and lean against a wall.

[oyedeng]

Honestly, she'd make a good belter med-tech.

"I'd deserve that," Naomi sighs, glad for the offered hand and taking it to get her bearing again. "Though I'll choose to take that as a compliment." The tone is amused, but there's strain there - has been pretty much any time Naomi's done more than rest.

Still, she's stubborn. Pushes till her muscles scream and her bones groan, till her heart races and her lungs burn.

"I suppose I'm impatient in my recovery."

[okayimin]

"You can take it anyway you like, as long as you get back to bed and rest a bit." And to make her point, Sawbones will start herding her back in that direction.

"You ain't on the front lines, you don't have a reason to be in a hurry," she says firmly, "Rushing healing is how people end up needing someone with a bone saw and leeches. Those lungs of yours got me worried enough as it is without you making me worry about your legs or head on top of it."

[oyedeng]

A bone saw.

Naomi has no idea what leeches even are, but the words 'bone' and 'saw' are familiar enough to conjure up unpleasant picture. She'd do well to remember that aside from 'magic' - she's still not convinced it's not merely science alien to her understanding of it - the medical advancements here are... limited, at best.

No regrowing spines or limbs, either.

"It's getting easier though - breathing, I mean. When you say bone saw... sabaka, no, I'm not going to ask." Naomi wrinkles her nose, and doesn't put up resistance on the way back towards the bed. Faced with Sister Sawbones - oh - she knows that pushing back is a waste of energy. "Is it too much to hope Jim won't hear of this? I don't want him to worry."

He does too much of that.