A Very Odd Afterlife

Posted on Mon Jun 22nd, 2020 @ 11:27pm by Cailus Griffin & Captain Nycolas Temple & Lieutenant Tyson Brookes
Edited on on Fri Jul 10th, 2020 @ 5:11pm

Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Current

A Mission Post by Lieutenant Cailus Griffin & Captain Nycolas Temple & Lieutenant JG Tyson Brookes
Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Current
Mon Sep 24th, 2018 @ 8:18pm

As it turned out, Death was a gentle thing. It wasn't sharp or brutal, as one would expect, nor was it outright malicious, as Cailus had secretly feared over the past weeks. In actuality, Death greeted him like an old friend, bearing no grudge for all the times that Cailus had cheated him. In the end, with Shae holding his wrinkled old hand, he was able to drift into the most content sleep that he'd ever experienced. It was a good way to go.

Unfortunately, while Death took him kindly, the daft bugger just couldn't hold on to his prize. Try as he might, Cailus just couldn't quite fall into that final sleep, feeling that ever so slight tug of the corporeal world no matter how much he tried to ignore it. Damn it, he didn't want to wake up again. He and Shae had said their goodbyes, and she had to move on from him. He wouldn't stay past his time like a damned revenant. What was that blasted humming sound, anyway? It was almost like...

Thus, gradually, Cailus was forced back to the waking world. Growling with a mean-tempered scowl, he felt his eyes open reluctantly only to be instantly blinded by the light, and he reflexively held up his left hand to cover his eyes. The hand moved easily, surprisingly so, and Cailus' frown become confused as he opened his eyes properly and saw his palm. Most strange. The wrinkled skin had become smooth, and the fingers flexed with impossible ease given their arthritis.

"What's going on?" Cailus asked grumpily, confusing himself further by how his voice sounded. And there were other voices. Voices he didn't recognise, voices that weren't Shae or Takada. "What the hell is going on!?"

"Uh Doctor. We have Lieutenant Griffin awake!" Nurse Mallory took the pen light, shortly aiming it into Cailus's eyes. His pupils instantly dialating from the uncomfortable brash stimulus. The whole room was a brash stiumulus; patients and doctors scurrying around. Rows of bio beds temporarily set up throughout the whole medical bay.

Tyson moved away from one of the many patients stasis updates he was working. All of the missing crew up until this point was comatose or some sort.

"Mr. Griffin." Tyson watched from the side of the bio bed, his eyes checking the mans vitals, checking his cognitive abilities ensuring there was no damage as they were stored in the Pandora's transporter buffers... "How are you feeling?" Tyson asked first. He noted that there was a steady level of strong vitals since the man woke up.

"What?" Cailus responded with sharp rudeness, still trying to recover his thoughts. "Is that...no, it can't be. That's impossible. What is happening? What the damned hell is happening?"

Temple stirred from his sleep in the adjacent bio-bed. He was finding himself sleeping in odd patterns since awakening from the Bubble; he could only take disjointed naps instead of getting a full night's sleep. Hearing the distinct voice of Cailus Griffin and the surprised reactions from the nurses caused him to awaken and sit up in bed immediately.

"Cailus!" Nyx cried in surprise, feeling a swell of emotion within him as he looked to his friend.

It took a moment for Cailus' eyes to notice the man on the bed beside him, but when they did, his eyes grew confused. "Captain?" he said dully, plainly not believing his eyes. "Impossible. It can't be. You've been dead for twenty six years."

"And yet, I'm still ruggedly handsome." Nyx joked as he slowly lifted himself out of bed. His legs were still wobbly, hopefully just a short-term effect of being broken down into molecules for a couple of weeks, but he knew he had to reach out to Griffin. Crossing the short distance between them, Nyx leaned on Cailus' bed and placed a firm hand on the man's shoulder. "Griffin, you're back on the Pandora. The real one. In our real universe. You're safe, everyone is safe." It was a lie of course, not everyone had returned from the Bubble, but he wanted to stop any panic and confusion.

The pressure of Nyx's hand helped lend weight to the man's words, that he wasn't some bizarre hologram or phantom, but real flesh and blood. Still stunned, Cailus looked around Sickbay, seeing a row of people on the biobeds whose faces he knew so well. Many were unconscious but they were all quite unmistakably just sleeping peacefully. Many were on their sides, resting their heads on their hands, or lying flat on their backs. Cailus looked at them all, knew them all, and found himself smiling in heartfelt relief, tears starting to form in his eyes. They all looked so much younger than he remembered, impossibly so, wonderfully so.

It was a damned miracle.

"Shae," Cailus said with grateful joy as his eyes found his beloved wife in the bed furthest away from the door, but instantly, he knew that something was wrong. Shae was on her back; she never slept on her back, not when she slept alone. Her ears weren't twitching as they did when she slept, and even worse, her tail was sticking out limply from under the blanket. She never allowed that. Her tail was always tucked close when sleeping, just like Aoife...

"Nyx," he said roughly, reaching a weak hand up to the man's collar. "Tell me Shae is sedated. Tell me she's not still in that place! Tell me, dammit! Tell me!"

"It's more like a coma." Nyx replied carefully. "Mr. Mindo had to employ a delicate process of separating and returning our molecules back together in order to rescue us from the transporter buffers. She's not in any distress, but she hasn't woken up yet." He paused for a moment, eyes still laying upon the sleeping crew. "It appears we were linked together on a subconscious level, which was the bubble universe we experienced. Something happened, I don't know what, to cause the bubble to collapse and we're all slowly waking up now."

"Right," Cailus muttered, plainly trying to compose himself. With some effort he managed to push up into a sitting position, amazed to find his arms to have incredible strength compared to the arthritis-ridden and weak limbs he'd had before he'd died. His arms felt strange and clumsy, tingling unpleasantly as he pushed himself up on the bed, but they were nevertheless strong and healthy.

Then Cailus focused his distracted thoughts on Nyx, shaking his head in wonderment. "Captain, I'm sorry for my reaction. This is...it's difficult to conceive. I was dead. You were dead for so long." Cailus cleared his throat hoarsely, scowling at the rush of emotion. "Damn. I missed you, my friend. More than I can say."

Nyx allowed himself a moment to smile, though his appreciative grin soon turned rueful. He had missed his friends as well, and the relief of realising the Bubble was gone filled him with incredible joy, but Nyx had only experienced a year of that torture while his friends seemingly suffered for an entire lifetime. Even if it wasn’t a real life time, it had felt real to those trapped inside. He couldn’t imagine what they had been through.

“I missed you too, my friend.” Nyx simply replied, placing an arm around Cailus. “We live to fight another day.”

"Damn straight," Cailus grumbled, running his right hand over his face. "What about your family? Emma and...no, that's not right. Emilie and Katrine. You've seen them?

"Yes." Nyx couldn't help but smile. "They're both alive and well, like we've never been gone." He paused and bit his lip. "I haven't told them everything that had happened in that place. Not everything. And it sounds like you will have quite the story to tell yourself. However." He shrugged. "I'm still coming to terms with the fact that it didn't happen. We're all going to need to keep reminding ourselves that it didn't happen."

Cailus nodded slowly, taking a deep breath to steady himself. The normally unrelenting security chief was a wreck, both physically and mentally, his arms quivering as they supported his weight on the biobed. He glanced at the captain, as if to refamiliarise himself with the man's face, so long forgotten. All the years of responsibility, of knowing that Cailus had to give the orders, take care of everyone, that the buck stopped with him...he had taken the blame for the problems, been hated by many for his harsh decisions, had worried every night about the crew, about the ship, the forcefields, the garden's viability, the power issues...

...it was over.

"I tried to carry on," Cailus said suddenly, surprising himself with his words as his eyes crinkled, tears starting to form. "Damn it, I tried to be their captain, Nyx, but I wasn't you. I promised to get them home, promised to take care of them, but I failed them, I just couldn't lead them like you did. We had issues after you died, problems, difficulties, and I...damn it. Fick, Shae, Madeleine, you, they all...I failed them all, and they all paid for it..." He sniffed, wiping his eyes with angry shame. "I'm sorry, Captain. I'm just...sorry."

Nyx leaned in again, sensing his friend was struggling, though he adopted a more light hearted tone. “Cailus, may I remind you that the crew rebelled against me and one of them killed me. Unless the same happened to you, then I’d say you were an excellent Captain. You kept them alive and safe for... how long? Years? Decades? You served the Pandora better than I ever could. You didn’t fail the crew, my friend, you united them when I could not.”

Cailus shook his head in denial, scowling furiously. "No, Captain. You don't know what happened after you died. Not the important parts. I made mistakes. Some of them unforgivable." He exhaled loudly through his nose, his eyes flicking back to Shae's unconscious form, and then at the others in Sickbay. "My apologies...er, sir. I know you mean well. I'll be fine once I get back in uniform and see my family again."

With that, he forced a wry smile as he looked at Nyx. "Speaking of which, sir, there is something that I've been waiting twenty six years to say. With all due respect, if you ever pull me into a telepathic communication again without permission, you'll regret it, even if I have to resurrect you a second time to make it so. As good a friend as you are, not even your death was worth the migraine that Shae and I had afterwards. Damn near felt like our skulls were split open."

A slight moment of recognition washed over Temple’s gaze, followed by a rush of emotion that caused his eyes to well as he remembered that moment. He quickly shook it away and tried a laugh, “My apologies, but it wouldn’t happen again anyway. Just a quirk of living within our subconscious I assume. I’m already starting to forget parts of it, like waking up after a dream. I can only hope we all eventually forget what happened.”

"Hmph," Cailus mumbled noncommittally, his eyes out of focus, lost in a memory. "Not all of it. There are parts that we'll all want to remember. Aurora. Alistair. Madeleine." He grumbled again as he flexed his stiff back, before suddenly grinning at the memory of another child, long thought lost. "How was it, Captain? To see Emilie and Katrine again? Not just memories, but in reality?"

A smile came over the Captain’s face as he remembered that moment; a smile so wide and joyful it said everything Nyx needed to say. His eyes glazed over again but this time with immense happiness. “It was... beautiful.” He replied simply. “And you’ll feel it too.”

Glancing again at Shae, Cailus nodded slowly before turning back to Nyx. He clasped Nyx's arm, locking his hardened eyes with his captain. "Yes, sir," he said with determination, putting a lot of meaning in those two words; trust, unyielding loyalty, and a friendship made all the stronger for its absence. They were all home now. Everything was as it should be.