Thatch, pt.1

From Greenthings

When he woke up, his mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton and his whole lower body felt sore.

Thatch groaned under his breath and attempted to collect his thoughts. His head felt like it had been ripped in two; that was the first new thing he noticed. The second, thankfully enough, was that he seemed to be laying in an actual bed. It wasn't very comfortable, come to think, but better-

Oh hang on, there was someone else in the room. Talking. Loudly. He tried, slowly, to pull the sheets up a bit higher- over his eyes would be really nice- when something shot like ice water through his veins.

He screamed and was nearly to his feet before realizing he was wearing very little. There were indeed two people in the room: beside him, a mild-looking middle-aged man in a doctor's coat who looked faintly embarrassed, and at the front of the room, a young woman with a blonde ponytail and a long jacket.

He crept back under the sheets and looked sheepish. Well, at least his head felt better, for some reason.

The man to his left cleared his throat and found a chair to sit down in; the woman gave him a brief, wry smile before turning back to Thatch.

"Good afternoon there," the former said. "I'm Doctor Lewis, and how're you doing today?"

Thatch furrowed his brow and considered this question worriedly for a few moments. "I'm not sure. I don't know why I'm here. Am I okay?"

"Well, that's up to you," the man smiled. "Other than the, uh, hangover, and the circumstances of your arrival, there's nothing obvious wrong with you. We'd like to continue observation for a while, if you don't mind? Seems you might be around for a while anyway."

He listened curiously to that, glancing back and forth between the doctor and the woman. The pain was gone, but fuzz in his head was still slowly lifting.

"H- hangover? What?"

He shrugged. "Symptoms mostly consistent with it. Would you like some water, or...?"

Thatch rubbed his eyes, then stopped.

"I've only been awake a couple of minutes..." he trailed off, looking around the mostly-bare room. Things began to add up, but not to anything he understood; he became worried again, mingling with confusion and some half-remembered X-Files episode. "What happened and where am I?"

The woman spoke this time. "You were wandering around in a daze, then collapsed in the street. After your problem was fully realized, you were brought to a specialist."

"I thought you said you didn't know what was wrong with me?"

"What was obvious; how and why... well, that's why I'm here. Was here," she corrected, "things have changed a little." She leaned over and extended her hand to him. "I'm going by Teresa, but you can call me Sequencer."

He shook clammily. "That- I'm sorry, it doesn't explain anything."

The doctor looked back at her. Thatch folded up his knees and fervently wished they'd knock it off with the knowing looks.

"If you don't mind me being blunt, your soul wasn't there," he said.

There was a brief, awkward silence.

"Well. Good to know that modern medical science has made such an advancement in the past..." Thatch tossed items around in his mind. How long had it- there. "Five and a half days?"

Teresa, or whatever she was calling herself, grinned. It was not a very reassuring look at all.

"Oh, come on."

"Sorry," the other man sighed. "I know it's a lot to deal with when you just woke up. If you don't mind answering some questions of ours, maybe we could all figure out what's going on."

His mind clamped onto that; an admission of shared confusion was much easier to swallow than something terrible, particularly from these nice-looking people. "All right," he smiled. "Ah, and since you mentioned it, I wouldn't mind some water."

Teresa nodded and ducked out of the room briefly, grin still stuck to her face.

"Well." The doctor shuffled some papers around on his little clipboard. "The first thing I'd like to know is whether you remember anything of the time during or immediately before you collapsed."

"Mmh." He closed his eyes and considered what to say; he remembered something, certainly, but it probaby wasn't relevant. As he thought about it, tiny motes floated through his senses, and the remaining pressure in the back of his head began to ease. It was nice. Very nice.

Things would be all right...

He was jolted back into the present by the door opening and shutting hard.

"Nng," he said. Teresa sat back down and offered him a bottle of water. He mumbled his appreciation and uncapped it.

The doctor looked at him hopefully.

"Oh," Thatch swallowed the rest and wiped his face. "Uhm. Just an odd dream, really."

"A dream, huh. Well, why don't you tell us about it?" he smiled.

"I suppose I could. It wasn't-" other than the bits at the end he wasn't sure he wanted to think too hard about, "-it wasn't very interesting."

He shrugged. "Up to you, but I think it might help."

"Let's see, then," he began. "I was walking down the street, wondering where I was going to go, when there was a path off to my left. It- I thought it must've been there before, but I don't see how. It wasn't a paved road, but... untended. Dirt."

Thatch watched them both. They seemed to be keeping interest, so he continued: "So I looked at it, and I thought- I wonder where that goes. And so I went and peeked around the corner at it, and it looked very pretty, so I thought, well it can't possibly be going anywhere I'm going to end up, but I might as well look anyway."

"So I started walking. It was odd, I mean, it was obviously a dream, the light was... brighter than light is, and there were all these colors, but anyhow. I kept walking down the road until I saw this great big tower in the distance."

"The road was long, and it and the tower... they were all covered in thistles."

Teresa whooped and punched the air. The doctor looked disapprovingly at her, and she laughed.

"What?" Thatch looked bemusedly at her.

"Sorry, but I had five to one on you not being another Obrimos."

"What?" He blinked.

"Nothing, nothing," she waved her hands, still grinning. "You just didn't sound like the type."

The doctor shook his head. "Right. Well, you do remember a tower, then. And you went inside?"

He nodded. "I went inside, and..."

The doctor interrupted softly. "When you went inside the tower, there was a great big wall with a bunch of names on it? And you put yours on there as well?"

Thatch sort of stared at him for a moment before nodding again.

"Right," he scribbled something on his clipboard. "No offense. You're smart enough that I didn't want you to think we got the whole story from you, or something. Glad you remember that part; it makes things easier."

His eyes drooped pitifully. Some tiny part of his mind that was still trying to keep track of the inconsistencies in the conversation finally gave up and went off into the id to have a nice cup of milk and a lie-down.

"Congratulations, Father Williams," the doctor held out his hand and smiled. "Welcome to the ranks of the Awakened."

It didn't come back for some time.