dreams.
Clarke has nightmares. They're constant and they vary. Neither the actual events of the shooting nor Le Tetard are present in his dreams but they're the subject matter behind them.
It's a sunny day during the first one. Clarke is walking down the street, away from headquarters towards his apartment. He arrives at his building and gathers his mail from from his assigned unit in the bank of mailboxes next to the outside doors of his building. He begins to leaf through bills and thumb through catalogs. He's about to question the existence of catalogs since he does not subscribe to any but before he can make the connection a faceless person appears and jabs him in the abdomen with a hot poker. Initially it feels like a sturdy punch, a hard whack. It takes only seconds to turn into excruciating pressure.
He's walking on Independence Avenue, another sunny day. In actuality, he generally avoids this area He has no interest in navigating the massive swarms of tourists and school groups. He's seen the Air and Space Museum enough to satisfy any curiosities he might have once had. Even in his nightmare he's not excited to be there. He walks away from the Mall towards L'Enfant Plaza. He can get on the train there. He reaches for his wallet to purchase a metro card. He's forced to freeze and watch in astonishment as ball bearings hit his suddenly liquid flesh, the momentum causing ripples, little circles starting from his torso moving out toward his chest and then his neck and then his limbs.
The third is the worst of the three. Clarke is at his work station in the lab at NCIS. People are around; he feels at ease. He can never remember what he's working on when he wakes up or who specifically the people are around him. He gathers slides he's finished with to be cleaned by a lab technician. His vision is flooded with brightness - yellow and orange and red. He can't see anything but he feel heat and he can hear his coworkers scream. He screams too; he wants to know what's going on. The glass slides explode and the shards lodge in his stomach. He falls to the ground in excruciating pain. Everything around him is exploding and he's stuck in the neutral center like the eye of a hurricane. It's not stopping and he's stuck.
The nurse is suddenly adjusting his saline line. After a quick check of his incision site, she brings him water, which he's happy to drink, his throat feels like sandpaper. She tries to be comforting, insisting the dreams aren't real as if he was a child who had nightmares of closet monsters. She wipes his damp forehead with a cool cloth and tells him he's got to stop yelling in his sleep all the time. She offers a clean shirt, invariably the one he slept in is drenched in sweat. She manages to be upbeat through the whole ordeal but it's a routine they both hate. Though each day is easier than the last, both patient and nurse anxiously count the moments until he can leave.
It's a sunny day during the first one. Clarke is walking down the street, away from headquarters towards his apartment. He arrives at his building and gathers his mail from from his assigned unit in the bank of mailboxes next to the outside doors of his building. He begins to leaf through bills and thumb through catalogs. He's about to question the existence of catalogs since he does not subscribe to any but before he can make the connection a faceless person appears and jabs him in the abdomen with a hot poker. Initially it feels like a sturdy punch, a hard whack. It takes only seconds to turn into excruciating pressure.
He's walking on Independence Avenue, another sunny day. In actuality, he generally avoids this area He has no interest in navigating the massive swarms of tourists and school groups. He's seen the Air and Space Museum enough to satisfy any curiosities he might have once had. Even in his nightmare he's not excited to be there. He walks away from the Mall towards L'Enfant Plaza. He can get on the train there. He reaches for his wallet to purchase a metro card. He's forced to freeze and watch in astonishment as ball bearings hit his suddenly liquid flesh, the momentum causing ripples, little circles starting from his torso moving out toward his chest and then his neck and then his limbs.
The third is the worst of the three. Clarke is at his work station in the lab at NCIS. People are around; he feels at ease. He can never remember what he's working on when he wakes up or who specifically the people are around him. He gathers slides he's finished with to be cleaned by a lab technician. His vision is flooded with brightness - yellow and orange and red. He can't see anything but he feel heat and he can hear his coworkers scream. He screams too; he wants to know what's going on. The glass slides explode and the shards lodge in his stomach. He falls to the ground in excruciating pain. Everything around him is exploding and he's stuck in the neutral center like the eye of a hurricane. It's not stopping and he's stuck.
The nurse is suddenly adjusting his saline line. After a quick check of his incision site, she brings him water, which he's happy to drink, his throat feels like sandpaper. She tries to be comforting, insisting the dreams aren't real as if he was a child who had nightmares of closet monsters. She wipes his damp forehead with a cool cloth and tells him he's got to stop yelling in his sleep all the time. She offers a clean shirt, invariably the one he slept in is drenched in sweat. She manages to be upbeat through the whole ordeal but it's a routine they both hate. Though each day is easier than the last, both patient and nurse anxiously count the moments until he can leave.