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“A coma, you say?”
“Yes. He appears to have slipped into it the moment he was sedated and fell asleep that night he was captured and restrained.”
As terrible of a thought as it was, the first thing to slip across his mind was the word pathetic. The patient in question was actually nothing of the sort— well, when he decided to show his better qualities, that is. The man now waiting at his bedside tapped his nails on the handle of his cane, which had become propped on his fickle leg when he sat down not too long ago, and tried not to let the incessant beeping of the heart monitor irk him. The doctor, Dr Kinsley, a kind woman who he had met several times about his chronic pain while still under the PPDC’s jurisdiction, was nervously clicking the pen stuck on her clipboard, as if holding her tongue due to not knowing exactly what to say next.
“If it makes you feel any better,” she tried nevertheless, “All of his vitals and body functions appear normal. No atrophy, no brain death, no apnea. Just a long nap, it looks like.”
“Right, of course.” He murmured, glancing at the languid body beside him and trying not to retch.
Dr Kinsley remained a moment longer before turning on her heel and drawing the curtain that separated the bed from the others in the room, giving him privacy despite no other soul being present. While prying eyes no longer subject to him, Hermann finally allowed himself a more in-depth scan of the lifeless individual he was visiting, no matter how much it turned his stomach to do so. The blood was gone from Newton’s nose and still healing lip, but his face appeared drained of any color, and as though he were a totally different person. There was almost a… sickly green hue to him, like a cartoon poisoning, and the dark, concave circles beneath his eyes greatly hollowed his once plump and lively face. His tattoos were the same ridiculously inked kaiju (yes, Hermann had finally learned the proper plural after having the old Newton looming in his head for ten years) that they had always been but between the aging and the possession, their vibrance was fading and they looked like they were draining from his skin as swiftly as his personality was from his head.
Hermann shook his own head and sniffed, now tightly gripping his cane. The white and blue hospital gown, which looked drab and uncomfortable if he might say so himself, was resurfacing memories of closing the breach and Newton fainting in his arms not long afterward, and having to watch him be whisked away to medbay and done up in another one of these absurd gowns. Newton nearly jumped out of his own skin when he awoke to find Hermann curled into his side, barely fitting in the bed with him, but was instantly calmed with gentle affections. “Fortune favors the brave'' was echoing against his skull in Newton’s voice and caused his stomach to turn in another knot, thinking about how surprised he still was that Newton hadn’t gone into a coma after that first drift, let alone the second, yet now he was inert and refusing to wake just as stubbornly as always.
A phantom kiss from that moment in time was lingering on his lips as he recalled those memories, a blip of happiness before the upheaval and schism between them that had brought them into this situation. Had Newton never been in his head, he wouldn’t have begun to ponder this but he now spared a thought towards the fairy-tale trope of revival after “true love’s” kiss and there was a stray hope for a world where it would work burning in his chest. In spite of its grasp on the head of his cane, he could feel his hand trembling and a heat rising over his face, making him dizzy in his chair and seeing a few spots in his peripheral. Deep down he knew it wasn’t going to work but unfortunately, the insufferable bastard had wormed his way in and sunken his hooks in two decades ago now, so all he had to lose with this course of action was the stability in his legs.
Setting his cane firmly on the ground, he placed his free hand on the arm of the chair and pushed himself up, ignoring the creak in his hips as he rose, and steadied his balance before closing the gap between his chair and the bed. It was a little ways to bend down but he still leaned over to take Newton’s hand in his own, stroking his thumb over the back of it, shocked that it was frozen to the touch when Newton usually ran quite warm. The longer he remained idle, save the movement of his thumb, the more his eyes grew cloudy, so he quickly blinked away the wetness and moved his hand up to cup Newton’s cheek, which was equally as cold, rubbing it with his thumb for a moment as well. Swallowing thickly, he finally bent over, paying little mind to the cannula in Newton’s nose that bumped against his, and pressed a kiss to lips that felt so icy they burned his own. He had hopelessly expected a spark or literally anything to happen but all he got was a tightening in his chest and the return of his lightheadedness, threatening to buckle his knees right there and then.
“Such a fool to think that I could wake you from your slumber,” he muttered under his breath as he sat once more, “That I could actually heal you.”
His cane fell unceremoniously into his lap as he covered his mouth, hiding the pained shape it was curling into, and shut his eyes tightly, ashamed of the warm tears now trailing down his cheeks but having very little control over their arrival. His body had already been faintly quivering from standing for the futile kiss but it worsened every time he drew in a pain breath, each rattling his lungs worse than the last. Any thoughts he had bouncing around his head dissolved and were replaced with a flame that was worse than any migraine or flare up he had yet to experience, igniting a fire in all of his nerves and opening the floodgates further in the several minutes that the pain was unbearable. He could feel the blood rushing from his now overactive heart into every single one of his veins and that in and of itself almost hurt as badly as his nerves. He had half of a thought to reach for his handkerchief— his favorite one, the one that still had the tiniest stain of blood from wiping both of their noses post-drift— from inside his blazer pocket but he felt unable to move any of his limbs, so he settled for letting this pass before trying to make himself look more presentable again.
“Newton, I don’t care whether or not you can hear me,” he started to choke out in a hushed tone once he could catch his breath, “But I need to tell you— even if only for my own sake— how disappointed in you I am.
“I feel as though I should be infuriated but I just can’t bring myself to be. I’m as disappointed in you as I was when you made that neural bridge out of garbage and drifted with that kaiju brain. You nearly died in my arms after that and I don’t know what I would have done with myself if you had, same as I didn’t know what to do with myself when you left, nor what to do now.”
He felt another wave of tears coming on, only making him angrier at himself for talking to thin air and being so weak and powerless that it was all he could manage. He had thought he could make it right by kissing him one last time to pull him out from the precursors’ control but it seemed they were still the victors here, leaving Newton far too poisoned for resurrection from a meager touching of lips— which was also contributing to his aggravation because he had been so desperate that he thought it would change any of the facts, maybe even wake Newton and prompt him to kiss back. After a handful of minutes spent gritting his teeth and blinking away the watering of his eyes, he rubbed his jaw and decided he had enough of his wallowing, as it was getting him nowhere. He stood one last time and stared just long enough to commit the image to memory, beginning to turn on his heel to step— no, break— away when a weight in his pocket tapped his hip softly.
“Right,” he sullenly chuckled, rooting through the pocket for his handkerchief and the weight in one go, “This won’t mean anything to you, even if you do wake up, but I’ll feel better knowing I had gotten it off my chest.”
He hooked his cane on the railing of the bed, dabbing his eyes with the cloth with his now open right hand, and took Newton’s left hand, slipping the weight— a gold ring— onto his ring finger. He had a similar band on his own finger but his had become tarnished and worn from years of having it on as a symbol of what they could have had. Gently replacing the hand onto the bed, he turned away, no longer weighed down by bearing the ring, and didn’t allow himself to take another look back, fearing a third episode in the span of ten minutes. Just as the room’s door closed upon his exiting, Newton’s now banded hand curled into a fist at his side.