Welcome to Gaia! ::

The least she could do was shake her head. It was the truth. She hadn't body swapped; not to her knowledge.

Her lips move to form a word, but speaking feels impossible. She's been robbed.

There is a long dragging silence. One time she would have been overjoyed to see the relief, the sag. Now they're minor details.

Water seems like such a trivial pursuit.

She finally works up the courage to say words. What she says is, "I'm alone." That is how she feels. It just took some time to remember.

She just stares.

She wants to recount her story, but forming so many thoughts is overwhelming, and it scares her.

It's not enough time. No time would ever be enough.

The fact that she's excited to see Jack come back through the door is pathetic.

Or beautiful.

She can't move her arms to take the water, they are numb. The smell of coffee sickens her to the point of nausea. It isn't rainwater and blood. It isn't the last thing she is supposed to remember smelling. She clenches the bedsheets.

Silence remains king in the infirmary room. "I still don't know how you feel." It is a vague statement, but she managed to plan that one sentence while he was gone. It was both an answer to his question earlier and a commentary on life in general.

"Please ..."

She wants to offer something to barter, but she has nothing left to give. She is a broken plate.

Crazy?

Crazy.

"I'm not .... crazy." She didn't want to be known that way. She wasn't crazy. She was not crazy.

She felt responsible for his confusion, and even in her sorry state, she wanted to fix that. Jack was always her priority.

Chel began to recount everything the moment after she'd shut his door on monday. It took a long time, and patience upon the part of the listener. It was done in very short sentences, with sometimes lengths as long as hours in between the fragments. It was hard and she cried a few times. Sometimes she would start a sentence and then drop it, only to finish it later. She spoke even if he wasn't there, but she did her best to sort out when he was and when he wasn't.

It was told in excruciating detail. She was sure to include every feeling (this was where the pauses happened the most, because it was hard to pick the adjective that seemed to fit), every person, every moment. How hard she loved Jack. How ashamed and apologetic she felt towards Finn. Nevada's gentleness. She included it all.

If she was going to die, she wanted to let someone to have her story right. Someone needed to hold her truths, because the burden was breaking her.

He stood and he drank his coffee and he listened without interruption. When it became apparent this would be a while, he pulled up a seat facing her. When his drink was finished, he set it on the tray by the water and watched her like an interesting documentary.

He crossed his arms, sat back, and closed his eyes somewhere in the middle, because like the scene with Arwen and Aragorn, there was too much attention. His responses were minute and quiet throughout: a frown at Finn's booty call, a frown of a different sort at the declaration of love, a frown of yet something else at the dream with the tall and dark man, and more besides with every other emotion described.

Jack was quiet for an era. There was a lot to digest, even with Owain's help.

A deep sigh through his nose heralded his return to reality. "Let's go through this piece by piece." His tone was a muted version of his usual but mild condescension. A resting b***h face with a resting b***h face of a voice. Almost normal, but tired and incredulous and wary and decidedly plain like he always sounded when he listed off facts all at once.

"I turn you down because I'm already in a fake relationship that I need to honor first, and you go on a bender because you think you're in love and now it's the end of the world."

He paused, then revised at Owain's insistence.

"I turn you down because I'm already in a fake relationship I need to honor first, and somehow you find yourself in a series of unfortunate events because of it."

That wasn't good either, but his partner was satisfied, and Jack preferred not having a giant roar in his head at the moment. There was still too much buzzing in his head from the information.

He shifted in his seat, opening his eyes at last. "Did it ever occur to you that I can say no and still like you, Craft? That I can still care as a friend? That when stupid s**t happens, I'd've wanted to know about that day?" He should have been accusing, but all he sounded like was tired. "That if you felt this bad, you could've just told me?"