She felt Labyrinthite shift under her, and suddenly her world was flooded in white. White like tile ceilings, like lab coats and scrubs and the lacy knitted cardigan Suri had apparently been wearing the last night she'd chosen to patrol. White like the surprise in the eyes of the nurse when she saw the general's tattered cloak, when he barreled past her to find an available bed, white like the pain that burned in her now that her dark glamour no longer dampened its bite, white like the lies she told herself in metered time, to help with her breathing.

It will be okay. It's over. It will be okay. It's over.

There might have been shouting or there might have been the ambient noise of hospital equipment, beeps and whines, but it all sounded so muffled when all Suri could focus on was the edges of her body, broken and bruised and begging to be set right. She felt herself get lowered to a bed and opened her eyes, searching for Labyrinthite's gaze, but he was looking over her to an orderly and reciting a series of orders with a quiet intensity that made Suri ill at ease. He had already been terrifying when she was Zircon, but without her tether to chaos she felt positively exposed and defenseless. She imagined it was worse for the quivering technician, who had never before tried to steel herself against those sharp whiskey eyes.

"You need to go," Suri murmured, frowning at the sound her voice made when powered down. After spending so much time as an officer, her world felt dimmer, more muffled, except for the pain, and she wasn't adjusting well to the way her body ached while the rest of her fumbled around without senses. But Labyrinthite had a duty to the Negaverse that extended well beyond her well-being, and he was needed back at the prison where he could find other survivors or exact revenge on her captors, not here where the only thing he could do was watch her be a living disappointment.

Whether or not the general had heard her, he backed away from her bedside, replaced by strange hands and foreign voices that got straight to work, maneuvering her arm into a blood pressure cuff, searching for veins to stick, starting IVs. It was only when he was truly out of reach that Suri's heart began to race, a panicked flutter settling in her gut. No, no, he couldn't just leave her here, what if there were senshi on the staff and they dragged her back to that place, back to that jell cail and Thraen--

"Hey, hold still," the nurse at her arm hissed, and only then did Suri realize she'd been trying to sit up at all. Someone was hooking up a bag to her IV, and monitors were beginning to flutter to the tune of her frightened heart. Her eyes looked for the flash of pink hair, or that tattered cape, but it was so much to hold herself up, to fight herself from sinking down, down into the safety of her bed in the arms of strangers. When she stopped struggling and let her head hit the pillow, the only thing she could feel was failure.

"Alright, Miss Ellis," Suri thought she heard the nurse say, but it was a faraway sound that echoed about in her twilight. "Talk to me about what happened..."

((575 words))