It has been waiting for her for days, crouched low, anticipating vulnerability. She hasn't noticed it there, the flashes of green in her head easily explained by bright lights, the headaches from sharing headspace, the anxiety from the stress of being a human adult. It is all logical, all explicable. But the beeping... the alarms... a curious child removing a sensor, sending nurses running, herself included. The smell of antiseptic sharp in the air. The lights, unforgiving and blinding. The slight hiss of oxygen in a nasal cannula. The banging. The constant banging on the metal doors. The sounds of lasers burning holes over the guttural alien mutterings full of sharp consonants.
Around her, the light dims and shifts as it focuses into a bright ball above her. She focuses on it because the pain has taken her breath away. It is the deepest pain, the oldest pain. It's in her pelvis and her spine and it radiates up into her chest until all of her is nothing but the acknowledgement of it. Until it is swept away quickly and a curtain is drawn over her abdomen. She watches the glint of the light on a bead of sweat trailing down the doctor's violet skin, and she feels nothing but movement. The numb rearrangement of her own organs to make room.
She doesn't understand.
They are coming. Faster than they should be able to. She looks to her right and sees Dirk, his red eyes full of the deep fear that threatens to seep out of her pores. The surgical mask over his face and the shockingly human curtain of hair over his forehead makes her focus on those scared little eyes. He does the thing that she can not and looks back at the door. It is alight with the effort of its destruction. In those red eyes she can see the ringed glow of the lasers. They will be here soon.
Either I get out there and end this or--
The cry pierces through the tension, loud and clear like the ringing of an alarm. He! He is with the doctor and she knows something is wrong. She knows that all of the pain meant that there is something wrong with him. Her son. Her Gerry, which is what she knows she will name him even though she has not even met him yet. She wants to cry because she knows that everything she has done in her life has led to this moment and he is suffocating or he can not survive the radioactive oven from which he's just emerged. It isn't until he is placed in her arms that she knows what she has to do. He is pink and healthy and unhappy and very, extraordinarily in danger. So she hands him to the doctor with some reluctance because she would like to run, but there is nowhere else to go in a black hole except deeper.
The doctor was not lying when she said the pain would be excruciating. It makes her vision shudder just with the effort of getting to her feet. But she has to push through. They are waiting. He is waiting. The instincts kick in quickly, making up for the what the pain is impairing. The bioelectricity of one hand lights through alien flesh while stolen weapons effectively slice through the rest. There is nothing but green, in one moment alive with movement and in the next, still. She didn't even see them all fall, but they are around her now, some of them in pieces.
The ding of an elevator echoes in the now-silent room and she holds her breath, expecting more, ready for more as a hundred unseen knives pierce her from the inside out. And there is Carol. Blonde. Strong. Followed by people with guns. Bathed in her own golden light. And Jessica knows she is safe now. Because with Carol comes safety. She falls to her knees first and then her cheek hits the chest of a Skrull whose body will exist until he is dust with a disbelieving, miscalculating smile on his face.
When Jules comes to, she feels pressure on her left arm and there is the bright tang of blood in her mouth. People are saying her name, but she is having trouble connecting them with memory. Her education has prepared her for this. Fight or flight. Adrenaline. Cortisol. Vasovagal syncope. She tethers herself to the earth with these facts, trying to rebuild the hospital, her hospital around her instead of the deep space nightmare her brain would like to revisit.
An hour later, she is waiting on a bench in the lobby, her sweater covering her bloodied scrubs. Visible to any passerby, however, is the white gauze bandage covering stitches in the bit of her arm that had clipped a cart on the way down. She feels hollowed out and dehydrated, but she's been told she'll be fine if she just rests. Deep down, she is not convinced. There is no way out of this that feels like it might be fine. If she closes her eyes for too long, she can still see all of them, all of the pieces of them. And all she wants to do is close her eyes.
The hospital called her emergency contact, a number that she isn't even sure she's updated in the last five years. She hopes that someone is coming. There is no way she trusts herself to stand let alone navigate her way home. When the door opens, she knows. The blond hair. The long, quick strides. The golden light. And for the first time in the last hour, Jules feels safe. Because with Cara comes safety.