Words people don't hear often: Grif was right [open]

[iamresponding]

Who| Open to Rich and anyone who might happen to swing by Medbay
What| Rich being not-dead! Visitors welcome! New characters can possibly meet him during their own Medbay stays
Where| Medbay, on the main floor instead of a private room
When| The day after Galactus plot, and after Rich's message on the network, but before Rocket shows up
Warnings/Notes| N/A

Rich felt like death warmed over. Because really, he kind of was death warmed over. After his lungs had kicked out an embolism when he was in the healing tanks, he'd apparently had a pretty close call on the operating table.

But then they got him breathing again, back into a tank, and the riskiest part of the twenty-four hours had safely passed on by. Now they'd gotten him into a normal bed on the Medbay floor and he was mostly out of the woods. Mostly.

Still feeling it, though. You didn't get an arm shoved through your chest without feeling pretty miserable the day after. Luckily, they had some real good pain meds in the glorious robot future. The part that was the most miserable was mostly just that he was so short of breath.

He was at least used to this. For someone who had invulnerability back home, he'd found himself in a Medbay bed being tended by medicos more than once. War was hell, after all.

At least this time nobody's gotta grow me a new leg.

Also: pudding. The Medbay had good pudding. He could barely tell it was made from soy. Their combat support hospitals during the Annihilation war never had pudding, just the usual protein paste and dehydrated carb rations. He was pretty much demolishing a new cup of it every other hour. Anyone that visited him would probably find him mid-pudding cup. Always chocolate.

Comments

[headinjuries]

Sam had been waiting for the okay to drop in; he figured watching Rich sleep would be kind of creepy, and arguing with doctors about getting in before he was up didn't sound like a good time anyway, but if he was doing well enough to be talking on the omnicoms, that had to mean it was safe to pop in.

So there was a head peeking in from the edge of the doorway, and once he saw that Rich was indeed awake, the rest of him followed, slipping into the room and taking a seat on the end of the bed.

"So I dunno if they're letting you have solid food or if you're on the pudding diet, but every time I get stuck in the hospital I'm begging for something from the outside world by the end of day one. I brought you stuff."

And he tipped over the bag he was holding, making it rain candy bars into Rich's lap.

Fun-sized, of course.

[sir_vancelot]

"You're an idiot, Rider."

Not the first time he's probably heard those words from Vance, either. Who was standing in the doorway, headpiece pushed back so that no part of his face was obscured. "I mean, I wouldn't have done differently, but it still needs to be said."

[iamresponding]

God, he loved this kid. Already. It was easy to. Rich got the joke and it made him laugh a few wheezy laughs. They hurt but they felt good at the same time. At least he was here to laugh -- and at least Sam was here to make him laugh. He was okay.

He'd have felt terrible if something had happened to him when he wasn't there to keep him safe.

"Cheapskate. You're a cheapskate. Like all those clueless old grannies -- that think these're actually fun."

He still had to pause in the middle of most of his sentences to take a breath.

He put his empty pudding cup on the little floating tray nearby, and gathered up all the candy bars and put them on the tray too, then unwrapped one to eat it.

Lifting his leg, he briefly prodded at Sam's side with his foot through the blanket. The end of the bed wasn't safe from poking with how long Rich's legs were.

"Since you apparently like tiny things -- you should have an even tinier name," he said around a mouth full of chocolate. "Your name's not Sam anymore. You're Munchkin Short Stack Half-Pint McShrimperson."

[iamresponding]

"So I've been told." Rich shrugged. "I had to. You said it yourself. It had to be done."

He breathed in a deep breath.

"'Sides, it wasn't a game of chance. That wasn't what it was about. I wasn't trusting to luck. I was trusting him." He was trusting a person. "And I'm still alive. And I didn't have to face Stardust or Galactus or anything. He knew what he was doing."

Yes, it'd been a very, very close call, but the Surfer had caused exactly enough damage to put him out of commission without killing him.

[sir_vancelot]

"He did. And I'm grateful for that, believe me." Vance shook his head as he walked over, grabbing a chair with his TK and bringing it with so he could sit by the bed. "I can still wish you hadn't ended up in here and nearly dying because of that meeting, though. Especially since, from what I understand, most of the rest of us would have been in a better place when it came to getting body parts replaced."

[headinjuries]

"Of course I'm a cheapskate. Mom has two jobs and we still can't afford a house payment."

As serious as that was, and as much as he usually found it embarrassing, it was a lot easier to laugh it off with a hero of the universe who used to be a burger flipper.

Sam reached over to swipe one of the candy bars as Rich gathered them up, unwrapping it to pop into his own mouth, but as soon as he heard Munchkin Short Stack Half-Pint McShrimperson he choked and started coughing.

"Oh my god," he finally got out, after a moment. "You are never gonna be Rich again. You're Dick. Forever."

[whyarewehere]

Grif was right about something, and the sheer force of his rightness made the world a brighter place. Someone had to acknowledge that he was correct and somehow, the omnicomms were just not adequate to collect on that acknowledgement.

It wasn't that he actually wanted to go check on Rich and see if he was okay. That would be stupid. Grif wasn't the kind of person to start giving a shit about what happened to somebody just because he'd dragged their bleeding almost-carcass back to medical, or because they were a nice person in general, or any of that garbage.

Grif plunked himself down in the visitor's chair with his own pudding cup. He'd pinched it off a cart while no one was looking on the way in.

"I was right!" he began as he mangled the foil tab and started working to tear the cup open with his nails.

Translation: Hi Rich, how are you?

[iamresponding]

"Enjoy it while you can. It happens so rarely," Rich teased, rolling his eyes, but he was smiling.

He had told Grif he was totally allowed to rub his face in it if he got hurt and survived for Grif to do it.

[iamresponding]

Rich just laughed, but then it turned to coughing.

"Ow ow ow, I need to stop doing that. Ow. Laughing hurts."

He let out a little whoosh of air and took a deep breath to even out his breathing again.

"So how's everyone taking the apocalyptic Lovecraft death worm thing? Seeing them freak on the network isn't the same as seeing anyone in person."

A pause.

"How are you taking the apocalyptic Lovecraft death worm thing?"

[iamresponding]

"Oh yeah. That."

Rich shrugged.

"It's not really any different than back home. On Earth, at least. In space, the cloning tech's good enough that I've had limbs replaced before, during the war, but --"

Oh. He probably shouldn't have said that. Whoops. He didn't really want his friends to know exactly how bad it'd gotten during the war.

"I guess here, they haven't really pursued it as a science as much 'cause of the ethics or something, but that only means it's the same amount of risk as on Earth. Less even, because even if they can't replace things, the tech's still more advanced than even what Pym and Richards and them have. And on the limb end of things, the robotics are fine."

He wiggled the fingers of his prosthetic.

"So if I lose anymore limbs, I can't get cloned new ones, but I'd still be able to get something that works well enough."

[headinjuries]

That was a surprisingly difficult question.

"It's...kind of hard to wrap my head around," Sam said, a little sheepishly. "Like I get it but at the same time I don't? It's hard to imagine something that just...wipes out everything, ever."

Which might've been a good thing, in its own way. It was easier to get up and function as if it were business as usual when part of him couldn't quite believe the magnitude of what they were staring in the face.

[whyarewehere]

"Oh hey, come on, I'm an extremely practical guy with a realistic outlook on life," Grif replied. He managed to break the seal and peel the top off the pudding cup.

"Speaking of life: how are you feeling?"

It was an excellent segue, if you asked him.

[iamresponding]

"I feel exactly the way someone would if someone put an arm through their lung. You know: death warmed over. Also, high. They have me on the good future drugs. They said they're non-addictive but may have 'unpleasant euphoric qualities.'"

Rich shook his head.

"I don't know why they put 'unpleasant' in the front, though. I mean, how is euphoria unpleasant? That's, like, an oxymoron." Rich looked genuinely stymied by that contradiction for a moment before moving on. "But it could be worse."

[iamresponding]

"Did you know Death is a person? An actual person. At least in our universe. She was Thanos' girlfriend."

He added, "Was. Emphasis on the past tense. That's how I died. Real messy breakup, and then Thanos was talking about mass murdering -- everyone in our universe. So Starlord and I kept him pinned in the parasite dimension -- we'd been trying to keep from invading ours. We got trapped there as it closed off. I died getting Starlord and Drax back to our universe."

It was still a weird thing to talk about that in the past tense. 'I died.'

"They're called Cosmic Abstracts. Cosmic beings that big and strange. I don't think we're supposed to be able to really understand 'em. I don't think we can. One exploded near me once and I was caught in the psychic backlash -- and whenever I try to remember what it was I saw--"

He stopped for a moment. Just stopped. For about two or three seconds. Froze in place and stopped talking. Then he started moving again.

"--that happens. Whenever I try to remember it. Brain just blanks out and shuts down for a few seconds, like a CD skipping. Freaky, ain't it?"

[headinjuries]

"That's really freaky."

Having a memory gap or something, okay. Sam had suffered enough concussions in his life to know that that was a thing. But it wasn't just that Rich couldn't remember whatever he saw - it was the way he stopped.

It was creepy as hell.

[whyarewehere]

"They say 'unpleasant' to try and make you not do it again," said Grif. He paused to lick pudding off the label, then added, "No fun allowed."

Only now that he'd triumphed over the cup did Grif realize that he'd forgotten to steal a spoon, too. This might have stopped some people. Lesser men would admit defeat, but not Grif.

He stubbornly began to eat it with only his face and some creative squeezing of the plastic. It was unpleasant to see, but he wasn't actually making a mess. More troublingly, he was so casual about it. Grif apparently had a lot of practice eating things with a less than ideal utensil situation.

[sir_vancelot]

"Limbs replaced before."

It was said absolutely levelly, without any inflection. Which mostly meant that Vance was having to keep his own emotions under control. Probably couldn't be that much of a surprise, given everything. He closed his eyes for a moment, elbows on his knees and folding his hands to press his forehead against. Just a breath or two before he shook his head. "Between you and Robbie, I'm going to be the first of us to go grey, you know."

He lifted his head, blinking a bit too quickly. "Rich. I would appreciate it if you didn't go on near suicide missions when friends show up. We barely had a chance to talk before I was thinking I'd lost you again. With just as much to be able to do about it."

[iamresponding]

"The upside is -- those things can be survived." Rich knocked his knuckles against the side of his head. "Whatever it is my brain did, it made it so -- I didn't go crazy or something."

Even as big as all this was, it wasn't so big that it couldn't be overcome.

"Beings like that may be bigger. Or more powerful. Or infinitely omnipotent. But I've seen plenty of fights -- against cosmic powers where the little people won."

He shook his head.

"We've still got a tough fight on our hands, though. I almost wish Surfer could've stayed -- even if Galactus had to go. He'd have been handy against this Chronoblivion thing."

Yes, he wished the guy who put a hand through his chest had stayed. He basically didn't have any hard feelings. At all. Or if he did, he just had priorities.

[iamresponding]

"I had to," Rich protested. "That's my job, Vance."

He shrugged.

"It ain't like it was back on the New Warriors." He held a hand to his chest. "I'm always going to be a Warrior at heart, I am, but what I do now is...it's on a whole 'nother level."

He raised his eyebrows.

"'The crimes no one else will touch' remember? Back home, there are systems where they don't have anybody else. And with this, it would've been worth it if Surfer had been convinced to leave earlier. You guys put up a hell of a fight, but I watched the footage -- you won by the skin of your teeth. And only by releasing a dangerous cosmic power. We still will have to put pandora back in his box. There was at least a chance talking to Surfer would've worked -- I had to take it."

[iamresponding]

"There is no way I'm sitting here watching you eat pudding like that. Crime against nature."

Rich rolled his eyes and tossed him an unused plastic spoon.

"How's everyone taking the cosmic horror apocalypse thing?"

[headinjuries]

"Yeah, well." Sam planted his hands behind him on the bed and leaned back, putting his weight on them. "Even if he'd be awesome to have on our side right now, it still felt really good to hit him."

That had nothing to do with threats to the universe, or their goals in the mission, or doing what they had to in order to save Braal and every other planet in the UP. It had everything to do with the fact that nobody was just going to nearly kill a Nova and get away with it, even if he'd been pulling punches just enough not to actually finish Rich. Nobody.

Sam dealt with enough at school. He was used to hitting back, and even if he'd heard a million lectures about how violence wasn't the answer, there was no changing the fact that sometimes, it was just really satisfying to get in a good wallop before someone had to be responsible and break up the fight.

[deafleppard]

"Yeah, that's right. Show that pudding who's boss, and also how awesome it is to have thumbs." But mostly the boss part.

Gwen had heard that Rich was okay and able to take visitors, so she went over to the Medbay just to see how he was doing. An appetite was good, and it was proof to her that he had avoid becoming a zombie. But everything always had to involve zombies, somehow.

[iamresponding]

Rich laughed -- as well as anyone could with a mouthful of pudding.

He swallowed.

"They tried to get me to eat something else and I told 'em I could only manage the pudding." He shook his head. "But I was lying. I just really like their pudding. And outside of here I feel too obligated to be a responsible grown up to eat pudding for every meal of the day."

[iamresponding]

Rich smiled.

"Yeah, well," he said, in mimicry. "Sometimes it's not a bad thing -- to let off a little steam. And, uh, Surfer's definitely someone -- that can take a beating -- and just walk it off."

After Rich watched the footage, he really doubted that they'd actually caused much lasting damage at all.

"I'm gonna be fine." He looked awkward, as if he was afraid he was assuming too much in thinking Sam was at least a little mad at Surfer on his behalf. "It could've been a lot worse, what he did. And it was good he at least listened and moved him. That fight with the Spectre could've shattered Braal."

[headinjuries]

"It could've been a lot better, too." There had to be ways to get Rich out of commission that didn't involve taking out a lung and giving the entire Legion a collective heart attack. "They kept saying you'd be okay as long as there weren't complications -"

You could almost hear the air quotes around "complications."

"But I mean. There are like a zillion ways that could've gone totally wrong."