Waking Up

It hurt.

Everything hurt.

His bones screamed as if they were being drilled into, crushed, and twisted.

His skin felt as if it was being flayed with a salt crusted whip, dunked into boiling water, and exposed to a freezing atmosphere.

The joints all responded as if they were perforated, punctured with needles.

The muscles wailed in agony, seemingly torn and incapable of tensing.

A ringing in his ears, drowning out all other sources of noise.

Don couldn't move, mostly, and where he was it was a pain like no other.

His breathing, soft, restrained, weak, was still enough to send tremors of agony around his chest and abdomen. His ribcage felt like it would explode from a tiny whisper of breath.

His mind, overwhelmed with signals of pain, was on the verge of collapse. A migraine the likes of which he had never experienced before. He was not suicidal by nature, but if death meant he could escape this senseless pain, he would be tempted.

But he was alive.

Barely conscious, on the verge of insanity, in an agony he felt he did not deserve, yes, but he was alive.

And he felt he had sufficient proof.

If he was truly dead, he believed he had a few ways to go.

Some form of Heaven this experience was most certainly not.

Reincarnation was also off the table.

Purgatory? Some dimension of half-ness? Also unlikely.

The theory of simply vanishing was also out of the question, the pain was proof again.

And yet it was not Hell, or some other torture derivative afterlife.

That would imply that there was only pain, something that was not the case.

For at the moment, despite all the pain and suffering he was experiencing, there was also a sensation of comfort, pleasure, peace.

It was coming from his right hand, and a portion of his left leg. He couldn't tell where they were in relation to the rest of him, nor did he really care. He could focus his attention on that to alleviate the pain, if only slightly.

From time to time, the pain akin to a blade traveling down his throat signaled that he was being fed.

He was thankful to not be throwing up, not sure if he would be able to stomach the pain of actual acid flowing over what seemed to be exposed nerves.

This went on for a long time, his only respite from the constant pain the periods he was left unconscious in sleep. He couldn't tell if the pain was starting to die down, or if he was getting better at tolerating it. He realized that there was not much of a difference between the two.

After a certain point, Don just wanted to see, hear, and taste again, so his relief after seeing just the slightest bit of light appearing at the bottom of his field of vision was immeasurable.

Infuriatingly, the burning sensation in his irises at this miniscule change imbued him with a subtle rage. Thankfully, the ringing had subsided slightly, but his taste buds had yet to return.

The next time the food was shoveled into his mouth, he could faintly make out the sounds of someone speaking, likely to him. A pinch of pain on his cheek suggested that his caretaker wasn't too proficient with feeding another person, likely the result of spilling some food on him.

He held back a groan, knowing it would only serve to further his suffering.

At times, the sources of warmth around his hand and leg would disappear. He was not so immature as to panic, but he did wonder where they went. Whatever caused it would always return after about half an hour, his knowledge of this the result of counting during his boredom.

The first thing he was going to do after waking up fully was ask for painkillers, or maybe even administer them himself. The pain was a little bit more intense about his elbow, so maybe his band was still there? Maybe that pain was just a remnant of the injection.

He couldn't even remember if there were any doses of the painkiller left. He could vaguely remember being drugged beyond belief at one point. He would be mad at ARC if he didn't understand it was absolutely necessary. Perhaps it had noticed the signs of extreme pain onset and had administered them in response.

That must have been a terribly careful balancing act, keeping him awake enough to fly but drugged enough to pay attention.

A shrill noise distracted him from his thoughts. It constantly changed pitch, but seemed to maintain a rhythm. A song? Whistling?

Was someone whistling? The tune sounded familiar, but he couldn't put a finger on what it was.

Not a marching song, he could differentiate them from other genres. Probably nothing that had come out recently either. The proclivity of modern musicians to focus on electronic noises and what sounded to him like walls of noise made it nigh impossible to actually catch a tune to whistle to.

Don didn't exactly have time to appreciate the pleasures of entertainment given the intensity of his study, but he could clearly remember this song from somewhere.

But when? Where? What was this song?

He brainstormed, trying to figure out what it was, where he had heard it. He had plenty of time.

Was it from a movie? That would make sense. He hadn't exactly seen many movies over the course of his life, so he could remember some of the ones he had seen. Doctor Helmsguard had shown him a few of his favorites from his vast collection of 'classics' from the time before the collapse, the golden age of film.

Many had catchy songs.

This was definitely from one of those movies, he no longer had a doubt about that. In fact Don was pretty sure he remembered which movie this was from.

If his memory served correctly, it was from a series, three or four movies long. Was it about an adventurer? Explorer? What was it that the protagonist called himself? Was he named after one of the old countries? A province in North America?

He looked for like, religious artifacts, or something along those lines, in the underdeveloped areas of the world.

An Archaeologist!

A small laugh escaped him, and the whistling stopped.

A pity, he quite enjoyed it.