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Leon rises back to consciousness to finds himself floating in a cold, dark ocean of agony, every bone in his body throbbing despite the soft surface gently cradling him. He can feel varying pressures across his skin, as if he's encased in heavy boulders in some spots and draped in delicate cloth in others. His head pulses with aching pain that radiates all the way down to his hips and back, paralyzing him and forcing him to breathe shallowly through his mouth. The air is dry and stale, sharp against his throat, as if ragged claws have torn through the soft flesh when he wasn't looking and left him gasping.
Faint sounds filter in as Leon slowly grows closer to the membrane between sleep and waking, distant voices speaking in hushed, sombre tones like the kind Leon would expect to find at a funeral. The thought bothers him, makes worry flicker through his chest, a faint frown pulling at Leon's brows as he forces himself to focus on the sound. The voices come in snatches, disjointed and lost at times under random beeps and clicks from the room around him.
"How is he?" Leon hears, the person's voice soft and familiar.
"Stable." That's Piers, the epiphany providing sudden clarity. Leon knows that voice like the back of his hand. Piers sounds upset, almost hollow with emotion, prompting Leon to try and pry open his gluey eyelids---only to be met with a dull, staticky gray expanse that takes a long moment to be recognizable in the shadows. A ceiling? "The surgeries went well, but they're worried about his lungs. Right now they just want to let him rest and get ahead of the pain."
Who are they talking about? A wave of exhaustion distracts Leon from the conversation, an attempt to shift his body again making him aware of the weights and random tendrils wrapped around him to keep him immobile. There's a pull in his elbow that reminds him of being in the hospital, another valiant attempt to flicker open his eyelids stopped by the fuzzy heaviness pulsing through his arteries. He's practically swimming in it, held aloft from the soupy pull of sleep only by the pillow beneath his head.
"---sorry," the first voice is saying when Leon tunes in again, wracked with guilt. "If only I had---"
"Don't, Chris." That's a third voice, also one of Leon's friends---or at least he thinks so. This time, his eyes allow themselves to stay partially opened when he pushes past the bleariness, revealing the dim ceiling of whatever room he's in, dappled in spots with faint pools of fluorescent white. Leon frowns. Why are his friends gathered in this strange, quiet room together? More importantly, why can't he seem to figure out what he's doing here?
"Jill---"
"You can't blame yourself." Piers again, this time tinged with anger. "He's so.... so stubborn, you never could have changed his mind. Retreat wasn't an option with civilians in harm's way."
He sounds worried, Leon thinks, fighting the insistent droop of his eyelids to glance to the left. Moving his head even slightly makes something shift on his face, keenly aware of the edge of whatever it is digging into his cheek. He tries to make a sound, call out and ask what's going on, but his voice comes out as nothing more than a whisper.
"Do they know how long it'll take for him to wake up?"
"Not really. He's been sedated pretty good, from what they've told me, at least until they reassess tomorrow. Hopefully soon, but with the---the head trauma, it's hard to say how coherent---"
Leon coughs, the sound hoarse, and the voices cut off in an instant. He tries to sit up, see where they've gone, but he can't move his arms at all, a faint sound of choked pain slipping from his mouth even though he can't really feel anything anymore. Something is slowly dragging him away from reality, and it's all Leon can do to struggle against the increasing strength of the current. A shadow appears in front of him, the vague shape of a person.
"Leon?" Piers murmurs softly, the ridged expanse of his scarred face cast in chiaroscuro by the glow of something beside Leon's bed. He looks concerned, scared, and Leon makes a faint sound of distress. What's going on? "Leon, can you hear me?"
"P---iers," he rasps, little more than a soft exhale. "Piers?"
"Shh," Piers sits quickly at Leon's side, reaching out his flesh hand to gently guide Leon's head back to centre and readjust whatever had shifted on his face. "Shh, it's alright, baby. You shouldn't be awake yet."
"Wh---'s---" Leon tries, suddenly breathless, " 's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," Piers soothes, a thumb smoothing over Leon's cheek. "Everything's okay, go back to sleep. I promise everyone is alright."
Leon's breath catches, his hand moving sluggishly to paw at Piers' arm in confusion. He doesn't think it actually gets there.
"Sleep," Piers says again, tenderness lacing his voice. "It's okay, Leon, just close your eyes. Just rest."
Leon's surprised to find that his eyelids have already fallen shut while he wasn't looking, his body relaxing back into the soft mattress as a gentle hand strokes his skin with the delicate brush of a butterfly's wing. Piers is warm, his body close and solid, and Leon sighs. He is tired.
The last thing he hears before slipping under entirely is Piers' soft voice, humming what Leon's pretty sure is a lullaby.