And I Carry a Bo Staff

((Action part backdated to the wee hours of this morning.))

[The horror ends at midnight.]

[Sort of.]

[Don doesn't know how long it takes him to realize that he's lying on cobblestone instead of mud, and that the water pooling around him is only the rain running off his own skin.]

[It's still raining now, but so lightly he can't even feel it through the numbness.]

[He gets up. People are running in every direction. Someone had organized a clinic and healers, and everywhere he looks the injured are being tended to.]

[There are no provisions for the dead. There are never any bodies.]

[Don turns away from the confusion, points his steps towards home. The walk seems to take a long time. When he gets there, the house is quiet. Don finds Mike asleep at the kitchen table, gives him what may be a startlingly cold hug, inhales the plate of spaghetti at his elbow, and moves on.]

[He closes the door of his room, drops his gear to the ground. Climbs into Leo's bed and finds his brother not yet asleep.]

We lost.

[That's all the words he has energy for.]

[He sleeps for the next thirty-six hours. He wakes intermittently to whisper half-intelligible accounts of the battle into Leo's ear. He runs a low fever.]

[On Wednesday afternoon he manages to get out of bed - or at least sit up, if his family won't allow any more than that - speak to his brothers and father, listen to his messages on the journal. In the evening he'll put out some short, poorly-filtered messages to obvious people.]

*

Ms. Daisy... I lost the samples.

*

Frederic, I'm so sorry. Do you want me to come over?

*

Mr. Mulder. Did you make it back safely?

*

Kay, ah... What are you doing Saturday?

*

((Feel free to leave Voice messages, but assume Don's replies are forward-dated to tomorrow. You may also get a more-timely response from one of his journal-stealing housemates.))