[center][sup]Collaboration with the always lovely [@Hellion][/sup][/center]
Teg heard the drums. She had heard them before. She knew them. She knew the chanting that accompanied the drums. Ancient Terra. Earth. The Great Plains. She'd fucked up again. She knew it. She'd been shot. Sloppy. Very sloppy. She was annoyed. She was better than that. She didn't want to die. Not yet.

The horse stopped in front of her and Teg peered up at the rider. He was silent, but she could see the faint outlines of a smile beneath the bone white war paint that obscured his features. Teg had to admit the feathers in his hair did look pretty cool. She was less into the beads. Jewelry was dumb. The crow that sat on his shoulder cawed loudly at Teg. It sounded like laughter. It sounded like it was mocking her. Teg felt a sudden urge to punch the covid.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I fucked up. No need to be snippy about, you dick."

"CAW, CAW!"

"So what's the deal, you boys here to take me to the bright light?"

The rider shook his head slowly from side to side but didn't reply and instead pointed towards the crow. A more balanced, perhaps sane mercenary would have questioned the hallucination generated by neurons on the verge of death, but Teg didn't. She had expected Valhalla to be a little bit snowier, but she'd settle for a desert. Even if she really, really hated sand. It always got everywhere. The crow watched Teg carefully. She could tell it was judging her. She could feel its beady little black eyes as they stared right into her soul. She hated the crow already. Teg didn't notice her own hand reaching reflexively for where her extra gun would have been, strapped flush against the small of her back. But the crow did and he glared maliciously at Teg as she pulled at air. She didn't have her guns. Not in whatever place she was in.

Teg sighed, if she couldn't shoot the bird she'd have to talk. Nodding in the direction of the crow, she rolled her eyes with practiced ease, "Alright bird, I guess you're the talker. What's the deal here? If you didn't notice I'm pretty busy dying. I don't have time to chat with you about shiny objects or whatever it is you care about."

"CAW!"

"No, I couldn't just have shot that last pirate. I don't have eyes in the back of my head."

"CAW."

"Yeah, well if you think you can do better how about you go back instead of me? If you're such a bad-ass why are you here? You fucking bird brained asshole."

"CAW, CAW."

"YEAH! So what! That's not my problem."

"Caw!"

“I don’t care about any interstellar maps! How many times do I have to tell you!” Teg shouted, unwilling to let the corvid have the last word. She didn’t have time to respond before her world turned a new shade of midnight and she fell from the stars.

-------

Teg lurched to life with a pained gasp. Her breath was ragged. She couldn’t breathe. Not enough. The lights were too bright. Her vision was blurry and her eyes burned. She wasn’t crying. She wouldn’t waste time on tears. 

The high-pitched alarms and whirring of gears within the medical equipment across the room first caused the Doctor’s attention to snap toward the ruckus, the heart monitor beginning to pulse at a steady time as it should. Kai’s gaze gradually traced its way along the large surgical table where Teg’s body had been laying lifeless, and noticed the subtle movements of bother her mouth and chest as air began to fill her lungs once again.

"S’tragotha..." The Ithlo -his eyes wider than normal this time- mumbled the exclamatory curse under his breath, unsure of just what was going on. “It can’t be.” He all but flew across the room to the bedside, where the mercenary’s body was going through convulsions as the need for air became greater. The Doctor wasted no time pulling the oxygen mask down from the ceiling and quickly placing the device over her nose and mouth, allowing for a controlled amount of breathing to naturally occur. 

"Miss Taggart." Kai refrained from any hysterics, as wasn’t in his nature, but there was still an urgency in the tone of his voice. “Breath slowly, and do not get up.” If things were, in fact, beginning to move toward the positive for Teg’s condition, then the necessary protocols were to be in place to ensure her blood pressure and heart rate would optimize.

"I will not lose you again, Corinna." He whispered, surprised that he had used her first name, a name never uttered by him or anyone he knew since their meet. Regardless, he continued flipping switches on various consoles and monitoring her vitals as her body began to awaken.

"Kai," Teg said, rasping from beneath the oxygen mask, beckoning him closer with the weak wave of a hand. She waited until he leaned in closer before she grabbed ahold of the label of his shirt and pulled him close, dangerously close, improperly close for a human much less an Ithlo. "I need a drink."