the curious happenstance of pedro pascal and din djarin [The Mandalorian]

Christopher & Ivana

TW: Every trigger you have previously associated with Christopher is present in this chapter. Read at your own discretion.
- Suicidal ideation
- Nosocomephobia
- Arachnophobia
- References to panic/anxiety attacks
- References to a previous miscarriage

Droplets of water fall from her fingertips and crash into a shallow puddle. The puddle soaks through her shoes, then her socks, then the very bottoms of her trousers. Her hair is now flat and brown and drip, drip, drips like a leaking tap. The droplets form on her eyelashes then splash on her face when she blinks them away. Hair rises on her arms, on her legs, as a great shiver overtakes her body, and thunder rolls across the sky in great waves like the ocean. The clouds, black like charcoal, are blazed by lightning and made to look like winter's snow.

This is Britain, she thinks. Her face burns from the bitter chill. This is London. I know it is, because it's raining.

Ivana laughs. Sam is laughing too, her hair drowned and tangled, her jumper is heavy with water and draping off her slight frame. They launch to embrace each other tightly, rock back and forth with glee, it's London, it's London!

Christopher is not laughing.

He's not crying either, but Ivana prefers if he would. He doesn't. He looks at her, his eyes drooped and his mouth hung open. When he coughs he doesn't wipe away the trickle of blood that coats his lip then dribbles down his chin. When he inhales it's deep, when he exhales it's sharp. Ivana wonders if it hurts, then wishes she didn't wonder.

"Chris," she calls through the rain. "Let's go home!"

He looks at her more. Nods, and she thinks he'll follow. He doesn't. He stays, he sways. His head nods.

"I can't breathe," he says.

And then he's on the ground.

-

Doctor Faraday is a young woman with a stern gaze. The matter in which she speaks is cold, calculated, and matter-of-fact. She carries a clipboard everywhere she goes and has a habit of tapping it over and over with her pen.

The tapping is all Ivana can hear. Tap tap tap, tuberculosis, tap tap tap, leukemia. Is he going to die or not?

She doesn't cry. She rarely does. It's difficult and irritating and hurts her eyes and stains her face.

The nurses are kind. The young man is nervous and stutters a lot, but he's competent. The old lady is grumpy, and scolds the boy for dawdling, but then her eyes soften as she gazes on Ivana, and the corners of her lips rise into what seems to be an attempt at a smile. They must be rare, she thinks, and feels special for it.

They're kind to Christopher too. Even when he kicks, and screams, and yells slurs in languages Ivana can't understand.

She tries to apologise. She buys them coffee. She gives them cookies. They accept them and thank her and say to her "we've had worse".

When he's not screaming, he's refusing to eat. He's staring despondently out the window with a shitty view. There's nothing to see there. He's not looking at anything, it's just the brick wall of a neighbouring building. But he stares at it like it's the most fascinating thing in the world.

She doesn't cry when he ignores her. She's angry, but she understands, and really, she expected this. He hates hospitals. He hates needles. The ventilator, tubes put up his nose, makes him feel like he's choking. He wakes up in the night with a panic attack and tells her that he's dying.