12. ibidem

[exnihilo]

[Video, public]

For the record, these penis enlargement pills do nothing. I'd like to register a complaint.


[Infirmary spam, open to visitors, backdated to 2-4 days post-Shakespeare flood.]

[She wakes up after jumping, her skin tight and and her eyes sore and her lungs aching in her chest. She groans, rolls over, tries to sleep. Maybe she can sleep for the entire toll. She's been trying so hard to be, to live and connect. Maybe she can just not be for awhile.]

(OOC NOTE: TW for suicide if people ask her why she is tolling. Ophelia's narrative was rough on her.)


[Private to Roderick, backdated also]

...can you do me a favor?

Comments

[fireincarnate]

[Jean keeps her mind open, as she sits in her office, just enough to get a general sense of all the patients. If someone is hurting, or needs something, she'll pretend it's mere happenstance that she walks by. People can get unsettled, otherwise.

She feels Mira start awake, and she's up and moving an instant later. She keeps cartons of soup in her office - her sister's recipes - and it only takes a burst of concentration to heat one up. A spoon floats along behind her as she carries it out.]

I've got some chicken soup with your name on it. [Her voice is soft, as she walks over. She won't pretend that she doesn't know Mira's awake. Pretending with her seems a bit futile, after that kiss.]

[exnihilo]

Mnuhh.

[Her name. People have names. (Blades have names too, if they are special ones. Still.) People are cared for. Fed. She wriggles up a little against the backboard of the infirmary got, stubbornly ignores the swim of vertigo.]

Thank. You.

[It's a bit raspy, but that's the right thing to say.]

[fireincarnate]

[She feels the echo of it, and doesn't delve any deeper, but it's achingly familiar all the same.

Grasping to find yourself again, yearning for a way to call yourself human.

The spoon dips into the bowl as Jean offers it.]

I can't make the effects go away, but I can lend you more strength, I think. [Enough that eating is a comfort, and not a chore.]

[exnihilo]

[She thinks about it, a little, not entirely certain she wants that. Jean's power is - Other, and vaster in so many ways. Easy to drown in in its own way. But also - so alive. She liked that, even when she was scared, the raw present crackling uncontainable reality of it.]

A little would be nice.

[fireincarnate]

[There's a sense of gratitude, as she nods, radiating from her as she reaches out. Trust is a precious thing.]

Just try to relax, okay? Settle into it. [It's something she's done countless times before; for her friends, her allies. Stronger than this, usually, but Mira's in a bed, not a battlefield.

It's slow and subtle, as it seeps into her; just enough to straighten her back, clear her eyes. Just enough for her to be comfortable.]

[video]

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

Are you taking the proper dosage?

[video]

[exnihilo]

It says two pills once a day, so unless they were manufactured on a planet with a wildly different day-night period, then yes.

[This is, in her mind, a plausible explanation, but the instructions really should account for it.]

[video]

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

I don't know what to tell you. Either you're a hopeless case, or they don't work.

[video]

[exnihilo]

[She flips him off.]

Well, they should. We get ourselves rearranged often enough at somebody's else's whim, we should get to grow new junk at our own whims if we want to.

[irishrotter]

[Simon tends to avoid the infirmary as a rule. Mira is one of the passengers he tries to keep an eye out for, though, and when he tries to find her in the days after the flood and can't -- even goes to the dining hall, which he normally has no reason to stop by, and doesn't see her at dinner -- he begrudgingly has to admit that he might once more have to set foot in the place. And he does so very begrudgingly, looking around as he steps inside, as though half-convinced that at any moment the men in white coats are going to come and grab him.

When they don't, though, he relaxes very slightly and goes to her bedside. He brushes a hand against her arm, voice very soft.]

Hey.

[exnihilo]

Oh. Hey.

[She reaches to take his hand, a little surprised he's sought her ought (that anyone would, aside from a few people who have sunk roots in her and somehow become family) but pleased with it.]

[irishrotter]

[He smiles a little, sort of pleasantly surprised himself: with the exception of a very inebriated Anya, most of the living here -- or living dead -- have avoided his touch. He gives her hand a squeeze, figuratively if not actually physically warm, and moves to sit at the side of the bed.]

I came looking for you. Figured you had to be here when I couldn't find you.

[exnihilo]

[Darling was always warm, warm like stone in the sun, not like flesh, and Simon is the opposite. It's interesting, in a small way, although certainly she's met sublines of humanity that ran colder, and artificials who didn't set their chassis warm. She glances away a little, though she keeps her hand in his.]

Sorry. I - yes.

[Yes, she's here. Sorry for that, maybe.]

private

[characterdefect]

Depends what the favor is.

[But really he means yes. Yes under any circumstances. In the right mood, for the right person, he can be incredibly giving.]

private

[exnihilo]

You know those. Christmas bears, everyone got, that looked like people.

Can you get mine from my room and bring it to the infirmary? It's not locked. The bear is under the couch.

[Hers looks like Arya. Anyone else would ask why, which is why it's hidden. They weren't close - never spoke, as far as anyone else knows. Every time they were face to face, one of them died. Roderick is the only person she'd consider telling.]

private ~~> spam

[characterdefect]

Well, that's hardly a favor at all. I'll be there in just a minute.

[Part of him is curious to get to a look at Mira's room. Part of him's worried. Part of him isn't even emotionally involved in the proceedings, not yet. This is just something to do with his time, with his hands, a way to keep himself from slipping away and doing something stupid.]

[So he fetches her bear, noting the little idiosyncracies of it but unable to place what they remind him of, and makes his way to the infirmary, where he finds Mira much the worse for wear, but sitting up, at least. He assumes that's a good sign, sets the bear on her bedside table.]

This what you were looking for?

spam

[exnihilo]

Yes. Thank you.

[A relieved little sigh. She takes the slightly squashed bear and fluffs it a bit, finger-combs the short brown hair-fur. There's a patch of russet in the gold where the heart should be, not garish enough to be obviously gore, but her fingertips linger there.]

spam

[deshabille]

[Mal, of course, knows what's happened. What, not how or why. She doesn't follow Mira around, so there are large pieces of information missing here. Empty spaces that she needs filled.]

[She's also worried. But then, that doesn't show. There's not a single worry line on her pale face when Mira wakes.]

Welcome back.

spam

[exnihilo]

[She always comes back. But she doesn't always come back. She thought she didn't want to. But she did want to, both times. She expected them to save her, just wanted to make the work for it. But the admiral did.

She wants to cry, abruptly, to crumble and not gather herself up for a little while, but everything feels locked up and she doesn't.]

...thank you.

[Rasped, almost whispered. Not rote. She is grateful, that someone would be waiting.]

spam

[deshabille]

Of course.

[Of course, of course; as though she would do this for anyone. As though Mira isn't a particular kind of special. One of hers.]

[But she wouldn't know how to explain that even if she wanted to, which she doesn't, and anyway now Mira's all. Foggy, and not quite crying, and she can't fathom what to do about it. Instead she just folds her hands on her lap and sits up ramrod-straight.]

What do you need?

spam

[exnihilo]

I keep expecting glass. The memories aren't actually tangled up, I know what happened when, but -

[It's disorienting, subversive, and irritating rather than catastrophic failing of her mind. She resents it.]

Tell me a history.

[Something linear, something true.]

[to_dust]

You know, I noticed that too? And the breast enlargement ones haven't done a thing.

[exnihilo]

I didn't get any of those! Not that I need them

Still, it's a bit of a scam.

[to_dust]

I suppose we got all the worth we paid for, though.

[exnihilo]

It's presents. They're supposed to be good anyway.

[Mira has Philosophical Opinions. More or less derived from the ether.]