Participants:
| Scene Title | Again |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | No, you're not experiencing deja vu… someone recycled their sceneset. |
| Date | October 4, 2009 |
St. Luke's Hospital is known for its high-quality care and its contributions to medical research. Its staff places an emphasis on compassion for and sensitivity to the needs of their patients and the communities they serve. In addition to nearby Columbia University, the hospital collaborates with several community groups, churches, and programs at local high schools. The associated Roosevelt Hospital offers a special wing of rooms and suites with more amenities than the standard hospital environment; they wouldn't seem out of place in a top-rated hotel. That said, a hospital is a hospital — every corridor and room still smells faintly of antiseptic.
Fel's awake these days. But it's a bleary, dreamy definition of 'awake', really. He's in a hospital gown, covers drawn up to his waist, head of the bed raised. He was reading, but seems to have drifted off on the morphine drip - there's a worn copy of 'Scaramouche' propped open by one leg, but his eyes are closed, and his free hand rests limply on his belly. The Fed is still thin to the point of gauntness, bone of his shoulders and the muscled cords of his throat stark above the patterned cotton of the hospital gown.
There is far more security stationed outside of the Federal Agent's hospital room than Barbara — make that Bijou — really feels comfortable in dealing with simply for the sake of paying Felix a courtesy call while he's still considered to be a captive audience. She bides her time around the corner quietly until there's a changing of the guard, so to speak, and approaches the door with a heavy breath held in, puffing up her chest in mock confidence. She's asked to show a picture ID. She shows it. Bijou Baxter. She's asked to state her business. She states it. And old friend. She's asked to pass through a metal detector. She passes it. All clear. It's only have this ceremony of perceived safety that she's then permitted into the man's hospital room. Five minutes.
Once the door is closed behind her, she offers the man laid up in the hospital bed a small but sincere smile as she addresses him: "Hello, stranger…"
It takes him a moment to even open his eyes…..and when they are, it's clear he's high as a kite. He's got the pinned pupils and dreamy stare of someone far gone on opiates. But he offers her a pleasant smile, blinking a little. "Hi. I remember you. I…." The name apparently escapes him. "Staten. A couple of times. You used to work for Logan, but you don't know."
The young woman takes a few short steps from the door to the edge of the man's hospital bed and lays a single finger against her own lips, as if to gently shush the invalid by proxy, before she dares do anything else. Once this little gesture is overseen, Bebe brings both hands down to quietly cradle Felix's fingers between her comparatively small palms while still wearing her warm smile. "I know. It's been a while…" She then steers the burgeoning parlay away from her own identity and says instead, "…I wanted to apologize to you for what happened before we parted ways." At Burlesque. When another (former) FBI Agent actually attempted to punch him in the face. For 'molesting' her. Or something.
Fel doesn't remember, by the way his gaze searches her face. It's so weird, to see his face so open. "Apology accepted, though I'm not sure what for? I'm a little fuzzy, these days," he admits, with no particular shame. His own hands are so terribly thin, fragile looking, the calluses from sports and work gone.
Bebe's fingers weave their way between the fae man's delicate digits with all appropriate attention paid to his fragile condition and IV tubing. The pad of her thumb brushes over one of Felix's thin knuckles in thoughtful (possibly even sad) silence. "Well, I can credit you with one thing, at the very least… you are incredibly determined, aren't you?" There is no need to exert the effort for an answer, of course; the question was rhetorical. "But, maybe it's time you put aside your love affair with death, hm?" Is she actually waxing philosophical now? "…don't you have anything worth living for?"
Felix's gaze drifts to the shapeless lump of bandages that ends one leg, under the starchy cover of the blanket. "I'm done," he says, simply, with regret in his voice. "In so many ways. But yes, you're right. And I do." No ring on those fingers, but the sinews of his hands are stretched like cords across the bones.
"Good." She doesn't ask. Perhaps she doesn't have to. Whatever Felix's reason for reckoning with the reality of his mortality, it's enough that such a thing simply exists without the necessity for it to be called into question. Bebe squeezes the Federal Agent's fingers before finally releasing them and recalling her hands behind her back while she teeters by his bedside. "I would be… very disappointed if you died."
"Again?" he retorts, and his tone is light. But even with the haze of opiates, his gaze is momentarily sharp, a little challenging. "For good? Is that why I'm so hard to heal now, that I've already been gone once?" Fel hitches himself up a little, watching her reaction closely.
Bebe's bright smile widens by a degree as she echoes the man's morphine humor. "Again." The expression is sadly short-lived, however. Felix's curious inquiry isn't entirely unexpected but nor is it something she's able to easily — or, really, truthfully — answer. "Honestly… I don't know…" But, of course, such a response could hardly be qualified as satisfying, and so she tries to supply him with something more than might make for a convincing placebo. "Yes." There. Certainty. "Probably." Almost.
"The only thing I know for sure is that bringing you back took no small effort…" And you're fucking it up, asshole, so knock it off!
Felix meets her gaze with that guileless blue. "Do you know why she did?" he wonders, tone a little lost. "And that must make sense, at least, as much as any of this makes sense. She's never asked anything of me, or even contacted me, that I know of…." He trails off. Perhaps a bit nervous about possibly being a Manchurian Candidate.
The reply is very likely not what Felix might have hoped for; a slow side-to-side shaking of soft brown hair worn down around those pink apple cheeks. Totally negatory. Bebe acknowledges the man's presumed disappointment in a preemptive fashion as she says softly, just shy of sad, "That isn't a question I can answer. You would have to ask her." Which, of course, isn't apt to happen any time soon… is it?
"She isn't as nefarious as other people might make her out to be…" Two fingers stroll up to her temple in order to tame an unbound lock of hair and slide it back behind an unadorned ear. "…she saved me, too."
"Well, I am grateful," he says, staunchly. "For what that's worth. If you ever see her, tell her so for me? And I've not really heard anything about her. Other than that she's known to this crazy bastard named Feng Daiyu." That, he's sharp enough to remember. Even now.
The name means nothing to Bebe, or so her otherwise blank expression seems to suggest, but she nods her head affirmatively with what Felix instructs her to do and then adds an arguably unnecessary confirmation, "I will." For a moment, her fingers reach out again but then recoil before she's close enough to reclaim the man's hand. Maybe she shouldn't tempt fate with too much tactile contact… just in case… residual memories of John Doe — Tyler Case, she reminds herself bitterly — might be hidden somewhere within. "I should go," she says, edging for the door. "Get some rest, hm?"
Felix reaches out to her, reflexively, trusting. But when she withdraws hers, so does he, his. "Doin' nothin' but," he says, with a little flare of cheerfulness, and a sketched in attempt at an insouciant grin.
Anyone else's parting expression might seem sad or even disingenuous but Bebe is an expert at faking her way through so many unpleasant things. Parting is not so much such sweet sorrow when she's standing there, one hand on the latch of the door, bestowing a look which speaks of both beginnings and finality — all unspoken promises hidden in the subtly up-turned corners of her mouth, just waiting for the right moment to be revealed. "Sleep sweet." And then, she's gone.
Angels quite often have somewhere else to be but their presence remains comforting long after their absence; maybe the demons that so enjoy haunting Felix Ivanov's sleep might be kept at bay for what's left of the evening in Bijou Baxter's wake.