Participants:
| Scene Title | Not Done Yet |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Keira awakens to bad news and a good friend. |
| Date | May 13, 2018 |
It took a few days for Keira to really come back to the real world — between the emergency care, whatever surgeries she needed to survive, the drugs, and the sheer shock of it all, she’s only really had brief moments of consciousness, and those were marked by blurry vision and no small amount of confusion. She knows what happened, but all of this has seemed like a really awful dream to her.
Finally, though, she’s stable and in a regular inpatient room, and waking up this time is a much more steady experience. The remaining blue eye flutters, before slowly opening. The blank space where the vision in her left eye should be confirms that this most definitely was not a bad dream.
Slowly she pulls herself from the confusion and grogginess of the heavy medication she’s been under, bracing herself for whatever bad news is to come.
“Kinder to let you die, maybe,” says a voice from the corner. Bent at the middle, arms draped across his legs with hands clasped in the space between his knees, Sasha Kozlow has been waiting for Keira to rejoin the waking world for an indeterminate period of time. In his pristine white coat and the dress shirt he wears beneath it, the former Vanguard assassin looks cleaner and more bright-eyed than the photos of him that circulated during the Albany trials, although not by very much.
Some things you never bounce all the way back from. A highly-publicized trial in which you narrowly escape hanging by two votes is one of them.
Breaking your back might be another, except—
Keira can feel her right leg, all the way from her hip down to the tips of her naked toes.
The same cannot be said of the left.
Sasha spreads his hands in apology. “I try to fix,” he says, “but my ability, eh, not so good. One leg you get back. The other is needing brace. Metal. Strong metal. Lasts long time.”
One of the constants at the hospital over the past few days has been someone not related to the tattooed blonde. The man who brought her in was a regular visitor at all hours, making what decisions he could for her and acting as a sort of ‘speaker for the unconscious' since Key really wasn't talking much those few days after their arrival at the hospital.
Every visiting hour that came, Caspian showed up. Mainly to sit and read, work on sketches in his book, or just doze in the chair next to the bed, always with a gloved hand, even when she was negated. Several nights the nurses had to wake him and send him home, and the next day, as soon as visiting hours were open, there he was again. The van they arrived in had been towed somewhere and the owner was contacted but, as both Keira and Caspian know, he’s probably not going to be claiming it anytime soon. Outside the safe zone is a wild place, and registration was more of a formality than anything for vehicles out there, where this one obviously came from.
There's a knock on the door, Caspian peeking in. “Keira? You awake?” And then, seeing her sitting up, he pushes the rest of the way into the room, barely noticing the doctor as he tosses his bag to the chair by the door, skidding to a stop when he finally does. “Oh. Oh hell, I'm sorry. It's just that Key’s awake for the first time in days and I thought that…..yeah, I'll shut up now so. Um. Yeah.” He glances to the pair. “Should I go?”
The ability to feel — or lack thereof — is the first bit of bad news. Oh, that’s not fun. That is not fun at all. No more Action Thug Time for Keira — and her anonymity is as good as gone now. The brace he speaks of probably won’t be flexible enough to adjust to changes in body size.
Dammit, she liked that cushion.
She watches Sasha as he speaks, knowing his face and kind of wanting to punch it — it’s not his fault that this happened, but she wants to direct her anger at something tangible. She avoids actually acting on that urge, thankfully, instead staring flatly at the man with a stony poker face, not saying a word.
And then, Caspian is poking his head in, and the tension fades from Keira’s form, ever-so-slightly. She’s still pretty displeased with all of this. “Caspian,” she murmurs, and shakes her head, lowering her gaze to her feet. “Stay.”
She turns her gaze toward Sasha again, frowning this time. “You said brace. So I can walk with it at least?” At least there’s that. At least she won’t be in a fucking wheelchair, restricted to wherever she might be able to get on wheels. That’s something that sucks a little less.
“Walk, yes. Feel, no.” Except that’s not entirely true. Keira can tell Sasha isn’t being entirely honest by the cagey way he refuses to meet her eyes as he rises from his seat.
His vigil has ended. “There is pain,” he confesses. “Later. Right now there is medicine in your blood. Fentanyl. So be happy, if you can be happy, Miss Fionn. Tomorrow, worse.”
He scuffs out of the room, shoulders hunched and head hung low like a stray dog with its tail tucked between its legs. The door shuts behind Caspian, and he and Keira are alone.
It’s almost like he wished he hadn’t been here for that little revelation of what Keira’s future might hold. Knowing that her leg will require a brace and substantial pain management….that’s…that’s kind of a big deal. That’s a really big deal. He stands there and watches as Sasha leaves the room, the door closing behind him with a final-sounding thump before he turns to take his seat next to Keira’s bed - on the side with her eye, so she can see him without turning her head too much - and rests a hand on the rail. “So.” he says softly, looking over. “What do we do now?” He doesn’t have an answer for this.
Keira’s one-eyed gaze follows Sasha, her jaw and fists clenched. She’s not happy. Surely someone can do better than this. She refuses to accept this outcome — being like this would be no better than being dead.
As Caspian takes the seat next to her bed, she relaxes, if just a little. The Fentanyl does make things nice — right now. She doesn’t want to be addicted to this shit.
“I’m going to call my boys and start seein’ if there’s some better option than that piece of shit,” she mutters, glaring at the door. She saw the Albany trials. She knows what Sasha has done. She knows that he very narrowly avoided being sentenced to death by hanging. And it leaves a bad taste in her mouth that he was the one in charge of her care. “Fuckin’ traitor,” she grumbles, shaking her head.
Then, she turns her mind away from that unpleasant fact. “I’m also gonna fuckin’ do the registration thing since sneakin’ in and out isn’t going to be easy any more. I’m gonna talk to SESA and let them know that Emile Danko isn’t dead, and I’m gonna talk to Richard Ray and get that piece of shit to do me a solid.”
She’s very angry right now; she does, however, take advantage of that negation she’s enjoying, and reaches out, touching Caspian’s hand, skin-to-skin — she can enjoy that at least. “Thank you…guess you’re my knight in shinin’ armor?”
“Any port in a storm.” Caspian responds quietly, turning his hand over so Keira can hold his hand - skin to skin - if she wants to. “I snuck a few looks at the prognosis and if it weren’t for him, it wouldn’t be good. I mean.” He shifts in his seat, looking over at Keira with a serious expression. “You got smacked pretty hard. Danko had some pretty tough backup to come and pull his ass out of the fire. Speaking of, I got your boys taken care of. The ones at the store. I pulled some strings while you were recovering and got them a place on Staten. Quiet, near that park with the two trees. Got them buried and had a few words said over ‘em. Don’t know if there are any families involved, but they’ve got a proper burial. And once you’re walkin’ better, we’ll go out and say goodbye.” Cost him a few bucks too, but it was worth it. No-one deserves to lay there and rot, forgotten.
He looks over to her in the hospital bed. “Registration isn’t so bad, like it used to be. They aren’t coming and hunting us down or anything anymore, and SESA is actually helping out, as far as I know. They’ll probably want to talk to you. Find out how you tracked Danko down, what you did with his stuff, and what you remember, if anything, about what came and ripped him out of that chair and put you into the position you’re in.”
Knight in shining armor? Caspian chuckles and shrugs. “Haven’t ever been considered a knight but sure, I’ll take it.”
That — the part where he says that he took care of her boys…it chokes her up a bit. Her eyelid flutters, a tear glistening there for a moment. “Th…thank you.” She sniffs once, raising her free hand to wipe away that tear. “They didn’t deserve to have that happen. They were just doin’ a job for me. Tim had a kid…fuckin’ cute little girl, she’s only seven…he was just tryin’ to support her.” She sniffs again, doing everything she can to avoid tearing up.
After a moment, she takes a few deep breaths, the pain meds doing a decent job of helping her keep her calm. “That’s all shit I wanna tell ‘em, anyhow. I have his shit stashed away, I was gonna take him to them anyhow.” She frowns. “Fuckin’ FRONTLINE armor, tore my boys apart.”
She gestures to herself. “Cut my eye out then snapped my back over their knee.” Well, that sounds unpleasant. “So much for bein’ anonymous.”
Caspian isn’t going to tell Keira what she needs to do. Chances are she already knows what obligations she has to her boys and the people they left behind. People don’t choose crime - they choose the results of crime. The ease of getting things that are needed to survive and even thrive in this war-scarred world. “It makes sense that someone would have a suit of that stuff stashed away somewhere. I mean, if you can keep it running properly, you’d have a hell of an advantage if you went in against regular foot soldiers.”
He sits back, thoughtful. “No clue what maintaining something like that would take, what power reserves would be required, or any of that stuff. I mean….it can’t fly, can it? ‘Cause that would throw all sorts of shit into the mix as far as where it /could/ come from.”
He gives her hand a squeeze, crossing one leg over the other. “I’ll help you out as best as I can. You know I will.”
The mangled shapeshifter frowns. “I don’t fuckin’ know, but I know SESA would love to find out, and I know that the fuckin’ CEO of Raytech would love to know about this shit.” She shakes her head, scowling at her feet. “Fun shit, that motherfucker is a hypocrite. He’s Evo just as sure as I am.”
She shakes her head, then turns to peer at Caspian with that one eye, the other bandaged heavily. She’s going to try and get Richard Ray to make her an eye with his fancy company — she’s sure she has something worth trading, even if it’s a vow to never ask him out for drinks ever again. Until then, though, she’ll have to deal with the lack of depth perception.
At least they didn’t take her aiming eye.
“Thank you again, Caspian. S’good t’have you around.” She peers at him quietly, studiously, before her eyes turn down to the bed, a slight pink coloring her cheeks. “If y’wanna keep stickin’ around, I would really appreciate it…”
“They’ve actually been wanting to talk to you for a while.” Caspian says, getting to his feet and walking over to his bag, grabbing it and making his way back over to the seat, retaking his spot, letting Keira re-take his hand if she wants while he rummages in the bag with the other. “It’s not often that someone comes in claiming what you’ve claimed. They asked me what I knew and I told them some. Figured the rest of the story should come from you since you were the one who went through it all.” He makes an ‘ah’ sound when he finds what he’s looking for.
“I know you’re probably going to be a little bored in here so I brought you something.” An old Gameboy - the cool ones that flip open with the lighted screen, is placed on the table next to the bed, the charger plugged in. “Hope you like Pokemon, because that’s the only game I could find that worked.” This is followed by a small pair of socks - thick wool ones. The hospital is kept cold so he places them close. “I can help get these on if you like.”
He goes quiet then, still holding her hand, watching her, studying her reactions to things. “Things’ll get better, Keira. We’ll get you patched up. There might even be a non-traitor Evo healer running around that can fix what ails you. Barring that, we can find you an eyepatch and dress you up as a pirate.”
The tiny shapeshifter turned one-eyed cripple tilts her head, nodding. “M’happy t’talk to them. They’re better equipped to handle this shit than I am, and they’ll know where to go with th’info and shit I have.” She nods quietly, watching him rummage about.
The gameboy is regarded with a faint smile. “I snatched one’ve these off an older kid back when I was in school. Played the shit out of Pokemon.” She takes it, examining with a fond look. The socks are met with a warmer smile. Man, he’s sweet. “I would like that,” she replies, watching him thoughtfully.
The mention of a possible healer on Staten prompts a small nod. “Surely there is. I’m gonna make some calls soon. Put my feelers out, find someone. I’m not gonna fuckin’ stay like…like this.” Not if she can help it. “Also gonna see if I can hit up my ex about a replacement eye. If anyone can get one made, it’s him. He’s kinda responsible for alla this shit anyhow.” She smirks.
“Either way, I’m not fuckin’ done yet.”