Turning Inward

Participants:

eve_icon.gif hana_icon.gif sonny_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title Turning Inward
Synopsis When healing Teo's new injuries conflicts with old surgery, the Ferry is there for him. They bring dark dreams, good drugs, and a certain sense of safety.
Date January 17, 2008

East Village — Church of Living Hope


The birds are coming out, gradually, a frenetic twitter and shriek that seems distinctly at odds with the fact that Teo's in Manhattan. Post-dawn, the Church of Living Hope stretches silent around him, but for the tick of a clock somewhere and the pounding inside his own head. Abby fixed his arm. He's happy for that. It had been a precarious and ugly process, her pushing raw life into his arm in tense little intervals, stopping whenever he felt a twinge — or a blinding spike — of pain lance through his skull where the surgical implant in his forehead started to buck or twist against the ruthless encroachment of reforming bone fibers.

By now, he's found some strange equilibrium against the burning in his head and the cold stone of the chapel wall against his back where he's sitting, ungainly, on the floor despite the other hospitality that God's house has to offer. There's a blanket pulled around his shoulders, blood dried around his eye and forehead. The door from the main areas and sanctuary are closed, permitting him privacy despite that there are hours yet before any real patrons are expected to arrive. Only a few people know he's here. Phoenix, the Ferrymen. Abigail, who had to go back to work: he had insisted after the first few hours, watching exhaustion set in on her.

He's waiting for no one in particular, watching the stained glass window across the carpeted out of empty blue eyes.

"Cosa povera. A voice calls out to the man in Italian, heels can be heard clicking on the church floor as Eve Mas walks down to where Teo is sitting. She is dressed in a long red dress and black boots. Her hair is down and it swings as she walks slowly towards the man. Switching to their full native language. "«I had a dream of you getting hurt, I'm sorry I was so late.. I couldn't help but I knew Abby would take care of you.»" The seer looks down at Teo as she finally gets to stand right in front of him.

Though closed, the door isn't locked; Eve gets through with the casual strength of an arm, and finds herself subject to a stare that takes a moment too long to focus. Teo's eyes can't seem to decide whether they want to do a hyper-detailed macro shot or a panoramic strip of the whole stone wall with Eve in the middle, her dress a dash of crimson that looks almost unreal against the muted colors behind her. "Ciao, bella," he says. His voice is a rasp. Noticing that, he creeps a hand out of the hem of his blanket, reaches around until he locates the cup of water sitting on the floor beside her. Taking a swallow, he offers her a smile small enough to fit on his face without looking too forced. Seated at her feet, he makes a drab and broken supplicant to the red madonna. "«Abby is always taking care of me.»"

The woman in the crimson dress kneels beside Teo and lays her head on his shoulder in a sign of affection before kneeling straight up, looking at the man. "«You must really be more careful. I can't imagine you being gone.»" Eve smiles softly at Teo adding, "«Who would put up with me then?»" She chuckles softly and rubs Teo's back.

When the woman's brow touches his shoulder, Teo pillows an ear gently in her hair, wary of getting muck off his face and onto her. He's aware that he retains scabbed injury. Probably should have seen to that earlier, wipe that off along with the flakes of blood off his forearms, but he had been distracted. Just a little. Didn't want anyone touching his face or head, which feels sore, inflamed at the skin, wreathing his right eye in dilated veins. It's not a good look for him though, admittedly, he's been in worse before. "«You're too kind,»" he says, wryly, his shoulders hunkering wearily under her fingers. "«You could tell me to be less stupid. How much did you see?»" He blinks unsteadily in the light, shifts his gaze to the floor.

"«You already know you are supposed to stop being stupid. People are depending on you.. /I'm/ depending on you. So just.. try not to die ok?»" Eve counters and as she says this, Eve slides her hand down to Teo's and grips it, the uninjured one, not to tight but just a little firm. "«I only saw some sort of explosion near here and you hurt. What happened?»" The seer looks to Teo and gives his appearance another look. "«You look terrible hun.»"

By now, both of Teo's arms are healed up, entirely intact and capable of bearing their weight. He notices her careful avoidance of the limb that Vinnie had decided to bend a pretzel out of and it brings a crooked grin to his face, wider than the one that had bent his mouth before. "«Somebody was trying to fuck with a comrade of mine through his friends. I think—»" he cuts short briefly, brow knitting hard under a brief pinch of dizziness. "«I think he was looking for Abigail. I got in the way. Then I did stupid things,»" he summarizes, a grin off-kilter, the muscle of his arm shifting tangibly under her grip as he tests the strength of her fingers for no other reason than because he can. An automated reaction. Then, ruefully, "«I know.»"

Sonny has arrived.

Given the early hour and the urgency he seemed to sense in Teo's tone, Sonny has not bothered to alter his face. Instead, he took the back way out of his building with a hood up and a toque beneath that, in a new-old ski jacket acquired from a secondhand store a few days ago. He's even got a different backpack, to make him harder to spot. From there, he slipped into the first cab available to take him to the church.
Once at the door, the doc hesitates before pushing it open. Churches…make him very uneasy. Like he doesn't belong here. Like he's broken in to someone else's house. He slowly enters. "Teo?"

"«Well at least you are alive, if we see that man again. We're beat him up, okay?»" Eve smiles softly at Teo and lays her head on his shoulder again. "«I should have been there to prevent it.»" The seer blinks as she hears Sonny, she doesn't want to turn around and look because she is too comfortable in the position she is in but she turns her head slightly. "«Someone is here for you.»"

A clean, cold hand cups Eve's face, thumbing the subtle line of her cheekbone by way of comfort. At the voice from the door, however, Teo looks up and splays all five fingers in the air, waving it in front of his own visage. Red is caked into his eyebrow and there are finger-sized furrows in the smear down his cheek, but it's evident that the injuries that had once resided there are now gone. Which leaves little to account for the veins twitching in the left side of his forehead and his bloodshot right eye, though that's a mystery Teo seeks promptly to dispel: "Buongiorno, Doctor Bianco. 'M sorry to bother you, but if you could fix my head…"

"Jesus, Teo," Sonny breathes. His breath condenses in the cool air by the door. He moves quickly down towards the reclined young man, tracking snow and salt as he does. He pushes back the hood and drops the backpack down. Then he falls to his knees and tears off his gloves. "What the fuck happened?"

He looks up at Eve, then down to the injured man again. "I'm a doctor. I work with the Ferrymen." That's for Eve's benefit, in case Teo didn't mention he was coming.

Eve closes her eyes and squeezes Teo's hand as she nuzzles him before she moves away for Sonny to help Teo. "I remember you from the party at the Garden. Sonny. I'm with the Ferrymen too." Eve smiles softly at the doctor, she looks at Teo and worry is in her eyes but she knows he will turn out ok. He has a.. habit of doing things like that.

Should have mentioned it, but hadn't. Teo inhales with a faint though audible rattle, his features lapsing into a crooked grin that makes him look as harmless as a big kid who got caught in a stupid fight. Technically. "Slipped, fell, fat English stronzo stood on me for a few minutes. Fff." Twisting his head to look up at people sends what looks like another blistering fire line knifing through the inside of his eye and he flinches irritably back from the sight that isn't there. Eve's hand is snared for a moment between fingers that could have broken hers, if he wasn't a little careful, but he is. "The New Year's party?" His pupil blooms, judders from between half-sealed eyelids.

"Okay pal, it's time to stop the chit chat for a minute here," Sonny may be Italian, but he's New York Italian. Which means he's traded melody for bluntness. He looks up at Eve again, then nods. "Right. I remember. Can you prop him up? Very gently? I'm going to give him some painkillers."

He fishes around in his kit and pulls out a small flashlight, then he proceeds to check Teo's eyes for signs of a concussion. "Teo, describe your symptoms." He sheds his jacket, then snaps on a pair of gloves. He pulls out a bottle of water, cracks it, and pours it into a small container. Then a swab goes in and he starts to clean away the caked blood so he has a better idea of what he's dealing with.

The woman nods her head at Sonny and does as he instructs, very gently. "Shh you." She agrees with Teo in making him stop talking. Eve looks to Sonny as he examines Teo.

There's a reason Teo had left most of the blood on his face. That reason is: he's a wuss. Sort of. It hurt and it didn't matter, he thought. Despite the expert's grip and handling, the cold, cottony liquid press of swabs elicits an incoherent mumble of protest and the younger man almost pulls away, though the wall and Eve's hands stop him from moving far. He stares into the flashlight with a look of blank concentration as if he's looking for candy in the lens. His pupils contract against the beam, promising that Teo's gray matter remains intact.

Or, at least, as intact as he started out with. "My head hurts. Abby was healing me. My arm, my face. But…" he ducks his head fractionally, more of a twitch than elusion, dropping a strandy shadow across his eyes, avoiding the window out of aversion to the light. "I think it started…" Terminology? He has none. "Fucking up the plate I got screwed into my head when I was little. Abs said— that might happen."

"Here…" Sonny shifts and digs into his bag. He taps a pair of white pills into his hand, then offers them to Teo along with a bottle of water. "Swallow these. should bring the swelling down so I can actually examine you without so much pain." In the meantime, he very carefully brushes the blood away with touches that are as a light as possible. "Well, the good news is, it's probably not serious. As in, not life-threatening. If I can get it back into place, it should relieve the pressure. But one of these days…you're going to have to go in for surgery. If you've had it since you were a kid, there's more modern procedures you can undergo."

There's a sound at the door. People are starting to gather. "Fuck. I can't move Teo for awhile. Eve, can you tell them the service is postponed or something? A…water leak or frozen pipes or something. I can't move him at least until the painkillers kick in."

It's then that Eve hears the people and nods at Sonny. "I'll do that." She offers Teo a faint smile and gets up to walk to the doors. Time to act crazy! Except.. Eve doesn't have to act so much..

Eve has left.

A soft word of gratitude follows Eve out with a brief glance from Teo, before he turns his head back, gingerly, as if its joint was slightly rusted where it connects to his neck. The blanketed mound of his shoulders steepens as he huddles down against any number of paranoid fears, subconscious or actual, accepting the medication into the flat of one icy-fingered hand. He pops the pills, swallows them with a pull from the bottle. "He took my gun and my knife," he states, for no other reason than because it's true. A breath gusts out, damp from distilled water. He squints at Sonny's unsteady shape.

Sonny shifts himself to take Eve's position of propping Teo's head up. "Close your eyes for a few minutes. I gave you the good stuff. It shouldn't take long to kick in. But you might start seeing some pretty colours." In the meantime, he goes back to cleaning the wound, though several glances are made at the door. The noise has ceased, which means Eve has done her job of forestalling entrance. "We're going to have to get you out of here pretty soon. Tell me when you think you can get up."

Sonny's profile, serious face and curly halo, is reflected back at him, miniaturized and tinged from the topaz striations of the younger man's irises. That in mind, the corner of his mouth seizes upward at that phrase, pretty colors, though he doesn't say so out loud, dully aware that it would be dismissed as words addled by either agony or narcotics.

"I can get up now," Teo states, despite having no real certainty of that much. Experimentally, he pulls one boot-shod foot closer to him, and then the other. Pushes his elbow into the wall behind him, seeking strength somewhere in the uncompromising bulwark of stone as he begins to labor up to his feet. The woolly blanket drags from his shoulders like wrecked wings, showing his sweater. His jacket was pillowed behind him, at the base of his back, lying in a dishevelled heap that looks more like a dead labrador pup than a garment.

"Don't want surgery," he's saying from behind closed eyes. His breathing is irregular. Grammar, also. "Creepy old men and women standing over me with knives. And I'm fucking asleep."

"What about just one creepy young guy in a Ferrymen safehouse?" Sonny's hand can be felt against Teo's back as he sits up. It's there as insurance, in case he overestimated his ability to, well, become upright. "I'd rather you stay put for a minute. So the drugs don't hit you midway. I want to take you to one of the safehouses with a med bay. Which should we go to?"

"I think I know what's wrong. The plate's just shifted. If I can get it back in place, the pain should release. It's only forestalling the inevitable though. Especially if Abby keeps healing you. I think…well, I should be able to alter the structure of your skull to accomodate the plate."
There's a hand at the base of Teo's skull. His hands are warm from the gloves. He touches, searching for signs of swelling.

There's swelling, considerable, a spongy heat to the skin around Teo's forehead where the doctor's fingers prod and probe, greater to the left than to the right. He can even feel the metal plate itself, the subtle seams where it lifts off the curve of Teo's skull and the minute bumps, protrusions of screws. It is slightly skewed, caught up by the seismic upheaval of new bones— or seems to be, extrapolating based on the very real probability that the original implant was supposed to have been set to maximize symmetry with the natural convex of his head. It's testament to the power of Sonny's drugs, that the Sicilian volunteers little in the way of reaction to the hands on his face and head.

"Bones change and grow, don' they?" he wonders aloud, slightly muffled by the funnel of the doctor's sleeve. "Naturally. Gradually. That's what my surgeon told me when I was younger.

"So if I don't get healed too much, too often, slow enough for my bones to keep up…" Either because he's stoned or because that idea is definitively retarded and not going to happen, he fades to silence. Smiles unevenly, and stays put. "Can't remember where to go. I…" his cheeks puff out briefly around a sigh. "The one off Stuyvesant Town. Think it's closest."

Sonny frowns with concern as he feels around Teo's head. If he was strictly a conventional doctor, Teo would have to go in for surgery. But, since he can do tricks with the shape of bone… "Don't move for a minute. I'm going to call the Ferrymen. See if they can't get us a car over here. I don't want to call a cab. They'll ask about your condition. Fuck. I should've drove."

The doc pulls out a sleek cell phone and dials up whoever's on call. After a quick conversation, he snaps the phone closed. "Someone'll be here to take us to the safehouse in a few minutes. We need to get your coat on."

Despite that Teo had no apparent interest in disobeying, the clack of the phone shutting draws a suspicious look. The sound seemed bright. The daylight coming in through the stained glass also seems bright. Growing alarmingly so, actually. The suffusion of saints and clouds riven apart by Divine will jarrs him with discomfort that might be a little like that which had beset Sonny when he first stepped into here. He stares, his eyes growing progressively rounder and rounder.

His eyelids snap into a hasty blink. Pharmeceuticals are beginning to play slum lord with his sensory perception and cognitive judgment. Holding onto paranoia, physical coordination, and his religious sensibilities feels like juggling slabs of iced sashimi. "Shit," he states eloquently, palming his face with both hands; he sways on his feet and almost steps on the glass of water he had left on the floor. "Wha'd you give me?"

Sonny reaches out to plant a firm hand on either one of Teo's shoulders. He pushes him back gently, so that he can use the wall for support. "I gave you some heavy painkillers and anti-inflammatories. I need you doped up and I need the swelling to go down before I can start to fix the plate." He looks Teo in the eye and plants a hand on his chest to make sure his centre of gravity is shifted back. "Stay still. Don't fall."
Then the doc's going to his kit, to gather things up and into his backpack. The blanket is picked up too, then handed to Teo. He then moves briskly to the side door to check for the presence of the car. "I think our ride's here. Are you okay to walk?"

"Yup." Wait. "Yes," Teo revises, after a momentary furrow of his brow. It is no yuping matter. Staying still isn't too hard, despite the distinct sense that his skin is lying to him. The eye that turns toward Sonny now is less entangled in throbbing red arteries than it had been before, fringy eyelids hanging momentarily lower over his pupils, cutting out the light in some vague hope that that will normalize the feedback the world is giving him. He receives the blanket in his hands, one gloved and the other bare. The dense gray folds wound up hugged to his chest: perhaps strangely, both his sense and fear of cold are momentarily lost to him.

"I can't fucking believe it," he says, his spine a slump against the wall. "Some dude— no offense, dude— gives me drugs, and I just eat them. Without asking what they are or anything. 'S not like I can't handle some pain. I always watch the needle going in. I'm going to walk now." It bears warning, before he takes his first step forward, graduating with an odd loop to his stride that doesn't quite overturn his balance.

"If you can't trust a doctor to give you drugs, who can you…hey!" Sonny moves quickly, backpack still open. He grabs hold of Teo's arm. "Take it easy, else I'm going to have something else busted to fix up. Keep ahold of my arm, okay? You might think you know which way is up, but it's decieving."

Then he's slowly manoevering Teo to the door. It's held out for him. "See the blue sedan?" There's a familiar Ferrymen face behind the wheel. He zips up his backpack and closes the door firmly behind them, all while keeping at least one hand on Teo's arm.

Door. Blue sedan. Nouns with adjectives attached, and adjectives that indicate color. So much of it. Teo is surprised by it, despite that he is fairly certain that he sees in color most of the time. "Oh man. Oh man. Figlio di un cane. I think that fire hydrant has eyes. Purple ones. That is the stupidest thing I have ever said," he decides, after a moment, his arm stretching to its full length on the end of its tether for a protracted moment. Despite that there's no real audacious or rebelliuos intent anywhere in Teodoro's brain, it's inculcated deep enough in his nature to toe lines that leaning against Sonny's grip comes as readily to him as gravity.

Bizarrely, he inverts the moment he steps into the intensifying sunlight past the church's doorframe. Hydrant, sedan, and the architecture he had been steered out of are entirely forgotten. He stops short, stock-still, staring emptily down the street. If he was doing facial expressions right now, he might have coordinated one to look afraid.

Oh. Dear. That's one of the risks Sonny runs in giving people drugs without all the proper tests. But given he doesn't have access to a lab facility to get said tests done…well. "Teo…Teo. Look at me. Keep hold of me. We're going to get you to the safehouse, all right?"

The Ferryman behind the wheel gets out and moves quickly around to open the back door for them. The doc nods in thanks, then guides the loopy Italian into the car. As soon as they're in, the sedan's heading off towards the safehouse.

"I hate being unarmed." The remark comes fleeting, low, with something like lucidity buckling Teo's pupils into accurate focus as he glances over his shoulder at the sidewalk pedestrians. His head swerves in under the car roof a fraction of an inch from splitting his scalp open on the chrome and renewing his concussion. That clarity of thought, if it had been that, doesn't last long; as he piles into the back seat, he's a tumble of long limbs and overreach. One of his hands remains conspicuously naked of its glove, and blood is scabbing in its hair where Sonny's diligent ministrations didn't extend past the footprints Vinnie had left on his face.

"What?" he asks the driver in the mirror. He figures out his seat belt by himself, and tells Sonny, sidelong, "Right now, you're made of orange."

"The hallucinatory effects will lesson once you stay still. The moving around's shunting it through your system. Close your eyes. Stay still. We'll be there soon." The doc's voice is tight with concern. Sonny looks up at the driver and nods. The vehicle starts to move, quickly, to the destination. Not the nearest safehouse, but the most medically well-equipped.


Lower East Side — A Ferrymen Safehouse


Hana has arrived.

There's a place in Lower East Side, an office building once donated to a charity organization that could almost be the Ferrymen by another name, so closely do they work together. The acting chauffeur drives the doctor and his patient up to the back entrance of the edifice, where a tall, dark-haired woman dressed in black waits, leaning against the doorpost with arms loosely crossed. Hana watches the car park with a fairly impassive expression. She exchanges a nod with the driver, as he gets out of the car to offer any assistance that might be needed.

Throughout the car ride, Teo kept his eyes closed. Reduced himself in the corner of the seat to his smallest possible size— which isn't very, but there was probably something telling about even the effort: Teodoro Laudani very rarely cares to make himself small. Deserted by his senses, aware of the head injury he still retains, and stinking still of the temper and blood after only a few hours' margin from the practical likelihood of getting his arm exploded in its socket by an Evolved mercenary, he has less of the courage and confidence that morning normally gives him in quantity enough to last him out to the evening.

And perhaps more because of the lack than any virtue worth mentioning, he pops his seatbelt and shoves the door open on his side instead of taking anybody's lead. He spills out onto the sidewalk, thankfully not on his head; winds up hanging onto the top of the door with one hand, the other gripping the sleeve of his sweater as he stares fixedly at Hana. Then the building. Hana again. It is super weird that she is here. "Should've just given me whisky," he informs Sonny from under his armpit, before throwing the car door shut and aiming his trundle for the woman, rather than the entrance slightly to her right.

"Hi."

Sonny is understandably alarmed when Teo steps out of the car without waiting for the guide doc. He clambers out quickly, snatches up his backpack, slams his door and rounds to Teo to take hold of his arm. "Take it easy, man. You may think you know which way is up, but you don't."

The doc keeps a firm hand on Teo as he walks up towards the building. He nods to Hana. "I need to perform a little minor surgery. I've heard you've got some decent facilities here." It's a little redundant, but Sonny doesn't know who Hana is.

Hana watches Teo's (and Sonny's) haphazard approach with that same nonexpression, one brow lifting ever so slightly. "It seems to be a week for bad decisions," she informs Teo in a deceptively level tone. Sonny receives a brief nod, as Hana moves to open the door for them. "Third floor's ideal — elevator's on left — but there's a rougher setup on the first if he won't make it that far. Straight and on the right if that's what you want to use."

"Heaven is 'up,'" Teo answers with the profundity that such a statement deserves. "This is like the Internet. Not a double-entendre." He skips a thought, accidentally albeit conveniently and is suddenly caught up by self-consciousness when he is subject to The Eyebrow. Dragged by the arm, he tells Sonny, "You heard nothing. Besides, terrestrial metaphors may apply too.

"Like when she's mad, it's a seismic event. Temblor to fucking tsuanmi, and all us little people have to run around… and run around until we find a seismograph, or somewhere safe, but there's nowhere to hide—" He allows himself to be herded through the doorway, his eyes roving left, right, up the stairs, locating a chip of paint missing from the ceiling a moment before it shifts out of sight. "But," he says, importantly. "But, we're safe. Well, you're safe.

"I think I'm in trouble." He is walking, though. He might make it all the way to the third floor, borne forward by momentum and continuous jawing. Oddly enough, his accent is beginning to emerge after years of acclimation. "My gun got stole."

"Jesus," mutters Sonny under his breath. "I…yeah, making a note never to give him those pills again." He grips the other Italian's arm a bit tighter, to be sure he doesn't wander off and start making out with a fusebox or something. "It's a good sign though. I don't think he's in any pain." He addresses this to Hana, beause…well, Teo doesn't make a stunning conversationalist at the moment. Not a sensical one, anyway.
He leads Teo carefully through the building, up the step towards the elevator. Two hands are used to brace him if need be. He glances back over his shoulder towards Hana. "I could use another set of hands if you have the time."

Hana takes Teo's other side, guiding him through the hall to the elevator. "So I see," she remarks to Sonny. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere else." Spoken in that tone of voice, it sounds more like a threat than a reassuring promise. Teo chatters; Teo all too often chatters. Hana does him the courtesy of tuning most of it out, this time. She's good at that.

Big building. Teo's never been in this safehouse before, probably because it required no remodelling and housed no children who coincidentally could have used language lessons. He is going to avoid making out with fuseboxes, though that sounds like something a friend he would want to be friends with would dare him to do if he were messed up on Percocet. Hana is holding the arm with no glove, and Sonny is keeping a solid grip on the one with. He apparently takes no offense to this, making his elbows into right angles, so it is like they are holding onto handle-bars.

"English is very hard sometimes," he tells his sitters. "I'm not explaining myself very well. I could do it in Italian. Ionno. Jesus fucking Christ, that is the fugliest dog I've ever seen." He may be referring either to the trash can in the corner of the hallway or the rust pattern on the elevator doors; it's difficult to tell. In any case, he extrudes a finger from his right fist and jabs the 'Up' button on the panel because everybody else has their hands busy. "Heaven," he states again, exchanging inscrutable stares with his distorted reflection.

"I should have just given him Tylenol 2," says Sonny. He pats Teo's shoulder and steps into the elevator. "The fugly dog won't get you, my friend." A-hem. "Speak Italian then. It'll make about the same amount of sense you're making now." He's trying to use wry humour to cover up the guilt he feels for being the one to give Teo the pills in the first place.

The elevator ride can't be fast enough. He's eager to work at relieving the other Italian's skull-pain. "I'm going to see if I can't re-set the plate using my power rather than making an incision. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a shot."

Fortunately, it's only two floors to ride; doesn't take all that long for the elevator to reach its destination and Hana to lead the way out towards the designated room. She nods to Sonny's declaration of intent, regards Teo sidelong. Ultimately remains silent. This might be a forbidding thing, but Teo is loopy and Sonny doesn't know Hana.

Even when 'loopy,' Teo is aware of forbidding things. Walking in the street unarmed, the loss of his own lucidity, the magnitude of Hana's temper. He leans away from his mentor's side and bumps his shoulder into Sonny's, somehow without swaying his axis too far off-center that he can't keep walking. "Uuuh." He rotates his eyes in their sockets so that he can look at the doctor without the ex-Mossad noticing. "I'll just… fuckin'… use somebody else's words. Although it'd kind of help if you guys had read them before— I guess, in case I get it wrong. I think I'm getting things wrong right n—ow. Mrs. Dalloway.

"By Woolf. It's English. Either of you? Anybody?" He slings his long frame through the doorway, kneeing the door open ahead of him because he is helpful. The bitter tang of antiseptic elicits a grunt; he closes his left eye and opens the other wide, scrolling it up toward the ceiling strip lights in search of burnt insects.

Sonny guides Teo towards the medical area, towards the hospital bed. "Up we go. Lie back. Try not to move, all right?" Once he's up and on it, the doc pulls out the bed rails so that Teo can't flail himself off and hit the floor. He moves around to the foot to pull off the other man's shoes. "Could you get the lights, please?" this is murmured to Hana as he moves to wash his hands and then inspect the facilities.

Woolf. The lack of answer seems to be a definite 'negative' on Hana's part, but it might be expected that English literature was never a study of hers. The lights are flicked on once Teo is in place and upon Sonny's request, before the woman folds her arms and returns to leaning against a nearby wall. She'll assist if the doctor indicates he needs anything, and stay out of the way otherwise.

As instructed, Teo puts his butt on the mattress first, kicks off his boots in a haphazard hook and jerk of ankles and knees. His feet go up toes-up and he flops back against the bed, fitting his head on the pillow with a toss and jiggle that dents the stuffed cotton case with exactly the curve of his beleauguered skull, making himself comfortable despite that he can't actually feel anything at all.

Freed, his hands go up to his face, fingertips probing the skin there gently— if ill-advisedly, investigating the topography of his forehead now that it is no longer causing him blinding pain to do so. He is apparently content with negatives and being summarily ignored. "'Septimus was one of the first to volunteer,'" he tells them, absently. He lifts his right leg and curls his toes around the tube railing of the bed, as if he had bird parts for a bird perch. "'He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square.' Why the fuck's it everything I love is here?" There's a dead moth silhouetted by the fluorescent bar. </re>

"Teo, buddy? Stop talking, okay? Just close your eyes and relax. And don't…" Sonny reaches forward to gently grab hold of his hand. "…don't poke at your face. You're going to bruise yourself." He tugs a stool over so that he can sit at the head of Teo's bed. Gentle fingers probe the area around his neck, then up to his skull. "The swelling's gone down. That's good." He rolls the stool back to search through the drawers for disinfectants and swabs. He finds what he's looking for, wheels back and then starts applying it to the bits of dried blood still left. He brushes bits of hair out of the way.

"Teo, listen to me. I'm going to use my power on you. It's going to feel very strange. It might even hurt through the painkillers. But I need you to stay still, all right? Do you understand me?" He speaks slowly and evenly so that the man on the bed will have the best chance of understanding him.

There's no real difficulty with comprehension there, although whether or not Teo will commit to whatever answer he gives seems to hang in the balance, given he's being sporadic about— everything right now, between the pace of his breathing and the subject of conversation. He frowns up at Sonny, his folded had squashed in Sonny's grip like an orgami thing, and even after the extremity is released, his expression lingers, pensive, drawn into careful focus while the squeak of the doctor's wheeled chair essays in and out of his hearing along with the man's woolly silhouette in his field of view.

When Sonny rolls back, and stays there, all sober-faced and immaculately shaped syllables, Teo finally turns his head slightly to look. Pushed back from his face, his blood-streaked hair looks like a drove of duckling that got stepped on. "'M pretty good with pain," he says, after a moment. He makes a thumbs-up. "A-plus. Bu yaojin."

"Seems like I freed you a little too much from the pain," says Sonny with a wry, fond sort of grin. "I think a little bit of it would've kept you grounded." The doc glances towards Hana. "I'm sorry, I've been rude. What's your name? I'm Sonny Bianco. Could you…" he motions to a set of white towels just out of reach. "I need to stabilize his head so he can't move very much."

He very gently tugs on Teo's neck, moves his head from side-to-side so that it's in the ideal position. He fingers the position of the metal plate. There's concern and deep concentration as he works, identifying areas of buckled bone, of plate, of metal and areas of swelling.

"Still hurts a bit," Teo objects a little pointlessly. "That's not how pain works, signor." Despite this disagreement, the patient allows the doctor to put his head and neck wherever he so chooses. Pallid eyes carry his pupils in short journeys between surgeon's-hands and the look on Sonny's face, which would seem so easily to lend itself to condescension. All of it deserved, certainly, but until he's allowed to laugh at anything it isn't easy to bear. He shuts his teeth with a metallic click ringing through the cold-processed air and presses his lips together to make a Very Serious Face. It fades to a mild expression, after a moment, smelling the soap off Sonny's hands and listening to the strange silence of Hana's patience. Sonny's fingers find the edge of alloy easily through the taut curve of Teo's skin, distinguish it from changed bones and crooked screws.

Hana's patience is usually silent. So is her impatience, but there's less of that in evidence now that Teo is on the bed and Sonny is settling in to work. She steps forward at the doctor's request, bringing the towels over and assisting in their placement. The possible rudeness of a lack of introduction seems to have not occurred to her (but she knows everyone already). "You know me by 'Wireless'," the woman supplies, given Sonny's prompting.

Sonny starts to roll the towels into logs and place them all around Teo's head to immobilize the Italian as much as possible. Between him and Hana, Teo will find himself packed in like a DVD player in styrofoam. Of course, he could get up if he wanted to. The towels serve to discourage small movements. "Stay still, buddy. Hold on. I'm going to try and get you fixed up pretty quick here."
He blinks and turns to observe Hana more fully at the mention of her name. "Oh, I see. Then we do know each other. In a way." If the occasional message counts as 'knowing.' "Well, Wireless. What I'd like you to do is to stay nearby in case he decides to get up and find the hydrant with the purple eyes. I could really hurt him if he moves at the wrong time."

The crevasse between towel-logs exudes a loud sigh and asks, "It's going to take me awhile to live that one down, isn't it?"

Hana looks down at Teo. It's a long ways down, but her expression isn't exactly unkind — though it fails to live up to 'encouraging', either. "He won't move," the ex-Mossad agent states simply. Just that. The words are addressed to Sonny, but her gaze remains fixed on the Sicilian, transmuting them from reassurance to instruction.

Sonny takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders back. He closes his eyes in an almost meditative way. Then he slowly opens his eyes and sets his fingers on Teo's skull. It's all very Star Trek - like he's Spock about to do a mind meld. "Don't. Move. Whatever you do." Those words are spoken through partially gritted teeth.

Then the doc starts to work his magic. It's hard to tell what's happening by watching it - except that the skin ripples a little and there's the faint sound of metal on bone. For Teo, the feeling is very disconcerting, but not painful. He's trying to rearrange the bone of his skull in such a way that the metal plate fits neatly once again. It's a touchy process.

When you've been playing terrorist long enough, the notion that it could be worse bears true meaning. It's from that that Teo draws reassurance; instruction, he takes from Hana as willingly as he ever has. She says, and he does. It's subtler than the flip of a cyborg's switch but more than a simple straightening of his face. With a troubled blink or two, his mouth finds a straight line. Stillness suddenly sits down on his arms and scissored legs and socked feet, bar the steady reverberation of his eyelids, the rise and fall of his chest, and the eerie grind and bubbling of bone and metal under Sonny's fingertips. He thinks he can hear the echoes rebound off the walls of his skull.

The process lasts for several, long, deeply focused minutes. Tiny adjustments are made here and there to make sure that there are no problems. At about five minutes in, Sonny makes the most critical adjustment. And then, Teo should feel as if a sack of bricks has been removed from a section of the skull. The relief is immediate, even through the veil of painkillers. That adjustment removed pain the Italian didn't even register through years of being accustomed to it.

But Sonny doesn't stop there. He makes absolutely sure everything is in its place and does his best to reshape the young man's skull to accomodate the plate. Then, he pulls back. He looks weary, but pleased. "I think that did it. How do you feel?"

If it hurt, Teo is the last stoner on Earth to burst into tears over it. His breathing changed, skin tension, a twitch of his finger and saccadic shift of his eye as the shape of his head adjusted and readjusted in degrees he could feel through the shifting nerve interfaces. At the crucial shift, there's a blink of pale eyes, a sharp intake of breath, and he probably would've reached out— grasped hold of the Doctor's elbow and damn near asked him to stop if it weren't for the earlier encoded into the most stubborn part of his memory. No doubt, it casts the relationship between the Ferrymen's formerly faceless Wireless and Sonny's sometimes-freeloader in a strange light.

Teo doesn't tend to cultivate normal relationships.

Teo passes a hand over his face. Then, gingerly, splays his fingers over the crown of his head, as if to check that Sonny hadn't Sylarized his cranium while he was busy playing possum. "Good," he answers, presently, nothing dishonest about his tone but uncertain; the subjectivity of that term weirds him out, and he's had a pretty weird day. "Wow." A quaver-beat, and his eyes turn to Sonny, leaving the rest of his head still strangely stationary despite the grin that splits his cheeks. "Grazie."


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January 17th: Cangiare
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January 17th: Sounds Like A Good Start
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