Healing

Participants:

noriko_icon.gif sanderson_icon.gif

Also Featuring:

sarisa_icon.gif

Scene Title Healing
Synopsis Sanderson and Noriko are both struggling to do it in entirely different senses.
Date January 4, 2010

USS George Washington


The last few days haven't been particularly easy ones for Lieutenant Adelle Sanderson. After being extracted from the city of Antananarivo, the marine was unconscious for four days, and for a while the marine surgeons weren't sure that the leader of Bravo-Two was going to pull through. Broken bones, lacerations, six bullet wounds in her torso and a cocktail of blunt-force trauma and parasite infection has left her body ragged and weary.

Head bandaged, one eye kept shut by a gauze patch held by medical tape to her face, arm splinted and braced, wrapped in gauze and IVs stuck in her arm, she looks like someone on her death bed, if the bruising and swelling across one side of her face from constant fighting and the ambush by Rasoul wasn't enough. Awake, now, she stares up blankly towards the fluorescent lights flickering overhead, the soft and steady beep of monitoring equipment keeping tabs on her condition.

From beyond the plastic curtain that leads into the section of the medical bay Sanderson's gurney rests in, Candace Allard — no — Noriko Amagi can see the marine's battered and bruised form. She's the only visitor come ot see the Lieutenant, and the buzz of ship doctors that briskly tend to her among the countless other injured held on the carrier seems almost like the noise of a working bee hive.

She survived, but the mental trauma that Sanderson suffered from her long and painful journey through Madagascar has left pieces of her behind in that jungle, pieces of her life that she will never be able to get back.

Sanderson isn't the only one who left pieces of herself in that jungle, at the moment Noriko is in a wash of emotions and feelings and cluelessness that has the poor woman spinning in circles. She no longer has a rudder to her life, a purpose that she can cling to. Once, she was just a graduate student then her life got turned upside down and she was sent to Moab for an ability that she wasn't supposed to have, couldn't possibly have had, if it weren't for Pinehearst. In there, a part of her broke, but she still clung to a purpose in there. Get out, find out about this thing, and get revenge. She had finally settled into a routine, was even making something of a recovery, starting friendships, learning that sting of feeling like the betrayer.

THen, she was sent into the hellhole of being undercover and she realized that her blocking her empathy with humans didn't just end at non-evolved like she thought it would. Instead, she found that she could cut all ties with everything, and just go through life able to do what she wanted at any point in time. She found herself a new goal in the forge of Humanis First, she would sow anarchy like never before, she would try to topple instutions so that she and other evolved might seize powere for themselves, become what nature had selected them to be.

Still dealing with that bit, and trying to recover, she was snatched away by the US Government, given an ultimatum of fight for the country that once imprisoned you unjustly, or die at the hands of the same country. Having little choice in the manner she found herself in Rasoul's own backyard. He started here on the path that led to Etana and the confusion that she brought with her vision of what the future may hold. Candy just looks at Sanderson for now, no longer able to quell the emotions that surge when she is around those who were in those cells with her. No, as much as she may later hold them in contempt, or disagree with them, Noriko can no more hurt them than she can move whole oceans of water by herself. A hand slowly reaches out to touch Sanderson, a faint and hesitant touch, one frought with uncertainty as she says softly, confessing to Sanderson as the doctor's move around her.

"I'm sorry. I… I don't know where to start, Sanderson, or what to do any more. I had a goal in life, I thought I had finally found my purpose. Then one thing after another came to shake things up. I died, in there, Sanderson, or a part of me did. I'm not sure it was the bad part of me either. I… killed those men, was covered in there blood, and again, I felt no remorse. I didn't feel anything until I was on the ground, realizing that the end was soon, and I didn't have a syringe of Claire's blood to bring me back from that blackness. There's no heaven or hell, just bleak blackness. If there's nothing there, no heaven or hell, what stops me from going on a rampage, Sanderson? I don't like this part of me, I can always feel it underneath my skin. Its right there, waiting to be set loose again and the next time I use it, will I die? Will I make the future that woman showed me a reality? Claire… dead and gone by my hand. Millions killed after I flood the eastern seabord…"

She finally trails off as she moves to take a seat, honestly still unaware that the Marine has been concious the entire time as she sits her head against the bars of the hospital bed. Madagascar has finally broken the tought outer shell of uncaring that Candy had erected around herself. Its broken, and the fragile guilt-ridden grad student who was never supposed to be in these kind of situations is revealed.

"You— " Sanderson tries to croak out some words, her throat's dry and she has to noisily swallow to lubricate the communication process. "You're a terrible person," she says with a smile that hurts to make, her one uncovered eye angling to stare at the woman she remembers as Candy, more so than her birth name. "I'm not a shrink," the marine states, looking rather unable to move, and either she can't recoil from the touch or just simply doesn't even feel it.

Looking back up to the fluorescent light, Sanderson closes her eye. "There's a guy here," Sanderson says after a dry swallow, "name's Rene," her blue eye opens again, focusing on the young woman the same age as her. "I'm thinking about going to him, getting… my memory cleaned up. Parts I don't want to remember anymore, things just— erased." One dark brow lowers, as Sanderson considers the woman at her bedside.

"Either you— " Sanderson swallows loudly again, "Either you deal with it, and more on, or if you can't suck it up and compensate, find him. He'll wipe it all away, whatever you want, gone. Kershner— the blonde watching us talk," Sanderson looks — it seems like she's restricted to eye movement — away from Noriko. There' on the opposite side of the medical bay, leaning one shoulder against the door frame, is a tall, blonde woman in dark suit, standing with her arms crossed. She's watching them talk, but there's no way she could hear the conversation from that distance.

"I can't tell you how to live your life," Sanderson admits reluctantly, "I don't know what you expect from me."

Noriko looks at Sanderson and smiles lightly before she replies, "A long time ago, Sanderson, you gave me advice. Well, wasn't that long ago, but it seems like it was another lifetime ago. We… we've been through more shit together, you, Claire, and I; then it seems is humanly possible." She falls silent for a couple of moments, the Asian looking into the one good eye of Sanderson, "I don't want to tell you what to do either, but… I need someone I can talk with, Sanderson. Someone whose been through what I've been through. Claire's memory… its gone to hell after her head being blown to kingdom come. You're the only one left who… really remembers. I wish you wouldn't get stuff erased, but I… I know what living with those kinds of things can do to a person." She offers a half smile, shrugging her shoulders a little while she stands there, "I know I acted like a blood thirsty animal out there. Like I wasn't human. I treated you like shit, and I should have given in to Rasoul, so that he didn't have Six do that to you." She closes her eyes tightly, knowing that that was probably one thing Sanderson didn't want to remember. "I just want to tell you that I'm sorry, Sanderson. For not feeling, not caring… I dunno what I want you to do right now, other than heal."

The hand finally does come back, and she squeezes the Marine's hand. "Heal and get healthy and share a beer or two with me." The hydrokinetic's eyes give Sanderson a pleading look, she wants help and she's going to where ever that she might find to get it.

Sanderson gives a dry laugh at something Noriko says, eyes shut and head shaking ever so subtly. She swallows dryly and tries to talk again, breathing rasping and labored. "Words don't matter, Allard," she goes with the name she knows, "actions do. You killed… all those people, and it didn't phase you, and you treated us like shit." Somehow Sanderson isn't angry about that, it may be the Morphine talking. "Those're actions, and they speak a hell of a lot louder than any word ever will."

Brows tensed and having difficulty talking, Sanderson looks up with her one uncovered eye to Noriko, watching her silently as she puts her thoughts together. "You want to apologize?" Sanderson offers in a gruff tone of voice, "then do something." There's the marine attitude bubbling up to the surface. "Don't say you're sorry, your words— " her voice cracks sharply, "words don't do as much as deeds. It doesn't mean you have to try and be a saint right now, but just… change."

Her lips downturn, painfully, the split on her swolen lower lip aching. "It won't happen overnight."

Noriko looks at Sanderson and nods her head a little as she stands up. Dusing her clothes off a little while she looks into the Marine's one good eye before finally saying, "I am trying to do it. I came here to apologize to you. Those aren't words, they're actions." There is no malice in Noriko's voice while she stands there, just the soft voice of a defeated girl. "Its not Allard any more, it's Noriko Amagi. I'm not that woman any more, I don't want to be that woman any more." She squeezes Sanderson's hand one good time while she stands there, her eyes closed as she seems to deflate just a little. She may say that these things don't phase her, that she is fine with being a monster. However, its evident with every passing day that the fact that she is on the outside looking in of most everyone else on the boat hurts her more than she's willing to admit. More so, when she is trying to find someone to help her.

"Heal up, Sanderson," Noriko says softly as parting words, tossing the Lieutenant a salute as she turns to talk from the hospital room.


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