Something For The Pain

Log Archive » Logs for February 2009 » Something For The Pain

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Scene Title	Something For The Pain
Synopsis	Two victims of the bomb finally meet, and they both give each other a little something to take away the pain.
Date	February 5, 2009

Morningside Heights, Ledgewood Apartments

"—irresponsible enough to drag him all the way out to Harlem's fucking trailer park and drop him in a riot, you can feel free to make your way up to Morningside. The vet bill is fifty dollars." Clack.

As answering machine recordings go, that was not the worst Bolivar had ever sent. He was left thinking himself rather restrained. It was the kind of message, he felt, that a discerning listener would prefer to interpret as and term a message, lest the ominous undertones manifest in something like a shepherd-skin rug. Not that Jason Rodriguez-Smith would ever harm a dog that wasn't rabid or otherwise a lost cause, of course, but he'd been in a bad mood when he called the Demsky household. Two of his dogs missing, Jupiter looking progressively lonelier and lonelier, and his bones hurt.

He continues to fail entirely to feel guilty about his tone or word choice the next day despite that, by then, Nina Lou is home, whole, and befriending the other former patrol dog underneath the dining table. Logan Rose, lays between them, dwarfed in her curls and studying the incomprehensible chitter and flash of the television screen. The sun is shining through the locked windows, coloring in eddies of motes that might be either dog hair, marijuana particle matter, or both.

None of the dogs so much as blink when the newspaper roll comes down on the table with a thwap. Nor at the instanenous autofire of curses. The bottlefly easily evades Bolivar's assault, leaving him to wheel on bare feet, scarred face bent around a scowl. Bottleflies often do.

The knock that comes first is actually muffled by the slap of a rolled up newspaper striking the table. Part of it is heard, but in that awkward and peripheral manner that elicits a pause and another listen, a 'did I just hear that' moment. Again, quiet and soft on the door, a series of five knocks in quick succession, followed by a shuffling sound and a quiet rattle of what can only be a thin chain. Either Jacob Marley has come to take Bolivar on a very belated Christmas journey, or Judah Demsky has finally come to pick up his damn dog.

But what waits outside of the peephole isn't a detective in his 40's at all. Six degrees of awkward describe the girl, eyes averted to her feet, idly plucking at a spot of lint stuck to the smooth suede of her brown and fur-lined jacket. The mop of black hair on her head looks stringy and messy, and it's only when she looks up to the door with an expectant sigh that it's clear she's blind in one eye. The chain, rattling still, is part of a leash she fiddles with in both hands, the rest soft black leather.

The eye that Bolivar squints through the peephole has something of a manic glaze over it. The color of his irises happen to register on the color spectrum at almost the exact midpoint between his mother's Hispanic-dark heritage and his father's watery regard; they flash pale when he studies the girl's mismatched stare, show black when he averts his gaze downward at the chain in the girl's hand. The bottlefly keens by his head. He yanks back from the door with a hiss: "Jodale tambien, el companero."

He hadn't noticed Jupiter coming up, but the old dog is here, behind him by the time the officer slides the deadbolt and night chain out. Large ears swing upright when Colette's scent whiffs in through the gap, a querulous grumble starting up in the canine's throat. Simultaneously, of course, the apartment huffs the scents of mingled soap, pork chop, and weed into the face of the stick-figured girl. Bolivar presents his scarred side to her, and subjects her to a long look.

The scars are enough to make the girl reflexively back away from the door, hurriedly producing a scrap of wrinkled paper from her pocket that her eyes immediately dart to. "I — " Hr voice is a quivering pitch of uncertainty and fear, evidenced in the wide-eyed stare she gives to the man revealed behind the door. Her voice catches in her throat, head and neck making a lurching motion as if she just wants to vomit out some excuse and run as far as she can.

But when the faint keening and click of claws comes from behind him, and Colette's eyes momentarially focus on something less frightening in the form of Jupiter's head trying to wedge past Bolivar's knees, she manages to find her voice. "I — I came — the — " She motions with the hand holding the chain, letting it sway back and forth freely as she gestures down towards the persistant canine. "Jupiter." Her mismatched eyes flick back up to Bolivar, "I — I'm Judah's — " Shit, what eexactly does she say here? Her hesitation ends up with nothing, "I — I'm sorry for bothering you."

"Most people say that when you're about to go away," Bolivar points out. He isn't looking at the girl while he says this, though; he seems to be addressing the furred top of Jupiter's head, frowning downward, as if to chide a co-conspirator for revealing their hand to the enemy too early in the game. He sidles slightly, attempting to recuse the creature into a less visible extremity of the apartment.

Naturally, Jupiter fails to take the hint. Scenting Colette's fear and spying her retreat, his grumble loudens, a whimper fluting through his great long muzzle as if to offer the little waif the comfort of his voice in lieu of a sturdy shoulder against her knee. The click of blunt nails betrays the other two dogs approaching to investigate what the whole fuss is about. Bolivar's frown deepens.

He palms the T-shirt flat on his stomach and sighs so loud his ribs jut like piano keys for a moment. Cantankerous though he may be, he's been a cop long enough to have a considerable share at the water cooler. Judah Demsky's decision to double the size of his family had come as a cold water shock to many. "If you're his daughter, you shouldn't feel stupid about it. If you're not, you're being stupid about it."

There's a bit of an awkward exhalation of a held in breath at the word daughter, and Colette's expression turns a touch dour as she stares down at her feet. "I — yeah, um, sorry." Shifting her eyes from one side to the other, she focuses towards the sway of the leash's chain in her hand, and then back up to the man at the door. "I — um, I'm here for Jupiter. I um, I'm sorry about… uh," She edges hesitantly towards the door, her head ducking down and shoulders raising while she creeps across the hall. "I — how did you find him?" Presuming the answer may imply her presence there, the girl asks anyway in a quiet and meek voice. For all her worth, she is looking more like an intimidated field-mouse than a girl at the moment.

Though even as she speaks, Colette's eyes are focusing past Bolivar, towards the dogs behind him that have come to assess the situation. Their presence affords her a faint smile, and her mismatched gaze flicking back up to the scarred man.

Colette's feet do not interest Bolivar. He stares fastidiously at the view he is presented of her face. Inconveniently, he stands two inches shorter than the lanky teenager. It's only by the shrinking physicality and timidity of her manner and posture that he manages to get a look down at her, and even then, he's more a glowering dwarf than anything imperious filling the frame of his threshold.

"I was at the riot at the Thomas Jefferson trailer park the other day." Trailer farm, the politically correct term is. Blithely ignorant of this, Logan Rose begins to wave her feather tail. "He came at me like a bat out of Hell. Which made sense, because there were psychos waving machine guns and Evolved going psycho, falling choppers, and fire everywhere. Seemed like Hell to me. I waited for half a fucking hour after, thinking Judah was going to report in. Guess what happened?"

"Y-yeah…" Scratching at her nose with one hand, Colette glances up and down both sides of the hall before guiltily admitting, "Judah wasn't… there. Jupiter's mine, I just — " Her yes lid partway and she keeps staring down at the floor, head bowed penetantly like some misbehaving child at the principal's office. "M'sorry I — I lost him. The — there's was like, I dunno, something caught fire and people were screaming, and…" Her eyes divert over to her other foot, fingers one one hand nervously rolling links of chain around in her palm. "I was scared shitless." The hand that was scratching at her nose moves up to rub at her face, soon massaging the bridge of her nose in a manner that seems ill-suited for someone as young as she is.

"I — got away and, I just — I forgot about him." It sounds terrible when she says it, worse than it did in her head. "Can — I mean, I can get him out of your hair." When she looks back up, it's clear the amount of stress about all of this has weighed down on her on top of everything else she's dealing with. Her shoulders slouch, and she offers up the leash. "I'll take him, um, off your hands." No mention of the fifty dollars owed.

There isn't enough bulk on Bolivar to stop three dogs. Probably not even one little girl, should she prove spirited enough. Jupiter manages to hiccup his way past the man's calf, emerging up to husky shoulders. His nose finds the point of Colette's knee, whuffing out a sigh of warm air faintly fragranced like pork. In stark contrast, the little half-breed above him is seems to be undergoing some process of cryogenic petrification while she speaks.

The fifty dollar debt doesn't occur to him. The unequivocal disgust that twists his lip locates its origin in a different reason completely. "Maybe you should just forget about him some more, Miss Demsky," he suggests. Every syllable seems to have been shaped on a whetstone.

"I — " It takes a second for what Bolivar said to kick in. Her eyes flick up, brows lowered, "Hey go fuck yourself two-face!" The girl's face scrunches up into a clearly distasteful expression, as if being denied her companion. "There were fucking people shooting at me, and that fucking moron Felix was dragging me out like the fucking flash and telling me to go home, and Trent — " Fuck, she forgot all about Trent. That name gets swallowed as her bravado begins to wane, and she realizes she just called a somewhat intimidating and highly scarred man a very impolite name. "I — I'm sorry I — " Fuck. "Just — just give me back my dog."

It is pretty impolite. And Bolivar being the paragon of etiquette and everything is offended. He glares daggers. Lazers. Something reasonably penetrating, because the uppity little girl is asking for it: her show of armor invites nettling, and her insult embarrasses him for the aggravation it brings. "Gold star for you, poppet. You're a bright one, aren't you?

Big eyes, bad words and crappy commands couldn't keep your dog the first time. What the fuck makes you think they're going to get him back?" A scarred hand tightens on the doorframe; he offers a brusque word of command, 'Back,' pushes Jupiter back with a heel. The animal's K-9 training serves him well; though chagrined, he rejoins the other two animals back in the ranks. "Stop apologizing to me.

"You're supposed to fucking take care of him. You didn't, and now all you have to offer are shitty excuses and piss-poor manners. No wonder they didn't put your name on the fucking tag."

Colette's hands clench tightly, her arms shaking as she looks up to Bolivar, "He — you — " The girl's jaw clenches,
nostrils flaring as all of this tension makes her relatively red in the face. The problem is, everything else is turning red too. From beneath where she's standing, and bleeding out to the wall behind her, everything is becoming crimson hued, like someone spilled dark red paint and t's just now seeping through the wood like blood through cloth. The color is pervasive, changing even the hue of the light from the fixtures in the ceiling. It spreads out in uneven blotches from the girl, saturating the hallway and everything behind her, everything out of her line of sight.

"Just — just give me back by fucking dog you jerk!" She takes a few steps towards the door, then stops, a herky-jerky uneven motion of wanting to just grab the dog, and also noticing this is a full grown — even if short — adult and she is maybe ninty-pounds soaking wet.

Once upon a time, Bolivar's sight was so good that he actually had his eyeballs insured, in much the way that surgeons have their hands. Though those days are long gone with the glory years of being a headlining sniper, he's still pretty good at seeing stuff. The fact that his whole hallway is going crimson as blood doesn't escape his attention; he takes a step backward, his temper mangling fear. It'll give Colette her moment, maybe. It would give Jupiter his moment, too. Maybe if there was less distance.

Nina Lou is closer. The female shehpherd bolts upright, virtually explodes into insensate fury. Black lips pulled back from teeth like a full set of white knives and she barks, deafening in the small space of the hallway, drowning out the piercing notes of Colette's voice with thunderous, seismic cries of warning. She hurls her long torso into the gap between her master and the doorframe and stops dead, hackling, eyes ringed white.

All of a sudden everything that could possibly go wrong does. If Conrad hadn't died, maybe he'd have been able to help Colette control her power when she's afraid, but he did, and she can't. When a dog comes charging towards the door, with all of her emotions unwound as hard as they are, pressured by a man who is terrorizing just the right insecurities the girl has, she loses it. Her hands come up to shield her face as she moves back and away from the apartment door, and the whirling motes of yellow light swirling around her fingertips for a moment look like harmless fireflies, until they form into a pair of glowing disks of illumination that quickly bend concave.

Unfortunately, the lighting in the hall is hardly sufficient to produce anything other than the popping flash of a camera from both hands as the girl collides with the wall. That color of bright red fades and drains, sinking to something a midnight blue color, shrouding the hall in dark and somber colors that drain away the dark of red. Colette curls up against the wall, one leg raised as she tries to edge away from the door, and then just turns and runs.

Because running is the right thing to do from a dog.

Obviously.

Obviously?! Obviously?! "Don't—" Bolivar casts out a hand into empty blue air, his shouted cry lost somewhere amid the belling roar of Nina Lou's sprint.

The dog bolts after the way the girl went, four strong legs beating the tiled floor and pounding toward the stairwell her quarry is circling toward, her teeth out, ears back, tail flat, heedless of Jupiter's alarmed cries muffled by the bread-box walls of the apartment. She doesn't ignore her master, however. No, she's too well-trained for that. In the whirlwind and blur of movement and shove through trapped air, she catches it. The command. Stop.

She can't, though. She's a big dog and she's running quick. Her jaws shut in empty air like a steel trap ringing closed, and she collides, instead, bodily into the girl's matchstick legs, sending up a dervish of fur and jacket panels. Railing lurches past; the landing comes up like the head of a train. Somewhere above, Bolivar is shouting; one door bangs shut and five burst open.

Forward momentum carries Colette down the stairs, tumbling head over heels over dog. Her shoulder collides with the stairs, then smashes down onto the floor of the landing as she skids a few feet before bumping into the wall. The only sounds from the landing are muffled whimpers of pain and flickering sparks of light. It's one thing for Conrad to have tried to train her to control her power while scared, but while hurt and scared is something else entirely.

The downstairs looks like the Fourth of July beyond the stairwell, flickering pops of random color, the walls shifting hues from blue to green to yellow, all sickly shades. The flickering bubbles of color are only interposed by haunting and ghostlike figments of people that blur in and out of any type of identifiable form. They're not quite people, more colors and shapes that somewhat look like them.

All the while, the girl's whimpering, curling into the fetal position at the hot and sharp pain in her now dislocated shoulder.

"Oh for fuck's sake." The tiny Mexican man appears at the top of the stairs, stares down at the organic, kidney bean curl of the girl's prone form against the grid of tiny tiles and grimey mortar. This is the dumbest thing. The dumbest thing. Except, maybe, the fact he had repressed the urge to actually pick up the rifle by the door before he shut it behind him.

You never know with Evolved.

But — but he has eyes enough to see: Colette is very small, and even a very small bullet hole would have eaten a considerable portion out of her flesh, and she is also very small in every other implication of the term also, young and stupid, and just trying to get her dog back. Nina Lou is struggling to her feet, whimpering some form of apology, shaken but apparently unharmed.

"You idiot," he snarls, shying back from the weird figures of abnatural light; one arm held out to protect himself from them, he scales down the stairs, his feet taking up Colette's field of vision. "Don't you know anything about dogs?" Because obviously that's the point. His voice bottoms out into a paranoid hiss, eyes darting up and down the stairs. "Turn off these fucking lights."

"I can't!" Comes the panicked response as Colette tries to get up from the floor, putting both weight and pressure on her dislocated arm, releasing a shrieking sound as she falls back down to the ground, doing what any girl her age would do upon dislocating her shoulder for the first time. Cry.

The girl's obviously dmaged emotional state, coupled with the searing hot pain of her shoulder only compounds what is going on, causing the floor beneath her and everything within ten feet to suddenly go pitch black as all light is bent around her. She's only done this once before, only with Conrad terrifying her with his voice. Bolivar can feel a sudden drop in temperature, not sharp, but noticable as everything goes absolutely dead black.

Out in the hall, Colette and Bolivar simply disappear from sight. Voices still heard, and strange, ghostly motes of color light still blossoming like so many stars in front of a dazed person's eyes, but neither the short resident of this building nor his wounded guest are visible to the naked eye.

The sounds of her crying though, it's drawing way too much attention.

Two seconds after the lights go out, Bolivar regains enough of his wits to snap, "What do you mean you can't?" That is, quite possibly, the worst lie he ever heard. The lights are off! They're so off that there is gooseflesh prickling his neck and arms where they protrude from the holes of his T-shirt. "Je-sus Christ."

Movement jumbles around to the left of the girl, a slippered foot bumping into her arm before he recoils away. Nina Lou's foot decends on her leg and doesn't move, anchoring herself to one tactile locus of reference while Bolivar fumbles around somewhere in the radius of her hearing.

His hands are moving, scrabbling around. He finds his phone after a moment. Flips it open, trying to muster a little light in all this blackness. "Stop. This is what's fucking wrong with you people. I'm going to call your father. I should call the fucking cops. I am a fu— hello?

Are you listening to me?" his eyes search darkness. Find nothing. He squats, cautious, stiff from almost forgotten pain; slides a foot out to poke. "What the Hell is your name?"

There's a flicker at Bolivar's words, like a fluorescent light flickering on that brings light and warmth back to him. The girl has moved, curled up in a corner near the stairs, eyes full of tears and one hand clutching her arm. "Don't call him," she says in a hoarse whisper, "J-just… just give me back my dog. Please, he— he's all I've got. I — I can't let him know I — please." She's trying to talk through clenched teeth, a white grimace straining her words. She's trembling, both from the pain, the shock and the fear as adrenaline surges through her. The ground and wall behind her and a foot spread around her back have all bled to a sickly yellow-green color, but the motes of spotty light have stopped, not replaced with an uneven dimming of the light in the foyer.

People gathered at the top of the stairs look down, hushed and murmuring amongst themselves. Some of them are on their phones, others are just watching to see what happens. Had they seen the pair come back from the bending of light? Hard to say, but they're there, and they're watching.

"Augh," Bolivar says, intelligently. "I'll be right back." The phone claps shut— for now, at least, is jammed back into his pocket wiht a brusque shove of his thumb. He plucks the badge off his belt, reaches over in what starts out as a reach for the girl's shoulder but aborts, after a moment's cringing hesitation, to ruffle Nina Lou's coffee-colored head.

Clasping a scarred hand around her muzzle, he points her nose down at Colette to focus her attention. "Stay."

He stands up, steps hesitantly out of the queasy green bubble, waving his ID to and fro. His mouth moves around words that have become rote after decades with the force. I'm an officer of the New York Police Department. Nothing to see here, folks. Please return to your homes. The situation is under control. You are in no danger. This is not a crime scene, please give her her privacy. He's lived here long enough that they know to believe him.

By the time Bolivar's figure comes swimming back in view through the liquid distortion of Colette's tears, the miniature crowd has been dispersed. He has little doubt that there are plenty of ears pressed to doorways and housewives' gossip between cellphones, now, but it's better. He squats. Frowns. Tries to pretend that that changes nothing. Give me back my dog. He's all I've got.

It changes everything. "If you can get up, I'll bring you to your dog." He jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

The first time she tries to get up, all she can to is whine out this painful keening sound and slip back down to the floor as her legs give out. The girl's lower jaw trembles, the pain in her shoulder is unbearable, but the thought of having to explain to Judah what happened to Jupiter after he'd entrusted her with him, it's too much.

Pick yourself up, and dust yourself off.

Grace's voice in her thoughts, rough like sandpaper, but she's Colette's strength. The girl grips at her shoulder, teeth clenched together as she struggles to get up again, trying not to flex or move that arm as she lets out this sharp, whining cry, her eyes scrunching shut as she raggedly pulls herself to her feet using the wall to prop herself up.

Panting, tears streaking down her cheeks and face bright red, she gives a few exasperated and panting breaths that harshly spit out the words, "My. Dog." The girl swallows, taking a step as she tries to lift her arm, tries to bend her elbow. She's never dislocated anything before, and when there is a horrible, wet popping sound at her shoulder, she just lets out this bubbling noise of pain and falls back against the wall, the partially dislocated shoulder sucking back into place, sending shooting pain down her arm and across her body.

That wasn't smart. Bolivar knows enough about First Aid to recognize a dislocated limb when it's dangling useless and lancing every other part with agony. He'd put a hand out, started to give warning, but his fingers curled in on his hand three inches from touching her shoulder, incapable of broaching that final margin to contact no matter that he'd already ceded her her dog.

He was trying to warn her. The only thing that hurts more than a joint popping out is putting it back in.

"Chica loca," he mumbles, rifling his pockets for tissue. He finds some: sickly man and dog-owner that he is, it's never a bad idea to have some of that ready, and big pockets besides. "Here. H—here. Shhhh. Come on, he's in my apartment. And I need to look at your arm because you're all fucked up right now, and Jupiter's going to be the least of your problems if your dad finds out."

Trying not to bawl her eyes out, and failing miserably, Colette's shaky hand — her good one — accepts the tissue and begins wiping at her eyes. She wants to strangle the little bastard and his dog, but right now she's hurt, terrified, and apparently he's a cop. Today has gone from bad to ridiculous in quick measure.

Only able to communicate with a nod of her head and a croaking whimper, Colette tries to keep her arm immobile, walking with it straight down at her side, even if that only makes the numb sensation of her fingertips worse. The girl's motions are shaky and ragged, looking ot the stairs as if the motion of having to ascend each one is going to be like a knife in her shoulder.

She should go to a hospital, but she's a minor and they'll call Judah. She has to figure something out, something to try and make this easier, better. She'll have to lie, that's certain. Lurching towards the stairs, Colette keeps her distance from Bolivar, ascending each step shakily and painfully, the jostling motion of walking causing even the slightest swing in her arm to send shooting pain up her body.

All this, for a dog.

But it's what he asked, and she has to get Jupiter back. By the time she's managed to get up the seven steps to the hall, her breathing is a shallow and painful whimper, the ache in her arm the worst pain she's ever felt. The girl chokes for a moment, sick to her stomach from the hurt, and leaving a yellow-green haze of discoloration in the air behind her that saturates everything in that pea-soup gloom.

Down the hall and to the apartment door, she struggles to keep her ability in check, the coloration small patches around where her feet touch the ground, bleeding out further when her arm throbs with that shooting pain.

Stupid, careless little girls don't deserve dogs, Bolivar believes, but this isn't information that he feels particularly compelled to share with this one at the present moment, for whatever reason. He leads the way at a sideways shuffle, his slippers slapping and scraping the way along, Nina Lou tailing them both on a scuffling rhythm of wide paws. A push of one shoulder opens the door, and he holds it out for her even as he holds the dogs back.

Jupiter rallies to her immediately, all tongue kisses and fretful whispers, drowning out the quiet click of the lock tumblers rolling home, sealing the world out, though it isn't nearly as good at containing little girls, should little girls regain enough use of their eyes and coordination to remember how to operate a doorknob. "I'll get some ice for the swelling in your shoulder and painkillers.

Sit somewhere." He gestures vaguely. Upon the merry orange carpet, there's a mismatched array of chairs — a woven straw rocking chair, overstuffed armchair, a long flat bench, and squishy sofa around, a higgledy-piggledy conglomeration of secondhand furniture and more comfortable pieces that he actually felt worth paying to have moved from the home he had once shared with his wife.

With some use of imagination, it might occur to a visitor that Bolivar rarely receives human visitors. The assortment of seating is principally available for the dogs' use.

Straining out some sort of confirmation through her nose, Colette's only ghost of a smile is when she sees Jupiter come over, nosing around at the fingers of her extended arm, lapping against them as he follows her over to the bench. She slowly, carefully sits down, using her good hand to bend her far less good one, laying her hand in her lap, using the muscles in it as little as possible. But it still hurts, it's incredible how much it hurts. She whimprs once seated, a restrained and strangled noise that indicates she's trying not to just break down here in a stranger's apartment that she is now locked in.

One hand reaches out, lightly scratching on the top of Jupiter's head as she leans back on the bench, thumping the back of her head against the wall with a ragged sigh. When her eyes open, they focus down at Jupiter, lips faintly creeping up before her hand turns, scratching now under his chin. "You okay?" She asks the dog in a hushed voice, her tone wavering and weak, sweat beaded on her brow.

After a moment, the girl's eyes scan her surroundings haphazardly, focusing on the presence of the other dogs and then in the direction Bolivar disappeared into. Her eyes drift shut, and at least while she's seated it doesn't feel quite that bad. "Co —" The words hitch in her throat, swallowed by a rough noise as a throb of pain shoots through her shoulder. "Colette." She finally says in a weak, wavering tone of voice. "My… my name. It's Colette."

The diminutive Mexican is blinking around his apartment so quick, at least according to the young woman's pain-addled sense of time and distance, that he seems to be teleporting about. Things move whenever he leaves them. The kettle goes on, a stove knob turns, a glass emerges from the cabinet and water gets into it.

A hand towel emerges, is filled with a cold pack the same vibrant blue as Gatorade. One of the chairs moves. The dogs — Bolivar's, that is — are scooted and scattered in little, psuedo-disgruntled fractions and flusters, seemingly more because they like to get in the way as a sign of affection than by real or serious accident.

"Colette," he repeats at her, acknowledgment.

He either forgets the part that, by default, comes after that, or expects her to remember from the answering machine. Instead, the little man suddenly materializes in front of her, doesn't bother squatting down to plant the glass of water on the bench beside her. The lump of towel and its contents emanates cold when he holds it out to her. "Put this under your shirt collar. Right on your shoulder. Codeine or Vicodin?"

Having a hard time keeping up with all of the motion, it's likely the cause of the somewhat staggered expression on Colette's face when the towel is handed out to her. Swallowing dryly, she starts to reach with her right hand, wincing when even the slightest threat of motion comes to it, and then more carefully reaches to take the towel with her left. She looks at it, then her coat and curses something under her breath, laying the towel down on her lap as she starts to unzip the heavy suede jacket. Then the reality of how to remove it comes into play. She curses again, this time more audible, "Son of a fuck."

Colette's nostrils flare, shifting her weight awkwardly as she snakes her good arm out of one sleeve, enough that the brick red turtleneck sweater she wears can be seen. Of course she had to wear a turtleneck today. The girl hisses to herself, fumbling with the towel until it slips out of her lap and falls on to the floor, "Mother fucker!" She shouts out, jerking back too quick when the towel falls, and just forcing more pain up into her shoulder.

"//Fucking son of a— //" Her voice cuts out, turned only into a hiss as one unsleeved arm holds her shoulder, eyes flicking up with misdirected irritation towards the pills. "Uh — I — " She clenched her jaw, "I don't know. I — Whatever's stronger." Because that makes sense, right?

Yes. No. Vicodin is stronger, so Bolivar is going to go with Codeine. Failing to caption his logic or executive decision verbally, he instead offers her half a white tablet, dug out of its foil packet with a clean fingertip. His hand doesn't waver even when he gusts out an extremely put upon sigh, enough force in it to make a visible eddy in the mote-filled air of the sunlit room.

"That's fucking great." He had flinched back from the falling cold pack, ever wary of pain; glares down at it, momentarily, before returning his gaze to the girl's face.

"I can lend you a T-shirt and turn around while you get organized," he offers, his tone of voice almost flat enough to suck the kinetic energy right out of the airborne particle matter again. "I should probably look at what you did to yourself anyway. You might not have put your shoulder all the way back into place." This is his working draft of 'patience.'

"I've got enough fucking — " Colette hesitates, drawing in a strained breath to try and calm her sharp attitude made only worse by the pain. "I have something on under the sweater, it's the middle of fucking winter, I just — How the fuck am I going to get it off?" She looks down at the thin and dark red fabric, and there's no real easy way to lift her arms up over her head after that. Forgetting all of that for a moment, she glances down at the tablet in her open palm. It's popped into her mouth, then a reach for the glass at her side as she tips it back, swallowing the pill with a grimace as her shoulder sends another twinge of pain thorugh her body.

"…back into what?" She finally asks, looking up to Bolivar, then down to her shoulder with a tension in her brow, eyes falling shut. "Awesome." Is her reply through clenched teeth, boot-clad feet shuffling slightly as she looks down to the half a jacket she wears. "I — I can't… fuck." At least she's stopped turning everything green around herself.

While the girl is swearing about things, Bolivar is making the elaborate and apparently Herculean effort of stooping down to pick up the cold pack in its little terrycloth pocket. Oh, his back. His knees. The asphyxiatingly annoying whinging going on with the culprit responsible for all of his problems. At least she isn't crying anymore, and the mucus is just congealed around her discolored face.

"Then we'll wait for ten fucking minutes until the painkillers kick in and you can figure out how to take off your fucking clothes," he suggests acidly, dropping the cold pack onto the bench beside her once again. He turns with a snippy slap of slippers, and shuffles his way imperiously to the fat armchair to her right. Nina's butt is protruding from underneath it. She is probably asleep.

"How long have you had him?" He points at Jupiter's head.

Her eyes track over to Jupiter, then close slowly, "A few months… He — Judah, um, got him for me because he's like — he's never around and, he… thought he'd be good company. I — " She gives her head a shake, reaching up with one hand to brush the heel of her palm over her cheeks, trying to smooth away some of the slickness there. "He's — Well," She manages something of a laugh, though it sounds bitter, "You probably know him don't you?" She figures a cop knows a cop, at least it makes sense in her head. "He's uh, he used to be like, a bomb sniffer. But he's old, and a pig" she adds, clearly directed to Jupiter as her hand finds his head, one hand gently stroking an ear. Despite her discomfort, her eyes lift up to look to Bolivar. "He's — really, I… I don't know what I'd do without him, but he's always fucking running off at the worst possible times." The young girl's eyes close, head shaking again with a swish of her bangs slipping out from behind her ear, shadowing her blinded eye.

"Um…" Feet shuffle, and so do her thoughts, "You — aren't… I mean, what happened in the hall — " Her teeth press down lightly on her lower lip, "Just — d-don't tell anyone, okay?"

"Shut up." This isn't the simple, professionally terse, monosyllabic order that Bolivar gives his dogs. There's an undercurrent of vehemence there, some hands-up, turn-away, aaargh species of disgust — mostly at himself. "You shut up.

"You're Registered. As far as I'm concerned," he reiterates, "you're Registered. Because Detective Judah Demsky wouldn't be stupid enough to let his whelp run around with her crazy little masturbatory light-shows knowing that there's testing coming out and that us cops are under twenty times the scrutiny of anybody else. Why the Hell aren't you Registered? There's a reason he's registered."

Jupiter gets his head pointed at again. This might be confusing to him if he weren't resting his head on Colette's knee, leaving the crabby little Mexican entirely out of his field of view. "If he wasn't, how much fucking trouble would he be in now? I don't know your dad that well. I just stupidly assumed he was brighter than this." The pocket-sized Kleenex reappears out of hiding.

Yanking another sheet out, he blankets it out on top of the passing spaniel's head with a word and gesture of instruction. Carry. Rose continues her trundle over to Jupiter's side, unphased by her unexpected veil. Her nostrils widen and shrink inhaling its faint perfume; she eyes Colette expectantly from underneath one wrinkled corner.

Glancing down at the sheet, one of Colette's brows raise, and her eyes upturn to Bolivar again. "Whatever, I'm whatever you need to think I am." Those words coming out of her mouth cause her as much pain as the shoulder does, but for entirely different reasons. The pit of her stomach turns, and she swallows down what would amount to a mouthful of bile remembering the last time she had to say that.

"What— " A twinge in her shoulder cuts her words off as she swallows a yelp, "W-What happened to you?" She nods with her nose towards Bolivar after a shaky start, figuring the specifics are pretty easy to figure out, and it gets the topic of conversation off of her Evolved status.

Tests though, fuck. It's one thing to hear about them on the news, it's another to hear about them from a person.

"The Midtown man happened to me," Bolivar replies. Six words. About covers it, as far as he can tell. Two-face.

He doesn't watch a lot of movies, but that pop cultural reference failed to miss him as he made his way through skin grafts, his face made to match the rather unattractive shape of the soul that resides inside it. He glances down at his left arm, studying the runs in color and aberrations in texture that characterize the limb all the way up to where it disappears into the cuff of his T-shirt.

His face changes slightly. His voice, on the other hand, does not. The same clanky growl emerges, unedited by shame or any change in pre-existing levels of resentment. He's had two years to find a reasonably comfortable equilibrium, and though reminders bring him no pleasure, fuck it. "I thought Judah was working from home or some shit. Why don't you see each other?"

Part of Colette's voice softens, though there's still the edge afforded by the pain she's in, numbing thanks to the Codine as it is, "You too…" She swallows, closing her eyes as she looks away, fingers of one hand curling into a small fist as she fights a throb of pain behind her shoulderblade. "Judah… doesn't have time for me. I — it's not important." The girl's brows furrow together, head shaking, "It — doesn't matter."

The girl's head downturns, swimming for a moment in the vaguely euphoric feling that Codine gives. "I think I've had this before…" She murmurs, one eye squinted as she looks up to Bolivar, the milky white of one eye seen through a cage of bangs. "Are we dead?" The question comes somewhat abruptly, said with the soft voice of a young girl questioning her surroundings. "Do you — I mean, ever think we just died there? And this is hell?" Partly the drugs talking, partly her own cynicism.

There's plenty of drugs and cynicism floating around in this apartment. Bolivar's mouth draws thin as a wire, curls slightly at the extruded end. "I'm an atheist," he answers, straightforwardly. "I don't believe in Hell. But if I did, I wouldn't believe dogs go there. No. You're alone in that boat. It sounds like a shitty one to be in, so I think you should get out and let it go. This may not be the Princess Suite, but it's not that bad."

He's teasing her. Almost. "Would you clean up your face?" He juts his jaw toward little Rose's veiled head, looks at Colette expectantly. And then blankly. And then with a scowl of recollection. "My dad was a cop. It's bullshit, being a cop's kid. The only thing he could find time for was Wednesday night pizza, and he liked anchovvies. I guess our main problem was I didn't like him, though."

Colette lets out a strained laugh and looks down at the dog's head again, giving her eyes a bit of a roll as she snatches the kleenex from atop the dog's head, shaking a little hair off of it before wipiing at her eyes. Did she really look that bad? She's feeling pretty good right about now, sure the arm's sore, but man there's nothing like Codine.

"I don't think Judah knew what he was gettin' into when he took me off the streets." The young girl's eyes wander down to Jupiter as she continues to wipe at her cheeks a bit drowsily, "I mean, he… I think — fuck, I don't know what to think. But he just — it's like he's just looking for an excuse to pawn me off. So, I… just don't go home much. I figure he likes the space." Not much reason to go home these days, not since Tamara disappeared.

There's a bitter snort from the girl as she closes her eyes, brows raising as a faint smirk curls up on her lips, relaxed enough by the Codine that her normal social awkwardness is beginning to melt away. "How much did you get — " Her mismatched eyes roll up to Bolivar as she tugs at her coat, "radiation I mean. I got pulled out from 42nd street, I don't even fucking remember how I got there. Like, fell asleep on my couch the midnight before the stupid shit, and then woke up in a hospital like a month and a half later." Trying to work her injured arm out of the sleeve, and doing at least a partial job of it, Colette a wincse when her shoulder actually moves under the effort. A girl of her slight weight though, even half a pill of Codine is going to dope her up like a surgery patient.

"S'fuckin' retarded isn't it? I didn't want this shit, I didn't want any of this." Her head rolls to one side, finally out of the coat as it falls down around behind her, slouches down off of the bench, and get stuck in the space between the bench and the wall. "Do you do anything? I mean, other'n take people's dogs…"

Perhaps having realized, for once, that he is in no position to complain about how anybody else looks, Bolivar lets that unspoken query slide on by. She doesn't look so terrible. Sticky and uncomfortable, but the latter is fading as the drug kicks in. The effect of half a dose on her threatens to amuse him, but Bolivar gracefully refrains.

Somewhat less gracefully, he hauls himself out of his armchair. Fff. There's a lot of gravity on this part of his floor and he's feeling it a lot. "Too much," he answers in a mutter, his brows finding a tilt of hard concentration as he approaches her bench. Eyes her fallen coat. "Seven sieverts. That's a one hundered percent death rate, but only because they round upwards. Doc said I was lucky. I'm not sure what happened. I think I was making a sandwich by the window.

"Next thing I know, I'm in the street — like three streets away from my place. Trying to get drinking water into some army kids who don't have their fucking faces anymore. Just five wet holes. Better two-face than that shit, I guess. 42nd? I woke up near there." Apparently unaware that this may be inappropriate conversational fare for little girls, he nonchalantly lifts up the cold pack and gestures at her arm. "I'm a cop. I work with my own dogs.

"She sniffs drugs and bombs." He angles a pinkie down, around, at little Rose, who beams out of a pristine white face framed in curls.

"How old are you? Like — fucking — seventeen?" Colette may be deceptively tiny, but so is he: he might well guess her age more accurately than most. "You get to move out in a year. I picked the Police Academy. Not the dumbest idea I ever had. You should work on one."

"Like fucking seventeen." She echoes, confirming his accurate guess. Out of the jacket, Colette stands, wavers like a sheet in the wind and brings her good arm out to brace herself against the wall. Once all of that gravity up here stops spinning sidewars, she reaches down to tug at the lower hem of her turtleneck, tugging it up about halfway, awkwardly struggling with the shirt as she keeps her other arm straight and unmoving. If it weren't for the Codine, she'd probably be trying to cut her way out of the shirt with scissors by now. "I — forgot how much I got. I was pretty lucky, I mean, unless you count blind in one fucking eye."

With the shirt up and over most of her body, it's a camouflage-print t-shirt about two sizes too small for her beneath. The girl is thinner than she looked with the jacket on, which is really goddamned thin. The loose jeans she wears hides the levels of tiny she is relatively well. Once she gets the sweater up high enough, she slides her hand under it and works it up off of her head, turning her already desheveled black hair into a messy pouf of tangled black locks. By the time she's sliding what's left of the turtleneck down her arms, she's wincing and cursing under her breath. Even through the Codine that hurt, which means without it she'd probably be unconscious on the floor.

"Police Academy?" She snorts out a laugh, "I'm a fucking highschool dropout. After my sister — " She cuts herself off, even if the drugs almost made her say it, she refuses to admit she's dead. "After… after I lost everything worth having, I sort've stoped caring." The brick red sweater is discarded to the floor — she was aiming for the bench, but, things are a little floaty right now. The floor's fine.

"I can't do shit. S'funny, I was just talking to someone yesterday about this. How I'm completely fucking useless — s'probably why Judah doesn't give two shits about me anymore." She holds out one hand for the cold pack, head cocking to one side. "Well, I guess I can make shit purple and blind myself. That's pretty awesome, huh?" Her sarcasm is far more biting without being so terrified of everything. On Codine, all of those repressed emotional quirks are bubbling to the surface like tiny carbon spheres siwmming in the seltzer of her barbituate-addled mind.

Now that Bolivar is sitting again, he feels ill-inclined to get up. Winds up eyeing the girl when she rises and puts herself through the elaborate routine of shedding her turtleneck. Given her bird-boned shoulder is now hovering well out of reach, he simply palms the cold pack up to her, pointing his other hand at her shoulder to indicate its intended destination.

"People don't adopt kids because they think they're getting something useful." A beat's pause. Okay, Bolivar acknowledges, strictly speaking… "Maybe tax shelters, but Judah doesn't have to worry a lot about that. If you want to learn how to do shit, you should maybe crack open a fucking book or something? I can't read. Dyslexic. That's my excuse, and besides: I like being a cop. Well," okay, strictly speaking… "I like my dogs.

"What did 'someone' think? Or did they just listen to this shit?" He makes a motion at her that probably could not be termed flattering, given the words he's trying to illustrate, but at least it isn't rude. He belligerently ignores the super powers, focuses on heckling the lazy little girl.

"If you'd been in school, you wouldn't have been ditching your dog in a fucking trailer park."

There's a defiant little snort, "Yeah, 'cause school's a good fucking option. You know what school I almost decided to go to when Judah adopted me? Washington-Irving." Her eyes narrow slightly as she stretches the collar of her t-shirt and tucks the cold pack under it to rest up against her shoulder, tensing from the chill as she shifts on her feet and begins to settle back down on the bench. "Fucking place — that — that happened the day after I met a kid from there. I was all set to go sign up. I mean, fuck, looks around us… The fucking world is falling apart, what good is school going to do?"

Colette winces from another jolt from her shoulder, awkwardly trying to shift the wrapped cold pack to where it hurts the most, eyes falling shut as she breathes in slowly through her nose. "I dunno… I mean, fuck, I don't even know who is blowing up who anymore. AllI see on the news is smoke, n'fire, and dead people. I mean, seriously, we're all fucking doomed." The girl leans back, letting her head thump hard against the wall. It's sure enough to say, she doesn't feel it.

"It would take a fucking miracle to turn this world around."

"Atheist," Bolivar responds in the tone of magnificent declaration. "Don't believe in miracles, either. Dogs work, though. A good enough dog could probably turn this world around." He might just be humoring her, at this point. God knows. "Fuck school, then.

"If you're scared of being the statistical minority, or whatever. Do what you want. Read a book about it. You're — seventeen," a hitch to his statement, as if realizing only now, belatedly, that he'd actually hit the correct number one guess in. "You're supposed to want things. Even I wanted things when I was fucking seventeen. To be a veterinarian or an astronaut or a tall Russian girl or something.

"And you're going to need a job if you want to keep taking care of Jupiter." His voice has found a complacent growl, like a very old dog mumbling in his sleep. By then, he's peering at her arm, one hand on her wrist, the other examining the subtle shapes of bones and the overall outline of her shoulder underneath the skin and terryclothd package.

Managing to exhale a part-frustrated and part-pained sound as she shifts the position of the cold pack on her dampening shoulder, Colette looks up a bit heavy-lided to Bolivar, lips quirking into a rueful smile as he speaks. "'Course I want stuff, but I'm — I dunno, pessimist?" She snorts out an awkward laugh, "I don't think m'ever gonna' get who— what I want." It's a momentary slip, likely because of the relaxing effect of the Codine. She feels great right now, even if her shoulder is a touch sore, and it's making things she wouldn't normally say come just a bit easier.

It's the whole job thing that makes her slouch for a moment — until the slouch of her shoulders hurts too much anyway. "I — I'm like, interning at this computer place in the city, but it doesn't pay. Friend of mine says it'd be good for a resume, or some shit." Her nose wrinkles again, and she raises her arm enough to bend her head down and rub her nose across her forearm, not letting go of the cold pack. "I really don't know what I want, I mean — you know, except to be fucking normal." Her brows crease together, "Didn't really wake up one morning and ask to be like this…" She'd been doing so good coming to terms with herself, and what she can do. Then Tamara disappears, and all of that confidence melts away like this winter's ice come spring.

"Sorry for being a dipshit." She adds a beat later, "Dogs, stairs, whatever… I'm kind've awesome at fucking up." Her lips crack into a self-deprecating smile, "I guess that's one thing I do good — screw up."

The slouch from 'the whole job thing' warrants a quick glower upward as Bolivar finds his examination momentarily interrupted by pained spasms and bad posture besides. When she straightens and reconfigures again, his expression smooths out before he has to complain some more. Which he appreciates. He's been talking a lot these past few minutes. More than he's used to, and it's taxing his throat. "Nobody's fucking normal." This glittering-bright gem of sagely wisdom is all he has to volunteer in terms of advice for a moment.

Her shoulder isn't pointing out in a bizarre angle, at least. Doesn't seem to be sliding and skewing around as if its joint were over-lubricated, either. The swelling gets in the way of his discerning much in the way of detail, but given the main detail is whether or not her whole limb is hanging out of its socket, that's okay. "Lift your arm," he says.

His fire-scarred palm feels like chapped rawhide on the point of her elbow, the contact ginger but deliberate, carefully, helpfully pre-empting a sudden give of her shoulder. "Internship first, then you do well, get paid, then you take your friend somewhere nice. That's the normal order of things, if normal is what you want. Don't you know anything?" If he's aware of any self-contradiction with this progression of advice, he fails to let it on.

The order to lift her arm is met with a disconcerted level of apprehension, but Codine makes things seem a little less severe in suggestion. Lifting her arm after a moment of hazy deliberation, Colette winces and lets out a hissing breath when it reaches a low angle. She chokes out a half-laugh half-whimper at the sensation, jerking her arm back down, which only hurts more from the quick movement. Judging from the way her shoulder moved and where she started to feel pain, it's back in the socket, or was never fully out to begin with. What she's dealing with now is just the price of not thinking things through.

"I — don't know much of shit." She affirms, eyes still closed as she tries to fight back what is a strangely numbed ache in her shoulder and through her whole arm. "My parents didn't give a shit about me, and my sister — " She shakes her head, "I was babied, she — " A huff of breath out her nostrils. "All I know right now is where to get a free sandwich if I'm on the street, and warm places to sleep. All that's kind've useless now that Judah's trying to pretend he fixed me." There's an evident bitterness there, but Bolivar is an expert at bitterness, and he knows when it's not entirely truthful.

Her's isn't.

Diagnostic assessment completed, Bolivar lets go of the girl's cinnamon stick arm with an articulate grunt. He puts his hands on his lap. They are as badly mismatched as the little girl's eyes. Cold packs, painkillers. Common enough in supply, if his own cabinets and refrigerator are a generalizable representation.

Which, he's well-aware, they aren't! But Bolivar figures he and Officer Demsky have access to similar resources, so as long as hospitalization and legal charges aren't of concern, there's no need to panic. About politics or hiring lawyers. Not to be egocentric, or anything. "Maybe if you screw up screwing up, they'll cancel each other out and you can start not screwing up," he offers, constructively, reaching down to pat Jupiter on the head first.

Logan Rose, second. Silken ears jiggle under the pressure of his palm, and she pants pleasurably in the slightly stuffy warmth of the apartment. "Well, Judah isn't fucking up bad enough that you actually hate him. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate the Linkin Park episode and unhealthy infatuation with your dog, but there's a difference. More than I can say for my old man." He stops short momentarily.

Subjects the passing bottlefly to a poisonous glare. The bottlefly waves gossamer at him and continues on its way. "Rumor has it, he's some sorry, emotionally useless, half-crippled fossilized cop fucko. I know a little bit about being that. Good for me, I have two dogs, and they didn't get stolen away by the other half of my family. Maybe he's the one you should be making time for, eh?" Bolivar doesn't do pity very well. Sometimes, that's a redeeming feature.

That stings.

Worse than the arm out of the socket, worse than most of the emotional screwballing that the teenage girl has put herself through. For all of the things that Bolivar has said, this one hurts the most because — par for course — it's true. Her brows furrow, teeth pressing into her lower lip as her eyes downcast to the floor. He knows the look, one that says fuck, you're right in all of the quiet ways that reprehension can.

Opening her mouth to speak, Colette finds nothing of worth to say, though as the bottlefly chooses to accost her again she rather reflexively raises her right hand as it zips past and lands on the window. There's a couple of flickering motes of colorful golden-yellow light that drift around her fingertips, accompanied by them swirling into a circular lens. A quick shutter of colorless light about as wide as two pencils moves out, followed by a sizzling sound near the window.

The girl's nose wrinkles, and her eyes shift to the side, "I guess there's that." She says indirectly, either referring to his kernel of truth, or her remarkably vast waste of an equally remarkable gift.

Logan Rose knows what's going on! Smells the infinitessimal burst of heat and chemical agony over by the window, turning her head and cocking her curly ears. Super weird. Almost as peculiar, as unexpected as the register that Bolivar is speaking in. She doesn't understand the words, of course: though an intelligent animal and well-trained, her vocabulary isn't nearly good enough to parse the nuances of meaning being conveyed between little man and little girl, but tone of voice was invented long, long before any language.

Silences are perhaps harder to read. Bolivar stops talking when the fly is swatted on his behalf. He tries to make up his mind whether the style of its execution disturbs him or whether he's merely maliciously pleased that the stupid insect finally got it. After a long moment, he decides that he can do both at the same time. "Registered Evolved," he mutters to himself.

Yep. Totally. "Now we should crap together some fancy lies you can tell Judah about your shoulder and where Jupiter's been," he proceeds, reaching up to scratch the top of his head.

"I've — " Colette winces slightly as he curls her fingers in towards her palm, "Been leaving in the morning before he leaves, and getting home at night after he's gone to bed… I — I'm not even sure he knows he's missing yet." She doesn't entirely feel comfortable saying that, but the roll of Colette's good shoulder signifies that right now she doesn't care much about the small man's reaction. "Just — maybe drop me off, if you've got a car. Otherwise I'll just take him and go, he probably won't even notice I'm — "

When she silences herself, there's a slow close of the girl's eyes, and Colette's brows scrunch together, one hand coming up to her face as she leans forward some. "No, I… I'm — I should just tell him what happened." Her fingers rub at her eyes, in a tired way that old men do — not young girls. "It — I'll just tell him." Looking up to Bolivar, Colette's teeth gently tug on her lower lip, looking towards her bad shoulder, then up to him again.

"How bad is it, anyway?" She asks in a meek voice, partly not wanting to know the truth, espescially if it means having to jerk her arm around again to make sure it's all stuffed back together properly.

Parent-child honesty. Bolivar will believe it when he sees it and not one minute sooner. While the tiny orphan is going through her paroxysms of guilt and resolution, he shifts a furtive gaze to and fro through his apartment, finds him meeting Nina Lou's baleful stare from underneath his vacated armchair. She's awake now. "It's not that bad," he answers. "I don't think you pushed it all the way out of place, so it just clicked right back in easy.

"There's some swelling and stretching and shit, but everything should go back to the right shape pretty quickly as long as you keep the swelling down and don't like… try to fly. Or play sports. You don't look like you play sports. You probably need a sling for a few days. You'll have to be a little more careful, though: every time you dislocate your shoulder, it's easier to do it again next time." Bolivar doesn't have much of a bedside manner. It's been said.

Hopefully the Codeine high will stave off nightmarish visions of her accidentally unscrewing her arm in a public restroom or something. "Do you want to call Judah so he can come pick you up?" He raises one slippered foot, moves it out of the way as Jupiter shifts to rest on his belly, his long head slinging forward to rest atop Colette's feet.

Hissing out a sigh at the words sling and call Judah, Colette just hangs her head and nods slowly. The girl's eyes close partway, and she looks around for her jacket, having forgotten for a moment that it was even here to begin with until she sees the lumps of brown shades and fur poking out from behind the bench. "Mmnh… y-yeah…" The thought of making it easier to rip her arm out of place again is a beautiful notion, and one that gives her an even further heightened sense of aversion to danger.

"I'll…" She reaches down and retrieves her small cell phone from the inside pocket, flipping it open but hesitating on dialing anything. Her brows knit together, mismatched eyes upturning to Bolivar. "Hey um, thanks for…" She rolls her tongue on the inside of her cheek, "For being… not a total dick." That's an unusually backhanded compliment. "You — didn't have to help me, or — " She looks down to Jupiter, smiling faintly, "I appreciate it…"

For Bolivar it is an unusually open-palmed compliment, actually. He doesn't take it otherwise, a wry grin seizing and tugging on the corner of his mouth to an angle sharp enough to look slightly painful for him, with the sheer authenticity of its inspiring sentiment. Fortunately, it's only a half-grin at best. The other side of his face continues to lie in ruin; probably couldn't take the missing half of that abuse without breaking permanently.

"You're very sweet, chica.

"Your crazy, dysfunctional little family just has to take better care of…" Grammar fails him. Either that, or sentiment does, and Bolivar adamantly refuses to be sentimental, so he concentrates on levering himself up now, his short legs steepled over Jupiter's wiery torso, carefully avoiding trodding on stray dog parts. His slipper almost jumps free of his foot; he stumbles back into it.

"Do you want some… fuckin'… juice or something, while you wai—?" He lapses into silence, then, jaws half-open. Thinks that somebody's picked up the other end of the line, and he's peculiarly hesitant to interrupt.

There's a crooked grin amidst the pain medication that comes blearily over Colette as she waggles her phone back and forth, then finally pushes talk and begins to dial. "I — yeah some — water?" Her nose wrinkles at the man's apprehensive posture, head shaking. Though all of that smiling, even if some of it is because the Codine is making her feel magnificent fades the moment she hears a gruff voice sound over the other end of the cell phone. Immediately, the girl hunches forward, threading a lock of hair behind one ear with a motion of the phone and her fingers. "U-um, hey I — it's me…" She says in a hushed, guilty tone of voice.

"Can you come pick me up?"