ways_infirmary | (no subject)

Nita rubbed her eyes, over where she was sitting in the chair next to Harper's bed.

"Do you think you could keep an eye on him for a little while? I really need to get some sleep. Just for a half hour."

Hopefully, a short nap would tide her over until it was Laini's shift.

Harper gurgled in his unconciousness.

"Yes, I can do that."

he smiles to Nita.

"I am pretty much here for the night anyway."

He ushers her out.

"Take your time."

Harper coughed, blood burbling out of the corners of his mouth.

He'd long since been divested of his clothes. The Magog kept eating through them anyway. He lay naked on waterproof sheets, covered in a surgical sheet, an area cut out over his torso for where the larvae were...expulsed.

His eyes flickered open and for a moment, he forgot where he was and struggled against the straps that held him down, but then he stopped, and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, as the theta-delta wave emitter worked away in silence.

"...Is there anyone h-here that can j-just destroy my body altogether?" he burbled quietly to Hank.

Hank looks at Harper, then shakes his head.

"Quite possibly, and no, it's not going to happen. Someone cursed you, harper, and I am going to make sure you live to kick his sorry ass."

His voice goes cold as ice in the end.

"D-don't think I'm going to be doing any ass-kicking any time soon," he stuttered, with a bitter, crimson-tinged grin on his drawn, pale face. "'S-sides, whoever did this c-could p-probably wipe the floor with me."

He started coughing again, and wound up coughing up several blood clots.

The skin on his stomach started to stretch and tear and he clamped his eyes shut, wincing, trying not to watch, as the baby Magog tore its way freem skittered off, and disappeared in a puff of smoke, like all that others.

He carefully avoided looking at his own torso.

"I think they're s-somehow being recycled," he said. "It's fourteen every time. Was only that s-singing one the one time."

he raises an eyebrow.

"It's quite possibly a temporal locus for a small pocket of time. That's why you cant die. Your body returns to what it was before. But the memory remains as does the memory of pain. That explains it. I wish I could cure it that easily. Others, more powerful than me are working on that."

he sighs.

"Mayhap now is not the time, but I thought you might need something to give you soemthing else to see and think about. It wont distract you obviously, but it is a project."

He pulls something out of a bag. it is the long ago promised Dream, a specially desiogned laptop filled to the craw with high tech and made in jet black mettalic finish with the images of stars coating it's outside. He sets it up on a roll in tray, where Harper can reach and see it, without it being in the way of his...epidemic.

Harper's mouth twitched into a little hysterical half-grin.

"Unstrap my arm?" he asked. There'd been good reason for the straps. Earlier, he'd been convulsing.

Hank does, on the account that right now, he is faster than Harper, and if Harper's arm is propped up on the tabnle, he cant do much else. So he does and watches Harper every second it is unstrapped.

"There you go."

He reached a trembling hand out and started fiddling with his new toy. Normally, he could type very quickly with one hand, but it was too shaky now. He managed though.

"You--you get whim-whammed, too? Recognized your voice--knew it was you, but--well, you're looking like you g-got that h-hair growth problem under control."

He kept fiddling, eyes widening more and more on his sweat-slicked, pale, careworn face.

"This--this is amazing," he said before giving a hacking, burbling cough.

He shook his head, eyes narrowing slightly.

"D-Don't get it. Don't get you--Duo, Laini--that kid doesn't even know me. D-don't get it."

If Hank didn't understand what Harper was talking about, he was in no shape to explain it.

"yes, I got whammied. Bastard caught me when I was looking, didnt like my senses I guess, clouded my mind and made me lose my mutation completely. I'm human, which ios normal for you, but is completely like... imagine never being able to use a computer or engineer anything again. That's what the bastard took from me. Not aanything like your whammy, but bad enough to rock my world for a good day before I could even react and think normally. Now I just wan to kick his ass."

Hank understood. Agfter all, hel;ping people he didnt know was his livelihood, his job.

"It's what people do, who care. They find a reason, a cause, a thing they believe in and they do it, no matter the cost.."

he smiles wryly.

"See, there is a certain selfish satisfaction that comes from knowing you are helping someone, that you caused that smile, or that good feeling, that you made them feel good, or at least better. And well, truth is, I see a lot fo you in me and a lot of me in you. And Geeks...m, we should stick together, you know?"

"Don't..." He tilted his head, then clamped his eyes shut as another larva burst free from his skin.

"I don't find--people like me," he admitted, after he'd opened his eyes again.

Or he did and he got them killed, like Hohne.

"You should all s-stay away from me. B-better for you that way."

There is a definite fierce look on hank's face as if he would like to tear the Other apart but he looks back at Harper and grins lopsidedly.

"I dont think so. I rather think i can learn from you, and that your friendship is worth it."

It wasn't the Other that was making Harper say these things. It was his whole life. It was everything and everyone he had lost. Everyone he he had hurt and screwed over. Everyone he had killed, cold-blooded--and he had killed people in cold blood, and some of them had not been guilty of any other crime than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or having food when Harper was hungry.

His hand fell down because he was too tired to hold it up anymore.

Right now he was angy. Right now he was scared.

And what if those larvae had not just disappeared?

That meant that Duo and Laini and that Nita girl, and the other doctor...Duo and Laini would have been...

Bitterly, he choked out, around blood and other fluids, "Nothing to learn from me. You can j-just learn how to be a b-bastard, and a m-murderer, that's what you c-could learn."

Sharp, intense eyes looked up at Hank.

"I-I am not a nice guy, y'know. I'm--I'm p-pretty damn near being a monster." He went on, trying to hold onto consciousness, which was slipping away from him. "I'll--if you get in my way, I look out for me. You should--all of you should s-stay away. All of you should--you should...you s-stick around me, and--and you'll all wind up l-like I am now, b-but it'll be a helluva lot more permanent."

After a bit of silence. "It would've b-been better for everybody if it'd worked. I p-probably--" He choked back tears. "I d-deserved this. This is--this is k-karma or something. This is...this is..."

He didn't have enough strength left to say much else. He had to stop and desperately try to catch his breath.

Hank watches carefully, ready with an oxygen mask.

"I think better of you, Harper. Perhaps I am wrong, but I do see goodness in you. And I choose to make and call you my friend."

He sighs.

"I am sure your life has sucked, has been a nightmare, and I cannot even say it will get better. But I will say this. As long as you are around, Im plan on calling you friend. And that means I will keep you around as long as I can, friends do that kind of thing."

he shakes his head.

"We all walk different paths, and I cannot judge yours, and wont. That's not what I am here for."

he also casts an eye at the computer, then at Harper.

"You didnt deserve this. And you dont now."

Hank's tone is very final on that note.

No, it was very clear in Harper's mind: he did not deserved this. He didn't deserved all these people careing about him, watching over him.

"Trance. Wanna see Trance. She--she doesn't know. She's--she's in the bar. Purple girl. Tail."

Harper's eyes were still disbelieving as he gasped and choked, and then they closed, and he flatlined.

Yet again.

After a moment of silence, his wounds healed over, and he gasped as his heart and lungs restarted, and the whole vicious cycle started all over again.

He stayed unconscious this time.

hank sighs, watching over this...friend? As he prepares a note for Trance. Somehow he had to help Harper. Firsr with this criss, then somehow, with whatever ailed him inside. Maybe he could do no more than be a friend.

Maybe.

He sits back and watches over him in the quiet room, filled with beepings.