(no subject)
It's her apartment, all right.
But it's cleaner, less cluttered, and that's her first clue that something's up, the first thing to detach her from what's going on.
At some point she must've put on one of her dad's concerts, but she's sitting on her couch, the melody curling around the couch toward her, and she notices a set of paints sitting on the coffee table in front of her.
She doesn't know where they came from, but she's invaded by the intense feeling that the last thing she wants to do is touch them.
"I got them for you."
Looking up, she meets Leoben's eyes. He smiles at her like he knows her, like the four months she spent with him earned him a hell of a lot more intimacy than they actually did.
"Don't you like them?"
It's not his question that startles her awake, but she's not sure what does. The room is still dark, still mostly quiet as the pilots around her sleep. Irritation rushes through her; she swipes the back of her bandaged right hand over her eyes, and feeling awkward and unwieldy, she turns her face toward the wall of her rack and tries to go back to sleep.
She gets there eventually.
During her morning visit to Cottle, she acknowledges to herself that this sucks. She's making more trips to sick bay than she wants to -- there's so much crap she can't do on her own and she has frakking tried -- and she's popping painkillers and spending most of her time watching other people do things because there's not a frak of a lot she'd like to do that she can pull off right now.
Lee's been by to check on her, but he didn't stay very long. She could see concern in his eyes -- she's always said he was easy to read -- but he didn't mention sending Dee after her and she didn't bring it up, either. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the fun they were having is over.
And then there's Sam, and every time she thinks about him she thinks about that relieved hug he wrapped her in the moment he saw her get off the Raptor with Dee. She knows she had a lot of morpha in her system that day, but she thinks she wasn't so bad to him.
Which may have felt like nice change to him.
A recurring guilty pang and the thought that he could probably use a thank you for the help he gave her then spur her to go ahead and make a call to the Salpica. She has to have someone hand her the handset -- she makes sure it's not Dee -- but she gets it tucked between her shoulder and the side of her face and then moves away for a little privacy, facing the wall, until she needs a hand again.
But it's cleaner, less cluttered, and that's her first clue that something's up, the first thing to detach her from what's going on.
At some point she must've put on one of her dad's concerts, but she's sitting on her couch, the melody curling around the couch toward her, and she notices a set of paints sitting on the coffee table in front of her.
She doesn't know where they came from, but she's invaded by the intense feeling that the last thing she wants to do is touch them.
"I got them for you."
Looking up, she meets Leoben's eyes. He smiles at her like he knows her, like the four months she spent with him earned him a hell of a lot more intimacy than they actually did.
"Don't you like them?"
It's not his question that startles her awake, but she's not sure what does. The room is still dark, still mostly quiet as the pilots around her sleep. Irritation rushes through her; she swipes the back of her bandaged right hand over her eyes, and feeling awkward and unwieldy, she turns her face toward the wall of her rack and tries to go back to sleep.
She gets there eventually.
During her morning visit to Cottle, she acknowledges to herself that this sucks. She's making more trips to sick bay than she wants to -- there's so much crap she can't do on her own and she has frakking tried -- and she's popping painkillers and spending most of her time watching other people do things because there's not a frak of a lot she'd like to do that she can pull off right now.
Lee's been by to check on her, but he didn't stay very long. She could see concern in his eyes -- she's always said he was easy to read -- but he didn't mention sending Dee after her and she didn't bring it up, either. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the fun they were having is over.
And then there's Sam, and every time she thinks about him she thinks about that relieved hug he wrapped her in the moment he saw her get off the Raptor with Dee. She knows she had a lot of morpha in her system that day, but she thinks she wasn't so bad to him.
Which may have felt like nice change to him.
A recurring guilty pang and the thought that he could probably use a thank you for the help he gave her then spur her to go ahead and make a call to the Salpica. She has to have someone hand her the handset -- she makes sure it's not Dee -- but she gets it tucked between her shoulder and the side of her face and then moves away for a little privacy, facing the wall, until she needs a hand again.