avatar 16
Title: Avatar 16
Author/artist: TamLin
Setting: AU
Rating: T
Summary: it's go time. and time to meet the faces behind the avatars.
The air felt harsh, as if it were too dry and it hurt on the way down as she gasped. Something moved in her chest and she realized it was her lungs and they ached. Somewhere off to the side and behind her that thin noise was still shrilling and she struggled to sit up. Mace's hands were against her shoulders and it was pathetic how easily the woman kept her down.
"Not yet, not yet. Hang on. Black's got this. Let me help you."
Tifa tried to say something but it came out silent. She cleared her throat and then made a muffled noise at how much that hurt. She felt something tug at her nose and Mace was talking again. There was a horrible slid of… something and it seemed to go up her throat and out her nose and she made a gagging noise in response - but all she could concentrate on the whole time was that monotone sound from the other tube so close and yet a world away from her. The slick sliding sensation stopped with a light tug and Tifa found herself coughing and then sneezing and she was still fighting to keep from gagging but it was too hard to breathe. Arms, warm and strong and oh so comforting went under her shoulders and she was sitting up.
The world lurched hard and her stomach finally gave in. Scrambling to lean over the side, Tifa heaved. It hurt all the way up into her lungs but nothing came out. Those warm arms stayed around her, rubbing her back, keeping her hair out of her face as the motions shook her hard. She felt as if she were made of paper and thin pieces of twig, all tissue and pointy bits. Her nose ran as she heaved and so did her eyes and she was angry at her body for doing this now when she had something - someone - so much more important to be concentrating on. She finally got the gagging under control but it had left her ribs and stomach hurting and her throat felt raw and torn to shreds. A warm, damp cloth wiped at her face and it felt so good for a moment she forgot to concentrate on anything else.
"Mace - " she managed to croak it this time and it hurt like salt on open wounds but at least it was something. And then she realized - all she heard was silence.
There was no monotone beep. There was no beep at all.
Giving up on talking, she curled her fingers around the edge of the plastic tube she was in and tried to lever herself out but, again, her friend stopped her. And, again, it was pathetically easy. Shaking with the effort she'd already put out, she raised her face to her friend.
"Oh, Ayumi," Mace's voice was soft and she stroked Tifa's hair back. It felt good and yet made her realize how greasy it felt against her scalp. She made a noise and shook her head against her friend, twisting in her arms to look at the place the shrill sound had been coming from. There was a dark haired man standing over the tube looking down into it at someone Tifa couldn't see and nearby there was a man in a wheelchair at a computer console. Swift was hunched over the keyboard with him and she could hear the sound of frantic key tapping and the low, tight murmur of their voices. In other tubes around the large metal hub set in the middle of the room there were various sounds of stirring and physical reactions to it. Tifa managed to pull her knees up close to her body.
"Drink this," it was a low, familiar voice at her side and she turned her head to see her fiancée. He looked as calm and steady as ever and she gave him a weak smile, taking the cup with its straw from him before her eyes went desperately back to the silent tube. The dark haired man was leaning low over it and she couldn't hear what his quiet voice was saying but it sounded continuous and insistent. Mace nudged the cup and automatically Tifa sipped at it. A thick, sticky sludge ran down her throat and she made a face and tried not to gag - but it helped her raw throat and settled her empty stomach a little. It was enough to let her make a soft noise in her throat that held all the worry and fear and straining longing she felt.
The dark haired man looked up at the noise and his eyes focused on her. He did something with his mouth that she thought must be meant to be a smile but it didn't work right at all for him. And then he straightened up and walked over to where she was.
"You're Tifa?"
The way he asked it didn't sound as if he didn't already know but she nodded mutely at him anyway. He nodded back in response, brows down over his eyes and then, entirely ignoring the other two people near her, he leaned in and scooped her up. She didn't even have to ask and she certainly didn't protest even as Mace made a sound that was the start of it. The man holding her though ignored it and instead carried her over to the tube he'd been standing in front of originally. She wound weak fingers in his shirt and strained forward a little.
The man in the tube looked as if he was sleeping. There were IVs hooked up to his arms and a thin plastic tube down his nose while various wires she guessed must be for monitoring were stuck to his bare chest and temples. It occurred to her, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Mace must have taken most of those off of her before she even came entirely around. The man she knew as Cloud had pale skin and, lax in the tube, it was easy to see the random freckles that scattered almost invisibly across his shoulders, his forearms, and small and in whispers across his face. For some reason those freckles stood out to her, setting off bells inside her mind. The man's hair was blond and did look shaggy and slightly spiky though not as gravity defying as she was used to and at the moment it looked limp and lifeless. He was just in a pair of loose pants and a pair of dog tags. She could see scars in little fits and starts across his bare chest with one ugly, indented one just below his heart. And then her own heart gave a little fit inside her chest and with a soft sound, she was letting go of the man holding her to reach down. A little panicked, not sure if she wanted to believe or not, she laid the flat of her hand over his cold chest. After a moment, she swore she felt the minuscule rise of it and, shortly afterward, the way it sank again in an exhale. The man holding her hummed.
"Yeah. He's still breathing, though the fucker scared the shit out of me earlier when he stopped."
He was using English when he spoke and Tifa, not taking her hands off of Cloud's chest, looked up sideways at him. His eyes were a dark blue but he definitely had Japanese features. Someone that was half and half then and it reminded her of someone else she'd once known that was -
Oh.
Oh no…
Her eyes went back to the blond man sleeping in the tube and - freckles. She remembered freckles. And blond fly a way hair forever in need of a comb.
And vulnerable, guarded, longing blue eyes and the promise of a friendship that would last forever and hadn't. Long walks home and secret Japanese lessons so he could speak it better and better and his mother's cookies and kites flown on windy days in parks far from their neighborhood and secret jokes and secret looks and bullies and cruel words and slurs against her and fists and blood and black eyes and school suspensions for him that were just as hard on her and -
And getting hurt and his abandonment…
Oh….
…oh no…
Careful, her hands shifted and she touched the lean angles of the sleeping face. It had been rounder - when he'd been a child. The chin had been more pointed. Light, she touched his dry lips and she didn't have to look at the name on his tags to know his name. Still holding her, the other man said:
"Yeah. He's been crushing pretty hard on you since he found out you were going to be in the game too. Always got the impression he felt guilty over something. He wouldn't go near you, wouldn't even leave a room until he was sure you wouldn't show up in the hallway outside it. I told him to man up and introduce himself but…" his eyes strayed away and over to another tube. "But I'm not really the guy to be pushing that kind of thing."
"Oh, quite pining, Black." A refined, vaguely bored voice sounded nearby and Tifa looked down to see the tall lean man in the wheel chair had rolled silently over to where they were. "You two act like school boys with your first crushes." Pale green eyes shifted to Tifa's face and she felt a strange shudder at how impersonal they looked. He offered his hand.
"White. A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Ito. I apologize for your arrival here. It was not my best work."
Still holding her, Black asked what was really on both of their minds.
"How's Cloud?"
White's pale brows furrowed and he glanced at the man in the tube. His hair really was pale enough to be white, Tifa realized even though she wouldn't guess that he was much older than any of the rest of them. She thought, or maybe she just imagined it, that White's face went a little worried and more human when he looked at Cloud.
"I had to send him back in. Apparently the virus is attached to his avatar though I'm not sure how it happened. It must have started before we realized they were being upgraded. When I tried to bring him out the virus activated and tried to crash his interface. I managed to keep it from happening but had to stop the extract process. He's still hooked up to the game."
Black made a noise that might have been close to a growl.
"So he's still in hostile territory. How do we extract him?"
White shook his head.
"Swift is looking for him as we speak. Our previous extract crashed the Fort Condor point and it's currently too hot to go in. The good news is that apparently our opponents can't find him either. The bad news is that that is most likely because his consciousness is not currently inhabiting his avatar."
"The fuck?" It was a new voice and they all turned to see a scrawny teen, propped up between two other equally scrawny teens. The one in the middle adjusted his glasses and demanded:
"So what's up with Spiky and how do we help you get him back?"
Speech patterns apparently outlasted physical changes. Tifa blinked in shock at the nerdy looking boy wearing the 'Neville would have done it in four books' t-shirt over his Transformers print pajama bottoms.
"Ah," White turned his attention on the three. "The game designers. Your friends have been most helpful with some of the more intricate sub-routines in the program but both of them insist you are the true…'geek master'? I have some programs I would appreciate your insight into."
"You got it," the kid that had once been Barret and Hey You nodded, brows down in determination behind his glasses. "It's time to kick some noob ass."
White nodded.
"Indeed. And Black - you can put Ms. Ito down any time you chose. I'm sure her friends would like her back at some point."
"Get her a chair," another voice, female this time, spoke from a nearby tube. "She'll want to sit next to him."
Tifa felt the way the man holding her jerked and she looked up at his frozen face and then over to see Aerith sitting up primly in her tube, hands folded in her lap, a scarf artfully wrapped around her head to hide how it must have been just as messed up as the rest of them and a flower embroidered sweater on. Her face looked perfectly calm but there was fire in her eyes as she inclined her head just a little to add:
"Zack."
"Shit," Black muttered it under his breath - and then he took a huge lungful of air in and looked down at her. "It's my turn to do the apology, beg, grovel, plead thing. You mind sitting here?"
Mute as much in surprise as anything else, Tifa shook her head - and Zack proceeded to set her down right in the tube. Tifa managed to tuck her legs up and shift so she wasn't on top of Cloud and then Zack strode over to Aerith and scooped her up. Tifa watched her eyes flare green venom but before she could get much out in protest, Zack was already striding out the door with her. A very polite looking man, hands folded calmly in front of himself, stepped to the side as they went out the door. Without much expression beyond curiosity he watched them go - and then moved back over to the chair next to Aerith's now empty tube and sat down in it, picking up what looked like a technical manual to continue reading it.
"We've got most of the floor sealed off," Mace explained as she finally reinserted herself into Tifa's world. "Gotta secure the bathroom and all, you know? You want me to get you out of there and onto a real chair?"
Tifa looked down at the man she was next to and she shifted so that her body fit a bit better against his. She shook her head and resolutely took one of his slack, cold hands in hers, wrapping it tight to try to share her warmth with him. A second later she found a blanket draped over her shoulders and looked up in surprise to see her fiancée. He didn't say anything else and she gave him a tired, appreciative time. They would have to talk - but it would have to be later when this was all done.
"Everyone else is okay?" Tifa managed to ask and her throat didn't feel quite so sore anymore. Mace nodded and reached over to start rubbing her back absently. It felt like heaven to Tifa and she shut her eyes and hunched forward a bit so Mace could reach more.
"Everyone's fine," Mace told her. "Bruce is staying in his tube until he remembers how that he's only got two legs instead of four and that Jessie girl is sitting up with him. I think they've got a thing going on. Swift's busy on the VR hook up or he'd come over and tell you how great he was for helping pull you out of there." Tifa found herself suddenly buried in a fierce hug and Mace was speaking close to her.
"Gawd, Ayumi, I was so worried about you. Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm okay," Tifa assured, wrapping an arm around the other girl's shoulders and holding her close. It felt so very good to hug like this and she burrowed in as close as she could without disturbing Cloud. "I'm okay."
After that there was surprisingly little to say and Tifa sat, rubbing absently at Cloud's hand while the usually talkative Mace fiddle in her seat next to her. Swift finally gave up on the headset he was wearing and set it aside. Speaking to White first, he then got up and slouched over to where his partners were, hauling over a chair of his own to straddled it backward.
He looked like hell warmed over.
Tifa reached out and gave his head a pat, neon colored hair springing back into place when the weight of her fingers left it and he raised his head to give her a lopsided, tired smile. Mace popped her sneakered feet up in his lap and he automatically reached down to wiggle the toes of them absent-mindedly.
"He's not loose, Teef," he told her, voice soft. "I can find anybody on that sucker and he's not there. White's convinced he's floating somewhere in between and I think he's right." He exhaled. And then, after a very long moment, he looked up and met her eyes.
"They're gonna have to send someone back in after him and no on the VR either. It's gonna have to be full immersion hooked up to his output. White's still tryin' to get around it but - yeah, it ain't gonna work any other way. Whoever they send in is gonna have to find his head space and direct him back into his avatar."
He was watching her very steadily and Tifa watched him just as calmly back. Mace shifted eyes between them, watching both of their faces and didn't interrupt. Weak, Tifa smiled.
"Thanks," she murmured and then turned her attention on White who was just starting to swivel his wheelchair around to face everyone else. Before he could speak she simply, clearly told him:
"I'll go."
Merry Christmas to all and God bless in the new year just in case I don't get back on in time to say it then!
Author/artist: TamLin
Setting: AU
Rating: T
Summary: it's go time. and time to meet the faces behind the avatars.
The air felt harsh, as if it were too dry and it hurt on the way down as she gasped. Something moved in her chest and she realized it was her lungs and they ached. Somewhere off to the side and behind her that thin noise was still shrilling and she struggled to sit up. Mace's hands were against her shoulders and it was pathetic how easily the woman kept her down.
"Not yet, not yet. Hang on. Black's got this. Let me help you."
Tifa tried to say something but it came out silent. She cleared her throat and then made a muffled noise at how much that hurt. She felt something tug at her nose and Mace was talking again. There was a horrible slid of… something and it seemed to go up her throat and out her nose and she made a gagging noise in response - but all she could concentrate on the whole time was that monotone sound from the other tube so close and yet a world away from her. The slick sliding sensation stopped with a light tug and Tifa found herself coughing and then sneezing and she was still fighting to keep from gagging but it was too hard to breathe. Arms, warm and strong and oh so comforting went under her shoulders and she was sitting up.
The world lurched hard and her stomach finally gave in. Scrambling to lean over the side, Tifa heaved. It hurt all the way up into her lungs but nothing came out. Those warm arms stayed around her, rubbing her back, keeping her hair out of her face as the motions shook her hard. She felt as if she were made of paper and thin pieces of twig, all tissue and pointy bits. Her nose ran as she heaved and so did her eyes and she was angry at her body for doing this now when she had something - someone - so much more important to be concentrating on. She finally got the gagging under control but it had left her ribs and stomach hurting and her throat felt raw and torn to shreds. A warm, damp cloth wiped at her face and it felt so good for a moment she forgot to concentrate on anything else.
"Mace - " she managed to croak it this time and it hurt like salt on open wounds but at least it was something. And then she realized - all she heard was silence.
There was no monotone beep. There was no beep at all.
Giving up on talking, she curled her fingers around the edge of the plastic tube she was in and tried to lever herself out but, again, her friend stopped her. And, again, it was pathetically easy. Shaking with the effort she'd already put out, she raised her face to her friend.
"Oh, Ayumi," Mace's voice was soft and she stroked Tifa's hair back. It felt good and yet made her realize how greasy it felt against her scalp. She made a noise and shook her head against her friend, twisting in her arms to look at the place the shrill sound had been coming from. There was a dark haired man standing over the tube looking down into it at someone Tifa couldn't see and nearby there was a man in a wheelchair at a computer console. Swift was hunched over the keyboard with him and she could hear the sound of frantic key tapping and the low, tight murmur of their voices. In other tubes around the large metal hub set in the middle of the room there were various sounds of stirring and physical reactions to it. Tifa managed to pull her knees up close to her body.
"Drink this," it was a low, familiar voice at her side and she turned her head to see her fiancée. He looked as calm and steady as ever and she gave him a weak smile, taking the cup with its straw from him before her eyes went desperately back to the silent tube. The dark haired man was leaning low over it and she couldn't hear what his quiet voice was saying but it sounded continuous and insistent. Mace nudged the cup and automatically Tifa sipped at it. A thick, sticky sludge ran down her throat and she made a face and tried not to gag - but it helped her raw throat and settled her empty stomach a little. It was enough to let her make a soft noise in her throat that held all the worry and fear and straining longing she felt.
The dark haired man looked up at the noise and his eyes focused on her. He did something with his mouth that she thought must be meant to be a smile but it didn't work right at all for him. And then he straightened up and walked over to where she was.
"You're Tifa?"
The way he asked it didn't sound as if he didn't already know but she nodded mutely at him anyway. He nodded back in response, brows down over his eyes and then, entirely ignoring the other two people near her, he leaned in and scooped her up. She didn't even have to ask and she certainly didn't protest even as Mace made a sound that was the start of it. The man holding her though ignored it and instead carried her over to the tube he'd been standing in front of originally. She wound weak fingers in his shirt and strained forward a little.
The man in the tube looked as if he was sleeping. There were IVs hooked up to his arms and a thin plastic tube down his nose while various wires she guessed must be for monitoring were stuck to his bare chest and temples. It occurred to her, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Mace must have taken most of those off of her before she even came entirely around. The man she knew as Cloud had pale skin and, lax in the tube, it was easy to see the random freckles that scattered almost invisibly across his shoulders, his forearms, and small and in whispers across his face. For some reason those freckles stood out to her, setting off bells inside her mind. The man's hair was blond and did look shaggy and slightly spiky though not as gravity defying as she was used to and at the moment it looked limp and lifeless. He was just in a pair of loose pants and a pair of dog tags. She could see scars in little fits and starts across his bare chest with one ugly, indented one just below his heart. And then her own heart gave a little fit inside her chest and with a soft sound, she was letting go of the man holding her to reach down. A little panicked, not sure if she wanted to believe or not, she laid the flat of her hand over his cold chest. After a moment, she swore she felt the minuscule rise of it and, shortly afterward, the way it sank again in an exhale. The man holding her hummed.
"Yeah. He's still breathing, though the fucker scared the shit out of me earlier when he stopped."
He was using English when he spoke and Tifa, not taking her hands off of Cloud's chest, looked up sideways at him. His eyes were a dark blue but he definitely had Japanese features. Someone that was half and half then and it reminded her of someone else she'd once known that was -
Oh.
Oh no…
Her eyes went back to the blond man sleeping in the tube and - freckles. She remembered freckles. And blond fly a way hair forever in need of a comb.
And vulnerable, guarded, longing blue eyes and the promise of a friendship that would last forever and hadn't. Long walks home and secret Japanese lessons so he could speak it better and better and his mother's cookies and kites flown on windy days in parks far from their neighborhood and secret jokes and secret looks and bullies and cruel words and slurs against her and fists and blood and black eyes and school suspensions for him that were just as hard on her and -
And getting hurt and his abandonment…
Oh….
…oh no…
Careful, her hands shifted and she touched the lean angles of the sleeping face. It had been rounder - when he'd been a child. The chin had been more pointed. Light, she touched his dry lips and she didn't have to look at the name on his tags to know his name. Still holding her, the other man said:
"Yeah. He's been crushing pretty hard on you since he found out you were going to be in the game too. Always got the impression he felt guilty over something. He wouldn't go near you, wouldn't even leave a room until he was sure you wouldn't show up in the hallway outside it. I told him to man up and introduce himself but…" his eyes strayed away and over to another tube. "But I'm not really the guy to be pushing that kind of thing."
"Oh, quite pining, Black." A refined, vaguely bored voice sounded nearby and Tifa looked down to see the tall lean man in the wheel chair had rolled silently over to where they were. "You two act like school boys with your first crushes." Pale green eyes shifted to Tifa's face and she felt a strange shudder at how impersonal they looked. He offered his hand.
"White. A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Ito. I apologize for your arrival here. It was not my best work."
Still holding her, Black asked what was really on both of their minds.
"How's Cloud?"
White's pale brows furrowed and he glanced at the man in the tube. His hair really was pale enough to be white, Tifa realized even though she wouldn't guess that he was much older than any of the rest of them. She thought, or maybe she just imagined it, that White's face went a little worried and more human when he looked at Cloud.
"I had to send him back in. Apparently the virus is attached to his avatar though I'm not sure how it happened. It must have started before we realized they were being upgraded. When I tried to bring him out the virus activated and tried to crash his interface. I managed to keep it from happening but had to stop the extract process. He's still hooked up to the game."
Black made a noise that might have been close to a growl.
"So he's still in hostile territory. How do we extract him?"
White shook his head.
"Swift is looking for him as we speak. Our previous extract crashed the Fort Condor point and it's currently too hot to go in. The good news is that apparently our opponents can't find him either. The bad news is that that is most likely because his consciousness is not currently inhabiting his avatar."
"The fuck?" It was a new voice and they all turned to see a scrawny teen, propped up between two other equally scrawny teens. The one in the middle adjusted his glasses and demanded:
"So what's up with Spiky and how do we help you get him back?"
Speech patterns apparently outlasted physical changes. Tifa blinked in shock at the nerdy looking boy wearing the 'Neville would have done it in four books' t-shirt over his Transformers print pajama bottoms.
"Ah," White turned his attention on the three. "The game designers. Your friends have been most helpful with some of the more intricate sub-routines in the program but both of them insist you are the true…'geek master'? I have some programs I would appreciate your insight into."
"You got it," the kid that had once been Barret and Hey You nodded, brows down in determination behind his glasses. "It's time to kick some noob ass."
White nodded.
"Indeed. And Black - you can put Ms. Ito down any time you chose. I'm sure her friends would like her back at some point."
"Get her a chair," another voice, female this time, spoke from a nearby tube. "She'll want to sit next to him."
Tifa felt the way the man holding her jerked and she looked up at his frozen face and then over to see Aerith sitting up primly in her tube, hands folded in her lap, a scarf artfully wrapped around her head to hide how it must have been just as messed up as the rest of them and a flower embroidered sweater on. Her face looked perfectly calm but there was fire in her eyes as she inclined her head just a little to add:
"Zack."
"Shit," Black muttered it under his breath - and then he took a huge lungful of air in and looked down at her. "It's my turn to do the apology, beg, grovel, plead thing. You mind sitting here?"
Mute as much in surprise as anything else, Tifa shook her head - and Zack proceeded to set her down right in the tube. Tifa managed to tuck her legs up and shift so she wasn't on top of Cloud and then Zack strode over to Aerith and scooped her up. Tifa watched her eyes flare green venom but before she could get much out in protest, Zack was already striding out the door with her. A very polite looking man, hands folded calmly in front of himself, stepped to the side as they went out the door. Without much expression beyond curiosity he watched them go - and then moved back over to the chair next to Aerith's now empty tube and sat down in it, picking up what looked like a technical manual to continue reading it.
"We've got most of the floor sealed off," Mace explained as she finally reinserted herself into Tifa's world. "Gotta secure the bathroom and all, you know? You want me to get you out of there and onto a real chair?"
Tifa looked down at the man she was next to and she shifted so that her body fit a bit better against his. She shook her head and resolutely took one of his slack, cold hands in hers, wrapping it tight to try to share her warmth with him. A second later she found a blanket draped over her shoulders and looked up in surprise to see her fiancée. He didn't say anything else and she gave him a tired, appreciative time. They would have to talk - but it would have to be later when this was all done.
"Everyone else is okay?" Tifa managed to ask and her throat didn't feel quite so sore anymore. Mace nodded and reached over to start rubbing her back absently. It felt like heaven to Tifa and she shut her eyes and hunched forward a bit so Mace could reach more.
"Everyone's fine," Mace told her. "Bruce is staying in his tube until he remembers how that he's only got two legs instead of four and that Jessie girl is sitting up with him. I think they've got a thing going on. Swift's busy on the VR hook up or he'd come over and tell you how great he was for helping pull you out of there." Tifa found herself suddenly buried in a fierce hug and Mace was speaking close to her.
"Gawd, Ayumi, I was so worried about you. Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm okay," Tifa assured, wrapping an arm around the other girl's shoulders and holding her close. It felt so very good to hug like this and she burrowed in as close as she could without disturbing Cloud. "I'm okay."
After that there was surprisingly little to say and Tifa sat, rubbing absently at Cloud's hand while the usually talkative Mace fiddle in her seat next to her. Swift finally gave up on the headset he was wearing and set it aside. Speaking to White first, he then got up and slouched over to where his partners were, hauling over a chair of his own to straddled it backward.
He looked like hell warmed over.
Tifa reached out and gave his head a pat, neon colored hair springing back into place when the weight of her fingers left it and he raised his head to give her a lopsided, tired smile. Mace popped her sneakered feet up in his lap and he automatically reached down to wiggle the toes of them absent-mindedly.
"He's not loose, Teef," he told her, voice soft. "I can find anybody on that sucker and he's not there. White's convinced he's floating somewhere in between and I think he's right." He exhaled. And then, after a very long moment, he looked up and met her eyes.
"They're gonna have to send someone back in after him and no on the VR either. It's gonna have to be full immersion hooked up to his output. White's still tryin' to get around it but - yeah, it ain't gonna work any other way. Whoever they send in is gonna have to find his head space and direct him back into his avatar."
He was watching her very steadily and Tifa watched him just as calmly back. Mace shifted eyes between them, watching both of their faces and didn't interrupt. Weak, Tifa smiled.
"Thanks," she murmured and then turned her attention on White who was just starting to swivel his wheelchair around to face everyone else. Before he could speak she simply, clearly told him:
"I'll go."
Merry Christmas to all and God bless in the new year just in case I don't get back on in time to say it then!