(Untitled)

[lastof_five]

The rain had faded away approximately a week before but Helen hadn't really had the chance to get out in the sun and just enjoy it. First, it was wanting to finish a book she'd found in the Compound, then it was clinic duties...but on a Sunday afternoon, even she had to admit there was very little in the way of work she could contrive. She had,

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[natureofsecrets]

Some people might shy from interrupting a stranger with a book, but with no real plans for his walk, no ultimate destination for the day or purpose for his trip to the beach other than to get some exercise and some sun, Morgan finds himself wanting to say hello to someone he hasn't spent most of last month cooped up with.

The bathing suit she's wearing doesn't hurt either, and he allows himself the idea that the book is just to stave off boredom, the kind of thing one would be happy to put down if given another distraction. Noting the title only strengthens the assumption, and the only thing that gives him pause on his way over is her laugh, the words directed at herself that, for a moment, he thought were for him. It postpones his greeting and, as he wanders closer to her, begs the question, "Does this place offer a lot of jobs that involve hobbits?"

[lastof_five]

Helen laughed a little and looked up, slightly nervous at being caught talking to herself. Man likely thought she was daft, but then again, Will had never said as much. He was a psychiatrist...surely he was most capable of determining that.

"Ah, no. I wish it did and perhaps I wouldn't seem so aimless. Hobbits, I can work with. It's mysterious islands that seem to give me pause."

[natureofsecrets]

"I think I'd have to give a little pause over hobbits, though I think they're a possibility here." Considering the werewolves, vampires, and superheroes running around, he's braced with every new arrival for another round of Reid's excited babbling about the childhood figures he's just met.

There's a bit less of it now, though, now that he's married to one of them.

"Derek Morgan," he asserts, rounding back to his original intent with a smile and a hand offered down for her to shake.

[lastof_five]

Helen shook his hand firmly, committing the name to memory as she had the few others she'd met in her short weeks on the island. She really ought to be more social, considering this might be a long-term stay and connections would need to be forged for survival's sake, but for now she'd been reserved about whose company she'd kept.

"Dr. Helen Magnus. I'm charmed to make your acquaintance, though I wish for both our sakes it wasn't on a godforsaken deserted island."

[natureofsecrets]

Not always a fan of the place himself, if only because of the sheer minutiae of tropical island life, Morgan doesn't think he'd ever use the word godforsaken to describe it. "Depending on your definition of deserted, I'm not sure we'd be meeting at all in a place like that," he quips, releasing her hand but not removing his attention from her. He can take in nature some other time, take in more nature than he can probably stand. "It's not that bad, once the rain's over and you get past the dinosaurs." Both the physical danger and how much that sort of thing can fuck with your head.

[lastof_five]

"I know the dinosaurs intimately," Helen admitted, laughing a little. "I arrived on the far side of the island and had to trek my way across to civilization. I was far from pleasant when I finally arrived."

But, given a few weeks of rain, her mood had just gone even more sour. Helen was glad when the sun came back because it gave her an opportunity to explore the boundaries of the island and meet new people, which she desperately needed.

"I'm much better now that we've some decent weather. Of course, I'm sure you didn't want to blather on about it, lovely though it is. Have you been here long, Derek?"

[natureofsecrets]

"It is the thing to blather about, lately," he concedes with a tilt of his head, shifting agreeably through the conversation. Introductions and blather were about the extent of his plan for walking over, if he could even be said to have a plan. He saw a woman in a bathing suit who isn't afraid of one of Tolkien's heftier tomes--coming over to talk feels, in retrospect, automatic. Ingrained, might be the word. "Weather and dinosaurs." That he's hardly the first or last to appear out there is, unsurprisingly, about as comforting as the knowledge that he could get sent back for round two.

"I think it's coming up on a year, soon," he answers, and he finds himself as interested in that as she might be; he hasn't really thought of it before. "You seem pleasant enough now, doctor, you must have been here long enough to recover."

[lastof_five]

Helen shook her head, smile wide but eyes a little guarded. No sense in being complacent in any situation, especially not one as ephemeral as the island had proven to be. Best to be on guard.

"For a brief respite, but I don't trust it. I don't think it's wise to trust something that hasn't rhyme or reason. Of course, that may change in time. I might settle down and have a family and eke out an existence."

It was hard not to notice the children, few as they were. When in crisis, people always clung to the familiar and there was nothing more basic and nuclear than a family, whether the traditional sort or the adopted.

"Or I might spend my days on the beach reading Tolkien and wishing I'd pop home. You've been here a year...which side of the coin are you?"

[natureofsecrets]

It's a good question, one Morgan doesn't often get. Perhaps the house full of teenagers and the general ease with which he approached the minutiae of his extended vacation made him seem pretty settled. "I think I'm somewhere in the middle," he answers truthfully. "I help run a boarding house for the orphaned kids we get, and I love doing it--but it's not really as exciting as my last job."

Not to mention, he'd had family at home, and a team that was as-good-as. He's not sure he'll ever fully settle into a place where he might not get to see them again.

[lastof_five]

Someone who contributed to the community then. Helen thought that was a good sign; contributing to the good of society was always a positive in her book. It had always been the way she'd gone about engaging with the world, after all.

"I'm practicing medicine," Helen said by way of agreement and offered a little shrug. "Not nearly as exciting as what I was used to, not by far, but I suppose this island is trying to tell me I need something approaching a break. I tend to work full-on with no breaks."