They had lights inside their eyes, they had lights inside their eyes.

[notaparker]

Not that the clinic isn't a marvel of coconut-radio-esque science, but it's a relief to be out of there. Lying around with no company but my own thoughts -- and, okay, a reasonably steady stream of visitors bringing snacks and episodes of Archer -- isn't really my idea of a good time. I'm not always the biggest fan of my own company

Comments

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy's been running since he woke up in the welcome arms of youth. Every chance he gets, he wakes up and he heads out for a run. He tries to avoid the main pathway and normally that means cutting through the graveyard. Typically, that takes him far away from people.

Today, well, today it doesn't. When he sees who it is, he's not surprised. McCoy slows to a stop, breathing in sharply as he takes her in. "Heard you found some trouble," he says, trying to keep his voice light to keep the worry out of it.

[notaparker]

Oh, humor as a way of avoiding things, you are my favorite thing.

"I wouldn't say found, I wasn't looking," I say. "I just kinda tripped over it. People really shouldn't leave their trouble lying in the middle of the street for people to... trip... over."

That was a lot of words. That was too many words. Not normally, but at present, I'm going to have to take a moment to get the old lungs back to capacity.

[leftwithmybones]

He'd lingered over the operating doctors when she got brought in, but at the time, he'd had just a bit too much to drink. It's a sobering thought -- horrible as that wording is -- but it's showed him that maybe he ought to be a bit more stringent in taking care of himself. "You okay?" he asks, a bit quieter than before. "All joking bullshit aside?"

[notaparker]

"All joking bullshit aside?" I say, then shrug, tightly, slightly hunched in on myself. "Not really. I'll heal. It's fine. I get to live, so, you know, that's swell."

And more than any of the denizens of Rapture get to say.

[leftwithmybones]

"And this graveyard visit thing, is this a new morbid hobby you kids are making popular?" he asks, jumping right back to the humor after exactly a few seconds away from it. Nobody ever said he was comfortable with this, even if he did care. "Or is it just a side-effect of the near-dying thing."

[notaparker]

"You know me, always jumping on the latest trend," I say, clamping down on the urge to simply snap the actual reason at him. I still might, who knows, I'm not in the most stable of moods right now. "It helps with my emo poetry."

[leftwithmybones]

"Which you're never to bring into our lab," McCoy insists. "I will not turn my of work into a beat poetry house, especially not for any kind of angst," he says, upper lip curling in mild disgust. "So, speaking of...when are you coming back to work?"

[notaparker]

It's a good question. I hesitate over it for a moment, wondering if there's even any point -- what good could I do, when I've proven so resoundingly useless down in Rapture?

But that's my answer, that's my reason.

"Soon," I say. "My brain isn't injured, my hands are fine. I just... I'd like to be able to actually help, actually fix something. I'd like that a lot."

I need to remind myself I can. I need to be useful, I need to accomplish some actual good.

[leftwithmybones]

"Well, the tomatoes are close to harvest." Sure, it doesn't sound like much, but ever since he started to breed vaccines into those tomatoes, they're chock full of all the vitamins that people need. "I was thinking of cultivating the new crop to be a little bit more resistant to flu and fever. It's gonna mean a lot of time with the microscope and cultures. You able to do that?"

[notaparker]

"Able? Boss, you me and microscopes and cultures," I say, "I am all about the microscopes and cultures. Sit me down, I will microscope the heck out of those cultures."

This isn't as much of an exaggeration as it may seem. I like science, okay? This should hardly be news. And flu-resistant tomatoes might not sound like the flashiest of scientific endeavours, but it's useful. I could do with that.

It's also unlikely to get my face punched in, and right now that's probably for the best, too.

[leftwithmybones]

"That's my girl," McCoy says with a proud smile, grateful that they're moving away from the whole graveyard thing, even if he's still curious as to what the hell she's doing spending her time in a place like this. He ignores it, mostly because he doesn't want to spend time thinking about the vaccine sitting in his lab, untouched, and the life it didn't save. "Are we seriously having this conversation in a graveyard, though? Look, I'm a doctor, not a necrophiliac or whatever they call 'em these days. How about I take you somewhere closer to civilization just in case you start bleeding all over the place?"

[notaparker]

"...they call them mourners, Doc Boss," I say. "People who hang out in graveyards are mourners. Unless they want to have sex with dead people, which, those're still necrophiliacs, I don't think we have slang for that. Let's, okay, we can book."

[leftwithmybones]

"Come on, you have to at least indulge my worrying and let me do a scan," he insists. "I'll even let you calibrate the settings on the tricorder if you're good about it," he offers, like that's a bribe that's going to get much traction.

[notaparker]

"I get to do the whole scan and tell you how it looks," I counter, "which will be fine, since I got patched up and given leave to go home, already."

I worry at what that tricorder can find out about me. I'd like to know, obviously, if it turns out all my genetic anomalies are still there, just suppressed and dormant, that's pretty interesting.

I'd just like to find out about it without the genetic anomalies becoming public knowledge. Or even slightly less private knowledge.

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy arches a brow, as if to instinctively dismiss her and say 'no', but he guesses that eventually, he's going to need to let her grown her own wings and fly. Whether she gets too close to the sun is up to her own damn self. "One scan, you tell me what you find, and I compare it to the data later," he challenges with a counter-offer.

[notaparker]

"...deal," I say. It's a compromise, and it still means things get awkward depending on what information comes up in the scan. But if there is something compromising in there, it gives me time to work out an approach.

And if there's nothing, it's good practice with a follow-up evaluation, which is also beneficial.