Having acquired clothing that is not drafty and dignity-sapping, John has also irritably shucked the sling which he didn't really need anyway and trudges stiffly along to Liz's room. Perhaps he is here to catch up on the latest with Anathema Hilton-Hussein X%%i!ishiaarr's abortion!
"Hey." Stubborn adherence to casual greetings probably only highlight the mutual protectiveness the family has, but he's not really capable of changing.
At least he's not crying, Liz has definitely had enough of that. For a couple of hours, anyway.
Claire brought some more interesting magazines, so Liz has been occupying herself with an issue of TIME, but most of the 'news' is producing a lot of angry mumbling and page-tearing. She looks pretty happy to put it down.
Outside of Silent Hill, John will fully deny crying at any point and time. Sometimes it's a macho thing, and sometimes it's just another kind of reaction that rarely ever occurs to him. He shuffles over to the bed to claim the chair moved over by various visitors.
"It's the pants." He slumps, leaning his weight on his left elbow against his knee. "They just restore normality after a few days of hospital fashion."
"Pants sound pretty great right now." Liz has bitched her way into scrubs, which is clearly a vast improvement over the paper gowns. Scrubs were designed by someone with a definite cruel streak, but they don't have quite the Nazi sadist flair of two sheets of tissue paper held together by wire.
"If they're letting you out you should probably tell Heather what's going on, I guess." Liz hasn't actually met Heather yet; she's just this mystical construct which has apparently been feeding Christmas.
"Okay," says John, who has no idea who Heather is either. But he assumes she'll be around to be told. He frowns, resentful and not quite cognizant enough to care about hiding it. "How long're they keeping you?"
Having someone she's never met in their house is disconcerting and uncomfortable for Liz, but Henry wouldn't be Henry if he hadn't let Heather stay there. Eileen offered to take Heather in when she was out of the hospital, and Liz was a little too eager to take her up on this, perhaps.
She would actually prefer to talk about the possibly non-existent Heather for as long as possible, because anything else they might talk about right now is Going to the Larder and Unsealing a Tin of Awkward. Oh well.
"Indefinitely." Her fingernails are fascinating. "Not in this room or anything, but. A while. I'm not really okay."
Not that any of them are, but that was easier to say than she thought it would be.
"You're never going to be okay." His voice implies the unsaid preceding 'so what?' but he hadn't meant it as anything other than honesty, a sort of limited commiseration. "When you're ready to leave, we should just leave."
"You know John, that would be be absolutely wonderful. Not that I don't love this hospital more than life itself, but I'm not allowed to, because once they decide my various vital signs are at 'unsafe levels' they look at me through a small window forever, and they're unsafe right now."
This is the most voice Liz has given to the fact that she is angry and upset, because it seems like that should speak for itself, really. Her voice is salty-sweet, clipped and sharp, but she expects John to know it isn't directed at him. The only person at which she could point what feels uncomfortably like disappointment is dead. Or trying to help her. Really. That's what the Bureau is doing. Helping.
"So they wanna cover their asses, it's not like we'd abduct you to Vegas and burn down the Bellagio." As he sounds entirely too reasonable when it's not really Liz he's arguing with, one might suspect he's given thought to that very adventure. For whatever reason.
"I like the BRPD and everything, Liz, but life's just a bit short for catering to this bureaucratical bullshit. If you wanna go, we'll see to it that we go." Though brittle, it sounds like John has retained a healthy sense of ego.
"You're very sweet." Yes, that's definitely the word. "If you figure out a place that would be all right to explode at any moment without hurting anyone, let me know."
Liz pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to pull the headache out with her fingers. "Covering their asses, yes. But they know how to handle this. They've been dealing with it for 18 years, and probably before that. I'm not the first firestarter to work here."
Be careful what you say; your conversation may be recorded and used against you in a court of whatever courts decide whether or not people can be qualified as dangers to society. Liz is the only weapon of mass destruction with the wounded ego of an eleven year old girl. It's a fairly dubious honor.
"I don't have to stay forever, okay? I can't even use it yet. But I can't spend the rest of my life being scared."
"We could figure something out." John stubbornly sticks to his party line. His attitude towards government agencies varies according to how he feels any given day. At the moment he'd like all of them to be together and elsewhere, so his level of concern for the Bureau's involvement is low whereas in the past he's more or less accepted the inevitable hospital stays.
He sighs, a signal of irritable resignation. "And later we're gonna have to talk about what you did with us. Later, like maybe in three years or something because fuck it, I think the to-do list is long enough already."
Liz sits up so abruptly her head swims and her ribs say things like 'ow u h0r,' presuming ribs communicate in netspeak. She ignores this.
"You haven't told anyone, have you? I didn't know I could do that, and I don't think they did either. I don't want them to know. And--you're right. Lots to talk about." Moving details to arrange, questionably legal dating afoot, destroying the economic structure of the planet by sacrificing every sheep ever, that sort of thing.
There's a blink and a frown for Liz's reaction, but he really only bosses Warren around for stuff like that, not Liz or indeed anyone else.
"No, it's just something -- something I've been thinking about." Well now he sounds a little uncomfortable, but since this is a '... moving on!' subject, he doesn't elaborate either. Possibly also since there is a potential Helena tangent therein as well.
"There--okay. Follow me on this and pretend it makes sense. Humor me. Every since I could do this, it's never been just mine. You know how before we worked together it was--you felt like it was separate from you. I don't have that."
Liz sits up a little more carefully this time, putting one hand flat on her ribs. There we go. Less ouch. She looks carefully at John, presumably because this way she'll be able to tell if she is, in fact, babbling nonsensically. "A lot of what they did here made me better. And then I went to the monastery and--well, there really wasn't much I couldn't do anymore." This is just a pale statement of fact, there's little to no pride in it.
"But that, in there. That was because of us, because of who we are, and I don't want it to be dissected or taken apart, because...because it was beautiful. I don't know if it will ever happen again or even if it should, but--well."
'Moving on' sounded strangely like 'explaining in great detail' there.
While John himself can succumb to minor nonsensical babbling under duress, he's too interested in what Liz has to say to be a good barometer of that. Not that that's happening. Not that they'd know! In any case a great deal of it confirms what John was thinking.
He rubs at the side of his face, thoughts visibly rearranging to accomodate the new information. "I'm ... glad it worked out." That is one mangly understatement.
Liz nods gravely at him. "I can see that you are. Careful, you wouldn't want to strain anything." She's hiding a smile. On the surface more things at 'home' appear to be normal than don't.
Despite the fact that she knows damn well it can't be that simple, she's not going to push anyone for heartfelt outpourings. In connection with Silent Hill, they're never good. And talking about it doesn't help.
"Hey." Stubborn adherence to casual greetings probably only highlight the mutual protectiveness the family has, but he's not really capable of changing.
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Claire brought some more interesting magazines, so Liz has been occupying herself with an issue of TIME, but most of the 'news' is producing a lot of angry mumbling and page-tearing. She looks pretty happy to put it down.
"Hi. You look refreshingly normal."
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"It's the pants." He slumps, leaning his weight on his left elbow against his knee. "They just restore normality after a few days of hospital fashion."
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"If they're letting you out you should probably tell Heather what's going on, I guess." Liz hasn't actually met Heather yet; she's just this mystical construct which has apparently been feeding Christmas.
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She would actually prefer to talk about the possibly non-existent Heather for as long as possible, because anything else they might talk about right now is Going to the Larder and Unsealing a Tin of Awkward. Oh well.
"Indefinitely." Her fingernails are fascinating. "Not in this room or anything, but. A while. I'm not really okay."
Not that any of them are, but that was easier to say than she thought it would be.
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This is the most voice Liz has given to the fact that she is angry and upset, because it seems like that should speak for itself, really. Her voice is salty-sweet, clipped and sharp, but she expects John to know it isn't directed at him. The only person at which she could point what feels uncomfortably like disappointment is dead. Or trying to help her. Really. That's what the Bureau is doing. Helping.
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"I like the BRPD and everything, Liz, but life's just a bit short for catering to this bureaucratical bullshit. If you wanna go, we'll see to it that we go." Though brittle, it sounds like John has retained a healthy sense of ego.
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Liz pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to pull the headache out with her fingers. "Covering their asses, yes. But they know how to handle this. They've been dealing with it for 18 years, and probably before that. I'm not the first firestarter to work here."
Be careful what you say; your conversation may be recorded and used against you in a court of whatever courts decide whether or not people can be qualified as dangers to society. Liz is the only weapon of mass destruction with the wounded ego of an eleven year old girl. It's a fairly dubious honor.
"I don't have to stay forever, okay? I can't even use it yet. But I can't spend the rest of my life being scared."
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He sighs, a signal of irritable resignation. "And later we're gonna have to talk about what you did with us. Later, like maybe in three years or something because fuck it, I think the to-do list is long enough already."
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"You haven't told anyone, have you? I didn't know I could do that, and I don't think they did either. I don't want them to know. And--you're right. Lots to talk about." Moving details to arrange, questionably legal dating afoot, destroying the economic structure of the planet by sacrificing every sheep ever, that sort of thing.
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"No, it's just something -- something I've been thinking about." Well now he sounds a little uncomfortable, but since this is a '... moving on!' subject, he doesn't elaborate either. Possibly also since there is a potential Helena tangent therein as well.
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Liz sits up a little more carefully this time, putting one hand flat on her ribs. There we go. Less ouch. She looks carefully at John, presumably because this way she'll be able to tell if she is, in fact, babbling nonsensically. "A lot of what they did here made me better. And then I went to the monastery and--well, there really wasn't much I couldn't do anymore." This is just a pale statement of fact, there's little to no pride in it.
"But that, in there. That was because of us, because of who we are, and I don't want it to be dissected or taken apart, because...because it was beautiful. I don't know if it will ever happen again or even if it should, but--well."
'Moving on' sounded strangely like 'explaining in great detail' there.
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He rubs at the side of his face, thoughts visibly rearranging to accomodate the new information. "I'm ... glad it worked out." That is one mangly understatement.
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Despite the fact that she knows damn well it can't be that simple, she's not going to push anyone for heartfelt outpourings. In connection with Silent Hill, they're never good. And talking about it doesn't help.
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