pt. 1
How many times had Eli flirted with the hatred in his heart, turning it around his fingers with intent to grasp hold and pull it loose like the pin of a ragefilled grenade? How many times did he leave the building, urged out my the janitorial staff on strict orders from the boss, only to flop against an outer wall and, leaning forward, to wrap those same fingers around with handfuls of curled hair, pulling until his scalp was sore and he was bent double near the doors, ignoring the eyes of the janitors flashing behind the doors they were locking up, looking one to the other- but neither of them made the move to go against Lightman's orders. Neither of them dared.
Well, those days are over, now. Whether from cold or from hunger the fire inside had died down. When a guy stops counting calories to make sure he's not taking in too many and starts counting calories to make sure he takes in enough on any given day, those extremeties of emotiveness begin to shut down, and anger goes into the bin with the other luxuries he simply can't afford.
You would have thought that flame, one breath from going out, would sputter and wave and ultimately fail altogether. Lightman had certainly been looking for it, as much as Eli had taken it upon himself to cease his complaints to the establishment. He'd watched the changes in his unpaid intern at a distance, fully intending to reverse the process when he saw the young man at the end of his proverbial rope, thus, to all apperances, abandoned. It had been nothing less than a fascinating show, to watch the layers peel back from the man who had professed already to be so open. Lightman would show him the scouring it took to get down to the real, the vital truth. Or... he thought he would. Just as the weeks were shuffling past in which Lightman began to seriously consider pulling the brakes on this little project of his (a talking-to from Gillian had spurred such considerations), he was veering down the corridor at his usual breakneck speed when a sight struck him so funny that he strode backward no less than three times to pause there in the corridor, line of sight angling through a half-corridor and thence through the back wall of the lab, all window to the waist- there to linger a moment on the intern settled in his usual fishbowl. Something was wrong. And even Lightman's lightning wit took several long moments to figure out what it was. There was Eli, at some customary piece of business, a set of large high definition headphones swallowing up a large portion of either side of his head, his eyes flashing with the laptop's presentation of the readout on which they were intently focused, fingers moving over the keyboard as if they were possessed of their own spirit, with a quiet confidence and brisk efficiency. There was a subtle strength in the way his jaw was set and a singular focus in his entire being.
The man whom Lightman had watched for weeks plummeting precipitously into uselessness and helplessness had all of a sudden ceased to plummet. That fire that had been quenched with months of cold and hunger was no longer guttering, but had found a singular spot of safety at the young man's core, and was burning like a candle of vigil in the dark of the night, steady and serene.
Before Lightman could fathom the full meaning of this jarring halt in Eli's descent, the intern's head bore up under the burden of the heavy headset, and, with a slow, deliberate motion, turned until his eyes were fixed upon the eyes that he seemed to have been able to feel from all that distance away. They sat there, those eyes, steadily engaged with the eyes of the other. No hatred, no anger, but, on the other hand, no fear, no shrinking. Not a smile, not a frown, just a look, staring as if straight through the Doctor for the count of three before he bowed his head and turned it back to his work.
Lightman, released from the transfixing stare, gave a half an unsettled swallow. What in the name of hell had he done?