Summary: Harry encourages Cassie to talk to her unconscious brother. The conversation leads down an unexpected path.
a/n: I will simply say that I blame vorchagirl for all of this and anything that derives from it.
Talk to Him
Before Cassie Ryder even made her own recovery, she was at her brother's bedside. A pattern had emerged even in that first visit—approaching Doctor Harry Carlyle with a general question about Pollux's status then the conversation would evolve into more specific questions until she reached some point of satisfaction or frustration, which was when she'd grab a chair and sit with her younger brother. Though in those early days and weeks, she mostly just sat there in silence with one of Pollux's hands wrapped in both of hers.
It might have been the third or fourth time that she visited when after their usual string of questioning Harry's attention kept returning to the young woman with the striking sea green hair. With no other patients in the bay at the time, little else held his interest.
He noted the firm set in her jaw as she rested her chin upon their clasped hands, saw the glistening of her aqua eyes in the unforgiving light of the medical area. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, which confirmed the concerns contained in the reports from Dr. T'Perro. He might have taken himself out of the field, but that didn't alleviate his investment in the health of the human pathfinder—even if Cassie Ryder was not the pathfinder he signed on with.
Alec Ryder's daughter bore an impossible mantle. The Initiative planned on four pathfinders who would all be tasked with the weight this young woman now carried all on her own. As that thought played through his head, he stood, his chair scraping against the smooth deck with the swift motion.
He glanced over and sure enough, Ryder was staring at him. Her eyes, clouded over like the sea after a storm. They'd only barely reached Andromeda and she'd already seen so much, lost so much. That gaze didn't waver as he started toward her. "You know, centuries worth of research data suggests that hearing the voice of a loved one while in a coma can actually speed and increase recovery rates."
Once he reached her brother's bedside, he sat on the empty bed on the opposite side of Pollux Ryder.
"I tried it once. I felt ridiculous. Like I was talking to myself."
Harry looked around, then back at her. "There's no one else here. And I certainly won't assume anything."
"I keep thinking I should tell him about Dad. But then I wonder if it might just do more harm than good. He was closer to Dad than I was," she said, blinking those bright eyes at Harry. The rapidness of the movement and the strain in her voice made him think she might be staving off her own grief.
"That's a tough choice." His hands pressed into the mattress beside him as he moved to cross his legs, placing one ankle on the opposite knee. "Would you want to know, if you were in his place?"
"Yeah, but I always wanted to know things that maybe I didn't have any business knowing. I mean outside of his lab and experiments, Pol was kind of always happy with just knowing what people told him."
Harry didn't interrupt, he just listened, let her talk as much or as little as she liked.
"I mean he still believed in Santa at sixteen. Sure, Mom was good, but I figured it out years earlier."
"And you didn't tell him?" Harry asked with a laugh.
Her vibrant hair brushed across her forehead as she shook her head. "Not after Mom threatened to give me nothing but coal."
His laughter echoed off the smooth and metallic surfaces around them; hers was more reserved, quieter, but genuine all the same.
"Pol could be a little gullible when we were kids. I think training and working at the station jaded him a little. Made him almost normal. Or at least closer to the expectation of it," she said, flashing a grin at her brother. "Sometimes I sit here and I just want to jump on his bed, like when we were kids and he refused to wake up."
"I'd have to advise against that particular approach," Harry said with a wince.
"Yeah, probably just make your job harder."
"And your wait longer."
Cassie frowned and dipped her head again, staring at the restful face of her twin. "Do you really think he'll be okay?"
When she turned those big aqua eyes on the doctor, his heart turned to stone in his chest. He had to swallow twice to get the lump out of his throat. "I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure of it."
She just nodded and looked away, going silent again.
After a few minutes, Harry got to his feet again, but when he passed near her, Cassie grabbed his hand. "I never got to thank you. For what you did for me on Habitat Seven."
Harry didn't know what to say. Finally, he settled on a simple, "You're welcome." He could have told her that she didn't need to thank him, it was his job, but it felt too impersonal. And saying that he refused to let her father's sacrifice be in vain felt wrong, too. While both were partly true, he'd done his duty for himself, for his friend, and for her. She deserved more than a glimpse at life before it was wrested from her grasp.
He placed his hand over hers and squeezed it gently, earning a faint smile.
Her warm fingers slipped out of his grasp, far too soon by some intangible measure in the back of his brain. "I should probably go," she said as she stood and stretched her arms above her head.
"You can stay as long as you like." Harry became all too aware of a part of him that truly hoped she might just stay, might steal the lonely silence that could haunt the cryo bay in the slower moments.
Her omni-tool flared to life on her wrist. "I would, except I promised we'd get back out there as soon as the resupply was complete," she said.
He noticed the subtle downward turn to the corners of her mouth and wondered if maybe she disliked saying it as much as he found he disliked hearing it.
She bent over her brother and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Don't give the doc here any trouble while I'm gone," she whispered against her brother's skin. She stood again and walked towards Harry. "Thanks again, Doctor Carlyle."
"Harry, please," he insisted.
Cassie merely nodded. "Keep me informed, okay."
"I could say the same to you," Harry replied.
"Yeah, maybe next time."
"I look forward to it."
With another soft smile, she took a few backwards steps and turned toward the door. Once alone again, well almost, Harry fell into the chair she'd vacated and looked at her brother.
There were moments when the cryo bay was quiet when Harry wondered if he'd made the right choices—joining the Initiative, coming to Andromeda, passing on the chance to remain with the Pathfinder's team. From what he gleaned from Lexi's notes, it seemed like a wiser choice.
He keyed up the interface for the omni-tool on his wrist and fired off a quick message to Dr. T'Perro. It contained a few odd suggestions on how to possibly garner better cooperation from the pathfinder in terms of doctor's orders; they were tricks he learned in his first tour as a combat medic with Alec. If there was one thing Harry learned quick; it was that Ryders could be hard-headed and stubborn. Sometimes you had to take a roundabout approach with them, but one trick that had always proved successful had been the reminder that people counted on them to be at their best. When nothing else did the trick, that usually worked.
After sharing that little secret, Harry sat back and found himself hoping that it might work on Cassie as well as it used to work on Alec.