creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic.And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.
Specific notation alert: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on Fanfiction.net under the penname of 'Osidiano'. The first line of this chapter comes from a fanfic by my good friend Delle.
Author's Note:This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the dissapearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P
A HUGE apology to everyone at FF.net for my strangeness, bitchiness, and moving-around-ness; and of course for all the false alarms. I'm here to stay this time.
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11
Big Brother is Watching
All of life's best distractions have the word 'fuck' in them.
Miyako had been trailing behind a doctor down the halls when they passed the monitor; had been hanging behind him and numbly nodding her head as he told her and Iori (in the convoluted tongue that doctors use) that they really didn't know what was wrong with Hikari, that they really didn't know what to do to help Hikari and essentially that while she would probably be just as well off with her friends and family they wanted to keep her at the hospital, the bastards. Miyako had been wringing her hands and occasionally looking back down the sterile white walkway to the door--long out of view--behind which they had left the sedated but still rebellious Taichi in a nurse's care, when they passed the monitor. She choked, and did a double-take, absolutely certain but at the same time completely unsure that her eyes were playing tricks on her. She had skidded to a halt in her tracks, and when she looked again the words were different.
Ah! Very good Miya-chan. So nice to know you're paying attention. There was an incessantly chirpy quality to them, despite the blocky and ancient typeface, as if she could hear the writer of the strange messages laughing in her mind--the feeling was sharp, and static. The words soon dissapeared, to be replaced by a new message. No worries dear--I don't really mean that, though your reaction seems to support the idea. You can close your mouth now.
For a moment she drew a blank on the last comment, and then Miyako realized that her jaw was indeed slack as she stared into a vacant hospital room, at the computer (a heart monitor?) whose power was clearly off; the cord unplugged and neatly coiled away. She did close her mouth, but it only stayed closed for a moment before beginning to work in disbelief; in an effort to speak and voice a hundred questions.
People are staring Miya-chan. Come in, won't you?
Come in? Come in and do what? Did it want her to talk to it again, to sit and speak with another disconnected monitor? Miyako swayed on her feet--oh god, was she going to faint? She found herself wondering again if maybe she really was going crazy, or imagining this, or dreaming this or--
"Miyako?" Iori spoke softly from just behind her, and took her rigid hand. "I'll go in with you, if you want."
She blinked, snapped from her near-swoon by surprise, and stared at him as he continued quietly. His eyes--too solemn, and faintly narrowed now--did not move from the monitor in the empty room. "I don't think the doctor has noticed we're not still following him, anyway."
For a moment she said nothing, and then squeezed Iori's hand slightly. She, too, spoke quietly--silence seemed important at that moment, though she did not know why. "You see it too. . .?"
Rather than speaking a response, or nodding his head, Iori pulled on Miyako's hand faintly, and started to walk into the room. "I. . .think it might be better if we don't think about it." His voice caught faintly, and his hand shook ever so slightly where it held onto hers--trying as always to seem so much older and in control.
Looking down at him Miyako felt. . .a regret, of sorts. A strange foreboding, an almost-fear that begged her to turn away and take Iori with her--far, far away and pretend this was not happening. To escape it. . .
Worry worry, Miya-chan. Mid-way through the message, the typed words began to take on a slightly more fluid look; began to become that archaic scrawl she had seen before on her own blank screen. Do you think I'm out to get you? To lay bloody hands upon the pale neck of innocence? The poetic words, if one called them that, mocked her, laughed in sliding sibilant static. Behind the elegant handwriting long columns began to run the screen in vivid, data-green blurs--perhaps, once or twice, Miyako's eyes caught a zero or one.
You might be right, I suppose.
Somewhere echoing down the halls she heard running footsteps; shouting and a staccato jerk-pounding sound. They seemed distant--they seemed ominous, and she held tighter to Iori's hand, pulling the younger boy close to her side and putting her arm around him. She did not look down at him. The aching bright green of the scrolling numerals would have burned against the deeper green of his eyes; and so she did not look down but watched with strange fascination as the letters no longer typed but carelessly scrawled themselves out.
In a very roundabout and wholly uninintentional manner; but right at that.
Outside the pounding and voices grew louder--something about a jammed door, an unstable patient and damnit why won't it open? A handful of hospital staff ran down the hall outside the room--they did not glance to the side, they did not see the young boy and girl clinging to each other with uncertain eyes before a dead screen run with elegant white and blinding green. Perhaps, even if they had looked. . .they would have seen nothing.
Beside her, Iori ceased to move forward. "Miyako, wait. . ."
Wait. She stopped, blinking, to realize that she had very nearly walked into the monitor. A shiver ran through her--the thought of touching it chilled her, made her skin crawl--and she looked away from it. Against Iori's eyes the green did burn, and mesh strangely--green on green on green forever, as if the colors swallowed themselves; or his eyes. She looked away from him, as well.
"Miyako, isn't. . ." He paused, pulling on her hand faintly. "Isn't Hikari's room down there. . .?" We should check on her, his voice added. We should go, because right now I'm scared but I don't want to admit that. He pulled her hand again: oh please Miyako, can't we please go and check on her?
The computer--or rather, whatever was using the computer--answered before Miyako had the chance. Hikari-chan isn't in her room, dear. More than ever Miyako felt that she heard it more than read it--must have heard more than read it, because she still stared fixedly at the blank wall and nowhere near the screen. The quality of the smooth, static voice was almost a purr, and from the monitor or near it came a soft sound--a dull stacatto ticking that seemed to fill the room like water. Hikari-chan's an awful long ways away. . .so much farther than a hospital bed.
Outside--in another world that neither Miyako nor Iori could still hear--the low buzz of a caretaker's powertool droned through the halls. There was the thud and clatter of a door falling from its hinges; there was a brief chatter and hush. Inside the room, despite its open door, only hush reached through that terrible and trembling sound.
They aren't going to find her there, Miya-chan.
Miyako closed her eyes to the wall.
What if you're right, Miya-chan-- in a terribly roundabout
"Quiet. . ." She whispered it, choked the word out as loud as she could beyond the dull and metallic lump in her throat. It was lost in the sound, in the
and fully unintentional way, Miya-chan--
voice that wasn't really a voice because nobody was saying anything. Because there was no one, there was nothing in the room except for her, and Iori, and an empty bed, and
if I really do mean to throttle the poor, pitiful remnants of innocence
a heart monitor with its cord unplugged and coiled almost too neatly on the trolley below it. Somewhere after the last 'Miya-chan' she suddenly realized she had found a change in the voice--somewhere after the last 'Miya-chan' she realized that the voice which was not and could not be a voice was familiar in a
(terribly roundabout and fully unintentional )
nightmarish way she could not put her finger on. Was. . .less static, less sibilant but no less low, or cold. Which gave her, surely, no more comfort except perhaps in the fact that for all of its words it at least was familiar;
from her pale little neck?
was somehow at least human. Her hand left Iori's and she covered her ears to close it out--the disdainful mocking, the carelessly cruel sardonism. It slithered through her fingers and still she heard it whisper, felt it fall like cold glass at her ear.
You had better hurry, Miya-chan.
She nearly screamed--it felt in that moment as if thin and icy lips murmured the words just short of touching her hand; it felt as if gloves hiding hands that almost burned like frost had touched her face, had wrapped arms around her briefly. Where the unseen arms circled her, something hard and metal at the wrist dug into her side. You had better move fast. Because the ball's a rollin', pretty girl; and we don't play slow ball.
A small, a living and warm hand reached up for hers and she clutched at it gratefully--clutched at Iori's trembling hand, held it against her and choked a sobbing breath when the boy's touch banished the frigid hands and too, too familiar voice. She opened her eyes faintly only to find them filled with cold tears. . .only to find that they were turned, once again, to the monitor with its vivid green and vivid white. The message--blocky, basic typeface once more--was simple but strange now
(The water's always deepest in the shallow end)
and, sitting upon the coiled cord as if precisely where they belonged, were two small objects. White, and color; and a soft glow. . .
Miyako did not move, and so it was Iori that reached out to take their D-3s from their place on the trolley with his free hand. He looked up at her for a moment, watched her tremble more than he and then simply held them both close against him.
Outside, sound resumed with a violent snap that shattered the tick tick ticking to harsh shards. A cry, people scrambling and shouting and a violent cacaphony: Where where, how it isn't possible it can't be where did she--
Iori bit his lip, and closed his eyes to the screen
(the bottom's always farther than it seems)
and closed his ears to the noise; to the panic, the fearful shouting which could only have one particular meaning. He clung to Miyako's grip, and he held his hand out--the D-3s felt cold, burned against his palm. Was this the right choice? His mouth moved minutely to form the words, but he did not know what they were--what if this was the wrong choice?
There was light, and hush once more.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Considering herself primarily a woman of action, there was little Tailmon hated more than being left behind.
But left behind she had been indeed, and now she slouched against the leg of Miyako's bed, eyeing Hikari's white and pink D-3 with narrowed eyes as she tossed it from paw to paw. Moving in and out of her peripheral vision Poromon busied himself with cleaning the floor of wires and computer parts; while above her on the bed itself Wormmon's sobbing had faded to wet sniffles and the occasional hiccough, and Chibimon's loud and pleading 'don't cry's trailed off to soft sympathetic mumbles. Something was wrong with Hikari--horribly, horribly wrong in ways she dare not imagine--and she had been left behind with the children; left behind to babysit. 'Digimon won't be welcome at the hospital', they had told her; and ushered her back here into Miyako's quiet room. She had stopped trying to swallow the resentment quite a while ago.
"It's not right. . ." She hissed the words, ears laying flat and tail lashing. She should be there for Hikari. She knew that smell--that coppery seawater smell like too much water diluting too much blood--and she dare not leave her Hikari alone to that. Dare not trust the hospital not to push her further away. It wasn't right. It wasn't right. It wasn--
"I'm worried too. . ."
Her tail paused in mid-lash, then snapped into the rest of the motion as her eyes wandered from the digivice to Poromon--he was hovering just in front of her now; a woeful ball of pink with nervous blue eyes. He fidgeted under Tailmon's silent glare, feathers ruffling slightly, and then continued. "I'm worried about. . .well, about all of them."
"All of them," a soft growl, the faint twitch of claws--she wouldn't really hurt Poromon, but even the bluff felt good right now, "aren't suffering like Hikari is." There was a certain satisfaction seeing Poromon cringe like that, and she couldn't bring herself to feel bad for that cold pleasure.
"A. . Ah, Tail--"
She held up a paw to silence him, ears pricking up and her foul mood pushed aside--there was a sound at the window; a small skittering of small claws. The hair along her back and long tail began to bristle and rise, and she stood, brushing past the younger digi. "Quiet. . ."
Poro fluttered aside obliginly, and Tail dropped to all fours, prowling towards the window. She paused a moment before leaping up to the sill, and pressing her face against the glass to angle her gaze downward, and around. But there was nothing. Puzzled she moved the other end of the sill, and did the same there--still, nothing. Sniffing the air at the edges of the window there was only rain, and wet; perhaps underneath lay the faintest hint of something repti--no, not reptillian but almost amphibian, something like both. And. . .digital. But where was i--
"You would be really easy to ambush, you know."
Tail yowled, jumping faintly and consequently falling from the narrow sill--her claws caught in the wood and she pulled herself back up, scrambling faintly. Her tail twitched, ears laying flat but still ringing--the voice had been high enough to hurt, thin and reedy even through the muffling of the glass. And it had come from the one angle she had forgotten to search.
Lowering her head, she rolled her eyes up. And yes. . .there in the edge of visibility was something vividly azure against the outside wall, and one narrowed dark eye looking down at her. Finding itself seen the thing shifted out of her vision--she caught, in the movement, a brief glimpse of small hands with tiny white claws, of large three-toed feet with thick white spades for talons; of a long thin tail before it vanished. "Who are you?" She did not bother keeping the suspicion, or the irritation from her voice.
"Your partners are in trouble, I don't think you care who I am." Tail cringed, putting her hands over her ears to ease the ache in her head. "All of them--you have to follow them."
Poro now close behind her, Tail grit her teeth--it took all of her somewhat considerable self-restraint not to burst through the window and throttle the speaker. "Why should we believe you?"
"Can you afford not to? The Digital World--you have to hurry, why are you nitpicking over this?"
No. The answer was no, of course, because Tailmon already knew that Hikari was in trouble. Poromon already knew, even if he didn't realize it, that Miyako was in trouble--and Iori, as well as Takeru, were with her. They all knew that Ken was in trouble, and that Daisuke had probably gotten himself into trouble. Behind her she heard and felt Poromon move away, fluttering over to awaken Chibimon and Wormmon; babbling that they had to go back quickly, quickly. Tail growled faintly, and shook her head. Something about this was wrong. . . "Why are you telling us this?"
For a moment there was silence above her, and then the soft skittering of those miniature claws on the brickwork. "Because. . .then you'll have to do the same for me, someday." There was a short crack like whiplash as the azure tail snapped down before the window--the result of the creature, the strange digimon with its ruthlessly soprano voice, turning sharply and somehow skittering away along the building.
"Hey, hold on!" Tail pressed her paws against the window, and, knowing the thing could no longer hear her, scowled. That wasn't any kind of answer, and as much as she wanted to go running off to the Digital World now on the off chance that she might be able to help Hikari by doing so, there was something about this that kept her fur on end and her skin cold. There was something, all truth, inherently wrong abou--
Behind her she heard the rapid babble of worried young voices, the rapid click of computer keys. Her eyes went wide. "W. . .wait, don--"
She whipped around, and leapt from the sill, just in time for the clumsily opened gate to catch hold of her.
~~~~~~~~~~
Creak. Bang. Creak. Bang. Creakbang. Creak--
Taichi stopped in mid-rock as the nurse attendant shot him a dark look. He regarded her for a moment--her nervous hands, her tight lips and edgy eyes--before giving her a look of his own and letting the front legs of the chair fall to the tile floor again. Bang. He held her eyes as he did so, as if challenging her--daring her--to stop him. To tell him to stop. To give him an excuse to beat the shit out of someone here for anything. To let him vent his frustration. To--
She looked away, going back to her paperwork, and he scowled. The chair rocked back again. Creak.
The room was irritatingly small, and the noise irritatingly loud within its confined space--the white walls seemed accoustically toned specifically to amplify the rattling sounds, to toss the echoes back and forth between them. Beneath the empty fuzz of the medication Taichi's head throbbed with it, screamed with it and he wondered if maybe it wasn't infinitely worse for him than the bored and nervous nurse. He closed his eyes against the blurry pale room, watching the sound-pain burst against the darkness in hot blue-white.
They wouldn't tell him what was wrong with his sister. Bang.
They seemed to think giving him a shot and holing him up here would change that. Creak.
But he wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't just going to let something like that slide. Bang.
Because they wouldn't tell him what was wrong with his sister, and they wouldn't help his sister. Creak.
And he knew, even though those bastards would never admit it, that the only reason they wouldn't-- Bang --
was because all these doctors and nurses and experts and specialists -- Creak -- didn't actually have half a goddamned brain between them and -- Bang -- anyway had their collective head so far up their collective ass -- Creak -- they didn't even know what the fucking light of day wa--
"Onii-chan!"
Taichi choked at the voice, eyes snapping open--rather than the chair thumping forward again it toppled back as he lost his balance, spilling him onto the floor. His spine made an awkward creak-snap of its own as he crashed to the tiles but he ignored it, rolling over and scrambling to his feet. His eyes were wide now as they darted, searched the room desperately--within the hazy ring the sedatives left around the edge of his vision, he saw he was alone in the room now.
"Hi--" he stopped, his voice small and trembling against the last clattered echoes. Licking his dry lips faintly, he started again. "Hikari. . .?"
"Onii-chan, don't use words like that!"
It took a moment, through the stupor of the shots which were slowly exercising their hold on him, for Taichi to realize that Hikari's voice--too young again, frightened and thin and faintly choking again--was not coming from any point directly in the room. He blinked slowly, lids feeling weighted, and leaned against the wall. "Hikari, where. . .?"
"It. . .I don't. . ." broken by a coughing fit, the voice almost drowned in a crackling static fuzz. "I don't like it, when you use words like that. . ."
Hikari's voice was fading out again, drowning in that sharp hissing roar again. Taichi lurched forward, hands outstretched as if he could see her voice; could catch it and pull it close to him. "I won't! Hikari, where are you?" He thought he was yelling again, maybe screaming out for her again but he couldn't tell because the sedatives muffled and slurred his voice in his own ears. "I. . .I promise Hikari! Where are y--"
Stumbling forward he crashed against the wall beside the nurse's empty chair, falling back into the faint indentation of the doorframe. The knob dug hard into the small of his back, a tiny dull pain against the numb wash descending on him. For a moment the entire room was nothing more than that pale blur, the entire world no more than that monotonous digitized hum and he thought, or he knew that the shot had taken hold; that he was going to pass out and lose this brief, this tenuous communication with Hikari. That he was going to lose. . .
His lids fell before the glazing brown eyes, and he slumped, only the catching of the doorknob in his underarm holding him from the ground. The sound had focused to a location somewhere above and to the side, and for one odd moment he almost saw the nurse in her seat again, or rather through her. Was it odd? He wasn't sure; he didn't think so.
He was going to lose. . .
What? The metal knob hurt, digging into his armpit, and his side--the feeling was distant, more like sympathy pain for a stranger. Somewhere above and to the side, just beside the nurse that he couldn't quite see--and who must not have been there; surely she would have restrained him by now?--Hikari's choking cough came again, tinny and distant. He tried to look, but his eyes were still closed and refused to be opened again. Stupid shots. . .why did they have to work now? He was. . . going to lose what. . .?
"Hey, Taichi."
He still could not open his eyes, but his head lolled forward--rolled forward so that his chin rest tiredly on his chest, and through the black of his lids he could vaguely see the source of this new voice in the sense that he could vaguely see the nurse. The source was, as the nurse, only a hazy translucent blur; it had replaced the nurse in her chair, a bleary figure of faded blue and green with crossed legs and one foot tapping the air aimlessly. In the white room full of white noise its eyes were white fire, were bright with argent light in a glassy manner; mirrors beneath a fluorescent tracklight sun.
"Hey, Taichi." The voice repeated itself, the too-large eyes--were they eyes? Were they reflections?--turning to face him. The room filled with a smell of blood, of burnt tar and rubber: thick and electric like ozone it seared a line down Taichi's throat and settled in his lungs. It left a taste like the sea in his mouth, too salty so that his mouth went dry and hot. "Did you ever wonder, Taichi. . ."
Above and to the side the static shivering continued, Hikari's faint and mournful pleading continued to drown in it; lost and tinny and so far away. Taichi could no longer make out the words, if she still spoke any--only those plaintive, fragile sobs. Did he ever. . .
(Aren't you afraid, Taichi)
The figure watched him silently for what should have been a moment--the shot drew it out, stretched the second thin. Was the voice familiar, had he heard it somewhere once
(bonesbloodfirehurthatedon'twhynopleasenonotaga--)
at some indeterminate point in history? Was it-- The figure shifted again and continued, voice somehow requiring him to hear only its careless words. "Did you ever wonder what happens
(that you might possibly lose, Taichi)
if you. . ." And here it paused, the inexorable sensation of indefinite familiarity shattered as the voice faltered faintly, as it trembled into soft and almost mournful tones. Through the medication Taichi could no longer hear it--through the white noise of the room he caught it as a counterpoint to Hikari's weeping. "If you. . .forget. . .
(The thing most precious to you, Taichi. . .)
"If you forget. . .
(That she might slip away from you, Taichi)
to tell them you're sorry sometimes. . .
(Because inevitably all things will, Taichi, and)
or what you mean. . .by 'I love you'. . .
(Sometimes)
or. . ." The voice choked, swallowed itself hard so the room filled, too, with that harsh sound. Taichi felt himself weeping, felt himself crying out no it can't be I won't let her go but he could not hear that--a thousand other things, the faint tearing of individual threads in his caught shirt but not that, not his promises that she would not fade away. That he would never, never let her fade away. . .
(It's better because)
The figure reached out--up, and to the side-- and it took a white piece from the white wall into its pale hand, and pressed it up against its pale face. Something red, or blue--a thin stream of color somehow sharp in the blurry world-- slipped down the figure's cheek from the temple, trickled across the hand in a metallic thread.
Another long moment passed--Taichi had the strangest sensation of falling--before the figure moved again: this time the pale hand with the white piece of the white wall reaching out down, and towards him. As the hand approached the buzzsnap grew louder; the static grew louder until it screamed and echoed, until Taichi could see sharp jagged light through the black of his lids like interference on a television screen. He tried to object but his throat closed around the words--I. . .
(sometimes)
No, I don't want it-- and beneath the static screech he could still hear Hikari, almost. He could still hear her crying. . .almost.
"Hey, Taichi."
The blue that wasn't really red gathered beneath the pale fingers holding that white piece of the white--no, a. . .a receiver?--and the blue that really wasn't red but was sort of a dark silver and shone mettalic under the harsh tracklight sun balled together, and fell in a heavy drop. Taichi wanted to move but he had the strangest sensation of
(big brother)
falling--but he wasn't falling, he could feel the knob digging against his skin and he thought he might be bruised or bleeding-- which would not let him move and instead it fell to spatter against one limp and heavy hand. The liquid burned where it touched, colder than ice and he tried to cry out because it hurt in a numbing way, when his skin buckled and blistered and tore beneath it; a scattered and jittering kind of way that might have been because of the sedatives making their sluggish way through his system. No, I don't want it. No.
"Hey, Taichi. . ." The pale hand reached down and took his, and it burned as well--his skin rebeled, it froze and cracked and shattered, crumbled away from the cold, cold touch. The pale hand reached down and took his
(only knows)
and placed it carefully over the receiver; wrapped the fingers too numb to bleed around the receiver so the bared blistering tissue stuck to the cool plastic. The sound of his skin shattering where the shards hit the ground was loud but so was the receiver--so was the howl of static, the crack-tearing fizzle and deep below. . .deep, deep below he could. . .
"It's for you, Taichi. . ."
His breath caught, hooked and choked in his throat as his unfeeling, throbbing fingers fumbled to remain locked on the phone; as his unfeeling aching muscles struggled to drag his heavy hand to his face. "H. . .huh. . ." It was all that his clenched throat could muster--he could not say her name. Something about this was horrible and unfair--he could save her by speaking somehow, and in this one imperative moment all he could choke out was a short gasp; a hard heavy breath. He could almost hear her under the static--
"Onii-chan I don't feel good. . .Onii-chan please, it's so cold here . . ."
--it was choking her it was drowning her it was killing her and he could make it better, all better but he couldn't. He. . .he couldn't . . .
Sometimes big brother. . .
Were his eyes opened? He closed them. There was no darkness--the image clarified, the pale figure in faded blue and green sharpened; the huge eyes of white fire sharpened to thick lenses. The figure--no, the boy--stood above him now, and lowered his head. The shadow of ragged bangs obscured the light on his face, and Taichi could see closed eyes behind the glasses; could see the thin streak of red and blue that wasn't blue but was a sort of silver-blue-black tracking down one cheek from the temple like a misplaced tear of not-water, of not-blood.
"I know it's hard, Taichi. But sometimes. . ."
Onii-chan! Onii-chan please!
The boy lifted his hands helplessly, palms upward. "Sometimes all we big brothers seem to know. . ."
I don't want to die, Onii-chan! I don't want it to take me!
Were his eyes closed? He opened them. The darkness came with hot tears in his eyes--he didn't want to see it anymore, the boy bleeding crimson mercury from his head; the white skin in the white room, the white receiver in his own grey-red hand. He didn't want to see it anymore but he could still see the static shiver across the inside of his eyes, he could still hear it rattle inside his skull trying to hide his sister's voice.
Don't give up Onii-chan. . .please, please don't give up. . .
A dry laugh, cold low chuckle which was once again distantly familiar. He no longer cared. "Well, you know by now don't you. Sometimes all we ever know is. . ." There was a pause, and this time no thoughts filled it--only dread. Only black. Only--
"worst."
Something cool and slick slipped up in Taichi's system--it flooded the taste in his mouth with cold copper; it flooded his eyes and synapses with soft silver-blue against the black. The last rigidity slipped from his body, the last resistance slipped from the twitching tendons and muscles. He slumped, slipped from the door onto the cold tiled ground.
No more dread, and no more black.
~~~~~~~~~~
After a moment, the nurse attendant looked up, startled by the sudden halt of the nerve-wracking, repetitive noise. She understood the boy's worry, but he made her uneasy nonetheless--maddened when he had torn into the building; like an animal and screaming--
She blinked at the scene before her, then sighed softly in relief; shoulders relaxing from their tense hunch. It would be alright now. She didn't have to worry about him anymore now.
He was slumped in his chair fast asleep, eyes shifting minutely in the hold of some faint drowsy dream. The sedatives, it seemed, had finally done their work.