Bikky's POV:
I lived in a dream-like state. People asked me things, and if I thought hard I could answer, but they didn't seem real to me. Sometimes it didn't even seem they were speaking any language I'd ever heard before, and yet I felt like I should understand.
I knew their names, but who they were in relationship to me was blurred at times. Even after the tube was taken out of my throat, speaking to them required too much thought and energy. I knew too that Rosa was okay, but I wasn't entirely sure who Rosa was.
When I wasn't in the half-awake state I dreamed. Sometimes I was little again, living with my father in the slums, lying awake on a dirty mattress and listening to the television blaring in the next room. Hearing Mr. Spock talk about how illogical something was. What was illogical, I mused? I tried to figure it out but it slipped away again.
Once I was a rat, running as fast as I could next to other rats, hearing humans cheering. Feeling hungry and tired, and smelling the fleshy, half- rotten smell of the other rats around me.
Once, and only once, I saw my mother standing in my room at Quantico. She was asking me to follow her, but as fast as I ran up and down the halls, I couldn't seem to catch up. Someone was holding me back, and I could see chains around my waist, feeling hands tugging me away from her. Later, I learned that for a few minutes my heart had stopped and that they'd had to move pretty quickly to get it started again. I have no idea, of course, of exact time I dreamed of my mother, but I do believe that it was then.
When the world suddenly shot back into focus completely, three days had passed since the stabbing, and I remembered it before I opened my eyes. Rosa on the ground and bloody, the attacker. My forehead felt stiff, tight, and there was an annoying kind of pressure on my side. A nagging voice in my head told me to just go back to sleep, but another voice, which sounded suspiciously like one of the nastiest trainers at Quantico, ordered me to wake up and deal with life.
The room was sunny, although I couldn't tell what time it was. There were flowers everywhere, and drawings on the wall, the kind a little kid would do. I turned my head, feeling the skin pull, and saw Ryo watching me.
He looked like a raccoon, dark circles and bags under his eyes, wrinkled clothing. Since with Ryo wrinkles are something akin to pestilence and plague, I figured he must have been here a while.
"Welcome back, stranger." He whispered, touching the side of my face. "They said you might actually rejoin the living today."
I tried to answer but my throat was too dry. He poured some water into a paper cup, and warned me to sip it slowly or I'd get sick. Even the act of swallowing it was exhausting.
"How long?" I asked. I was suddenly afraid. With how bad Ryo looked I half expected him to announce I'd just woken up from a two year coma.
"It's Thursday. Same week." He offered me more water and I shook my head. What little I drank was already making me queasy. "They've been lowering your medication since last night." He continued. "Dee says they got tired of hearing you snore."
"How's Rosa?"
"She's doing great. She's still weak, and she'll have a scar, but they're probably going to send her home later today. Most of the flowers are from her family. I think that from now on every single Lopez boy is going to be named after you."
He pulled a chair close to my bed. "Dee went to get some coffee, and we made Cal go home and get some sleep. She's a wreck."
"Least I got her attention." I muttered.
"There are easier ways to do that." He laughed. I tried to as well, but it hurt too much.
"You know for a while there." He gave me a really intense look. "For a while, they didn't think." His voice broke.
"Hey, give me a little credit. You think one little knife is enough to stop me?" I winced. "Okay, so maybe it wasn't so little."
It was a pattern with us that went back to my earliest days with him. He'd try and get sentimental and fatherly, and I'd get uncomfortable and make a joke about it. It didn't mean I didn't like it. Just that it wasn't in my nature to be cuddly.
"More flowers." I heard Dee's voice from the doorway. "I swear the Lopez family must own stock in FTD." He strolled in and sat the green vase down on the one remaining space near the TV, grabbing up the card. "Well, good morning, sunshine. Decided to stick around after all, I see."
"Of course." I chuckled. "Someone has to keep you out of trouble." He looked as frazzled as Ryo.
"Oh, you'll like this one." He waved the card. "'Hey dipshit. You're not supposed to get yourself killed until after they assign you a case. Screw up again and I'll fly to New York and beat the crap out of you. Tiff sends her love.'"
I could hear Gunther's voice overlapping Dee's as he read. It felt like balm being poured over my wounds, that I was slowly working my way back into the world.
"Assistant Director Marsh sent those." Ryo pointed at a bunch of orchids. "He says he wants you in Jersey City the moment you're back to 100% and not a moment before."
"Ah, I'll be ready in two days." I waved my hand. "This place is boring. How are the little guys doing?"
"Okay. They miss you. They've been sleeping on the sofa bed instead of their own bunk, and Nando's going around telling everyone about his big brother the hero. Miguel took your graduation picture out of the photo album and he carries it everywhere. You made the paper too. They wanted a picture as well but we didn't think it would be a good idea."
"Thanks." Doing undercover work was going to be difficult enough with my unique appearance. It would be nearly impossible if every idiot in the city knew what I looked like. "Just don't let anyone make a big deal out of it, okay? I don't want that. All I did was stop a mugging."
"In New York, that is a big deal." Dee growled, but he look he gave Ryo was odd, and I picked up on it. "Okay, what aren't you telling me?"
"You should go back to sleep." Ryo tried to pull up my blankets and I smacked at his hand, almost pulling out an IV. "Spill it."
He paused. "Bikky, Rosa's convinced it wasn't a mugging. She swears that the perp was after Roberto and Carlos, her brothers. She said the guy came very close to grabbing Roberto."
"Christ. I wish I'd killed him." I said with regret. "I will, as soon as I get out of here."
"Stand in line." Dee put his arm around Ryo. "We've got a little matter to settle with him as well. Now, do what you're told and go back to sleep."
My body responded very enthusiastically to the word sleep even if my mind didn't. "Tell them I want to go home." I muttered. Before I drifted off, something flitted across my mind, something about Rosa and her brothers and the attack, but it was gone before I could grab it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Waiting for news of Bikky, Cal had wandered the halls of the hospital so much that she knew the place backwards and forwards.
Sometime she had found herself in the maturity ward, staring at the newborns in their little glass cribs, waving their hands in the air. The healthy ones, anyway. Not far away was the neonatal unit, where under heat lamps and constant attention, the smallest of the small fought to stay alive. She wondered how many she'd see again and again in the next few years as they were shifted from one home to the next, punished every day for the crimes of their mothers. Who really gave a damn about these skinny little creatures anyway, besides a handful of people in her department? Who cared if they survived or not?
She cared. She cared so much she hurt with it. She cared enough to try and do something about it.
If she wanted to she could be here herself as a mother. She could be one of the weary, beaming women cooing over their healthy, strong little sons and daughters. She could be here time and time again, turning out latte-skinned future Federal Agents and social workers, and they'd never want for anything.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that those fantasy children would have the best of everything love if not endless money could provide, while these kids suffered in pain and neglect. Society had already turned its collective back on them. By having children of her own, Cal would be effectively doing the same.
But Bikky had just assumed that she wanted a family as much as he did. That as soon as they both had good careers going they'd get married and do the whole picket-fence thing. He hadn't even asked her about it, if that fit into the plans for her life. He'd just assumed, and that angered her. It wasn't as if there was any great hurry to settle down for either of them, and she knew Bikky well. Knew that he was jealous and needy, and that if he resented the time her job took from him now, it would be a thousand times worse if they were married.
Today though, she wasn't thinking about anything but Bikky being well again. When he was they'd really and truly talk, but she was still chilled to think of how close she'd come to losing him forever.
She had a peace-offering smuggled in under her jacket, some apple turnovers and Reese Cups, the crunchy kind he was addicted to. She barely ever remembered kissing him when he didn't taste like peanut-butter.
She shifted her package, and was pushing his door open when she heard laughter.
"Oh you were a very bad little boy. I am surprised your Papas didn't turn your bottom red every minute of the day."
"Dee would have if Ryo had let him. I don't know how many times he threatened to take off his belt. I'd call him a pervert and then he'd really get mad. We drove Ryo up the wall."
Rosa Lopez was sitting on the hospital bed next to Bikky, and in front of them was a half-eaten bowl of chocolate ice cream. Rosa had her hand on Bikky's shoulder, her index finger move lightly across the material of his hospital gown.
"Well, you're feeling better." Cal called out brightly.
"Hey babe. Yeah, can't keep a good man down." He grinned at her and she reached his bed, leaned forward past Rosa, and kissed him. No peanut-butter this time.
"I should go back to my own room before they notice I'm gone." Rosa slid off the bed. "But I had to see my hero again and thank him in person." She kissed Bikky as well, but on the cheek.
"God, if I'd known this was part of the package I'd have gotten stabbed a lot sooner." He winked at her and they both laughed. Cal managed a watery smile.
"I'm so glad you're okay, Rosa."
"Only because of your man here." Rosa slid back into her slippers, next to Bikky's hospital bed. "You are very lucky to have him."
"I am." Cal stressed the 'I' very slightly and she could see that Rosa had picked up on it. She expected the younger woman to blush or look away, but Rosa met her gave with a steady one, and Cal got a sense of a gauntlet being thrown down.
"I will see you later, before I go home." Rosa promised Bikky. "I have to get strong enough to keep up with that wild little brother of yours." She squeezed his hand and left the room.
"How's your side?" Cal asked when they were alone, putting the pack of candy in front of him, watching his eyes brighten as he tore it open.
"Still there." He managed around a mouthful. "Soon as the medicine wears off, it reminds me it hasn't gone anyway. Got lucky though. Livers regenerate. I didn't know that."
"You know you really scared me." She toyed with the empty candy wrapper. "I kept thinking about the fight, about how that might be the last conversation we'd ever have."
He shook his head. "No. I'd have come back as a ghost and gotten in the last word."
"Still believe in ghosts?" She teased.
"I know what Dee and I saw in England. No matter what anyone else believes. I saw that little girl and I heard her crying. I know it's possible to go on. I would have come back, Cal. Just to tell you that I love you." He scooted himself over, freeing up a space.
She lay down on the bed next to him, on his uninjured side and put her arm around him. "Love you back."
His hand began moving down her body.
"Now cut that out." She scolded. "Do you want to pull out your stitches?"
"In your arms, my love, death would be the beating of a hummingbird's wings against the torrent of a hurricane."
She groaned. "Oh god, that's really bad."
"Harvey said that to Beatrice today on 'Starlight Cove'. He's got cancer. He doesn't know that Malanse is really his twin brother Styler. He was in a fire and had plastic surgery and doesn't remember Harvey at all."
"I suppose that Beatrice is pregnant with Styler's baby." Cal said dryly.
"No. She's pregnant with Cortland's baby. He's their father. She doesn't want to tell Harvey the truth because it might make him sicker."
"We really do have to get you out of here. No more daytime TV. Daytime TV bad!" She swatted him gently. "Wait, you just woke up this morning. How do you know all that from one episode?"
He blushed. "Gunther loved it. I've sort of been watching it for months now. A bunch of us were fans. We all had a party when Natalina and Dustin got married." Bikky frowned. "But I think Melissa is going to turn out to be still married to him. See, she needed to be married to get her inheritance from Gretchen."
"No, no more." Cal wailed, burying her face in his side. "Make it stop."
"Oprah had great tips on how to lose weight and keep it off."
"Forgive me for not finding Oprah's advice on that particularly trust- worthy, Sweetheart."
They were quiet for a moment, letting all the things they still needed to hash out go unmentioned for now. He was beautiful and he was going to live, and he was hers. Cal had always found the concept of two women fighting over a man incredibly stereotypical and demeaning, believing herself to be way beyond that. However, Cal had never been one to back down from a fight either.
Bring it on, Miss Lopez.
I lived in a dream-like state. People asked me things, and if I thought hard I could answer, but they didn't seem real to me. Sometimes it didn't even seem they were speaking any language I'd ever heard before, and yet I felt like I should understand.
I knew their names, but who they were in relationship to me was blurred at times. Even after the tube was taken out of my throat, speaking to them required too much thought and energy. I knew too that Rosa was okay, but I wasn't entirely sure who Rosa was.
When I wasn't in the half-awake state I dreamed. Sometimes I was little again, living with my father in the slums, lying awake on a dirty mattress and listening to the television blaring in the next room. Hearing Mr. Spock talk about how illogical something was. What was illogical, I mused? I tried to figure it out but it slipped away again.
Once I was a rat, running as fast as I could next to other rats, hearing humans cheering. Feeling hungry and tired, and smelling the fleshy, half- rotten smell of the other rats around me.
Once, and only once, I saw my mother standing in my room at Quantico. She was asking me to follow her, but as fast as I ran up and down the halls, I couldn't seem to catch up. Someone was holding me back, and I could see chains around my waist, feeling hands tugging me away from her. Later, I learned that for a few minutes my heart had stopped and that they'd had to move pretty quickly to get it started again. I have no idea, of course, of exact time I dreamed of my mother, but I do believe that it was then.
When the world suddenly shot back into focus completely, three days had passed since the stabbing, and I remembered it before I opened my eyes. Rosa on the ground and bloody, the attacker. My forehead felt stiff, tight, and there was an annoying kind of pressure on my side. A nagging voice in my head told me to just go back to sleep, but another voice, which sounded suspiciously like one of the nastiest trainers at Quantico, ordered me to wake up and deal with life.
The room was sunny, although I couldn't tell what time it was. There were flowers everywhere, and drawings on the wall, the kind a little kid would do. I turned my head, feeling the skin pull, and saw Ryo watching me.
He looked like a raccoon, dark circles and bags under his eyes, wrinkled clothing. Since with Ryo wrinkles are something akin to pestilence and plague, I figured he must have been here a while.
"Welcome back, stranger." He whispered, touching the side of my face. "They said you might actually rejoin the living today."
I tried to answer but my throat was too dry. He poured some water into a paper cup, and warned me to sip it slowly or I'd get sick. Even the act of swallowing it was exhausting.
"How long?" I asked. I was suddenly afraid. With how bad Ryo looked I half expected him to announce I'd just woken up from a two year coma.
"It's Thursday. Same week." He offered me more water and I shook my head. What little I drank was already making me queasy. "They've been lowering your medication since last night." He continued. "Dee says they got tired of hearing you snore."
"How's Rosa?"
"She's doing great. She's still weak, and she'll have a scar, but they're probably going to send her home later today. Most of the flowers are from her family. I think that from now on every single Lopez boy is going to be named after you."
He pulled a chair close to my bed. "Dee went to get some coffee, and we made Cal go home and get some sleep. She's a wreck."
"Least I got her attention." I muttered.
"There are easier ways to do that." He laughed. I tried to as well, but it hurt too much.
"You know for a while there." He gave me a really intense look. "For a while, they didn't think." His voice broke.
"Hey, give me a little credit. You think one little knife is enough to stop me?" I winced. "Okay, so maybe it wasn't so little."
It was a pattern with us that went back to my earliest days with him. He'd try and get sentimental and fatherly, and I'd get uncomfortable and make a joke about it. It didn't mean I didn't like it. Just that it wasn't in my nature to be cuddly.
"More flowers." I heard Dee's voice from the doorway. "I swear the Lopez family must own stock in FTD." He strolled in and sat the green vase down on the one remaining space near the TV, grabbing up the card. "Well, good morning, sunshine. Decided to stick around after all, I see."
"Of course." I chuckled. "Someone has to keep you out of trouble." He looked as frazzled as Ryo.
"Oh, you'll like this one." He waved the card. "'Hey dipshit. You're not supposed to get yourself killed until after they assign you a case. Screw up again and I'll fly to New York and beat the crap out of you. Tiff sends her love.'"
I could hear Gunther's voice overlapping Dee's as he read. It felt like balm being poured over my wounds, that I was slowly working my way back into the world.
"Assistant Director Marsh sent those." Ryo pointed at a bunch of orchids. "He says he wants you in Jersey City the moment you're back to 100% and not a moment before."
"Ah, I'll be ready in two days." I waved my hand. "This place is boring. How are the little guys doing?"
"Okay. They miss you. They've been sleeping on the sofa bed instead of their own bunk, and Nando's going around telling everyone about his big brother the hero. Miguel took your graduation picture out of the photo album and he carries it everywhere. You made the paper too. They wanted a picture as well but we didn't think it would be a good idea."
"Thanks." Doing undercover work was going to be difficult enough with my unique appearance. It would be nearly impossible if every idiot in the city knew what I looked like. "Just don't let anyone make a big deal out of it, okay? I don't want that. All I did was stop a mugging."
"In New York, that is a big deal." Dee growled, but he look he gave Ryo was odd, and I picked up on it. "Okay, what aren't you telling me?"
"You should go back to sleep." Ryo tried to pull up my blankets and I smacked at his hand, almost pulling out an IV. "Spill it."
He paused. "Bikky, Rosa's convinced it wasn't a mugging. She swears that the perp was after Roberto and Carlos, her brothers. She said the guy came very close to grabbing Roberto."
"Christ. I wish I'd killed him." I said with regret. "I will, as soon as I get out of here."
"Stand in line." Dee put his arm around Ryo. "We've got a little matter to settle with him as well. Now, do what you're told and go back to sleep."
My body responded very enthusiastically to the word sleep even if my mind didn't. "Tell them I want to go home." I muttered. Before I drifted off, something flitted across my mind, something about Rosa and her brothers and the attack, but it was gone before I could grab it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Waiting for news of Bikky, Cal had wandered the halls of the hospital so much that she knew the place backwards and forwards.
Sometime she had found herself in the maturity ward, staring at the newborns in their little glass cribs, waving their hands in the air. The healthy ones, anyway. Not far away was the neonatal unit, where under heat lamps and constant attention, the smallest of the small fought to stay alive. She wondered how many she'd see again and again in the next few years as they were shifted from one home to the next, punished every day for the crimes of their mothers. Who really gave a damn about these skinny little creatures anyway, besides a handful of people in her department? Who cared if they survived or not?
She cared. She cared so much she hurt with it. She cared enough to try and do something about it.
If she wanted to she could be here herself as a mother. She could be one of the weary, beaming women cooing over their healthy, strong little sons and daughters. She could be here time and time again, turning out latte-skinned future Federal Agents and social workers, and they'd never want for anything.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that those fantasy children would have the best of everything love if not endless money could provide, while these kids suffered in pain and neglect. Society had already turned its collective back on them. By having children of her own, Cal would be effectively doing the same.
But Bikky had just assumed that she wanted a family as much as he did. That as soon as they both had good careers going they'd get married and do the whole picket-fence thing. He hadn't even asked her about it, if that fit into the plans for her life. He'd just assumed, and that angered her. It wasn't as if there was any great hurry to settle down for either of them, and she knew Bikky well. Knew that he was jealous and needy, and that if he resented the time her job took from him now, it would be a thousand times worse if they were married.
Today though, she wasn't thinking about anything but Bikky being well again. When he was they'd really and truly talk, but she was still chilled to think of how close she'd come to losing him forever.
She had a peace-offering smuggled in under her jacket, some apple turnovers and Reese Cups, the crunchy kind he was addicted to. She barely ever remembered kissing him when he didn't taste like peanut-butter.
She shifted her package, and was pushing his door open when she heard laughter.
"Oh you were a very bad little boy. I am surprised your Papas didn't turn your bottom red every minute of the day."
"Dee would have if Ryo had let him. I don't know how many times he threatened to take off his belt. I'd call him a pervert and then he'd really get mad. We drove Ryo up the wall."
Rosa Lopez was sitting on the hospital bed next to Bikky, and in front of them was a half-eaten bowl of chocolate ice cream. Rosa had her hand on Bikky's shoulder, her index finger move lightly across the material of his hospital gown.
"Well, you're feeling better." Cal called out brightly.
"Hey babe. Yeah, can't keep a good man down." He grinned at her and she reached his bed, leaned forward past Rosa, and kissed him. No peanut-butter this time.
"I should go back to my own room before they notice I'm gone." Rosa slid off the bed. "But I had to see my hero again and thank him in person." She kissed Bikky as well, but on the cheek.
"God, if I'd known this was part of the package I'd have gotten stabbed a lot sooner." He winked at her and they both laughed. Cal managed a watery smile.
"I'm so glad you're okay, Rosa."
"Only because of your man here." Rosa slid back into her slippers, next to Bikky's hospital bed. "You are very lucky to have him."
"I am." Cal stressed the 'I' very slightly and she could see that Rosa had picked up on it. She expected the younger woman to blush or look away, but Rosa met her gave with a steady one, and Cal got a sense of a gauntlet being thrown down.
"I will see you later, before I go home." Rosa promised Bikky. "I have to get strong enough to keep up with that wild little brother of yours." She squeezed his hand and left the room.
"How's your side?" Cal asked when they were alone, putting the pack of candy in front of him, watching his eyes brighten as he tore it open.
"Still there." He managed around a mouthful. "Soon as the medicine wears off, it reminds me it hasn't gone anyway. Got lucky though. Livers regenerate. I didn't know that."
"You know you really scared me." She toyed with the empty candy wrapper. "I kept thinking about the fight, about how that might be the last conversation we'd ever have."
He shook his head. "No. I'd have come back as a ghost and gotten in the last word."
"Still believe in ghosts?" She teased.
"I know what Dee and I saw in England. No matter what anyone else believes. I saw that little girl and I heard her crying. I know it's possible to go on. I would have come back, Cal. Just to tell you that I love you." He scooted himself over, freeing up a space.
She lay down on the bed next to him, on his uninjured side and put her arm around him. "Love you back."
His hand began moving down her body.
"Now cut that out." She scolded. "Do you want to pull out your stitches?"
"In your arms, my love, death would be the beating of a hummingbird's wings against the torrent of a hurricane."
She groaned. "Oh god, that's really bad."
"Harvey said that to Beatrice today on 'Starlight Cove'. He's got cancer. He doesn't know that Malanse is really his twin brother Styler. He was in a fire and had plastic surgery and doesn't remember Harvey at all."
"I suppose that Beatrice is pregnant with Styler's baby." Cal said dryly.
"No. She's pregnant with Cortland's baby. He's their father. She doesn't want to tell Harvey the truth because it might make him sicker."
"We really do have to get you out of here. No more daytime TV. Daytime TV bad!" She swatted him gently. "Wait, you just woke up this morning. How do you know all that from one episode?"
He blushed. "Gunther loved it. I've sort of been watching it for months now. A bunch of us were fans. We all had a party when Natalina and Dustin got married." Bikky frowned. "But I think Melissa is going to turn out to be still married to him. See, she needed to be married to get her inheritance from Gretchen."
"No, no more." Cal wailed, burying her face in his side. "Make it stop."
"Oprah had great tips on how to lose weight and keep it off."
"Forgive me for not finding Oprah's advice on that particularly trust- worthy, Sweetheart."
They were quiet for a moment, letting all the things they still needed to hash out go unmentioned for now. He was beautiful and he was going to live, and he was hers. Cal had always found the concept of two women fighting over a man incredibly stereotypical and demeaning, believing herself to be way beyond that. However, Cal had never been one to back down from a fight either.
Bring it on, Miss Lopez.