It was nearly 4am when Detective Mark Kincaid eased his way into Sidney's hospital room, just as a pair of FBI agents was leaving. She thought, at first, that he was another in the revolving line of officers asking questions that she felt like she'd answered a million times, so it took her by surprise when he instead claimed the chair beside her bed, sighing heavily and holding out a cup of coffee.
She glanced over, sizing him up; the detective looked as tired as she felt, and she was on the brink of telling him that he probably needed the coffee more than she did when she realized he clutched a mostly-empty cup in his other hand.
(The hand in the sling from the wound that he'd suffered because of her.)
Alright then. She gave him her best attempt at a smile and murmured, "Thanks."
"I'm sorry they've been at this so long," he told her. "The docs have said you need sleep, but when you combine Sidney Prescott and a whole slew of Hollywood murders…"
"The cops' questions matter more than my urgent need for a few REM cycles. I get it." Sidney tested the coffee, pleased when she found that it wasn't half-bad. At least she wouldn't have to pretend to like it. "Did the doctors tell you to get some rest too, detective?"
"Detective?" he repeated. "What happened to, 'I'll call you Mark when you catch the killer'?"
Sidney smirked to herself and took another sip of coffee. "Technically I caught the killer. And you're avoiding the question, Mark."
He chuckled softly. "After a case ends like that, I'm never really able to sleep. Or if I do, I just wake up feeling like the living dead."
Feeling like the living dead. What a way to put it. "I get what you mean," she murmured. In fact, had Sidney ever stopped feeling that way, really? There seemed to be no better description for everything she'd done, everything she'd been since the death of her mother.
When Mark replied with, "I thought you might," it rang with an echo of his words back at the station – I think you know about being haunted – and it wasn't that she'd doubted him, exactly… Frankly, it was part of what made her feel like perhaps she could trust him in the first place. But now, more than then, she felt herself sinking into the shared affinity of it all.
The possibility that he saw her, and within that, the possibility that she might let him.
"So what, you caffeinate until you think you won't have bad dreams?"
"I caffeinate until I'm so tired that I won't have any dreams at all. At least for a little while."
Sidney swallowed hard, looking down at her lap so that she didn't feel like she had to look at him. "Sounds nice."
"It's alright." Mark faltered there, and for a few long moments, silence settled over the hospital room. There was nothing awkward in it; on the contrary, it also gave Sidney a pleasant sort of sinking feeling. If she were to sit there with him for hours in that silence, it might not be too bad.
But she was the one who put spoke first. "I was thinking, once they let me out of here, I might try and track down those movies my mom was in. Some company might be nice, if you're up for it."
"Trying to stop being haunted?"
Sidney couldn't have said whether he was referring to her desire to stop hiding from the ghost of her mother, or her offer to do it with him—with people. Maybe she didn't know Mark all that well, but she looked up at him, and from the way he watched her over the rim of his coffee cup as he drained it, she suspected that he meant it as a little bit of both.
"Yeah, I'm trying," she murmured.
Mark nodded slowly while he digested this. Finally, he held out his cup for Sidney to cheers, which she did—holding his gaze all the while. "Count me in."
They both smiled, and looked away, and fell into another easy silence. Sidney didn't say it – didn't know how – but she didn't feel like the living dead at all, then.
