This chapter goes back to Leon's POV and things are looking a little...different now...

Session Twenty Four

The room was bright. That much he could tell even with his eyes closed. He could feel all his limbs and move them. That was good. His head hurt, a constant pounding that centered on his right eye. That was weird. He didn't remember falling on his face. He opened his eyes. Light lanced his right eye like a spear and the room spun. That was a bad idea. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Opened them slowly.

Leon blinked. The room slid in and out of focus like a bad transmission. Spikes of light glared down from the ceiling and danced in blurring double-vision over everything in the room. Leon turned his head to look at the wall instead and immediately fought back a wave of nausea. He closed his eyes again. The nausea faded. He lay still for some time, listening and breathing.

He wasn't on the Bebop. His quick glimpse of the room revealed plain white walls and white sheets, a single chair, a sink, and a couple of medical monitors lined up beside him. Aside from the soft whir of machinery, he didn't hear any movement. A hospital? That didn't make much sense. He didn't seem injured enough for a hospital. Just to be sure he wiggled his fingers and toes again. He couldn't feel any wounds anywhere, just the incessant pounding in his head.

But he didn't remember hitting his head.

Had he forgotten?

Leon thought back to the last thing he did remember. The Ares. The Dragon. A whirl of gunfire and smoke and chaos. Ed's blood covering his clothes, his hands, the floor. And Faye. Anger surged up in him as he pictured her wide green eyes and devastated face. How her lips tried to tell him she didn't while her eyes told him she did. How the glass glittered in her hair like diamonds - tiny, lying diamonds. How Ed's blood ran like a river in the floor. Then, darkness.

Leon felt another wave of nausea that had nothing to do with pain. The Dragon had him. What had they done to him after they left The Ares? Why was he laid up in bed with a splitting headache? The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to pretend he had no idea what was going on and he was home, in the Bebop, lying in Spike's old bed, Ein curled at his side. Where Faye's lies and Ed's gunshot wound weren't real.

He opened his eyes again and swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. He needed to know where he was and what was going on, even if he threw up every step of the way. He lifted his head and almost screamed at the mixed messages sent to his brain. The room spun and swayed and he clapped his hand to his right eye in frustration and pain. The spinning slowed, stopped. Leon blinked. He could see clearly out of his left eye. The glaring spikes of light retreated. He took his hand off his right eye and the light spikes, double vision, and nausea returned. He covered his right eye again.

When the room settled, he sat up. Movement didn't make him want to puke this time. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Someone had taken his shoes off, and they sat on the floor underneath the chair. Secondarily, he realized he didn't have a shirt on. He found his suit coat, tie, and shirt folded in a neat, clean pile on the chair. At least they left him his pants and his dignity. He blanched as he realized his pants were still covered in Ed's blood.

Just then he heard footsteps in the hall and the door opened, admitting a little man in a white coat, with close cropped dark hair. He looked like someone's family doctor, but Leon immediately hated him.

"Oh, good, you're awake. I thought the sedatives would wear off about now." The doctor smiled, like he was telling Leon about the weather.

"What have you done to me?" Leon demanded.

"Minor surgical procedures." The doctor shrugged and began washing his hands in the sink.

"Minor surgical procedures?" Leon hated the high pitch of fear that lurked in his voice, but right now he wanted answers more than respect.

"Yes, just a few cosmetic tweaks." The doctor agreed jovially. "Don't worry, in time, you'll hardly notice." His voice was falsely reassuring.

Leon was pretty sure he was going to notice for a long time. He wanted nothing more than to wipe the smile off the doctor's face. But he didn't have his Jericho. He looked down at his left hand, which was clenched in a fist in his lap. The doctor had his back to him, putting on gloves and humming softly to himself. With an inarticulate yell, Leon launched himself off the bed, fist aimed for the doctor's head. The doctor turned around before Leon reached him, stepped neatly forward, deflected Leon's clumsy punch, and grabbed his right arm, pulling his hand away from his eye. Leon staggered as the double vision returned. It was worse standing up. He tried to pull away, but the doctor grabbed his chin and forced his head up toward the light. Spears of light pierced his right eye as the world spun in ever dizzying circles. Leon gagged and the doctor let go of his chin, stepping lightly out of the way as Leon vomited on the floor. Leon fell to hands and knees, heaving, eyes tightly shut. After several seconds, the world stilled and Leon got control of his stomach again. He knelt, head down, panting. His headache was worse, knocking about like a gremlin with a hammer. His arms trembled and his hands were numb from shock.

"Now," the doctor said above him. "You'll only make it worse, carrying on like that. I haven't calibrated that eye yet, but I prefer you conscious for the process, so I can't knock you out yet."

Leon felt a cold finger of dread slide down his spine. Goosebumps broke out on his arms, despite the sweat dripping down his face.

He doesn't have a cybernetic eye. I checked. Faye's words floated back to him from his first night on the Bebop.

"You tore out my eye," Leon growled. He spit and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"That's one way of putting it, yes." The doctor crouched on the floor beside Leon. "Although I believe you'll come to find the features of this new one...advantageous."

"I don't care if I was blind in that eye. It was my eye, dammit."

"Losing a body part can be traumatic."

Leon looked up at the doctor from under sweaty strands of hair. He made sure to keep his right eye closed. "Traumatic? You think?" he spat, trying to clear his mouth of the acid burn of vomit.

"When one deals in body parts for a living, one tends to forget how much people regret the loss." The doctor shrugged and stood up, grabbing a plastic cup from a cabinet under the sink. He filled it with water and handed it to Leon. Leon debated throwing it in the doctor's face, but he decided that he'd rather drink it. He sat back against the wall with his elbows propped on his knees and took the cup. The doctor waited until Leon finished the water. He gestured to the sink as if to ask if Leon wanted more. Leon shook his head and let it rest against the wall.

"You said something about calibrating this god-awful piece of tech?" he asked tiredly.

"If you promise not to hit me again," the doctor scolded.

Leon glared at him. "Not like you fight fair, anyway. But alright. I won't hit you."

The doctor practically jumped with glee. "Now, for the eye! I daresay calibrating it will get rid of all the dizziness and double vision. I can't promise anything about the headache though."

Leon sighed. The doctor moved to one of the machines hooked up near the bed and pulled a keyboard out on a sliding tray. "You want to be more comfortable?" he asked, pointing at the bed.

"I'll stay here," Leon said. He didn't think he had it in him to move.

"Good. You might want to," the doctor said. "The calibration process can induce vomiting."

"Sadist," Leon accused.

The doctor looked genuinely offended. "This is much better than the process they had in your father's time," he huffed. "Back then, you had to go under anesthesia, adjust the eye, wake the patient up, see what the effects were, then do it all again until you got it right. Nowadays, these little babies are completely automatic and fully self-adjusting. I just open up the software for your eye on my computer, calibrate it, give the eye the proper settings, and voila! You'll never have to adjust her again."

Leon rolled his eyes, the right one grating against his eyelid. "I never had to adjust my old eye in the first place," he muttered.

"Stop whining," the doctor admonished. "And open your eye."

Leon swallowed a rising wave of panic and clenched his jaw. He opened his right eye, squinting against the light. At least the nausea wasn't horrible so long as he held perfectly still.

"Now, this may be a bit uncomfortable," the doctor said, typing something into the keyboard.

Leon grit his teeth against the sudden sensation in his skull. It was like someone moving gears in his eye socket. The world spun and tilted. Leon put his hands on the floor to steady himself. He moaned and closed his eyes instinctively.

"Keep them open!" the doctor ordered.

Leon forced himself to open his eyes and immediately lurched forward, vomiting again. The water he just drank splattered on the floor. Leon's stomach clenched with dry heaves and he coughed, trying to get his breath. When he calmed, he blinked, realizing that the light spikes were gone and the double vision was less.

"How is that?" the doctor asked calmly.

"I still...see double," Leon panted, on hands and knees again.

The doctor scratched his chin. "Right then. This should fix it," he said, tapping the keys again.

The room tilted again, but this time, there was nothing to lose and Leon clenched his teeth against the dizziness. After a few seconds, everything stilled and he looked up. The world didn't spin. Nothing moved and he only saw one of everything. He blinked. He felt a single tear trace his right cheek, but nothing else happened.

He suddenly realized that the doctor was kneeling in front of him. "Better?" he asked.

Leon nodded.

"Good. Drink this." The doctor handed him another plastic cup full of water.

Leon drank. He didn't even feel it when he hit the floor.

I'm no doctor, so I mostly imagined the effects of a cybernetic eye and the tech involved in putting one in (although I found out some interesting facts about how eyes work in the process of researching tears and fake/bionic eyes). Another shout out to Shadowcrest Nightingale here because Dragons of the Darkwave has some scenes where Spike adjusts to his cybernetic eye that I'm sure unconsciously influenced this scene a bit. I imagine that the technology has improved somewhat since Spike got his eye (something like 20 years ago), hence the doctor's comment about the process being "better." And, of course, Leon's emotional state only adds to his pain and confusion here