Garfield
First there was the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. Then panic. Not just their panic, but everyone's panic. They had waited hours at the police station for the Justice League to finish asking her questions, only to then be told they had to wait another several hours at the hospital where the Flash delivered her, after a police officer tried to shoot her. Thankfully the Flash was there and he stepped in just in time. Or at least that's what they'd been told. The longer they waited, the more he questioned if that was actually true. At least they'd had the courtesy to get her the room next to Victor's, but still... The waiting after so many months of not knowing, not speaking, is agonizing. It should get easier, but it doesn't.
Richard fidgets next to him in his seat. Garfield stopped trying to talk to him an hour ago, because he got mean when he was this irritated. It was easier just to sit quietly and half-heartedly scroll on his phone.
Finally a nurse waves them over to the front desk.
"You can go upstairs now. Visiting hours are over for the day, but you can stay for an hour, if you're quiet and don't cause any trouble," the nurse says.
"We'll be good," Garfield says. An hour? A measly hour after all the waiting they'd done? Richard doesn't need more permission, he goes to the elevator and presses the up button, but after a few seconds he heads towards the stairs. Garfield follows and they nearly run the several flights up until they get to Victor's floor. They walk down the hall, because there's two nurses at the end, chatting and eyeing them warily, like they're not supposed to be here. He wants to stick his tongue out and yell that they have permission, but that's probably the type of behavior that would get them kicked out.
The room is a bit smaller than Victor's, but the setup is similar. There's a hospital bed with two chairs, that he knows from experience are about as comfortable as cardboard. A TV is mounted to the wall and there's a nightstand next to the bed with a bible in the top drawer, where other patients might put photographs or keepsakes to remind them why they should get better. She's laying down and so still he wonders at first if she's awake, but her eyes meet his before going back to the IV in her arm. She looks at it with suspicion, but she doesn't pull it out, which is good, because it would probably trigger some sort of alert to the nurses and then they'd get kicked out while the nurses fussed over her. She can cause trouble for them later, if she wants to.
"Are you okay?" Richard asks. He doesn't sit, he goes next to the bed and stands over her, looking for signs of injury. Garfield doesn't smell any blood on her though. She smells clean, like she took a shower, but the faint scent of death still lingers with her. A smell worse than rotten fish or garbage. Whatever happened with those people, was bad... So bad the Justice League is involved. So bad that a police officer tried to shoot her... He's not allowed to ask about that now though. Or about the truck or the million other things he wants to ask about. That was the only decent conversation Richard was willing to have while they waited. They agreed that tonight was not the time to ask the hard questions or have those conversations. They would not be like the Justice League and question her now. They'd give her time to recover. The important thing is that she's alive and they're together again.
"We can only stay for an hour," Garfield frowns. "But Victor is right next door. He can call us if you need us or if anything else happens." She nods and he hopes she remembers Victor. She only got a glimpse of him before Wonder Woman whisked her away.
"How long are they keeping you here? What happens after?" Richard asks. They'd tried to get these questions answered while they waited, but everyone kept telling him to be patient. The Daytons said they'd get him answers, but it had been hours and they hadn't given him any news. Richard had asked Mr. Wayne and Alfred, but they didn't tell him anything either. The Flash, who had met them in the police lobby to tell them what happened, was also useless.
"I don't know," her voice is soft and he can hear the fatigue in it. "When he left me here, the Flash said I need to stay here for a few days to recover. He didn't say what would happen after." That's the same story that they got. As soon as he got home, he'd talk to his parents. Maybe they could take her in too, or Mr. Wayne. As long as she was near, he'd be fine with whoever she got to live with, but the idea of her going back to another place like Sunny Oaks makes his stomach hurt. They wouldn't do that right? They wouldn't separate them again?
"We'll come right when visiting hours start tomorrow morning. So you won't be bored or alone. Before that you should go say hi to Victor. He doesn't sleep much, so you won't be bothering him," Garfield says. She nods and closes her eyes, clearly tired. He feels bad for keeping her up, but not being here, not seeing her... It's still hard to believe this is real. Can they really be so lucky after everything else they've gone through. After his chance for a normal life was stolen, after his parents died, he'd stopped believing that life was fair and that good things could happen to good people. All you needed to do was spend a few days in Gotham to know that bad things happened to good people all the time. Now, it's like the universe is finally realizing that it gave him too shitty of a deal. That losing his parents and watching his classmates explode was really too much for one kid. The universe is finally cutting him a break. They get to have her back, even when it should be impossible.
She takes his hand suddenly and then Richard's with her other one. It's cold and dry. The skin calloused and rougher than he remembers it being. Her eyes are only half open and she doesn't look at them. She's looking at the ceiling and even though this is a miracle and it's the scene of a long awaited reunification, if this was a movie, this would be the scene of someone dying. He can't not see the thinness in her face or the absolute fatigue that seems to settle into her bones, ones which the outlines of are visible in her tiny arms.
"You broke your promise," she says. Those were not the words he was expecting her to say. Ever since they found out about the truck, they'd been thinking about how she hurt them. How she broke her promise, but now it occurs to him that she must have felt the same. They got out. They left and she didn't hear from either of them... Maybe she wouldn't have jumped if not for them.
"We didn't want to, we just..." How does he explain? It's not like he could just do whatever he wanted, not if he didn't want the Daytons to realize they made a mistake and return him. Every time he brought calling her up or even trying to spend time with Richard, there was something in them that made him regret saying anything. Some kind of friction. He could tell they didn't like it.
"We had a hard time. We would have found a way to see you again eventually," Richard says. She squeezes his hand, but it's barley what he'd called a squeeze. There's little pressure in it.
"We didn't stop though," Garfield says. "We found you..."
"I'm sorry," she says, another thing he didn't expect her to say.
"For what?" Richard asks.
"If I had been honest with you..." Her face is just tired. There are no tears in her eyes, but he hears tears in her voice.
"We won't ask you anything today," Garfield says. "About the truck and stuff... It can wait until you're feeling better."
"Yeah, we can talk when you're feeling better." He gives Richard a grateful look. He knows Richard wants answers, he wants answers too, but the most important thing is that they're together again. The three musketeers are united.
The hour is over too quickly. It feels more like ten minutes than sixty. The nurse who let them in comes up and shoos them downstairs. If she hadn't walked them down there personally, he might have stopped by to check on Victor again. Instead, he settles for a text message.
I'll stop by tomorrow after we check on Raven.
I'll let you know if I see any aliens or superheroes up here. Garfield grins and shows Richard, who does not smile, but he does catch his muscles relax just a bit. It's good to have eyes and ears up there with her, even if they can't be.
Alfred takes him home first. The Daytons are waiting in the living room for him. They were sitting on the couch, but they get up as soon as the door is closed behind him. Mr. Dayton crosses his arms over his chest and his lips are in the fine line they always go in when Garfield gets in trouble. It's a look he knows well from doing poorly on a test or coming home later than he said he would. In this case, he lied about what he was doing and where he'd be.
"We were so worried about you," Mrs. Dayton says.
"How could you take off like that? It was so dangerous. You had no idea what you were getting into," the nagging goes on and on, but eventually they stop and send him to his room. In some ways it feels good to get nagged like this. He hopes it means they still care and that he didn't mess up enough to get sent away. He shouldn't think like that, but the thought is always there, that he might be more than they can chew and after what happened with the fire, when they didn't tell him... He doesn't know if that would be so bad. He doesn't want to get sent away or separated from his friends. He doesn't want to start over, but something just doesn't feel right.
Victor
Some people would love to be able to only sleep a couple hours each night. They would think to themselves about all the things they could get done. But Victor has nothing to get done. He's just sitting in his hospital bed, waiting for the people who are supposed to be his parents to come in and run more tests or for Garfield to show up and play checkers. So, it's three AM and he's sitting up in bed bored out of his mind. Nothing good is on TV this late, he's played more video games than anyone has a right to and he's caught up on all the comic books Garfield brought to lend him.
Maybe that's why, when he hears it, the sound of someone crying he decides to take action. He's been finagling with his leg tech for the last few weeks at night, when no ones watching, but he hadn't been brave enough to actually activate them. His parents keep insisting that his legs aren't ready to be tested yet, that they need to do more work, but he suspects that's not true. It's just that once his legs are activated, they won't be able to keep him in bed anymore. They'll have less of an excuse to keep him in the hospital. He'll be able to start asking to do things and go places on his own. They'll lose some of their power over him.
He opens the control port on his arm and starts the activation sequence. His legs, previously numb, begin to have sensation again. At first it feels like they're asleep, the needle pinching feeling. Then they feel almost normal, which might be why he almost falls when he steps off the bed. They might feel like his normal legs, but they're much bulkier and feel strange to move. He uses the bed as support to hold himself up and then slowly, but surely takes a few steps. He peeps out into the hall, no nurses on duty, so he makesta break to the left and frowns. There's an old woman in that bed. He was sure Garfield said she was on the left, but that dude probably doesn't know his right from left. Thankfully the woman doesn't wake up at the sound of his heavy footfalls. He checks the hall to make sure it's clear and then goes down to the door on the right of his own. It's open a crack and he slips in before taking one of the chairs. He's never sat in one of them before, but Garfield had complained enough that he knew they weren't the best. He was right about that at least. It's like sitting on cardboard. He isn't sure it'll be able to hold his weight.
The girl tosses and turns in the bed so violently she almost rips out her IV. He taps on her shoulder and she shoots up, breathing heavy like she's just run a marathon or something.
"It's Victor, remember me?" he whispers quietly. She nods and looks around the room for a minute, as if remembering where she is. "You were having a nightmare." She nods again. There's a water bottle next to the bed so he unseals it and hands it to her. She takes it and swings a small sip, before putting it back. He's not sure what to say next. Garfield talked a lot about Richard and Raven, but she doesn't know him and what he knows is that she just went through some serious shit and threw herself in front of a truck.
"Want to watch TV?" he asks. She nods and he grabs the remote from the nightstand drawer and turns it on. He quickly sets the volume to one and turns on the captions. There's nothing on except infomercials, but she looks at the hair growth ad as if it's a TV show or something interesting. They sit like that for a few minutes and he wonders if he should go.
"Thanks," she mumbles.
"Garfield said he'll be back in the morning. He said he's bringing doughnuts," Victor says. "I prefer waffles myself, but it's not easy to get takeout waffles around here. I can't actually think of anywhere that offers takeout waffles."
"I like waffles better too," she says and he smiles a little, because that means he said the right thing.
"I should probably just be grateful for the doughnuts. I bet the breakfast menu tomorrow is like oatmeal or something. Plain, cause they don't want us having too much sugar." She makes a face that suggests she's had plain oatmeal and isn't a fan. It's not like he hates it, but he used to make scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and waffles. All the great stuff. But that was before the accident. Now his life is plain oatmeal, fruit cups and scrambled egg whites. The eggs, sometimes aren't even real eggs. Sometimes it's a vegan egg replacement and that just don't taste the same. It doesn't even look the same. Who do they think they're fooling?
"Have you been here a long time?" she asks. He nods.
"Longer than I'd like," he says. He would like to have never been here, but most people would agree to that statement. There's no one laying in a hospital bed here that wants to be here. They just had shitty luck. Some people go their whole lives never seeing a hospital room and other people live most of their lives in them. That's just the way of the world and he drew the shit straw. She drew the shit straw too, just a different one.
"Did Garfield visit you a lot? How did you meet?" she asks. She's more chatty that he thought she'd be, but that's a good thing. If she wasn't talking then he'd probably start worrying that he made a mistake. It's not his nature to be all nosey and get in other people's business, but this girl means a lot to Garfield and he has nothing better to do, so why not?
"It's kind of your fault actually," he says. She looks at him and raises an eyebrow. "He started visiting as a volunteer thing, but I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to talk to anybody." That thought still brings a pang to his chest. Those were dark days.
"How is it my fault?" she asks. "And is it a bad thing?"
"It's a good thing," he says. And he means it. It really is a good thing that Garfield started coming and talking to him, got him to open up and finally to have someone understand.
"After a few weeks of getting ignored I finally caved and asked him why he was bothering with me," she smiles a little and he remembers Garfield saying he got the same treatment from Richard and her. Damn. No wonder he was so persistent. It wasn't his first rodeo.
"He said his parents were trying to keep him away from Richard and keep his mind off of you. He saw a video of the truck..." he didn't really want to bring that up just now, after she had a nightmare, but if it bothers her, it doesn't show on her face.
"Of course I had questions after he told me about all that so, he started telling me everything, his whole life story and then he told me he knew what I was going through. I wasn't always like this and he wasn't always green." She nods and looks down at her lap.
"So, I blame you," he crosses his arms over his chest and looks at her. "If you want my forgiveness it'll cost you."
"What will it cost?" she glances up and raises her eyebrow again.
"I've heard your friendship is hard to win. You only have Richard and Garfield, so if you give me that, then we'll call it even." She smiles then, a genuine one and nods.
"You may regret that," she says.
"I doubt it," he smiles right back.
"You can decide tomorrow," she says. "There's a reason I don't have a lot of friends." She stops smiling then and her voice is a bit ominous. If he's honest it gives him the heebie-jeebies.