Some Assembly Required

Disclaimer: Same one as last time.

Jack smelled breakfast before he woke up properly. Sally had been cooking, by the sound of the bubbling cauldron and the wafting cloud of steam in the air. She'd set up a little cushion of fabric scraps and a bowl with a straw for him to drink out of, and while he drank, she cooked up the rest and disappeared to serve a bowlful to the doctor.

He didn't eat much. Without a body to feed, he wasn't too hungry. While she was gone, however, he could get a good look out of her kitchen window and see exactly where he was in town. It didn't make too much of a difference, except that the kitchen window faced farthest away from the main street and was surrounded on all sides by heavy walls and privacy fences. There would be no getting someone's attention from here... although, he supposed, if that were the case, Sally would have done so by now.

"Sally..." he cried out to the returning footsteps. "You don't mean to tell me that he keeps you down here all by yourself? Er-" he backpedaled. "Well, I suppose you couldn't tell me anything at the moment."

Sally appeared from above, winding her way down the ramp with wobbling footsteps and both hands firmly grasping the guard wall. Sticking to 'yes and no's for now, he kept asking. "Did he make you incapable of speech? Or... maybe... you haven't learned how yet?" Sally nodded to that one. "Ah, fantastic! Then we can learn together, you and I. But first, we'll need something from the doctor's study."

She gasped as if alarmed by the very idea. Jack tilted his skull back just a little, inviting her to lean in so he could whisper. "Trust me, my dear, I won't lead you into anything that would get you into trouble. Or... well." He thought on that a moment. "Perhaps, I might." She gasped again. "It's all right! There are some things in death that are worth getting in a little trouble for. That's what Halloween is all about, isn't it? A little troubling to improve one's life."

She tilted her head at him.

"Halloween?"

She blinked, blankly.

Jack nearly blanched. "How old- nevermind that. Are you ready to help me?"

Sally let out a full-body shiver, as if she were trying to force the tension out of herself. With a little tremor left in her arms, she nodded in agreement.

"All right, pick me up." She did. "To the upstairs, Sally! We'll need a book from-" She shook her head. "What? He's a doctor! He'll have a book on skeletons!"

She shook her head again, even as she ascended the ramp as quickly as her shaking legs would carry her. The upstairs door was shut tight, and she opened it only a crack before the doctor's voice came through it.

"What is it, Sally?" he asked in a positively slimey tone, the tone of over-politeness used when a guest was being a particular bother. Jack couldn't see through the door, kept out of sight and tucked well under Sally's farther arm, and he supposed that was on purpose. "Do you have something for me?" Her hair fluttered against his eye sockets as she shook her head. "Then stay down there until I can pay you my full attention, my dear. Can't have you wandering the house on your own."

He waited until she'd shut the door solidly behind her before groaning in frustration. "Wandering the hous- However old you are, Sally, I can assure you, you are not to be shut up into a side room like a child!" She held him up to they could speak face to face. "I am going to personally speak to him about this once I have my body back..."

Oh, it was so tempting to just call out to the doctor and have his whole body fixed in a second, but a genuine fear went through him of what the doctor might do to Sally in response... and what she'd think of him afterward. He took a deep breath, Sally watching him the whole time, and spoke.

"Sally, what I'm about to tell you to do should only be done... well, not in emergencies..." he thought aloud. "It's really harmless, but it's not something to abuse, do you understand?"

She nodded, looking a tad fearful.

"Go into the cabinet and find something for me. We're going to make belladonna tea."

She nodded and clambered back down the ramp, one hand tight on Jack and the other on the wall, and he explained. "My mother used this when she couldn't sleep. You don't use much, but a little sip of tea and it put her out like a light. But we can't use straight tea, that would be too conspicuous." Back on the kitchen floor, Sally pulled out jars upon jars before finding a little tea kettle.

"We'll need to brew it with something that covers up the flavor. Perhaps something to play off the soft taste... maybe crabapple rose hips? That might be too posh, it's a bit grandmotherly. Do you have any-" Sally put a bottle in front of his face. "Worm's Wart? No, it doesn't make a good tea, I've tried. Too sweet. Maybe snake oil essence? The flavor floats on top a little, though, you have to beat it pretty severely to get the blend right. Perhaps something in a light-"

Sally popped open the kettle, dosing in a few drops of belladonna from a jar labeled "Deadly Nightshade", a flask of water, and finally nearly half of a lung of fresh, earthy Frog's Breath.

His train of thought ground to a halt. "Or Frog's Breath! If you like something that tastes like it's smacking you on the tongue with a paddle."

Sally laughed and swirled the kettle lightly before putting it on the embers of the cooking fire. Lifting Jack again, she hunkered down by the fire with him in her lap, silently watching, and Jack lulled into a light doze while the embers warmed him.

What an odd relationship he'd fallen into with this woman. Was this odd? To be automatic friends with someone he'd never met before, who'd never met him? For him to be giving her absolutely terrible in the bad way advice to save his own dignity? Was this truly a friendship, if their communication was so one-sided? He wasn't entirely sure how to answer the specifics, but he did know that he liked her. She had a wonderful intensity to her gaze when she was concentrating, and an unguarded way to her emotions that made her easy to read even without speech. Perhaps it was her finding him at his worst... No way to go but up from here, like digging out of a grave and hitting the moonlight. Maybe-

She stood up fast, and he went along for the ride as she hurriedly scooped all of his bones and his suit into her basket and scaled the ramp, yet again, to put it next to the door. She hurried down, each step getting a little more wobbly, and caught up the kettle just as it was starting to whistle. It was painful to watch her stumble with the kettle throwing off her balance, wishing not for the first time that he could just reach out a hand and help her up like a gentleman. Her face showed none of the discomfort that his skull did, he was sure. She just set her mind to something and did it, and did it fast and did it even through her lack of speech and bad legs and Jack had to immediately distract himself. Was there enough belladonna in the tea? Would this work?

She put his head in the basket with his bones, and with one little pat on the skull, she disappeared into the house, shutting the door behind her.

He couldn't hear. He wished he could... he wished he could be there, he hated sending her out there on her own. Perhaps he'd just gotten used to being tucked under her arm and figured she'd bring him with her. He wished-

Sally flung open the door, her smile splitting her face from ear to ear, and he wondered why he ever worried about her. "Sally, you brilliant woman, it worked!"

She laughed out loud, unrestrained for what was maybe the first time in her life, Jack liked to romantically think. She definitely picked up the basket of him with more fervor than normal, and she made her way up the main ramp of the foyer with twice the speed as before. He caught a glimpse in the doctor's office as they went past, and yes, he was quietly asleep in a slump over his notes.

And then they passed the library. "Sally- Sally! The books are in there!"

Then they went into another little door, one Jack had noticed but never paid much attention to, and Sally went inside.

It was so sparse, compared to his own home. His abode was littered with family treasures, pictures and scrolls, trinkets and knicknacks from old passions and aborted plans. This room was barely more than walls, with a table before the window and a bed hanging from chains. He would have called it a closet, really, if Sally hadn't put him down with a firm authority. "This is mine," her body language said, and he heard it clearly. Apparently moving him into her room took higher priority than finding a book with a skeleton inside.

A chance look out the window, and Jack saw his home, and chuckled. They were so close for how long? And he'd completely missed her until yesterday, because he'd dared to wander off on his own. As she lifted his head, he caught her eyes and lead her to look out the window. "I live there! Remind me to invite you over, once this whole debacle is quite over with. We'll have tea." She grimaced. "Minus the nightshade." There was the grin, and he laughed.

The doctor slept, and Sally and Jack made their way to the doctor's study. After some frustratingly careful peeking into volume after volume, Sally found an anatomy book. Sitting in her room in a tense silence, listening for the sound of the doctor's chair, they sorted through his vertebrae bit by bit until, after a few test configurations, they put his neck together.

So much progress, and yet so little. Soon they heard Doctor Finkelstein groaning, and Sally moved Jack and his bones behind her bedroom door. Indeed, it soon popped open, and Sally was thusly lectured on what did and did not make good tea, and how nightshade had to be boiled and boiled until the color changed otherwise it made him very sleepy, but it was an honest if ignorant mistake, Sally, don't do it again. She weathered the tirade in silence, in what Jack was certain was a conscious decision on the doctor's part. Fate was surely kicking him in the tailbone, because right after Sally was instructed to get back to the kitchen and start a proper dinner. Jack was left alone, in a basket behind a door, staring out a window to his real home and wondering what he had done to deserve this.

It wasn't totally without entertainment. With his neck reattached, he has another part of his body to move and reacquaint himself with. Without the weight of his body below it, though, it wiggled under him like a tail more than moved his head properly. It was an odd sensation of his body doing something entirely wrong. He grimaced and frowned and scowled and made every sort of terrible face he could before he got used to the feeling. He couldn't imagine what he would need it for, either, but at least he was, and it was a start.

By the time he was wish he had some nightshade of his own, Sally was let back into her room and the door was firmly locked behind her. She stood, waving the doctor goodbye until the door clicked.

The chair whirred away.

Sally scooped him up and hugged him, all foot-and-a-half of him and his neck, and he laughed at the absurdity.

"I missed you too!" Sally held him out enough for them to speak quietly. "All right, let's see how much of me we can put back together. Did he notice the missing book?"

She shook her head.

"Didn't mind the tea?"

Her expression was unsure.

"Right, that's why we have to be subtle about such things. Are you ready now?"

She nodded and grinned.

"Excellent!"

They worked until the sun was down and the moon was the room's only light. Sally, thankfully, was blessed with the same stellar night vision as Jack, and they put him back piece by slow piece. More of his spine, and then his collar and right shoulder. Around this stage of his body, Jack started to feel less helpless and more naked, as his body started to look more like himself.

She started on his ribcage and stopped midway, puzzled by the variety of bones to stick together. Instead, she filled out his shoulder and the rest of his arm until he had enough to prop himself up by his elbow and help her count. Then, after losing track a few times when a cloud passed overhead, she finished his hand so he could point specific bones out. He was sure that his thumb was on wrong. Or maybe it was the wrong thumb.

It wasn't just him worrying. Sally kept checking between him and the book, over and over, counting them by touching the bones and then their counterpart in the book. One, two, three. Jack, mostly spine and some ribs and a stray arm, checked by giving himself a light rattle. Do, re, mi... there were notes missing.

Sally covered up a few ribs in the book with her fingers.

There were bones missing.

Sally and Jack looked into each other's eyes and realized together, in horror, that parts of him were back in the cemetery.

And down in the town, the alarm sounded.

Jack gasped aloud, and Sally stood up to see lights flickering on across the town spread out below her window. "What- why are they sounding the alarm? Sally we have to go see what's wrong!"

She squeaked in shock, pointing between him and the door, asking how to get out with the lock shut tight.

"I don't know! We'll have to find another way!" Jack scanned the infuriatingly bare room. Other than the echo of the wailing klaxon, there wasn't a damn thing he hadn't already seen in the several hours he'd been stuck there. "You don't have sheets to make a rope? No scraps of cloth?"

Sally pointed down, to the kitchen- right! They were down there from this morning!

"Bah!" He smacked his fist against the sewing table. The alarm was thumping in his ears. "We can't get out the door, not going out the window while I'm in this state..."

Sally gasped. She started to stumble, getting her weight aligned the right direction, and threw herself to the window to throw it open. Jack leaned after her with his weight tenderly balanced on the bottom of his back. "You've thought of something?"

She nodded, although with her back turned to him he couldn't see her face. Something about the slight angle of her shoulders, though, told him she wasn't happy about it.

"Whatever it is, Sally, I'm sure it will work." She nodded a bit more firmly. "You're sure it will work?"

She met his gaze again, and her troubled face suggested. There was an echo in her eyes, not uncertainty. More dread, a familiar kind of dread that Jack saw on people who needed dentistry work done. "You... how do you know it will work?"

She shrugged a little, weighing the options in her hands like a scale, and it clicked. "Sally, have you done this before?"

Sally made sure he was looking before pantomiming the event, "opening" her window and leaning over the side of her table, the windowsill... and then flipping over and landing in a heap on her floor.

"NO!" Jack snapped immediately, trying to talk over the rustling of fabric as she stood up. "No! I cannot believe- We are not jumping out the window! I will not put you in this kind of position!"

She popped his head off at the neck. His body wriggled under him, and when his hand went up to check for his head, it all fell back against the table in a clatter and promptly gave up. He wasn't sure whether to be angrier at his body or more scared for Sally. She put him back down on the table in front of her, searching through the desk for things he couldn't quite bother to look at.

"Sally!" He pleaded.

Sally pulled at a stitch just below her neck, and then as it loosened, pulled the halves of her chest open.

He recoiled, scandalized. "Sally!"

She waggled a finger at him in scolding and put it up to her lips before popping a bobbin of thread into his mouth. His teeth closed around it reflexively. Before he could gather up his tongue to spit it out, she hoisted him up and stuffed him into her chest facing outwards so he could see. His neck stump settled into- was it leaves?- Sally's stuffing. A needle scraped his skull, and thread criss-crossed his vision as Sally half-sewed up herself around him.

Gagged as he was, he couldn't scream as Sally made for the window, took a deep breath, and dropped.