cannulalingus | BARH-L2 || SPAM

[ O P E N ]

[ It's hard to do much of anything - breathing's the worst of it, though. Something so simple and she hears her own breath heaving and whistling with every inhale and exhale. She's propped upright by now, at least, shaky and shaken, but okay. Living. Alive. That's crazy. How is she alive?

The cannula's back in place, her sweater sleeves are pulled well and nervously over her hands, and she keeps constantly playing with her hair, adjusting herself, if she's not sleeping it off outright. She wishes she had some of the good stuff. She wishes she had a book, or something, while her limbs shook and shuddered too much to stand, but that was neither here nor there.

She can't blame Helena. Not when she knows the basics. She can't blame her any more than those poor pitbulls can be blamed for being whipped into fighting dogs. She was raised cruel, and she was raised a killer. That's not easy to shake. Logically, at least, she knows.

Consciously, it's kind of hard not to hold it against her.

It's not easy for her to lay on her side - physically, yeah, because she's sore as hell and all over, for that matter - but because she has a strange new temporary paranoia of pointing her back towards anything in particular (or rather away from anyone in particular. But she does anyway, curls on her side and faces the door for anyone who might be walking in. She doesn't expect many visitors, not when she's new here. ]

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[He supports the cup as long as she lets him, but trusts her to take it when she tries. Their fingers do not touch.]

Yeah, well. I maybe could have stopped her if I weren't being self-absorbed and paranoid about the powers thing. So I feel a little responsible.

[Dillon has a lot of faults, but at least he owns up to them well.]

[ She pauses with the cup, eyeing Dillon over the rim with a bit of confusion, but regarding him evenly. ]

How could you have? She got the jump on me. [ With a self-deprecating smile, she raises her other hand, vaguely. ] My bad.

I mean, unless you're precog or something -

[ are you precog or something ]

[He looks down and rubs his forehead.]

Or something. I can see - patterns, possibilities. I have a lot more blindspots on the barge, but I knew how she felt about, uh, the rest of you.

[ It's the first time she doesn't want to get into more of the powers, she squashes her professional curiosity for the time being and has to ask, if gently: ]

You've spoken with her, then? How well do you think you know her?

I know a lot about her. Which isn't always the same thing.

And. An evil version of me had her half-convinced I was God. So, like. I've been trying to give her space.

I, um. I can heal, too. I can't do much for the death toll because it's not subject to physical biochemistry but I can give your lungs a boost, if you're okay with that.

[ It's magic. It's the unknown, but then again needles in her arms without necessarily all the details hadn't been a problem at the time, had it? She tends to go out on a limb. Anything to feel less like an invalid.

There's a very large part of her that's still harboring this new sense of paranoia for herself, maybe more of a sense of danger and what's to come. Call her a little naive sometimes, but, well. ]

Helena's psyche is - fragile. It's not good to play with her like that.

[ But he sounds reproachful enough about it, whatever it was that happened - 'evil version'? - so it's not a lecture so much as an agreement. She pauses, looking over Dillon and propping up her head on a hand. ]

How's that work? This isn't some big bad plan to cop a feel or something, right?

[ That's a joke, Dillon. You can breathe too. ]

I know.

[He shakes his head, not somber but not really equipped with enough suaveness to joke back, and falling back on hapazard professionalism instead. He technically works here, he can answer questions.]

I don't need to touch you at all. But it helps me focus if I do, just on the wrist or something. My power reverses entropy, turns randomness back into ordered states. So I can't fix the root coding problem, because it's part of your, like, baseline pattern? But I can undo a fair amount of the tissue deterioration.

It won't hurt or anything. It feels a little weird.

[ She almost holds out her hand. She doesn't know him, not personally, she doesn't even know his name yet. In a weird way (new worries involving her recent demise, she supposes), she just wants to make sure she's not about to get her soul sucked out or something. ]

If you're a warden, what's your key?

You know, I didn't actually say I was a warden. We let inmates with healing powers work here, too. But it's this.

[But he digs something out of his pocket, holds it up in between his second and third fingers - a Bellagio poker chip.]

Look, if you're not comfortable with it, I'm not insisting. You've got your treatments and all. But the offer's on the table.

Call it - uh, call it a screening process.

[ So maybe she's being a little unfair on the inmate idea right now, but not every one of them is going to mean well, nor are they going to necessarily be telling the truth. She figures she's safer with wardens, but -

Well, he produces that right away. He's not lying or he's a very good one. She seems more satisfied with that, coughing once into her arm and leaning back into her pillows. She sips carefully at the water again, trying not to spill, and considers. ]

What can you do for my lungs? Specifically.

[ Because this breathing thing really does suck. ]

I don't know the medical words for it. But okay, look.

[He takes the cup back, deftly, then crumples the plastic, crushes it between his hands, spills some of the water. Then he opens his palms, focuses, just a little. The plastic pops back into shape, the thin white crease-lines vanishing from the cheap translucent surface. Water droplets roll upward and return to their places.]

They used to work better than they do now, right? I'll just - unmake some of the damage since then.

That's - Holy shit.

[ Seeing really is believing. She watches the cup mold back into its original shape as if it's malleable, as if it was never crushed at all. Even the water's - Christ. ]

You can do that to me? You can - I don't know, uncrinkle some of the crackle?

[ Because that would be really cool. That would be - phenomenal to not have to wheeze with every breath. ]

Yeah, pretty much. It won't be permanent, since the reason they got like that in the first place is still there, but it'll help for awhile.

[ She lingers on it - for a while. At first, it seems like she's just not going to give him an answer at all. Finally, she glances towards Dillon again, rubbing furtively at her chest and biting at her lips. ]

Try it. Go ahead. I - wanna see.

[He rests his hand on her wrist, and presses on the world, focuses, concentrates his usual ambient energy here, into this flesh which is disordered, decayed, clawing it back toward where it should be. It doesn't hurt - it feels like the vibrations of sounds too low to hear, energy resonating deep through her chest, a grinding, squelching shift - and then relief, a flood of ease, of sudden air. The rest of her is refreshed too, rejuvenated, and for a few seconds, a few heartbeats, she does not age.]

[ She feels it nigh instantly, like something blossoming within her chest - she can feel her lungs easy expand and then exhale as his magic whatever it is works its - well, magic.

There's a shift within her, certainly, of something changing and she loops curious fingers underneath her nose tubes once she's done, the good hand that's not extended to him raising and tugging them away from her face for a moment.

She breathes in fresh air for the first time in ages, sighing happily and looking over at him with a bright look in her eyes. ]

That's amazing. That's - amazing.

[He grins, ducks his head a little, pleased, slightly shy.]

It has its perks, yeah.

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