and the fever began to spread

Entry tags:

and the fever began to spread

Who: Morgana and Bruce Banner
What: the angry ravings of a madwoman or something
Where: The infirmary
When: After this
Warnings: ...the ravings of a madwoman, mostly

She'd meant to taunt Merlin. Far from harmless, given how he haunts Arthur's footsteps, but she hadn't foreseen that conversation ending with her hurling her communicator away in anger. He hadn't spoken, and she couldn't help but read his words in monotone, couldn't imagine any emotion in the typed words he'd sent her. And it made it so much worse, to know that he hatched the only thing she has cared about in the past year or more, she doesn't even know how long it's been - to know that he would make a deal with the Admiral to fix her, after never having been there.

To know that Merlin would claim the dragon as responsibility, despite condemning her to grow twisted and crippled. Morgana doesn't know if she'll ever fly, she doesn't know if Aithusa will ever walk, and she would have died to save her, protect her, heal her - but all Merlin has to do is have a word with the Admiral, and it can be undone.

She wants to scream.

Staying in the infirmary is unbearable, in that moment, and she pushes herself out of bed, her whole body trembling. She tells herself it's anger, even though it's wasted muscle struggling to hold her up. She has no direction, but abruptly spots her communicator where it skittered across the floor, and she starts in its direction with slow, trembling steps. And if there are frustrated, furious, even pained sounds to accompany her walk, she'll never admit it.

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While they've been able to move many of the death tolling patients out of the infirmary, Bruce was quite sad when Tyrion, who spoke to Morgana regularly, was moved to his rooms. He seemed to be good to her, good for her, in a way. But he was certain the man, like anyone else, wanted to be rested elsewhere, and who wouldn't be in this mess? He just hoped it wouldn't adversely affect his patient.

Surprise, surprise: it's that patient that's making the little sounds that tear at his heart, the misery audible. He's drawn up from his desk, and heads over -- shadows under his eyes and expression grim.

"Morgana," he starts, though in the end he can't do anything, can't say anything-- just offering gentle hands to pluck up her communicator where it's fallen and bring it back to her. "Here," he says, voice kept low. "Here, let me help you back. You're not ready to walk yet."

With Ivy's serum, she'd thought that maybe, maybe she could manage to walk across a room. A room. She used to ride and run and fight, she'd hunted, she'd walked the length of a forest, and now she couldn't walk from her bed to the wall.

Watching Bruce retrieve her device is maddening, and she grits her teeth and turns her glower on him. It's Merlin she wants to lash out at, but Bruce is so much closer. "I don't need your help," she snarls, though she knows she does. Her legs still tremble, and though Ivy said the serum would help, it's not immediate. "We don't need anyone's help!"

He might as well be Merlin, for all that she was censuring herself.

"You need mine," he begins, stopping before her with her device in his hand; her opened his palm, let it lay flat, and waited for her to take it, watching her spit defiance at him.

He was the stone before the wind, unyielding, erosion of his good nature invisible to the naked eye. She did not know how weary he was, or how dangerous screaming at him could be. Not did she understand the strength it took to stand there, and offer no rage in the face of her own.

She has no idea, and if she did - if she did, she might have more care, but she'd be much more wary, too. As it is, he's been kind, and helpful, but all she can remember is the claustrophobia of being trapped in a too small space, day after day. All she can think of is Aithusa, still trapped, grown twisted and crippled when their cage became too small. She doesn't know how long they spent there, or how long they will spend there - but she knows that Merlin does, and that he won't tell her.

Snatching the device from his hand, she holds it tightly against her chest to hide the way her hand is shaking. "I don't," she snaps, glowering. "When the Admiral sees fit to send me back, I won't have help." She won't have Ivy's generosity or the serum, she won't have a bed to convalesce in, or friends to help her heal. She'll have a hole in the ground that, according to Merlin, she'll escape one day. The blood is draining from her face, both from the effort of moving and the prospect of returning there. She wants to slap him, just for seeing her like this all the time, for being here and knowing exactly how weak she still is - and the only reason she refrains is the knowledge that she couldn't possibly strike him hard enough to hurt.

He couldn't know her situation, so he didn't say you don't know that; he knew others of her world were here-- Merlin had been in, and skirted around her while she convalesced. He knew there was a rift, deep and treacherous, between them -- but it was not something that simply time could mend. There was a sickness here, and he did not know if there were people her who could help her.

Bruce reaches out, all the, hands firm and gentle, to gather her and help, despite her protests.

"Maybe not," he says, because it's all he can say in the moment. "But you're not there, you're here. And while you're here, I'll help you."

It would be easy to acquiesce, to let him herd her back into bed and make sure she hadn't hurt herself. But Morgana's pride has always come first, and she pushes at his hands when he reaches for her, stepping back on legs that are threatening to give out. "Don't touch me," she snarls.

The pit had shattered something in her, leaving her holding together sharp edges and pieces that didn't quite fit anymore. "You can't help me! You can't make it as if it never happened!" It's Merlin she's angry at, it's Merlin she's furious with, but she'll settle for shouting at Bruce. "Did he tell you?" Sometimes, when she least wants to admit it, she is very like Uther: seeing enemies in every shadow, suspecting every kind word. "Did he say how long I was there, has he admitted to anything he knows? He owes me answers!"

"No one has told me anything," Bruce said, putting his hands up, eyes on her as she hissed and spit at him. It was not the first time that someone had taken out their damage on him. The first few years of his life, that's all he'd seen -- his father, angry and demented, either thick in madness or the drink both.

Now, it was Morgana. It put him on edge, focusing; for a brief moment he closed his eyes-- thinking of the beach, of the metronome, of anything that could bring the calm. They opened, still brown. Still Bruce.

"I don't know anything about your situation off the barge, Morgana. I'm sorry," he told her. "I just know you've been hurt, and I want to help you, if you'll let me."

Edited 2013-03-09 23:12 (UTC)

"Yes, you've been very helpful," she snaps, because his eyes haven't changed and she has no idea the risk she runs by putting him on edge. And because she doesn't know, all she wants is to dig at everyone around her, until they hurt just as much as she does. "You've kept me penned in here very well. There may be no chains, but I'm just as trapped as I was!" If her voice breaks, she doesn't pause to acknowledge it.

The worst part is that she does need his help, he is right to insist she stay, because she still can't stand on her own. And rather than collapse entirely, she reaches for his arm to hold herself up. It's a weakness, and it's obvious, and she wants to scream at herself for it.

"I wasn't hurt." Her voice is lower, still angry but just slightly more controlled. "I was caged. And Merlin knows all about it, and refuses to say a word." It's an explanation, the best she can give - not an apology, because she isn't sorry. She thinks she never will be.

Little does she know that he hurts as much -- sometimes more -- than she can know. But he endures, he endures despite that there's something rattling it's cage behind his eyes; he closes his eyes, let's the metronome tick in the recesses of his mind, and then opens them again; they're still brown, still safe.

His fingers flex as she lurches into him, but he takes her weight and helps her.

"No one tells me," he says quietly, as he helps her toward the bed. "But I know what that's like. Being a mushroom; being kept in the dark, fed lies and crap. It wasn't like you-- my body, it can't -- break down like that. Not anymore. But I know what it's like for people to keep you in the dark. I'm sorry."

Break down. She hates the way that sounds - she's broken down. She's broken. It tempts her to push away from him again, enough so that her arm tenses - but she doesn't have the strength, and drags her feet, stumbling toward the bed. "Do you," she says, doubt lacing her words. Doubt, and something else she won't recognize. She doesn't want to trust people anymore; they fail her.

"Then maybe you'll tell him for me, that it's a small ship, and he can't run from me forever." Not that he hides, but that doesn't matter to her - what matters is that eventually she'll be able to walk on her own, and she'll find her own answers. "Did you face those who kept you in the dark?"

"I will," he says. He will, too, in his own way. Perhaps not so threateningly, but he will think on Merlin, and think on speaking to him. If there's a way to aid her, then-- well, Bruce will try and get it rendered to her. It's the least he can do; she is a patient, and she is under his care.

Her other question, however, has him pausing there, next to her bed. That has a much more complicated response, really.

"No," He finally says. "I never did. I never had the chance." There is a lie in there, deeply buried. But even Bruce won't face it anymore. He's lied about it so many times it has become the truth now.

She sits heavily, abruptly grateful for the bed's support. There is a small part of her that wants to lay down and never stand back up; there is a louder part of her that never wants to be so still again.

For all Morgana's power, she is easily lied to; it's been so all her life. If he lies, she doesn't see it, can't hear it. But she does look up at him, meet his eye. "Then I'm sorry, too," she says, voice low, and passionate in dangerous, violent ways. "It's a shame you couldn't kill them."

"He was killed. In a mugging," he said, though his heart knows the truth, the mind has buried it so deep he has forgotten the facts. "So. Someone got to it for me. Eventually. That's -- the truth of it, you know? Even if you don't get the satisfaction, someone will. People like that... their actions usually lead them to their end."

It did for Brian Banner. Fool was at his wife's grave. He was asking for it. And some kind soul (her son) put him down the way he should have years ago.

"You should rest now." And Bruce needs space. "But call for me if you need anything."

"Maybe." She'd much rather have the satisfaction; she didn't have it when Uther died, couldn't look in his eyes though she felt him breathe his last. It hadn't been the joyful moment she'd expected, it had only left her cold and empty, and she had to believe that there would be relief and release if she watched the light leave the Sarrum's eyes.

But she was tired, and found herself nodding as she turned to lay down, finding her communicator and clenching it tightly in one hand. There was no apology, no promise to call, but as she turned away there was at least a quiet, "Thank you, Doctor."

It was all he was getting. He was used to it.

"You're welcome, Morgana." He lingered for a moment, before her turned away and closed the curtains around her bed, leaving her to rest.

Jesse's still worn through from his own death toll, but Charles's stupid telepathy voice in his head won't let him sit still through it. It's his own fault, of course: both because he's the one that asked Charles to put the whammy on him in the first place, and because the only reason it's acting up so much now is that he's feeling sorry for himself. In his brain's fucked-up language, that means wanting to get high.

Instead, he's got to be helpful, so he's convinced Banner to let him bustle around lest the itch become completely unbearable. He's on his way back from getting Chromie settled in when he hears the shouting and snarling; he sees Morgana and Banner stumbling by as he goes to strip the little gnome's infirmary bed, but he doesn't get involved.

Later, though... He's not sure what gets him back to her, specifically, other than the itch, but there's something there he can't help but respond to. All that helpless rage... no one should feel like that, something in him feels, not even here. So after a while, he quietly goes to check in on her, tugging her curtain back just a little. "Hey," he whispers. "You okay?"

She lifts her head at the sound of his voice, and a frown pulls at her brows. Most of her memories are back, and she recognizes him - but not as someone she'd expect to look in on her, and for a moment, she wonders if there's still some memory missing. Her hand clenches around her communicator, though it's clicked off. Since Banner left, her thoughts have inhabited a decidedly darker locale, and the only company she had.

Merlin wants to restore Aithusa, fix her, and Morgana should be pleased at the idea. The dragon was more innocent than she was, growing crippled and twisted was the last thing she deserved. Yet all Morgana can feel is rage, that Merlin could solve a problem she could not prevent, that he would take the time to tell her but refuse to tell her enough.

"Don't worry," she says instead of answering, voice bitter. "I won't throw another fit." Today.

"I'm not..." Jesse holds up a hand in a gesture of innocence, shaking his head. It's not the fit part that nags at him; he's had his fair share of his own, and more than one have ended in him throwing things, too. At Narvin's head, once.

"I just heard what happened before. It sounded..." Bad. She knows what it sounded like. "I wanted to see if you needed anything, I guess."

Morgana would probably buy into his money program if she could purchase the chance to throw things at Merlin's head. "I need to walk," she mutters half into her pillow. "I need to leave. But you can't do that, can you?" She knows what the answer is, so she just shifts, and pushes herself up to sit.

"You used to be an inmate, didn't you?"

The truth is, Jesse's not sure why she can't leave -- but then, he's not 100% sure why she's there to begin with. She doesn't seem okay, but he's been ferrying death tollers back and forth all day so far. If Banner's saying no, though... Jesse doesn't have a lot of faith in authority, which is probably why he's so bad at having any himself, but doctors he listens to. Usually. "Sorry," he says uncertainly, holding his hands out.

Besides, he's not gonna fight the Hulk without a good reason.

But then she asks a question he can answer, and so he nods. "Uh-huh. Up until July. Why?"

She ignores the apology - the sentiment means nothing, because sorry or not she still won't be able to walk out of here. Drawing her legs up under the blanket, Morgana settles her hands on her knees and shakes her head slightly.

"Why are you still here?"

That's always the million dollar question, isn't it? "Because of the deals," he says a little too quickly, like it's the prepared version of the answer, which it is. "I want mine, same as any warden."

Half a million, maybe. "How can you trust him?" That's the big one, as far as Morgana's concerned. A scowl starts in her brows, and she wraps her arms around her legs. "After everything he's done, how can you stand the Admiral?"

Jesse nods: it's the other half a million dollar question, maybe, and as far as he's concerned it's a totally fair one. He grabs a nearby chair and pulls it up, giving her a questioning look, sitting down when she nods. "I've seen enough to know he can do what he says," he explains, more seriously. "He sent me back in time after I graduated. He let me undo something I did. And I got to see-- when I went back a couple months ago, I got to see what would've happened if I hadn't."

Which is, really, the crux of the answer to the first question, the part he's not sharing just yet. Why is he still here? Because there's more to undo. More to get done, too. "In the end, it's just... more important that I'm here." And then there's the other thing, the one that makes him smile distantly. "Plus, well-- there's someone I got to stick around for."

"And that's worth it," she says, though it comes out more snappish than she intended. "There's no one at home that needs you, nothing there that needs you?" She understands it, in a way: the Admiral promises a magic gift, and if she had any hope that he'd give her hers, maybe she'd be more invested in graduation. But as far as she can assume, that can't happen until she gives up exactly what she'd ask the Admiral for. So what, in the end, is the point?

It's a dagger, whether she meant it to be or not, and it clearly hits home. He glances away, jaw tightening briefly. "Nothing that needs me more than the people who need me here," he replies, voice slightly roughened by the admission. What does he have on the outside? Claire, their dogs, a home. Or Andrea and Brock, if he wants that instead, if he could keep his nose clean and his name clear in Albuquerque.

Except he's done more than his share to screw both of those up. And if he weighs staying outside and screwing up more against Arya and all the things he could fix in here... Well, there's a reason he's said he's not leaving for a long, long time.

She shakes her head, and her hands tighten around her legs. It pulls at her sleeves, revealing the edges of bandages around her wrists. Beneath the linen, scars are forming, from the months she spent fighting manacles. "Then you're fortunate," she says sharply. She didn't mean the barb that hurt him, but she can still see that he's hurt. And Morgana is far from an apologetic mood.

"Or maybe you're not. But not all of us can be so unconcerned by what's happening at home."

He spots the bandages when he looks back and immediately comes to the wrong conclusion, although one that certainly explains why Banner hasn't let her out of the infirmary yet. He softens a little, frowning -- Lua had tried the same thing, he remembers all too well.

"It's not..." He licks his lips, sits forward, elbows on his knees. "All this, it's so things will be better back home. Graduating, too. It's not like I don't think anyone missed me while I was an inmate--" Actually, he doubts anyone really did except maybe Mr. White, but whatever-- "but I swear to God, the best thing I could've done for them was put up with all this bullshit out here and come out the other side of it. I know that sounds like just more party line crap, but it's true."

She doesn't exactly understand his words, but she gets the gist, and that's exactly what it sounds like. "Fortunate," she snaps again. "Lucky them, and lucky you. While I put up with this, someone is dying slowly and alone because I'm not there." Her hands shift, wrapping around fistfuls of blanket and the impetus for her earlier rage resurfaces. Aithusa is still chained in the Sarrum's pit, still crippled and hurting - and Merlin would wipe that away, as if it never happened.

"So you'll forgive me if your 'party line crap' doesn't hold any comfort."

"It doesn't have to be like that," he says immediately, leaning forward further. "There's-- look, people will tell you that time stops here and that's sort of true and sort of not, from what I've seen, but it does in some places. In some worlds. Which means there's worlds where you can go back and fix that when you're done here. Like I said -- the Admiral let me. He, um..."

No, he's told some people about Gale, but he's not at the place yet where he can admit it to someone who's largely a stranger. He clears his throat and shakes his head instead. "Someone was suffering because of me, too, and he let me help. He let me make it better. If there's someone who needs you like that... I mean, don't that make you lucky, too?"

"Does it?" She's too caught up in herself to notice the pause, to think that maybe he isn't giving her the full truth. It doesn't matter to her, now: her anger is too easy to lose herself in. "Or does it mean I'll be trapped here a small eternity, or at least until I abandon every conviction I've ever held? And in all that time, she'll suffer, and suffer."

Morgana breaks off, studying his face in silence, her eyes wide and just a little manic. "Why should me redemption be worth more than her life?"

"It doesn't have to be like that," he says again, patiently but a little worriedly, his own eyes wide as well. Insistent, perhaps, more than worried, although there's something sympathetically upsetting about all her anger and fear. "They can be the same -- you can do it for her. And maybe she won't even know. Maybe time's just stopped for her, like it did back in my timeline."

"Maybe isn't good enough!" She shouts it at him, and a moment later she's tearing at one of the bandages around her wrist, pulling and ripping until she can unwind the linen. When it's in a small pile in her lap, her sleeve yanked up, she holds her arm out, hand clenched in a tight fist. He was wrong; the marks on her skin, still ugly and red and scarring, weren't self inflicted. They circle her wrists, though they're worse on the inside, where she pulled the hardest, chaffed the worst.

"Maybe time hasn't stopped! Maybe she's alone, maybe she needs someone to protect her and I'm not there!"

Not that she ever, ever wants to return to that prison - but she can't find any comfort without Aithusa.

Oh, shit. "Hey!" Jesse lunges forward as she rips at her bandages, although he doesn't actually physically stop her. "Hey hey hey hey -- it's okay, yo, don't--" He cuts off as she holds up her wrist, eyes wide. It's an ugly image, and sadly it's one he recognizes, even if she's damaged a lot worse than he ever was any of the times he's been handcuffed.

He swallows, takes a metaphorical step back -- but not a physical one -- and regroups. He holds his hands up, lowering his voice to something he hopes is calming. "Then the best thing you can do for her is work on ditching this place, right?" he murmurs. "You can do that. You can definitely do that. Having someone to do it for, that's important. That's a big step already."

She ignored his attempts to stop her, but now she's faced with his calm, and a pile of bandages, and a stinging wrist. The anger doesn't go out of her, but it stalls, at least for the moment. Shaking her head, Morgana laughs, though it's more a tired huff than anything. "I don't want redemption. I don't need it." She could give in for Aithusa's sake, and sacrifice the druids, the magic users, all the people who needed her to be strong for them. It wasn't a fair trade.

"But she does," he says softly, trying to catch her eyes with his own. "Right? So what's the problem?" It's a real question -- he gets what's making her want to leave, so what's making her not?

She doesn't want to look at him, and avoids his eye for a long moment. When she does look up, the anger is still there, and the desperation, and a fierceness. Years ago, for her, she'd spoken with Ivy about sanity and madness, and how to measure it in the strength of their convictions. How could she sacrifice that, even for the last dragon in Albion?

"She doesn't," Morgana snaps, and gathers the bandages in one clenched hand. "If I sacrifice everything I believe in, just to return to hell, I'll have doomed every one of my kind who has ever dreamt of freedom."

Well, what the hell does that mean? Is she a secret terrorist or something? he wonders, baffled. She says freedom, but... even the Admiral wouldn't pull up someone who was a slave or something, right? That'd be like taking Moses on board.

Still. Still, there is one thing he does know: "Maybe you're right." He nods, ducking his head, biting his lip. "Maybe you can't have both. There ain't always a way to have both." He couldn't have Mr. White free and Gale alive; he can't have his own freedom from the Barge and undo his mistakes. He can't have freedom and keep Arya and Chromie, either. "But... you take enough time, you might be able to think up a way to get as much as possible."

Secret terrorist is perhaps the most apt description of Morgana that has ever been made. She laughs quietly, gaze dropping to her clenched hand. Slowly, she starts wrapping her wrist again.

"Might is no better than maybe." She glances up at him again. "Is that what you did? Do you have as much as possible?"

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and the fever began to spread

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OH I'M HERE NOW

YES GOOD

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