this doesn't change anything

who: brett and eris
where: the hospital
when: late

Eris was back to the Round to drop off replies to letters and see if there were any new ones. She'd had a rather busy day, booking clients for the event on Friday, and then she'd needed to track down Charlie, talk to him, get the fact that she was hiring him settled...there was a lot going on. So it was a bit later than usual that she managed to show up in the bar, feeling a little tired. She got up to the counter, smiled, and was immediately pulled aside. Mac told her the news--that the man who'd been coming in every night to get a letter from her, the cop she'd vouched for--had gotten shot.

It seemed a lot for her like all of the color and warmth drained from the world in one harsh heartbeat. He quickly assured her that he hadn't been dead yet when the ambulance had showed up to haul him away, but that didn't necessarily serve to make her feel any better. She felt nearly numb, but only in the manner she remembered from childhood. A numb that happened just before the blood rushed to the wound, when the pain would really start.

It wasn't a matter of making a clear choice. One moment, she was being told what had happened, the next she was leaving. At no point did the thought 'I really need to get there!' cross her mind. It was more like a blind, internal drive that dictated her actions as opposed to higher thought. Brett was hurt (not dead, not dead, not dead) and she was going to be there. End of story. She also didn't even pause to think about stealing a car off of the street, which she did. A cab would take to long to get to her, and she'd have to walk to a better area to even be in sight of one. So, she wasn't waiting.

As she drove, she had a few near misses. Stop signs became something that only happened to other people, and she wove in and out of traffic like a madwoman. At no point was she reacting, however. She was just acting, just driving, and that heartbeat thudding in her ears, it was loud enough to block out the blaring horns and screeching tires.

When she got to the hospital, she hopped a curb to get into the lot, finding the first space she could before she was rushing to the doors. It was the closest hospital to the Round, she knew for a fact all of the gunshot wound victims were brought there. She rushed in, getting to the front desk and she started asking after him. The staff was helpful enough in getting her the right information--she was told where he was, and that it wasn't the morgue. However it was intensive care. That proved to be a slight bit of a problem.

The problem came in the way that people were trying to stop her from getting in there. They were trying to sell her on some silly nonsense that it was 'immediate family only'. As she kept going for the doors, trying to shrug off a nurse who was attempting to stop her, she answered. Loud and clear.

Those souls in the ICU, what they heard was something more along the lines of angry, intense arguing. "...I'm his wife! ...yes, please. Ask me why I'm not wearing a ring. Do you know what a detective makes? Trust me, it isn't enough for what that man would want to put on my finger." The argument got a little louder as she made her way through the main doors. "You back the hell off and I get to see him or I start letting the entire world know what the administrator of this dump does in his spare time. It involves high heels, for starters, and you really don't want me to fill in the blanks of 'how'. Barring that, I start looking for bonesaws."

It was that moment where she finally burst through the doors of Brett Trent's room, the information gleaned by people looking in a panicked manner towards his door. There were three staff immediately behind her, all looking various degrees of upset and worried. "Baby," she said, tone overly patient. "Please tell these people who I am."

It was not a particularly pleasant way of coming back to consciousness, the shouting from beyond his door having come through first, before he opened his eyes to the overly bright lights, all the more glaring as they reflected off the white walls and sheets. The smell had hit him - that unmistakable, clinical smell. He hated hospitals, he knew that much even though his head was still spinning from whatever drugs they had him on. Something strong, if the way he felt like he was floating an inch above the bed was any indication. Floating on air, and everything else was cutting through that, the raised voices, the footsteps and then the door was flung open and he was being asked questions. He opened his mouth to answer, but what came out wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear. “Get me out of here,” he said, directing that at Eris, struggling to get up, though his limbs didn’t seem to want to co-operate, meaning he was dangerously close to falling out of bed. He hated hospitals. Floating on air or not, he wanted to leave, and she could take him - she didn’t care about the rules. She would get him out of here, she would save him.

Eris and the medical team all rushed forward when he started moving around, though Eris got there first. It was possible to run in heels, just not advisable. Either way, however, she got there, and put her arms up to brace against his shoulders, trying to ensure he didn't wind up on the floor with a concussion to boot. Everyone else helped that, though the second he seemed to be no longer in danger of hitting the floor, she turned that death glare on everyone else. "Get out." she snapped. "Now." There was no question to her tone, no hint of bending to anyone's will. After an exchanged look, the staff left, though no one looked happy about it. She looked him over, trying to see how many IV's he was hooked up to, where he'd been shot, how pale he looked...all the little things.

Brett pushed back against the hands that held him down, but feebly. Between blood loss and the drugs they had him on, he had no real strength. “I wanna go home,” he told her, even as the staff left the room - though they did not actually close the door behind them.

"We'll go home, don't worry." she told him reaching up to look him in the eyes--though really she was looking for how much his pupils were dilated and the answer was 'a whole goddamn lot'. She glanced around, turned on a lamp and went to kill the overhead lights. She'd dealt with certain situations in her past that required her to play nurse. Sometimes it was detoxing girls who wanted to join up in Babylon, sometimes people got hurt. It wasn't really something she'd had to do often, but she wasn't flying completely blind, either. She crossed back to him, picking up the clip board attached to the end of the bed, glancing over the notes there. It was still sinking in, everything that was happening, though one thing was clear. She had pushed panicking aside. Maybe she'd panic later. Her full throttle drives were still steering the boat, and right now they said she needed to get herself up to speed with the situation, and make her own decisions.

"We'll go home soon." she murmured, looking over the last few notes on the page. Morphine had been listed up front. So there was that. He was probably more than a little high right now. That was probably for the best. She was relieved when she got the gist of it all. That he'd been shot in the leg but it hadn't hit anything important. They got the bullet out, he'd lost a lot of blood (which explained the blood in one of the bags above the bed) but it didn't look like anything that was going to cause extreme, long term trouble. That had her letting out a breath in relief and she shut her eyes for a second. But that was all she gave herself. Just one second. Then she put the chart back, and moved to pull the blankets down gently, so she could see the bandages on his leg.

“We’ll go home now,” Brett said, sounding like he was agreeing with her. He had taken her pushing down his blankets as her helping him to get out of bed, the first step in getting out of here. “Don’t like hospitals,” he said, making an attempt to push himself into a sitting position from where he was propped up against a mountain of pillows.

She saw dried blood on the bandage, but nothing new seeping forth. That she took as a good sign, that bleeding wasn't continuing. When he tried to push himself up, she gently pushed on his shoulder to get him back down again, putting the blankets right. She stood, looking down at him, her hand still on one shoulder. "I know you don't like hospitals." she told him first. "And I'll get you out of here as soon as I can. But right now, you're not done yet." she continued, tone clear but patient. "See?" she glanced towards the IV's. "Not done. You need that. So not right now. Soon, but you have to be patient for me."

“No,” Brett said, attempting for firm, but his tone came out more as a petulant child. “Hate fucking hospitals. Spent too much time in them. Want to go home,” he told her, his words slurring slightly from the drugs. Whole sentences weren’t really happening for him, though he sounded rather more eloquent inside his head. Still, he slumped back against the pillows when she pushed him. “When’d’y get so strong?” he asked her.

"Right about when you gave sister morphine a big bear hug." Eris told him, smirking faintly. When he was down, though, she let up the pressure, standing straight as she looked him over again, even if there was nothing new to see. She was aware people outside were looking in from well across the desk area, she imagined monitoring them for anything suspicious. No, not them. Her. Finding a chair, she brought it over to the side of the bed, and sat in it, though she felt too antsy to be sitting. It wouldn't help for her to flit around the room, though. She needed to be where he could focus on her more easily. "We'll get you home soon enough. At least there'll be a view there. And an endless streak of girls coming in to look after you. I'm sure it'll be hard work for you, but you'll manage."

“Haven’t got a sister. Or girls,” Brett told her, confused and trying to follow what she was saying. “Just you - you can look after me. At home.”

"No, but you have a very upscale apartment that's spacious, will serve you well right now, and a whole floor full of girls right there who'll be happy to check in on you." Eris told him. She did feel a tightening in her chest when he told her that it was going to be just her. That meant she was invited, at any rate. "If you want it to be just me, it'll be just me. And it'll be at our home, you're not going back to your apartment."

“Don’t want any girls. Don’t want them to see-” he weakly indicated himself, it swimming into his awareness for the first time that he was dressed in a short sleeved, cotton hospital gown, and that the edges of his scars, on his neck and his left arm, were visible. “-me.” The hospital staff would have seen. He hated hospitals. “Wanna go home.” He needed to get out of here. He just needed to get his head and his body to work with him on that, but they weren’t.

Eris reached out, a sharp, hard pang of sympathy going out to him. One of the big parts of their relationship had been overcoming his issues related to his scars. They were always there, even after they'd been intimate. A constant in her own mind, not wanting to trigger anything for him. She knew just how real that was to him, how awful it felt for him to have people see the ruins the fire had left his flesh in. She took his hand, and brought it to her lips, pressing them against his knuckles, very gently. "No one'll see. I promise." she told him first. "And we'll go home when you're done with the emergency treatments. The second I feel like I can take you home and you won't do anything like die on me, we're out of here."

Brett slumped back against the pillows, closing his eyes, his head tilted toward the ceiling. “Not gonna die. Can’t. Too easy.” He’d wanted to die, last time he was in this place. All those years ago. The morphine may have dulled his current pain, but he still had the memory of the pain from before. How it felt to have those burns biting deep, the pull from badly healing wounds. Having to learn to walk again, to do everything on his own again. The indignity of it all. The pity. He opened his eyes and looked at her, suddenly and sharply pulling his hand from hers as that thought rose. “I don’t need your fucking pity,” he spat at her. She’d never given it to him before. Not once. But he was back here - and it was all starting again. Just like last time. It would always end up like last time. Nothing ever changed. Not for him.

Eris gave him a highly unamused Look. "Oh do not even start that with me, Trent." she snapped at him, not even a little bit considering that she was going to be bitching out a man who was just shot. "You know me a little fucking better than that, and you don't get to pull this bullshit with me." she continued. "So stow it, and right goddamn now. I've not once pitied you, you angry son of a bitch, and I'm not starting now. So take a second, and remember who the fuck it is you're talking to."

“Julia,” Brett said, as though she’d actually asked him who he was talking to. “December says you’re blunt,” he added, for a moment sounding conversational, as though one statement flowed on from the last, though in reality there was a clear disconnect.

This was the problem with talking to people who weren't exactly on top of their game with a brain soaked in drugs. Conversation wasn't the most lucid. "That's right, Julia." she said, voice lower. "And I've never pitied you. I'm not going to start now. As for...December?" That didn't make sense to her. A month said she was blunt? She moved past it. "Yes, I'm blunt, you knew that."

“You’ll start. More to pity now. Easier to pity now. I know how this works. Nothing ever changes for me. Broken record. Round and round,” Brett said, lifting a hand with a pointed finger and twirling it in the air. He’d thought about that earlier, now the words played like a loop in his head to some unknown tune.

Eris looked at him, then calmly got up, crossed to the door and shut it. Then she turned and headed back to the bed, heels clicking on the floor. "If you're going to be a whiny little bitch about everything, then you're going to get slapped at some point. Maybe not right now, but at some point." she told him, crossing her arms beneath her chest. "You, Detective Whineass, are fine. Okay? You were shot, sure, but it's a flesh wound. It's nothing. You could practically walk this off, and be fine." Which wasn't true, but it didn't matter at the moment. "There'll be a little recovery time, but this isn't some huge deal. You'll heal up. So suck it up, or I will start to pity the fact that for some reason, in our time apart, you became a sissy little girl."

“If I’m so fucking fine then find me my clothes and get me the hell out of here, now,” Brett said, in a voice that would have been angry and snappy, if the whole effect hadn’t been spoiled by the fact he was as high as a kite, coupled with the problem that as he snapped his head up to look at her, the rush it caused meant he was seeing double for a moment or two.

"I will--when your emergency treatments are done. Which I already told you. There happens to be a sliding scale between 'deathbed' and 'papercut'. You'll be okay but you need some more blood, and to be sure they haven't fucked anything up. I'll get you out as soon as I can. Just not right this second. Possibly when you're less stoned. You're a big man, and I will at no point be able to actually pick you up off of the floor if you happen to take a fall because the walls are swimmy."

Brett closed his eyes, willing there to stop being two of everything. Maybe if he just laid still for a moment or two, things would go back to normal. “I hate hospitals,” he said, his voice quiet.

She stepped closer again, and pulled the sheet up higher towards his shoulder so it covered the scars on his arm. "I know." she told him, much more gently. "Everyone does. You won't be here long." she promised him. "Then you can come home, and be back to your usual angry self in no time. It'll be fine."

“I don’t want to be here. Last time I was here, they wouldn’t let me leave,” he muttered, his eyes still closed. “I wanted to go home, but they wouldn’t let me leave.” He’d been in hospital for months that time. Between the period where they didn’t know if he would make it, through recovery and then onto the seemingly endless rehabilitation. He’d asked to go home so many times and they’d never let him. And in the meantime, his life just fell apart and he got more and more bitter. He knew he’d never properly healed, not really. Not inside.

"Last time you were here, it was a lot worse." Eris told him lightly, moving to brush his hair back a little, a gentle gesture. "This time it's nothing bit. No one'll keep you here. If anyone tries, they'll have me to deal with and no one wants that." she assured him. "If you trust me even a little, you know I wouldn't let anyone keep you here for long."

Brett half opened his eyes, turning his head a little to face her. “You told them you were my wife,” he said, remembering that out of the haze. He’d heard her shout that, then she’d come into the room demanding he tell them who she was. He’d never answered that.

"They were telling me it was 'immediate family only' and I wasn't going to claim I was your sister." she answered smoothly. She had said what she thought would work the best, and at the moment, they were either assuming it was right, or quietly calling the police to come remove her. One of the two. She didn't actually apologize for it, though.

“You’re not wearing a ring,” his brain supplied as his eyes glanced down. He couldn’t actually see her hand, but it didn’t seem to matter to his mind at the moment. He knew she wasn’t, and if she was he didn’t know why. Maybe she was, maybe she was just that prepared. He wouldn’t put it passed her, but he’d said something now.

"No, I'm not. I told them that a detective doesn't make enough to get me a proper ring." Eris told him, smirking very faintly. "Which is true...you guys make shit. You'd never be able to afford a ring that would look the part on my finger on those wages." she commented.

“No. You have expensive tastes, Julia. You’d need something special. But you’d never marry me. They’ll believe it though. Anyway, they don’t really care - just don’t want loads of visitors around. And I won’t get that. Nobody’ll be stupid enough to come see me. Except you,” Brett told her, closing his eyes again.

"You're not exactly the marrying kind." she told him. Which was sort of in response to his comment that she'd never marry him. She'd actually sort of answered that in the last letter she'd written him...or one of the last ones, was it the very last? She was losing track. But she remembered writing down that she didn't have a problem with the idea of being the little lady. But that wasn't a possibility. He'd have to ask, for starters. "No one'll have time to come see you, because you'll be out of here in pretty short order." she told him. "Just...if they ask, yes, I'm your wife."

“Was once,” Brett said, though that didn’t seem to connect to anything. The way he was talking, he was starting to sound like the king of the random statement. “You’re my wife. We have an apartment. But not a dog - you wanna dog?” he asked her.

Eris arched a brow at him. "Are you going to take it for walks?" she asked. "Because I'm not." She sat down on the edge of his bed, on his uninjured side, watching him. "We had a very small wedding, something just us and some witnesses. Your cousin, or something. And..." She didn't really have anyone like that. The girls, of course, but no one close. Unless one counted the crush Bull O'Malley had started to develop on her, but he'd not shown back up in a while. "Just something small. And if we have a dog, it can't be one of those little ankle biters, it has to be a proper dog."

“December. And I can’t walk it - fucked up my leg,” Brett pointed out, a small smile gracing his lips for a second before it vanished. He was starting to be able to feel it now, the very edge of pain, bringing his leg to his awareness for the first time. “I was shot,” he stated. It wasn’t like he had forgotten it, it was just that until that moment it didn’t seem particularly important. Not something that needed to be said. Now it had been, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought that being shot was important. That didn’t make sense.

December. Was that his cousin? She was thinking so, putting it together. "And yes, you fucked up your leg." she agreed. She sighed when he said he was shot, and she looked down a second, before refocusing on him. "I know. Mac told me. I got here as soon as I could." I'll miss out the fact I stole a car. "What happened?"

“Someone shot me,” Brett said, seemingly unaware that he was repeating himself. “There as a fight. Then someone shot me.”

"I know. Do you remember who? Did you get a look at them? Were you in the fight?" she asked, trying to narrow things down. She might have got more details out of Mac, but she'd left in too big a hurry. Her top priority had been getting to Brett.

“Don’t know - just went in to get your letter. Fight broke out when I was there. Then I was shot. Fucking hurts. Not been shot in a long time.” And never anything that got him into hospital. Of course, last time he was shot, he was working for the O’Malleys and you didn’t take your gunshot wound to the hospital when it had been gotten down at the docks, overseeing the latest Jade Lotus drug shipment.

Right. Getting her letter. That hit her with a very heavy stab of guilt. "No more letters." she told him. "If you're going to be writing me, it'll have to be delivered by a mailman." She reached up to start taking the pins out of her hair, really more to have something to do with her hands than anything else. "I really should have stopped a while ago. You shouldn't have been coming into the Round at all." It was just asking for something bad to happen, it was lucky this wasn't worse.

“Not your fault, Julia,” Brett said, opening his eyes to look at her. Whether the drugs were wearing off, or whether he was just very certain on that point, his voice came through strong for those four words, and his eyes looked rather more focused.

She looked back at him, and didn't say anything for a moment. "Maybe not, maybe I didn't pull the trigger, but it feels a whole lot like this could have been avoided." she told him, since that was how she was feeling. In retrospect, she could kick herself for keeping things up while knowing it put him in danger. It just...hadn't really seemed like that at the time. It hadn't been on her mind when she read his letters, when he replied. It had felt like a connection, a breath of life in her world, not some bad situation waiting to happen.

“I started this, Julia,” he reminded her. He’d written her the first note. She’d never asked him to. That had been all on him. She’d just replied. And he’d written back and he’d kept writing to her.

She looked at him, and everything she could think of to say was either an outright lie, or just didn't seem to matter like it should. Like she wanted to say that she could have not written back, but she'd been honest when she told him in her letters that she couldn't ignore him. So, instead, she just jumped to the most prominent feeling she was experiencing. "It's good to see you, Brett."

“I’d say the same, but...” But he was never happy to see anyone when he was in a vulnerable state. All the same, he didn’t ask her why she was here. He knew why she was here - he was even fairly sure he knew how quickly she had dumped everything when she found out what had happened and where he was.

"But you're not." She said. She stood, finishing pulling the pins out of her hair, and she crossed to set them on the nearest counter. Pulling her fingers through her hair, she tried to decide what the plan was. She was obviously going to take him back to their apartment uptown. He'd already said that it was going to be just her tending to him. Of course, he was also pumped full of morphine, and it was possible that he'd change his mind. "Do you need me to contact anyone?" she asked. "The police, your cousin, do you know if the cops have been here yet?"

He watched as her hair came down, drifting in waves to settle around her face. It was a beautiful face. “Hospital will have called the precinct. Standard policy. Precinct knows, December’ll know. Anyone else who might give a damn will know. There is nobody else,” Brett told her. His life, right now, was the job. They both knew that.

"Alright." she said. She bit back the question of whether or not he would have let her know about the shooting if she hadn't found out on her own. At the moment she didn't really want the answer. "Do you need me to take care of anything? Do you need anything from your apartment, do you want anything they aren't going to have here...basically, do you have any bitch work for me?"

“Yeah - get me the hell out of here,” Brett told her. Right now, that was really all he wanted. He didn’t care about anything else. He sounded very slightly more lucid about the fact though, than he had done when she’d first arrived. Maybe it was the pain - his leg was starting to throb and twinge, the spikes of pain cutting through the mist that surrounded his mind.

"In due time. But in the meantime...do you need anything? I know your top priority is getting the hell out of here, and I already promised I'll make that happen, just not this second. Clothes, perhaps? Though I'm expecting I'll have a lot of mending to do, if I went and got you clothes from your apartment." She'd always taken care of that. With her out of the picture, she didn't see him changing habits, or buying new clothes.

He took a minute, trying to give her a clear, sensible answer, to find a way that wasn’t full of either mist, or the returning pain. “Something with sleeves,” he told her. He didn’t much care what, but she would understand why.

She gave him the time, walking back over. "I'll get you clothes you'll be more comfortable in." she promised. In fact, she might just go buy him new clothes. But she'd get him some from his place while she was at it. "After you go to sleep, I'll go get clothes, and when you wake up, you'll have them here." Plus anything else she thought might be useful. She drew in a breath, and let it out quietly. "You seem clearer...is the morphine wearing off?" she asked.

“That what they gave me?” Brett asked. That made sense. He’d had morphine before, though he didn’t remember all that much about it. Killed the pain though. “It hurts - my leg. Must be wearing off. Head feels clearer though.” What a trade off.

"That's what it says on your chart." Eris confirmed. She looked it over again, just to be sure, and she'd been right. Yay short term memory, it didn't fail this time. "Do you want me to ask the nurses to give you more?" she asked. "You should probably get some rest, the more you sleep, the less it's going to seem like you're here for that long." She knew that from experience. She still didn't quite know how long she was at Grey's when she was recovering, and she was willing to bet the same went for Brett in the early days after the fire.

“No - no more right now,” Brett told her. “Prefer to have pain and my mind than lose it completely.” He was aware also that people got hooked on morphine. Wouldn’t that just be the icing on the cake right now. One more thing to screw up his life.

That statement, gave her a light, soft little smirk. "I shouldn't be surprised. You always were stubborn." she commented. "Fine. I won't find people to make you more comfortable." she promised. Then she shook her head, crossing her arms across her stomach. "What am I going to do with you?" she asked. It was sort of rhetorical, but was open enough that he could answer.

He closed his eyes and turned his face back up to the ceiling. “You know you don’t have to do anything with me. You know you don’t have to be here,” he felt obliged to tell her, though he predicted she’d not be happy with him pointing that out. And it was a lot less cruel than coming out and telling her that just because she had rushed to his bedside and wanted to make everything better, and just because he was allowing her to do that didn’t mean that they were suddenly back together again. Maybe, once upon a time, with anyone else, he would have said just that. But not her.

She considered that, and eventually she shook her head, and she sat down on the edge of the bed again. "Yes, I do have to be here." she told him. She hesitated for a moment, then rolled her eyes at herself. "Remember a long time ago, you left my place, in the middle of a fight, and you dropped the toolbox in the stairwell? And I thought it was a gunshot." What with people wanting her dead and all. "I just...acted. Just went for you. Mac said some words that involved you and 'shot', and that was it. Same thing. So yes, I have to be here. If you don't want me here, I'll leave. But I needed to see you breathing for myself."

He looked across at her. “I’m still breathing,” he pointed out. “No chance of me stopping any time soon. You acted - that doesn’t mean you have to keep acting. This - this doesn’t change anything.”

And there it was. It didn't change anything. Which really, didn't come as a surprise to her. It wasn't news. "I didn't expect it to." she told him honestly. "I'll help you through this, because let's face it--no one else is beating down the door to help your ass, and if we want to be really technical, I owe you." Which she knew he hated. It hadn't come up in a very, very long time, but since he was going to be putting things out there like that, a very clear 'this here is the line', then she was going to argue her case. "When I needed someone to help me, you were there, and I got better." Or as better as she was going to get. "I'll return the favor. And when you're good, which I'm sure won't be that long, we're even. You can go back to your life, and I'll go back to mine." Not that she wanted it to work out like that. But she wanted to lay out there right now that she wasn't actually some silly, sappy little twit who thought that injury automatically meant the world was a shiny place for them again. A little care taking didn't fix what was wrong in their relationship. There was nothing for that.

“You don’t owe me anything, Julia,” Brett told her, firmly. She knew very well how he felt about that bullshit and it wasn’t going to fly. “You never did and if you’re just here out of some misguided sense of obligation then you need to leave, right now.” Because he didn’t think she was. He hadn’t thought she was. And if she was, if he was wrong, then he didn’t want her here. He didn’t want her anywhere near him when he had to deal with the fact that that had been the only reason she was here.

"Yes, I blindly dropped everything to get here because of obligation." Eris said sarcastically. "I stole a car, because I needed to get here faster than I was going to be able to get a cab. That's exactly it." She said, shaking her head. "Look." she started. "You just said it doesn't change anything. I agree, it doesn't. So, if you want some other reason, some other motivation this can be termed under that isn't fodder for some ridiculous romance novel, some degree of separation from the emotional trainwreck that is our history--you have it. You were there when I needed someone there to nurse me back to health and I've never forgotten that. Maybe some details, or a lot of details, but not the basic core of it."

“You stole a car? Julia you have to stop doing that,” he said with a small groan. She stole a car to come visit a damn cop. Where there could be other cops visiting. Sometimes she simply didn’t think. Other times - well, then she thought far too much. The result was often largely the same, or so it seemed.

"I'll bring it back." She told him. "Besides, it was in front of the Round. There are fairly good odds it was stolen before I got to it." she added. "And at least this time it didn't have a murderer in it, or someone stuffed in the trunk, so I'm calling it a win."

“Two wrongs don’t make a right, Julia - especially not when you’re visiting a cop.” He knew he was no angel, but still, her views were very different to his. “If you need a car, you can take mine. It’s parked outside the Round anyway. The keys are probably around here somewhere, if not, I left the spare set at the apartment.” He’d always meant to go back for them, but he didn’t want to be there without her.

"I don't need a car, I just needed to get here fast enough. Though...your car needs to not be left there. It'll be gone before you know it. I'll move it." she decided. That would be something. "And if you're really that mad about the car, I'll call in a tip about it. Or, I could just go tell the cops I stole a car. Whatever'll mend your bruised sense of justice." she said, clearly sounding like it was off the mark there. But that was her. At least he hadn't asked about the murderer or people in the trunk of the last car she stole. That hadn't been her fault.

“Don’t be so fucking stupid,” Brett snapped at her, wondering when she was going to get over this insane need to turn herself in for shit. “You know damn well I don’t want you to do that.”

"Car theft is different than murder." she said, shrugging. "Might mean I'd be able to go to jail for a while, but not be thrown in with people who'd want to hang me by my bra from my cell bars." she said, though she didn't actually press the point. "Either way, it's done. So, drop it, or do something. I'll bring it back. Chances are someone'll just think they forgot where they parked it, and were too drunk to remember right. They shouldn't be driving anyways. No one coming out of the Round should be driving, technically..." she shook her head, moving forward. "So am I leaving?"

“I am doing something - I’m bitching at you about it. Not gonna turn you in, you know that the fuck well, but never think you can do these things and not get shit about them from me. And car theft - it’s still a fucking crime. And I’m still a damn cop. And even if I wasn’t, I’d still be the guy who was a damn cop. You know where I stand on this shit, Julia. I need... I need to believe that you can stop doing this. If there’s any chance at all. Otherwise there’s no point even talking about things,” he said, clearly struggling for clarity in what he was saying.

That was when there was a flicker of a frown on her features. She had to sort of mentally replay what he'd said to try and make sense of it. Because it had sounded suspiciously like he'd said the words 'if there's any chance at all'. And, because she was confused, she didn't say anything for a few long moments. When she did, it was the safest statement she could make, that didn't at all touch what she was reeling over. "I've been keeping everything above board. Even when I was...let's call it 'spiraling'. Even then, there was only once I did anything you wouldn't approve of. It isn't as if it's something I do all the time. Extenuating circumstances need to occur. That on top of it being important. When Mac told me what happened, he said that when you were hauled away, you weren't dead 'yet'. Leg wounds can be bad. People can die from those easily, as I'm sure you're very aware. I'm not out boosting cars and joyriding." And the last time, she'd actually brought the guy in the trunk home, and apologized for the hit man who'd stolen the car in the first place.

That was something, at least. He had been worried that she was just going through life, doing whatever she thought she should - and Brett knew that could, really, have been anything, legal or otherwise. “Glad to hear it. I... You were spiralling?” he asked, catching onto that, realising that something must have happened that he didn’t know about.

"Not a topic we're discussing." Eris told him firmly. "It doesn't matter anyway." She got up again, putting distance between them, and with a small little spark of memory, she realized that this was 'normal' behavior between them. She did that. She walked away, put space between them when they were arguing, or when there was something being discussed that she was having trouble with. "Clothes, moving your car," she said, ticking things off on her fingers to help in the process of getting him off the topic. It felt a little like cheating, but with the morphine in his system, maybe if she simply got far enough away from the question he'd forget he asked. "Maybe something decent to eat because hospital food is atrocious."

“It matters to me,” Brett said, knowing possibly better than she did what she was doing right now, and entirely ignoring it. The pain in his leg was a constant throb now, one that threatened to become ever more painful and invasive. He could feel how bad it was going to get, but his head was clearer. He had a while before he would have to give in, before he would beg and scream for some relief - or he would have done had he been anyone else. His pride rivalled his stubbornness, after all.

"Do you really want to know the gory details, Brett?" she asked. "Why? Why does it matter?" she snapped, hearing her own tone. She didn't like it, she really didn't want to give him too much shit right now. Plus, she understood that because she was having a snit about this, it would be all the more clear that things had gotten dark. Or at the very least, things had gone a way she didn't want to tell him about. She wasn't sure how exactly that would translate to him.

Brett scowled at her. “You know why it matters, Julia,” he told her, testily. “You know I... care,” he added, sidestepping the reality of the situation, for both their sakes. “That hasn’t changed.”

"Well, a few minutes ago you were quite clear with letting me know nothing else has changed either. So, what makes you think you've got the right to know?" she asked. "Look, it was bad, for a while. That's all you really need to know. It's over. I'm fine. Came out the other side, with a little help, and now it's over."

“So, you get the right to come haring the hell over here the moment you hear that I’m hurt, but I don’t get to know shit about your life - is that it? Is that how you think that this should work?” Brett said, raising his voice slightly and attracting the attention of the staff. A nurse peeked her head round the door, only to be met with a glare from Brett. “We’re fine,” he told her, abruptly.

Eris walked over to the door and gave the woman a tight smile. "We'll let you know when something's needed." she said firmly, and shut the door on a wary look from the nurse. Then she turned back to Brett. Walking back over so she could answer without raising her voice at all, she sounded perfectly calm. Her body language didn't quite match up, though. There was a tight tension in her. "They're rather different things, darling." she said, falling back on the old habit of a pet name said without the affection attached. They used to do that all the time. "And last time I checked, this didn't 'work' at all, remember? What happened to me while you've been off burying yourself in your job..." she shook her head. "Consider the fact that maybe there's a reason I'm not telling you."

“Are you okay?” Brett asked, sounding concerned, the momentary anger disappearing entirely as his tone softened, matched by something in his eyes as he searched her face. He could make connections, and he didn’t like the possible conclusions he reached. He’d buried himself in his work. She had spiralled - and in such a way that she didn’t want to tell him what had happened. His mind fled back to the time she’d spent with Grey, what he’d done to her. There may be a reason she wasn’t telling him, and right now, that just made things worse.

"I'm fine." she said, sighing and reaching up to pull her fingers through her hair. "Things were just not so good for a while." She sat down in one of the room chairs, and didn't quite look at him. Apparently she was going to tell him at least the bare bones. "I didn't want to be here. I didn't want whatever life I could see in front of me. I tried to leave. Several times, actually. I bought more than one train ticked and the train would never come. Or it was broken, or fill in the blank, it never happened. I tried to get out of town another way and...that's a story we aren't going to talk about. But I kept trying, and kept failing, and...you wouldn't get what it felt like because you're one of nature's survivors. It doesn't matter what gets thrown at you, you're going to make it. I'm not like that. Or...I don't know. I think I used to be, before..." she made a vague gesture at her head. "But apparently when I gained a soul or whatever, it kicked out that part of me. I spent some time with...someone, and I got left somewhere I shouldn't be. And nothing happened, I was okay, but it wasn't exactly the best of times."

There were a couple of things in her story that Brett had to bite back a reaction to. The first that she’d tried to leave. As always, he had a very negative, personal, gut reaction to that which he would have let out if she hadn’t suckerpunched him with that sounded like the news that she’d moved on, at least for a time. If he hadn’t been suddenly consumed by an overwhelming jealousy that there had been someone else. And that, that he couldn’t let out, though it flashed behind his eyes. He had no right to be jealous, or hurt. He took a breath, in through his nose, taking his time, actually trying not to overreact for once in his life. It was hard for him, especially right now. “You could have come to me - I would have taken care of you,” he told her, and he meant that. In his own way.

"No, I couldn't." she said, shaking her head. "Your days of taking care of me are over. We are over. It's been clearly put. We parted ways, and that was that. You had your job, you chose your path. That path was the city." She gave a smile, even if it was something that didn't hold humor, more a faint mockery of humor directed at herself. "First time I've ever been left for a concept." she told him, laughing quietly. "But either way, no. I believe that you believe that. That if I'd showed up and needed looking after that you would have, but it would hardly have been fair. It wouldn't have worked, by any stretch of the imagination." It would have put her in a similar position to the one she'd avoided by parting ways with him. What she'd said she couldn't handle in the first place, some life where he was off doing his thing, and there were all the issues between them with no actual hope. Eris was bad with hope. She hated having any. "You were busy. You were doing what you thought was right. In no way would my showing up all..." she made a vague gesture. "'messy' would things have actually worked. It would have been miserable."

“They arrested Martens,” Brett told her, talking on top of the end of her words. “Today. Took him into custody. It’s over,” he added, wondering if that would make a difference to her. It made a difference to him and he’d thought it would to her, but listening to her talk, listening to what she had to say just now, he wondered about that. Things sounded so much more final when she spoke than they were in his head. Then again, his head was all confusion when he thought about things. She, however, she sounded very certain.

She nodded. "Good." Then she paused, catching a little late that he seemed to be putting more significance on things. The idea that it was 'over'. She didn't say anything for a few long moments, before she finally made true eye contact again. "So, what does that mean for you?" she asked. She knew what her idea of what was next for him entailed. There was probably already someone murdered in this city, someone else who needed a detective working the case. Probably several somebodies. Hell, wasn't there some huge slaughter in the paper the other day? Some gang or something?

For him, it had always meant that there would be time. That he could take some time. That they could. Time to figure things out, for better or for worse. To talk things through. But now, now he wasn’t so sure - because he’d said right at the start that he didn’t expect her to wait for him. He’d always known that that was a risk. And it seemed, right now, that she hadn’t. He’d thought that maybe she had - the way she’d turned up here. It had seemed that way. But now, listening to her, he was filled with doubt. “I had thought that - maybe we would... talk, but...” he said, his tone sounding odd in his ears. An uncertainty that was never usually present, that seemed to belong to someone else.

Her head tilted to the side slightly, watching the truly unfamiliar sight of Brett Trent tripping over his words. And of course there were the words themselves. "I thought there wasn't going to be talking." she told him honestly. "That things were just over, and that was it." Which totally didn't explain why she'd dropped everything to be there, but she cared more about the man in that hospital bed than anyone in the world. Nothing would change that. "I hadn't been aware there would be any talking at all. And but...but what? Now there isn't? Did I miss something beyond the open possibility thing I was unaware of?" she asked, feeling lost herself now.

He frowned. “There was always going to be...” He broke off, wondering if he had missed something. But he knew her, and her memory issues. Just playing the odds, if someone was remembering something wrong, it was unlikely to be him. “Julia,” he said, his tone turning more steady and he forced some patience in there. “Things were - they were over because of everything else. I couldn’t give us the time we needed to see if things could work out. You couldn’t wait for me. There were no other real options. For me, if I could get to the place where we had the time, I would have wanted to give us that time. I don’t know where that would have gotten us, but I would have wanted to see. I always knew that you might not still be there when I had the time, but for me, that was always my intention.”

Eris didn't really know what to do with that. She'd been very much under the clear, unaltering impression that he was done with her. Done, and that was it, and everything was over, and there wasn't even a glimmer of possibility that anything would ever get better. Even when he wrote her, and she hung on every word, she was always aware of the one gigantic, unavoidable detail. That elephant in the room he'd been talking about. She'd killed someone, and that was that. She couldn't take that back. It would always be there. He wasn't ever going to forget she did that. Even if she never got brought to justice, and it was clear he didn't really have intentions of doing that, he would never forget. And in reality she didn't want him to. It would make him less somehow. She thought better of him than that.

As she listened, she realized that her view of things and his were different things. Possibly whole worlds different. They started out from the same place, but ended somewhere entirely separate. "I needed time you couldn't give me. I understood that. I understood other things too, like what I did. And how that'll never go away, and it shouldn't." She looked away again, not sure how to say what she had on her mind there, but she gave it a shot. "I can't be sure, because we both know my issues, but I don't think you ever actually expressed any desire or wish that...if you had time you would want to give it. If that was always your intention, I didn't know about it. For me, it was just...over. Cut and dried. Some things don't fit, and how things worked out, that seemed to clearly be the case between us." She fell quiet again, not sure what else to say or how to take it. The fact that she was thrown for a hard loop was clear. Vulnerability was there in her posture, her expression. "To me, you were clear with it being over." But she could have been wrong. And having the idea of her brain damage wrecking havoc on this made it all the harder to deal with. That was clear too, in the bit of a lost look in her eyes, that mild confusion to the set of her expression.

Brett hated being vulnerable. And he really disliked seeing vulnerability in her. It was one of the things that had inescapably attracted him to her - she wasn’t soft like so many other women who had come his way. Right now, everything felt so broken. It would be easier just to agree with her, make it over. Except, that was a lie - he knew it wasn’t easier, because he’d been living with that for so long now and it wasn’t going away. Even if she did. “I’m not clear on anything, not when it comes to this,” he confessed. “I - if I seemed clear, it was about the time and place. And because, even if we had the time - I can’t guarantee anything. I - Julia, I honestly don’t know. I just... I just know that I can’t just cut you out of my life. I know I should, with what happened. I know I should be running so far and so fast and yet here I am and I go round and round in circles and... And I’m still exactly where I was when we last talked about this.” He doubted that would really come as a surprise to her. She knew him, after all.

Her first reaction was 'you did cut me out of your life!' but she didn't say it. She didn't say anything for what felt like too long, but with the issue of her head fucking things up on the table now, even if it wasn't the actual topic of conversation, she was automatically trying to take things slower, to attempt to keep herself clearer. He was right, though. She wasn't surprised. "It's what you do. You find a rut and you stay in it, and you need someone else to kick you out of it." she told him, though it wasn't actually a dig at him. "Are you looking to get out of the rut? Change the record, as it were?" Maybe he'd still go in circles, but they could be different circles.

“I don’t like where I am,” Brett admitted to her, though he sounded resigned. He never expected to like where he was, after all. He’d returned to the force for one reason and one reason only: to prevent her from turning herself in. Nothing else could have made him go back. He’d stayed for different reasons - he’d stayed because he’d been needed and he couldn’t walk away, but it wasn’t like he’d rediscovered the love of the job he’d had as a younger man, when the world had actually made sense.

She nodded, not overly surprised. After all, she did know him well. And he was a hero, but that didn't mean he reveled in it. He didn't even accept the title. He did the right thing because of an inner drive, not some zeal that made him love life and everything he did. It wasn't like that for him. It was a lot darker than that. "Then you can change that." she told him, tone light, but actually firm. This she could do. This she was confident in. "You've just been shot, for starters. That would automatically mean you'd have to take leave, if not early retirement, if you decide you don't want to go back. I'd suggest you take leave, first, just so you have real time to think over if you want to leave or not. But you still have the business. Just like you didn't actually take my name off of anything I didn't take yours off either. I've actually been running the place again. The girls needed me. Our little bookmaker found me and said she really couldn't handle it all, so...I sobered up, and went back to the office. So that's still there. You'd have the money to do whatever you wanted, and time would be paid for, even without the PD's help. I don't know what they might compensate you with, but I doubt it'd be enough to really live on. Not that I want you back in that apartment while you're recovering in the first place. You go back to our apartment for that. I'm not bending on that. I know earlier you seemed on board, but you were also a lot higher than right now, so I'm just saying it again. But that's your first step to changing where you are." She was careful to leave herself out of it. Helping Brett didn’t mean she had to insert herself in the plan anywhere. She could do that just fine without that.

One thing stood out in that for him, one thing he really wanted to latch onto. “You went back to the business?” he asked her, something akin to a tentative, maybe hopeful, possibly pleased edge to his tone. It wasn’t quite any of those, because it was tempered back the fact that he knew that she hated that business. That at the time everything went to hell, they were trying to extricate themselves from it. But it meant that she had actually taken steps to rebuild her life, to take something on, something that didn’t revolve around him being her only reason for living. That was important to him. That caused the tone in his voice.

She nodded. "Becky said that you were incommunicado, and she was drowning. Plus, we've got a few girls with...let's call them 'aggressive personality types'. They were trying to run her over. They were my girls before, I guess they still needed me. Everyone seemed to be rather overjoyed when they saw me in the office again." she said, a light smile touching her lips for a moment. It had felt good, that. "I won't be leaving them again like that. Not when it's clear they don't do well when left to their own devices. They're good girls, the entire lot of them, they just...need direction. And someone to tell them 'playing mind games with the social elite is a stupid idea, don't do that'." she said, shaking her head but that little light smile was still there.

“I’m sorry about Becky - she seemed to be able to handle things. Though, honestly, she was the only candidate and I was desperate,” he admitted to her. “Looks like we both got stuck doing things we didn’t want to.”

"I wouldn't say that." Eris said, shaking her head. "And don't be sorry. She's sweet, but not made of stern enough stuff to stand up to some people. I haven't had to do anything I haven't wanted to. Mostly I've just been at the office, putting out small fires that I can handle. It feels...good, I suppose. Looking after my girls. Maybe it's just looking at it from this angle, but they're doing well. They're getting places. I feel better knowing someone has their best interests at heart, and that it's me. I won't let anything happen to them. And people know better than to cross me." She shrugged one shoulder. "I suppose it's just coming at it all from a different place. Doing something different with it. The social aspect of things I wasn't happy with I don't have to engage in, really, unless I want to. The girls have been getting their own clients brought in. We're actually doing sort of ridiculously well, honestly, for what we started with and the fact that we haven't been 'advertising' as it were."

He looked at her, long and hard, searching for any suggestion that she was bullshitting him, but finding none. “I’m... happy for you,” he said, a little haltingly, because it was true. He was glad that she was doing okay. Glad that she’d found some purpose to her life. He just still struggled with that emotion - it was an unfamiliar one to him and he always had to pause and double check in the rare occasions that it appeared.

You don’t feel happy. I remember you telling me that. she thought but didn’t say. “Thank you. I suppose there’s still days where I feel like I don’t want to be where I am. I can’t even tell you how hard I tried to leave this city. But it was like the entire place was conspiring against me. The train, the conditions, everything. Including the people. Everyone from random assholes I barely knew to hit men were telling me ‘You’re Eris Stockard. You can’t leave. You are this city’. or something like that. People kept telling me I was better than that, or...something. I don’t know. I just know everyone I came across seemed to be mortally offended by the idea of my leaving, even people who you would think either wouldn’t care or would love to see me gone.” She sighed. “But I’m doing what I’m doing. People need me to be Eris Stockard, I guess. So, that’s what happened. I stepped back into those shoes, just on my terms.”

Brett considered all of that, wondering if he was still actually high. “All people you know?” he asked, clearly confused. Maybe he was still high, if she was saying the city wouldn’t let her leave. That sounded pretty damn odd, after all.

"Some people I know. One...I know I knew of him but couldn't place him. He wasn't taking the hint to fuck off. Eventually he did. But...yeah. Seems like anyone who I crossed paths with on the way out of town had some huge problem with it. It was the weirdest thing I ever came across. I still don't quite understand it. For instance, why exactly would Max Falconeri want to talk me into staying?" Eris asked rhetorically. She shook her head. "It was...interesting."

Brett’s forehead furrowed. “Who is Max Falconeri?” he asked, trying to place the name, wondering why it sounded so familiar. He still couldn’t quite think entirely straight, but his head was clear enough to know he couldn’t recall everything now.

"The guy who does the hitting for the DiGiovanni family." Eris said. "He--" she sighed. "I wasn't really going to get into this. But whatever. I stole a car, and it broke down on the way out of town. It was pouring, I was walking, he was driving and picked me up. I heard some thunks from the trunk, found out he'd carjacked some guy and he was in the trunk. Let's just say I got Max out of the car with some creative threats after discussing my impending departure from the city, then I drove the car back into town, opened the trunk and tried to calm the guy down."

By the end of that, Brett could do nothing but stare at her, not entirely sure how the hell to react to that. Especially not since the increasing pain in his leg and increasing clearing of his head were dually signalling to him that attempting to move would be a bad idea of the highest order. “I... Huh?” he asked, unintelligently.

“It was a long night. And a weird one. Don't worry about it, it doesn't actually make any real sense anyway. A whole lot of my exploits while you were busy don't make sense. Don't get me started on Bull O'Malley," Eris said, sighing. "Later. Sometime later, I'll tell you whatever you want to know." she said, deciding fine. Whatever. If he wanted to know that bad....she guessed she'd have to tell him. Possibly with some creative omission.

“The guy who stabbed you through the hand,” Brett said, his tone turning dangerous. He knew exactly what Bull O’Malley had done - or he thought he did, by all accounts.

"The very same." Eris said. "I mentioned how we would talk about this later? Basically my point was that I'm still in this city because of an overwhelming amount of circumstance stacked against me. And during my spiral, things were...all over. And had some colorful people coming in through the drunken haze." Because she had definitely dropped into full blown alcoholism for a while.

“Thing about you, Julia, is that you make me want to talk about everything now,” Brett told her, even aware as he was that they’d been putting so much off for so long. But needs must - that didn’t mean the instinct wasn’t there, just that he suppressed it.

Eris arched a brow. "I make you want to talk about everything?" she asked. Then she smiled. "That's progress, for you." she said, not even sarcastic. "What if I gave you one question? One that I'll answer, right here and now. The rest we can save for later."

“You make me want to talk about it now. Doesn’t mean it always happens that way,” Brett told her. He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’d ask. Not right here, right now. I don’t know enough to get that right. And if I offered the same to you?” he asked her in return.

"Nothing stands out? Nothing comes to mind?" she asked. "Not even leading off of what you want to talk about right now?" Mostly she was curious what he might ask if given free reign. Standing up, she crossed to check his leg again, to see that it still wasn't seeping.

He kept his eyes on her as she moved, more aware now, though he flinched slightly as she got near his leg, aware that if she touched it, it would hurt. “More like everything stands out. Everything comes to mind,” he clarified. “You gave me one question. One question and I don’t know what I’d ask.”

Nothing seemed to be amiss with his leg, and she didn't touch him at all. Triggering pain for him was the last thing she wanted to do. Staying where she was, crouched by his bedside, she looked up at him. "Pressure's on, Trent. Think, and pick something." Eris told him.

He spoke without thinking - though after he’d asked his question, he was left wondering if that was a good idea or not. Really, it depended upon one’s point of view. “Do you miss me?”

"More than I can express accurately." She answered, not actually having to consider her answer. "Every day I couldn't wait to get your letter. And I couldn't do anything until I replied. It's been getting me through the days. Just...that little, shred of contact. Which might be pathetic, but it's true. Yes. I miss you." She paused. "I said something like it in my last reply to you...though I suppose you didn't get it."

Brett shook his head. “No - I was going for it, but they got me before I could. It’ll still be at the bar, I suppose. What did you say?” he asked her, wanting to know. Her letters felt like all that had been keeping him going recently, thought he knew that couldn’t be the truth. After all, he’d survived before he started writing to her. Little had changed there.

She stopped to consider it. To really think about it. "Something about...a spark. That I miss having in my life, that you had." she said, sure she was more eloquent on paper. These days she always was. But she did her best to recall. "I'm guessing you were too busy to miss me." She said, not actually coming out to ask.

Brett hesitated. Not over what he should say, but whether he should say it at all. I was never too busy to miss you. “I... Things were very busy,” he said, side stepping the question, feeling the lie on his lips.

And that's why I didn't ask. Eris thought to herself, wishing he hadn't said anything. She nodded, though, even if there was hurt in there. Standing, she walked back over towards the counter, thinking about taking her last letter and torching it. Did he really need more from her when he didn't miss her at all? And where did he get off asking her when he didn't feel the same? Why did he get to be indignant and demand details of what went on while he was busy when he apparently went for ages without sparing her a thought? How exactly did this add up to him thinking there was hope somewhere? This was why she'd thought everything was over. Because right there and then, she felt like an utter fool. "I should get that car back. Take care of everything else." she said, picking up her hair pins, and she started to loosely pin it back up.

He felt as much as saw her withdraw. And, strangely, it still felt familiar. He still knew how they worked. Hell, he could practically see the threads of the various ways that this one could play out, depending on his reaction. For all they were both volatile people, that didn’t mean that they were entirely unpredictable, apparently. It came as a shock to Brett to realise that, and it would have been a far more useful realisation had he actually known where he wanted them to go. “Julia,” he said, his tone one designed to stop what she was doing, commanding attention. “I miss you.” He often wished he didn’t, but everything would have always been so much easier if he didn’t feel the way he did about her.

She did stop what she was doing, and she looked over at him. She said nothing, for a long moment. "Why couldn't you just say that?" she asked, tone unreadable. It wasn't that she was angry. It was more she honestly didn't get it. In fact, there was a spark in the back of her mind that said they'd had a similar argument at some point, but she couldn't quite recall. So she set her mind to it, thinking it was probably important.

Because everything’s a mess and fucked up and I don’t know which way to turn. “When have I ever made anything easy?” he asked her, going with an answer that made him feel less like a twelve year old girl. He’d already been called a whiny bitch by her once today, he wasn’t going to feed that summation.

Again, she held her tongue for a moment, finishing putting the pins in her hair. "Right now, making things more difficult isn't going to get you anywhere, Brett. Like, I can't remember what it was about last time, but I know we've had a talk like this before. How you...you say shit you don't mean or don't say things because for some reason you don't want to or...whatever. And all it really does? Is make it perfectly clear to me that I mean nothing to you. So keep it up, if you want to ensure that impression. You're well on your way." she told him. She really wished she remembered the specifics but she couldn't call them up right now. Just the basics behind it. “If your goal is for me to make the decision for you, and just fuck off, that can be arranged.”

“That would be pointless,” Brett muttered to himself. He’d chased women away before. Lots of women. He was practically a pro at getting people to leave. But he couldn’t count the number of times she’d walked away from him, or tried to, and he’d just hunted her down and brought her back again. Hell, this last time, when they’d mutually agreed to split, he still ended up back at her door, writing her letters.

"What was that?" Eris asked, crossing her arms again as she leveled her gaze on him. She'd heard, but she wanted to give him a second shot at either saying that loud enough to make it a real statement, or changing his tune.

He raised his head and looked at her, his eyes finally clear for the first time since he’d woken, the morphine edge gone. “There would be no point in chasing you away. You know that. I know that. Not when I always come after you anyway.”

"Up until a few minutes ago, I didn't know that. Remember? You were the one with the idea in mind that there was still some possibilities for us, I was working under the idea that there wasn't. I believed you were done. I suppose in light of this, my opinion could change." she said, leaning against the counter. "One thing does bother me, though." she told him, with a light little frown on her lips.

Brett had his own confusion about her opinions, but he didn’t express it, instead attending to her opening. “What bothers you?” he asked her.

"We just talked about how you tend to get yourself stuck in circles." she said. "I think I said this before but honestly I don't know. But I do wonder if things with me...if it's just a different one. That bothers me. Whatever happens," because she wasn't actually laying money on anything these days, "I don't want to be just another circle you're stuck in." Her tone was gentle when she said it. For the both of their sakes.

“I don’t want that either,” Brett told her, honestly. “Whatever happens, I want it to be the right thing. I don’t just want to blindly stumble into something and then stick with it just because that’s where I am. We both deserve more than that.”

Nodding, Eris agreed with that. Or, she did on his behalf. For herself...she wanted more than that, but the question of what she did and didn't deserve were always points she and Brett would argue over. "I haven't been living at the apartment, even if I went back to the office." she told him. "I'll have to go shopping and get it stocked back up. Do you think you're going to need anything specific to help you heal up as efficiently as possible?"

Brett shook his head. He didn’t question it, not even now his head was clear, that he was going to go home with her. He knew he should, at least on some level, but he pushed away that level with the excuse that he didn’t have anybody else. If she didn’t, there was nobody else. And that would have to do. That excuse.

"Okay. It'll be all set before you ever get there." she promised. She walked back over towards him, looking down at him there in the bed. She didn't like seeing him like this. Hurt. Even if the wound wasn't bad enough that he'd be down for that long, she didn't like seeing him wounded at all. Her fingers itched to reach out towards him, but his voice echoed in her head. 'This doesn't change anything.' And he was right, and she accepted that...it just didn't actually take away the urge to touch him, even just a little. "You better get well soon." she said, to break herself out of her own moment there. "I was never cut out to be a nurse, and it's too odd looking down at you. I'm meant to get a crick in my neck looking up at your tall ass."

“As long as I’m not stuck in here, I’ll do fine,” he told her, though the pain was now starting to bite through in his tone. It was getting harder to deny it, now that the morphine had entirely worn off.

"You won't be. If I don't get you out of here in short order, I'm sure half the nurses here'll quit within a week." she teased, just a little. There was a smirk on her lips when she said it. Then she curbed the urge to lean down and kiss his forehead. He'd hate that anyhow, and she was reminding herself that nothing was different, this was completely extenuating circumstances. "I'll be back. You should sleep, or you're going to be a complete bear."

“If I am still here in a week, there’s gonna be more than hell to pay. And I’m a complete bear anyway - no fucking difference whether I sleep or not,” he growled at her, the pain now lacing his tone liberally. His leg felt like it was on fire and she thought he would be able to sleep. She was right - she was a shit nurse.

"You won't be. I'm thinking much shorter term than that." Eris said. Really, she'd try to make sure it was the shortest term possible. She didn't think tomorrow would fly, but maybe the next day. At his tone, she didn't look phased. Instead, she just arched a brow. "Someone needs more morphine." she told him. "I'll tell the nurses on my way out." She clearly hesitated, then made herself turn around without doing anything stupid. "I'll be back."

“I don’t want more morphine!” he called after her, but he didn’t sound much like he expected to be listened to. And the nurses would be even worse than she was. They’d never listen to him. He was just a piece of meat.

He fucking hated hospitals.