Log Date: 7/7/99 Log Cast: Kesya, Tance, Sheila (NPC) Log Intro: Being hauled into the Infirmary with a life-threatening wound is hardly a new experience for Tance Vokrim -- but being informed that the woman he loves is not dead after all is most definitely not. Seriously wounded though he might be, Tance has received the news that Kesya, who he'd thought dead these past three years, was actually alive and in a coma... and that she's awakened from that long sleep. Moreover, Tance has learned that the Chief Meditech has deliberately avoided letting him know Kesya's status -- thinking it kinder to lead Tance to believe that she's dead. This news really hasn't had time to sink in, though. Since he _is_ seriously wounded, CS Vokrim has been put under heavy sedation to keep him resting, and so, the impact of their reunion is so far only really being experienced by Kesya... ---------- It's rare, that deep, dreamless sleep that makes one feel renewed and almost reborn when one awakes. Especially rare for Kesya, who now rests comfortably in Tance's embrace, sleeping just that enviable way, dreamless and renewing. It's the sort of sleep you just don't want to wake from; but Kesya has had enough of sleeping over the past three years. Something stirs her, presses naggingly at the outskirts of her mind, demands attention. It's too easy to push away, ignore it, like all the other things that have worried her over the last month. That is, until she realizes what it is that's nagging at her. Even still half asleep, she can feel someone's breath on her cheek, and the pleasant smell of someone she'd missed for too long, even without the knowing of it. Tance. He's here, he's hers, and... last night, he said he didn't want her to leave! As that thought crosses the wisps of thoughts that play in her mind, her eyes flutter open, and she turns her head just slightly to provide proof to her senses; and there's Tance, beside her. It's hard not to simply stare at him, marvelling at how -real- he is. And why fight that urge? She doesn't. Even at age two hundred, a Crystal Singer is not particularly likely to change greatly in his or her appearance. Surface details might change as health alters -- but as long as the symbiont holds out, fundamental changes to the way a Singer looks over so short a span of time as three years are small at best. And so the man lying beside Kesya has not changed in the things that make him _Tance_; the lines of his face, the shape of his features, the color of his hair. His scent is the same. The shape of the arm curled slackly about her form is the same. And even the barely audible rasp that Tance's sporadic snore is the same. Kesya has to stiffle a giggle at that sporadic snore, the sound dredging up memories she'd long forgotten. Sleeping with him in her sled when they were cutting together; waking up next to him in her suite, resting under the stars in the deep forests of Verron IV. The memories are surprising, especially with the number of them... but it all seems alright, somehow. And she didn't have the falling dream, either. A good night, indeed. Perhaps one of the best. Those thoughts can't last forever though; physical needs awaken within her as her hunger rumbles audibly in her stomach. Gods, but she's been eating like it was passover since she'd awoken from that coma! Edging slightly away from Tance, gently in an attempt not to wake him, she makes an effort to look around for the call button. There -- on the other side of Tance's bed. Of course, he's lying between the green-skinned Singer and the button that is her goal, and he shifts his head slightly at the feel of the motion against him. He doesn't yet awaken, however. It would be. Kesya's hunger isn't going away though, and therefore she -must- take action. Her first thought is to throw something at it; but short of taking off her hospital shift and tossing that, there's nothing within reaching distance. Well! Obviously there's no better time for a good practice walking. She shakes her head, sending limp strands of sea-green hair to shifting over her shoulders. She's never experienced so much frustration as this learning to walk business. Her mind knows what to do... it's just her body is too weak yet to obey. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she grasps the lowered bedrail firmly and manages to get to her feet. The journey around the bed seems longer than it should. Tance's brow crinkles as he sleepily senses the departure of the warm body that had been curled up against him. His free arm, the one that doesn't have the IV feed leading into it, moves feebly over the space Kesya had just occupied, automatically seeking her. His mouth works for a moment, and then he lets out a small drowsy noise, eyes still firmly shut. Kesya pauses as Tance makes that small noise, being careful not to disturb him. With that gut wound he has... goodness knows, he needs all the rest he can get. With shuffling steps, she goes hand-over-hand along the rail and end of the bed, making her slow, tedious way toward that button that means food. "J..." Tance manages the single consonant even mostly asleep, and his face crinkles up a little more as his groping hand fails to find the person that had just been occupying that space next to him. Slowly, though, it begins to percolate through his slumbering mind that Something Has Changed, and he murmurs something vague and confused into the air. "Wha...?" "Shh," his Jade answers softly, now mostly around the bed. Hand over hand... easy does it, persistance is the key, slow and steady wins the race. She grips the bedrail and leans to gently kiss Tance's forehead and lips, then straightens to do the last two steps to the button on the wall. "I'm just getting us some food," comes her following whisper, and she presses the button soundlessly, letting out a sigh of relief. Climbing gullies in Ballybran mountain ranges was easier. Tance's eyelids flutter at that contact to his brow and his mouth. "Wha?" he mumbles, his voice dreamfully slurred. "Jade. Dreamin' again?" The brown gaze that comes into view is soft and unfocused -- very likely the result of whatever Quinn put into that IV communing with his leanly muscled arm. "I feel... fuzzy." "They drugged you," Kesya says mildly, looking down at her beloved with warm, silver-blue eyes. She's also taking the opportunity to lean heavily on the bedrail, a rest before the trek back around the bed. "And you aren't dreaming, love. I'm here." Drugged. Tance's eyes crinkle up shut again as this concept slowly trickles through his brain. Okay... this makes sense, at least. The place smells familiar, feels familiar, looks familiar, but... wait. His eyes come open again, a glimmer of startlement offsetting his languour. "Here," he repeats thickly. "Wha... but... here. Alive? I..." Kesya can't help but smile, having been far too used to reminding her sweetheart of details of life and even having missed it. "Umm hmm," she responds in an lovingly teasing tone, "Alive and well, if weak as a newborn. Do you remember what Quinn told you last night? About why they told you I was dead?" She begins to make her way around the bed again, all too eager to get back to a sitting position, and especially one next to Tance. These questions appear to be giving Tance some difficulty. He lifts his disoriented gaze up to the woman he's still not entirely certain he's not imagining, unable as of yet to convince his arms and hands to accomplish more than the most clumsy of motions. "Told me," he echoes, trying to let the thought take hold. Then his face crinkles again, and his voice takes on a mournful tone. "Told me you were dead. Why'd they tell me that? I can't remember. All fuzzyheaded." It doesn't take Kesya as long this time to inch her way around the bed, and finally she makes it to Tance's side, sliding beside him. "He told you," she begins gently as she snugs herself next to his warm frame, "... that they -did- get me back, but that I was in a coma. I only woke up last month; being they didn't expect me to ever wake up, they didn't want you waiting for me, I guess. Quinn says you would've died." Her brows crease at that, and she rests her head on his shoulder. Tance has never been a man of eloquent expression, and he's even less of one when he's under sedation. His sluggish thoughts provide only a dim recollection of how exactly he reacted when he received the news of Kesya's alledged demise; he's rather fuzzy on the particulars, but one concept does get through. "I... I got a little crazy," he murmurs. His arm, the free one, does finally make it up to curl around the younger Singer's form, and with the way his mind is working right now -- or rather, failing to work -- it is far easier for him to register the shape of that form rather than make much sense of the words being spoken to him. His brows wing down over his dazed eyes, and he adds bemusedly, "You're all... skinny, honey..." "I lost a lot of weight," the gaunt singer beside you acknowledges softly, seeming nothing but warm bones beside you. "It'll take me a while to get back... I didn't want, at first, for you to see me like this. I can't even walk yet. Not properly, anyway." She sighs, lost in the frustration of it for a moment, but that moment passes as she feels your arm snug around her. Slowly, owlishly, Tance blinks as he tries to absorb this information. Then, just as slowly, he peers down the length of his prone form -- and the cast on his left leg catches his attention. Another blink, and then he declares blurrily, "You got one on me, Jade honey..." A spark of laughter sounds from the woman beside you, and she squeezes her frail arms around your shoulders in a hug. "We're quite a pair, aren't we?" Another little noise escapes Tance, then, prompted out of him by the contact of those arms around his neck. He tries to move his other arm, only to feel the slight tug of the IV where it's been inserted into his bicep and taped into place; with that, he turns a vaguely disapproving gaze in that direction. "Makin' me loopy," he complains, the rasp softened out of his voice by whatever's in his system. And his gaze comes back, liquid, full of a need for reassurance. "'Mnot dreamin'?" The possibility is still nagging at him; hells, given the number of times he's been in this room and under sedation, Tance is often not entirely sure of who's real and who isn't, here. "Y'r here?" "I'm here," Kesya affirms, closing her eyes as she rests her head on her beloved's shoulder. "It's been too long, but I'm here." A small, throaty croon slides out of Tance as Kesya snuggles up beside him again, and his head turns towards her hair. "Could break you in half," he murmurs in consternation. "So little... y'r all little, carry you with my cutter..." His voice trails off, though, as drowsiness tugs at his brain again and coaxes him back towards slumber. It's nice here. He's loopy, but it's... nice, and he's warm, and most importantly... Jade's here. Just before he slips back down into soft gray darkness, he murmurs, "Missed you..." And on that final syllable he is asleep again, chest rising and falling in peaceful rhythms, his lined visage losing decades as tranquility overtakes it once more. Only when Tance and Kesya curl up to sleep again there on the bed does the orderly Sheila Parker finally scurry onto the scene in answer to that summons from the call button... but she stops dead at the sight of the pair of Singers lying there where one Singer normally should be. Then, a slight smile curling her mouth, Parker comes over to very gently and very quietly pull a blanket over the two prone forms, before slipping off the way she came. Whatever they wanted, she tells herself, it can wait. [End log.]