Room 204; Friday Afternoon [04/20].

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer had tried to stay at the clinic for as long as she could last night; she was hoping there might be a break in everyone's condition, or maybe the doctors would figure something out, and then they could do whatever needed to be done to fix it, but she must have fallen asleep at one point, woken up by the gentle shaking of a nurse who suggested she go home and get some rest. She wanted to argue, but they met all of her arguments before she even said them, and she made them promise to text her the moment anything happened, especially if Kanan woke up. It was typical for her to barely look up from her phone when going anywhere, but it was definitely different last night, and when she got back to her room, she felt so incredibly grateful that Stance had come with her, because the loneliness in that room would have absolutely killed her. After a shower to get all the bits of jello and pepper and monster gore off of her skin and out of her hair, she cuddled up with Stance on her bed and passed out until well past noon.

She woke feeling strange, sleep having swept away most of the night, but it didn't take long for her brain to remind her what was happening, especially since she opened her eyes to find Stance licking her face, trying to get her attention and letting out a little whimper. That's all it took for it to come flooding back to her, she gasped, reaching for her phone, no news, no news at all...except that class had been canceled, but she wasn't going to go anyway. She let out a whimper of her own.

"You're probably hungry, huh, Stance?" Summer murmured after a moment of just petting him to console herself, but it didn't work. "I'll be right back, okay?"

She went to the common room, grabbed something she figured a dog might light from the fridge and brought it back, leaving the door open, because that at least made her feel a little less lonely. As Stance gobbled up the leftover whatever it was, she sat down, feeling awfully numb, but then he finished and bounced over to her, tail wagging, looking eager. That made her smile, just a little, and she found a ball of socks and used that to play a little game of mindless fetch with him until he wore himself out, thinking how nice it must be to be a dog, only worrying about your next meal, something to play with, a warm body to cuddle, but it probably wouldn't be long before he started wondering where his owner was...

But for now...playing fetch, in a sad attempt to make herself feel marginally better.

[[door and post are open!]]

Comments

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer smiled faintly at Rey, wondering if she could ever have any idea how grateful she felt that the other girl had come and sat down with her. Then she bit her lip, wondering if she'd have to recount the event many more times; maybe it would get easier with each telling.

"I don't really know for sure," she admitted. "Not at first. I was just going to go visit Hera and I heard Stance here, barking like crazy, and he lead me to where Kanan was, lying in the street with this...big skinless monster thing pinning him down. We fought the monster off, but whatever it did to him, it left him unresponsive, y'know? So we got him to the clinic,and there were other people being brought in, too, he wasn't the only one. No one really knew what happened to them, but it was definitely these monster things..."

[thatwaslucky]

The frown deepened, and she listened quietly, deciding that first, she wasn’t going out without a weapon. Then she finally asked, “Do they think he’ll be okay?”

[somethingwithturquoise]

"He better be," Summer said, after taking a moment herself and allowing a little derisive snort, "or else I'll kill him myself."

If, of course, Hera didn't get to him first.

"Honestly, though," she added, the glum seriousness taking over again as Stance, not sure who to go to now that there were two options, just dropped the sock-ball in the middle of them and she reached out to pick it up and toss it lightly for him to go tearing after, "there's gotta be something to do the trick. I find it hard to believe that, with all the resources and knowledge on this island, there isn't some way that someone won't find a solution. It's just a matter of when, I guess, and hoping that this is the worse it gets, that he only slowly get better with time, or remains stagnant until it gets figured out..."

[thatwaslucky]

Rey nodded, taking that in, and while she didn’t really have a basis for how bad this actually was, Summer’s reaction said a lot. “I’m sure of it. People are used to that sort of thing here,” she said.

And then, “Are you okay?”

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer bit her lip and took her sweet time answering, mostly because she didn't know exactly what to answer.

Eventually, she came around with a cautious, "Not...yet. But I will be. It's just all still processing, you know? I'm fine. It'll be fine. He'll be fine. And, I mean, if not? Then we'll find out whatever these monsters are and burn them all to the fucking ground."

This was her Safe Place. She wasn't used to this side of her coming out here...

[thatwaslucky]

“Exactly. There’s always a way to stop things, we just have to figure out how. We’re very good at that here,” Rey nodded. Between now and with Tip, she was never sure how good she was at being reassuring, but she was trying. “Do you need anything?”