Aaron Lucas (thirdandlast) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-03-14 09:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, aaron, aaron x kat, kat |
Who: Aaron and Kat
When: mid-morning, Thursday, Dec 7th
Where: Mercy Hospital
Status: complete
Aaron was in bad shape, in a multitude of ways. The medical professionals said that his wounds were looking as good as could be expected. They had him on an IV cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics and who knew what other drugs, and a nurse had come in to redo his bandages a couple of times already. They’d gotten him up to walk to the bathroom, and he’d managed to do that without falling. Aaron was duly grateful, because the catheter was uncomfortable as fuck. It hurt to breathe too deeply, and he’d half-listened to a doctor tell him his lung might be compromised for a while, they were still concerned about his intestinal function, blah blah, it was already blurring together in his mind.
Aaron’s brain was even more of a mess. He’d been sleeping a lot, but at weird times and durations, so he’d found himself awake at quiet times during the long night. His brothers had been keeping him company off and on so far, Gavin more than Caden, but they had to sleep sometime, and Aaron was feeling more and more alone even with another human body in the room. It was all really starting to sink in by the time he could see the sunrise through the window.
Mila -- or whatever had been possessing her, he stubbornly repeated in his head -- had stabbed him. Twice. She’d tried to kill him with a kitchen knife, and she -- that thing -- had enjoyed it. That felt so good, she’d whispered. Aaron remembered that at some point in the wee hours. And now she was gone. And it was ultimately his fault. It had been over a full day now, and there had been no word about her, unless they just hadn’t told him. Mila’s whispered words kept repeating in his mind, over and over, and Aaron sank further into despair as the hours passed. Someone had brought him a rosary when he’d asked, and he kept it tangled around his fingers as he stared listlessly out the window, ignoring the Jell-O and water they’d brought him for breakfast.
Kat couldn’t concentrate on anything. She’d been at the hospital the day before, since the moment she’d found out, but there had always been someone else in the room with them or else Aaron had been asleep and there’d been no real opportunity for them to talk about what she knew of the situation. Finally she’d gone home last night and fallen into an exhausted sleep. Sure, she was still worried, but Aaron was alive and he should fully recover, unless there was something she hadn’t been told. After waking up and grabbing a quick shower, she’d dressed and made her way back to Mercy Hospital.
It was quiet when she eased into his room, the Keds she wore making no sound on the polished floors. “Hey,” she said, sitting down in the chair next to his bed after pushing it as close to him as she could get it. “How do you feel? Did you sleep?” The expression he wore gave her hints as to what his answer would be, but she had to ask, and she was glad to finally get a chance to really talk to him.
Aaron didn’t hear her come in, and he startled a tiny bit when he realized someone was in the room with him now, but seeing it was Kat made him relax again quickly. “Hey,” Aaron echoed, watching his sister sit down. His voice was rusty. He licked his dry lips and nodded slightly. “Yeah, off and on. I’m feeling okay.” That was a lie, but Aaron didn’t know how to describe how he really felt. Like everything was falling apart. They still had him on an IV drip and whatever drugs they had him on were killing the physical pain pretty well ... but that just left a lot of room for the other kind of pain. “I walked to the bathroom earlier,” he offered with a wan smile. It was a small accomplishment at least. “How are you?”
Kat had been fighting off panic ever since this had happened, because her favorite brother could have died. When it happened to someone else, it was just words, but when it was Aaron? It felt like all the air had been punched out of her and she couldn't get any of it back. It made her feel like life was so fragile, and she knew it was... especially in this town. She gave him a bit of a skeptical look, because she didn't think he was even slightly okay, but with this brother she tended to let him open up at his own pace. "Congrats," she said wryly of his walk to the bathroom. "I'm hanging in there." She wasn't fine either, but she didn't think whining about it would help the situation they had right now. Very gently, she put a hand on his arm, wanting to touch him and reassure herself he was actually there.
It had been an automatic sort of question, maybe strange from the guy in the hospital bed, but Kat was his family, and Aaron cared about her immensely. She was far more sensitive than his brothers, a lot like Aaron, and he didn’t want her to be sad or super scared about what had happened to him. The touch was nice, and Aaron reached to pat her hand a little before letting his own drop to his lap again. “Thanks. You want some Jell-O?” he asked, aiming for some levity and probably falling short. Aaron nodded at the tray he hadn’t touched yet. The orange gelatin wasn’t even tempting, he had no appetite. He really just wanted to be drugged up enough to sleep for days and days, at least until they found Mila. If they ever did.
Kat knew that Aaron asked those kinds of questions just as she knew Gavin and Caden wouldn’t have. It wasn’t that they were heartless, more that they didn’t have the deep core of caring that Aaron did. They would be completely focused on the situation at hand, not on seeing if another sibling was handling it okay. She snorted a sad little laugh at his next question. “No, I don’t want Jell-O. It tastes awful enough anyway, and I’m sure the hospital kind is even worse.” She sighed deeply, raking a hand through her hair before glancing his way again and asking, “Are they looking for Mila?” She figured someone had to be, and what better candidates for that job than their brothers.
Aaron couldn’t even really say if it tasted bad or not. He’d had a few bites of it at another point, but he barely tasted it, it was just a gesture to make his stomach shut up. But it didn’t really matter since he didn’t honestly feel like eating ever again. He would, but even thinking about a big juicy steak brought him no pleasure. Nothing did, not even the prospect of finding Mila, because God only knew what shape she would be in, if that thing would have let her go. He just desperately wanted her. Aaron nodded a little to Kat’s question, his fingers idly picking at the thin blanket over him. “Gavin said the cops are,” he said. “Don’t think they’ve found anything yet though. They wanna talk to me soon.” He wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. “I think I know where she went, but ... you should all stay away from there.”
“I hope she’s okay,” Kat said, her voice soft. She meant it even if she had mixed feelings about Mila at the moment. She knew her friend hadn’t had control over what she’d done, but still… it was frightening. Anyone who hurt Aaron was on Kat’s bad list for damn sure, but this was a different kind of situation. A Point Pleasant situation. Her eyebrows lifted at what he said next. “Yeah, I think that’s a job for people with weapons.” Given what Mila had done to Aaron, a man who could fight hard and take care of himself, Kat wouldn’t be keen on running into her right now.
Aaron’s brow furrowed as that comment sparked a whole new worry in his mind. The last thing Mila needed was people pointing guns at her. He hoped the sheriff had more sense than that. She’d only stabbed him, it wasn’t like she could shoot lightning from her fingers or anything -- as far as they knew, anyway -- so extra force wouldn’t be necessary. Hopefully. If she was even still alive. Still, it was the tunnel that had started the problems, and Aaron didn’t want anyone else in his family to get sucked in. “I just want her home safe,” he mumbled miserably, slouching even more against the upright bed. Aaron let his head fall back and his gaze drifted toward the window again. “I want her back,” he added softly. “She hadn’t been her for a while.”
Kat had heard about the tunnels, like everyone else in town, but she'd never had any desire to go near them. There were things that happened in Point Pleasant that couldn't be explained, and she wasn't one to push her luck when it came to supernatural weirdness. She gently stroked Aaron's arm with a soft sigh, chewing at one corner of her lip before saying, "I want her safe, too. Maybe they'll find her soon." Of course, her first priority was her brother, and she couldn't help wondering how he'd ever trust Mila again, how he'd feel confident that Mila was safe for him to be around. It wouldn't be helpful to say that, though, so she didn't. She didn't know anything about how possession worked beyond what went on in bad TV movies, anyway.
Aaron didn’t know how much hope he had that Mila would be found. And if she was, what kind of shape she would be in. She’d walked out into a December night just in little pj shorts and a top. Would the thing possessing her take her somewhere warm? Or did it just use her up and dump her body somewhere? It felt so strange to his tired brain to want a thing so intensely and have so much doubt about it at the same time. It wasn’t the same as when Amelia disappeared, Aaron knew that something bad had Mila, there was no mystery to it. “Just pray for us,” he murmured to his sister, finding her hand with his to squeeze it weakly. “I dunno who else can help her now.”
Kat couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be Mila right now. It boggled her brain, and she pushed those thoughts away for now. It seemed most important to her to be there for Aaron. A part of her felt like maybe if she stayed with him as much as she could, nothing else terrible would happen to him. Him asking her to pray for them brought unexpected tears to her eyes, and she blinked. “Of course,” she said warmly. She wasn’t the most religious person in the universe, but somehow, praying when things were bad soothed her in a way that nothing else did. “Maybe I can pray while I sit here and you rest. You could really, really use some, if you can.” She didn’t care in the slightest about work at the moment. Anything she had going could wait. All she wanted to do was be with her brother. When there was nothing else to talk about, the two of them had always been just fine with silence.
They’d been raised Catholic, and though he and Gavin were probably the most devout of the siblings, Aaron knew Kat would understand where he was coming from. He felt completely helpless and hopeless, and where could one turn to in times like this other than God? Some dark and powerful force had taken Mila and tried to kill him, and if witches couldn’t help, then it had to be taken to a higher power. Aaron deeply regretted not taking Mila to a priest like he’d wanted early on. Kat was right about him needing rest though, even being awake seemed to take monumental effort, and he was tired. “Okay,” he murmured. Aaron gave her fingers another soft squeeze. He knew she wouldn’t leave him before he fell asleep, so he didn’t even ask. “Love you, Kat. Thanks for bein’ here.” He resettled his head, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, ready to slip back into the dark where he didn’t have to think anymore.
Kat had no intentions of going anywhere for quite a while. “Love you too,” she murmured, pulling her legs up and getting as comfortable in the chair as possible-- which wasn’t very, given the nature of hospital chairs. It didn’t matter. She breathed in deeply, wanting to calm herself and clear her mind before attempting to pray. It wasn’t always the easiest thing to do when awful things happened, but she had time to try. Aaron would sleep, and she’d pray, maybe even meditate some, then she might doze too. This was a place that felt safe for now, and that was good enough for her.