Anne Weaver (sciencedivision) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-09-27 19:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, anne weaver, leo fitz |
Who: Anne Weaver and Leo Fitz
When: Backdated to 9/15
Where: The hospital
What: Anne promised her protege oreos. Anne keeps her promises.
Rating: Talk of injuries and recovery.
Anne had committed the chart to memory since she had been well enough to come visit Fitz. There were only so many times she could look at the same prognosis. It was good, miraculous even. Then again the young did tend to bounce back more than the weary. The stiff pain that shot up her leg was a firm reminder of that. But instead of bitterness Anne simply had hope. He was awake, responsive, and well enough to be picky about the food. Those were all good signs, marks of progress from the readings that had initially seen far too dire for a young man Anne count among one of the finest minds she had ever had the pleasure of helping encourage. Tucking the chart back into place, she smiled pleasantly at the nurse as she made her exit. There were a couple moments of idle chitchat that ended in Anne reassuring the woman that Fitz would be fine for a few moments. After all she did not have a medical degree just for show. The woman at ease and the room empty of everyone but her former student, Anne shut the door quietly. “I hope you’ve kept the appetite.” she mused with a smile before taking her place beside him. Sitting comfortably, Anne popped open the top of her cane and tilted it. A sleeve of oreos fell into her hand and she quickly passed it on. The bed itself was strewn with papers, notes jotted on almost all of them, even as Fitz stooped over a fresh paper with a marked look of concentration on his face. He knew, as a part of being a member of the human race, that people who had accidents needed time to recover. There was the healing of the body, but… there was also relearning skills. Adjusting to the new normal. His hand guided the pen along slowly; the connection that had existed between mind and body had taken a hit for sure. One day he’d be able to write freely -- funny thing, that. He hadn’t picked up a pen to write much of anything in months prior, but now that he couldn’t just do it, it bothered him. Besides, it wasn’t just that one task. It was a matter of how would he solder, manipulate the Holotable, be anything like useful if he couldn’t write his own bloody name anymore. But the pen stopped as Fitz found himself addressed, and he looked up to meet the familiar visage of his former professor. A smile slowly drifted onto his face, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Oh, thank god.” After a second consideration, though, he shoved himself forward with one hand planted into his pillow and craned to check the door. “That nightmare of a woman’s gone, right? Telling him just how amazing his recovery was wouldn’t help him. Anne had spent more time than she cared to think about with agents after devastating injuries. Even with logic and experience behind her, the stiffness of her own leg needled her. And that was a minor inconvenience compared to what Fitz would now have to deal with. Telling a brilliant mind that the body simply refused to obey, how did one properly handle that? Even with experience Anne was not entirely sure. But that lack of spark in his eyes, Anne hoped one day it would find its way back. He was still so young, the incident still so soon. But Fitz heard that every day. Repeating words that she knew would only seem to ring hollow would be meaningless to them both. “For now. I do have some rank left after all.” Anne leaned back in her chair, cradling the cane between her hands. “I’ll bring the cheeseburger tomorrow. Can’t spoil you all at once, they’ll get suspicious of me.” “This’ll more than do for now,” Fitz replied, his hands already working the package open. He stopped, fingers tugging at the ends of the waxy paper, and looked up. His testy temperament often made him overlook the moments when gratitude should be given, but in the presence of a woman he respected and after being entirely humbled for the last few weeks, the response was natural and easy: “Thank you. No worries about the burger. Can’t imagine fitting it in a cane would work out for any parties involved.” He gave a nod towards the chair beside the bed, which probably had a Simmons-shaped indent by now. “How’s the -- I mean, is the cane a temporary thing?” “A promise is a promise, Fitz. I can’t start going back on my word now.” Anne mused affectionately. There were so few of her students left. Anne couldn’t even count how many had been killed. And of those missing how many were in the same situation she had been? And how many had simply gone over to HYDRA entirely. Those losses made seeing Fitz here, alive, all the more precious. Anne was never going to have children, but her students were the closest to motherhood she ever wanted really. And Fitz had always been one of her favorites. He simply brimmed with potential. Raising an eyebrow slightly, Anne looked at her cane and sighed softly. “Oh, no.” she said simply, rather blunt with her own prognosis. Reaching down she drummed her fingertips against her left thigh. “No, full mobility isn’t achievable. I’m lucky it’s healed as well as it has really.” She wasn’t upset about it. The fact that she could still walk after all of it was a blessing in and of itself. And her field days were long behind her anyway. The oreos were methodically being split in two with a small, if not determined thanks to a tremble in his hand, twist. Fitz was listening intently, but that didn’t stop him from putting away a few cookies before the nurse threatened to enter. Sneaky woman she was, he probably looked more akin to a squirrel protecting a scrap of bread it had found on the sidewalk. But Weaver’s confession had him lowering his hands and giving her knee a once over. He gestured with one hand, an oreo pinched between the fingers. “Some sort of mechanical brace. Bet Simmons and I could rig something up. Just have to calibrate for… for…” He pinched his eyes shut. This kept happening. It was pockets in his memory that he kept tripping into. Sometimes it clicked, just after a frustrating struggle to focus his mind: “Pressure differentials in each leg, try to retrain the body to use both eq…” He distractedly looked at the papers in front of him. “Equally.” It was nice to see him so pleased with the gift. She had not brought much to him on her visits, and Anne felt the slightest guilty that she was not here more often. But SHIELD was not going to rise itself from the ashes and everyone had to do their part. One never spent too much time with the patients, becoming too invested was dangerous. Given that she was already invested as it was, adding to that would not help. She waited patiently for him to finish his comment, folding her hands together as she thought over it for a moment. “It’s possible, but the biggest hindrance is the stiffness of the joint. I would be interested in seeing what you managed to come up with if you decided to pursue such a device.” The stumbling over his words was ignored as she focused on the idea itself. He already had his own focus on it, there was no need to draw even more attention to the fact. “It’s not as if I don’t have…” He waved around at the room in the pause, but it was more to cover up a search for the word. “I don’t have all this. Here. To not occupy myself with.” There was a morose glance at the screen which had been monitoring his heartbeat up to a few days ago. Time. That was the word. Too late now. “Few more days of this and I’ll go mad. Think this is the longest I’ve ever been out of the lab,” Fitz continued. He started fumbling his hand into the oreo package again, but ultimately gave that up and upended it until three tumbled out. “Feels…” His brows pinched together. “It feels -- feels…” This was why it was easier texting people. They didn’t realize how long it took to get the word or something near enough to it before the reply was sent through. On the network, he was recovered and whole. No one knew any better. “Stifling.” Anne provided softly, tilting her head with a soft smile. Being confined to a bed, Anne hazard that she might have made more of a recovery if she had actually managed to stay put. Or maybe she wouldn’t have. But that possibility hadn’t changed the fact that she had neede to get herself moving as fast as she could. Too much time had been lost and there was too much to focus on if she simply stayed in bed with nothing else but Felix’s reports to keep her mind entertained. “If I still had a facility, I’d relocate you.” Anne offered, a bit of a sigh accompanying it. “It’d be the best of both worlds really. And your warden wouldn’t be there, which is a decidedly large perk I believe.” “Stifling,” Fitz repeated slowly, almost as if he’d come upon the word on his own and he hadn’t heard Weaver at all. They both knew it wasn’t the case, but no one ever liked having weaknesses exposed to an audience. Or, at least, he never did. He was one of the Academy’s youngest graduates -- the only other being Simmons, of course. He was a tech engineer proficient at making just about anything he could dream up. Take it all away, and what did that leave? Mediocrity at best. Dependence on everyone else. It was a harsh reality that kept reprising itself every time he tried to hold down a conversation. “S’pose everyone’s been uprooted, though. Simmons was telling me what I missed.” The oreos were mostly left to sit on the top of the blankets of the bed. “Can’t imagine how. She’s been here -- She always seems to be here.” “She has been most devoted.” Anne commented as she watched Fitz. The coma had been frightening enough, that worry that he might never wake up. But the coma had held nothing but potential, for good or ill. Now they simply had what reality brought them. And reality was never as pretty as potential, it was messy and cruel in ways the imagination at times had trouble with. “Is there anything else you’d like me to bring for you?” she asked, curious. “Perhaps something to work on?” |