[ She's been in and out constantly since the first night — to the point that the nurses at the desk don't even bother trying to stop her anymore. They don't get paid enough to deal with the pissy cop that keeps muscling her way into Archie's room after visiting hours are over. It's become something of a little routine — work, hospital, home, hospital, work, hospital — and if she's looking more worn down than usual, at least everyone's had the decency so far not to call her out on it.
It's obvious when she enters the room that she wasn't exactly expecting him to be conscious. She stops dead in the doorway with her coffee in her hand, her eyebrows pinching for a moment when she sees him. But fuck it. She's already here. So she comes the rest of the way inside, nudging the door shut behind her with her hip before coming to sit heavily in the same chair she always sits in.
[he notices immediately, but like everyone else, doesn't say anything. what's the point? he can't imagine he looks too good on an average day, let alone right now. blood loss is a bitch, man. especially when you can't magically replenish it.]
Yeaa-aaah. Been in and out a little but finally managin' to hold onto consciousness longer than a couple minutes. What a shitty fuckin' Monday, huh? You holdin' up?
[archie's the one that got shot, leave it to him to ask her how she's doing.]
[ It's nice of him to ask. Particularly because he knows better than most people that Andy always answers these kinds of questions the same fucking way. Is she holding up? Sure. Bitch is immortal, isn't she? Doesn't have much choice in the matter. ]
I'm fine.
[ Tired mostly. Very fucking tired. But what else is new? She's been tired for months now. Decades. Centuries. Besides, what's she supposed to say? That it terrified her to watch his blood seep out from between her fingers as she tried to stop the bleeding, that night? That this poignant reminder of his morality — and the mortality of everyone she loves — has kept her up at night?
There's no point in saying any of that. So. I'm fine is what he gets. ]
[ She'll take the dig. They both know she's lying — she just doesn't know what else to say. Or maybe she's just too tired to get into it, just like he is. To tell him how she really feels now requires a degree of vulnerability her heart just isn't ready for. ]
Can't help you with that. I didn't see shit all of what happened. [ Her coffee is getting lukewarm. She can feel it, through the disposable cup. ] When I showed up, you were down already, so it didn't really fucking matter either.
[ She just wanted him to live. Fuck the rest of it. She must have prayed in every language she knew, to every god she could remember. It seems foolish now. Desperate. He's here, isn't he? He's fine. Not like Noriko, that night the storm came, or Lykon, on the eve of their last battle together. Not like so many others she's lost to violent deaths.
[he drops it, quick enough. andy's here to see him, not to suffer his insufferable needling over something he's not in a position to do shit all about. over something he caused with his stupidity. he shifts a little in the bed, scooting over towards her so he can grab her free hand before she moves it out of range.]
...Sorry. For puttin' you through that. If I hadn't done somethin' so fucking dumb we wouldn't be here.
[ She might have pulled away, if she'd noticed him reaching for her — but she gets far away sometimes, their Andy, and her thoughts were somewhere between that night she held her hands desperately against his bullet wound and more distant memories, faded fragments that she can't remember quite as clearly. It draws her back to feel his hand on hers, her eyes focusing again as she turns her head towards him. Her hand tenses slightly, but she doesn't withdraw. ]
Don't apologize to me. [ It was dumb. But she expects that by now — from all of them. From herself. They're stupid and reckless, the whole lot. ] I'm not the one that almost fucking died.
[ Though maybe she regrets putting it that way now. Makes it sound as serious as it was — which makes it harder to play it off. ]
Did you forget that you're mortal, or did you just not care?
[there's a lot he could say to that. this time, or whatever else. nothing he's interested in bringing up. they're not here to argue, after all.
archie groans lightly and leans back, pressing his free hand to his temple lightly.] Didn't care. Was too pissed. The guy that did it-- he's from Niko's region.
[he looks about to say more, but stops suddenly. not sure if he even wants to talk about this with andy. or... at all. even if she'd understand well.]
--From his dad's gang. He's trying to break up the guardianship Niko wanted with me to get him back on his side. 'Cause, you know. Fuck me for thinkin' I can have something nice for longer than two weeks, right?
[the salt in his tone practically erodes part of the wall.]
[ She glances at him as he explains, watching him out of the corner of her eye as if that might allow her to feign a degree of disinterest. As if fronting even matters at this point when she's been frequenting his bedside this whole time, terrorizing the staff just to earn a few quiet hours of listening to the machines around him beep, telling her his heart is still beating in his chest. But old habits, they die hard, and Andy is ill at ease with caring so openly.
Her gaze only slides away again at that last bit. The bitter comment about how nice things don't last around here. It's the truth, and she'd be the last person to disagree, but it's still hard to hear him say it. She would've liked for him to have something nice for a while too.
Finally, she leans down to set her lukewarm coffee down at the foot of her chair. When she straights again, she's quiet and still for a moment — then, finally, her free hand, still a little warm from the paper cup, closes around his where it still grasps her other one. Bowing her head, she brushes her lips briefly against his knuckles, giving his hand a squeeze in both of hers.
She knows there's nothing that can change what happened now. But in the relative privacy of this room, with no one else watching, she can give him that — a small gesture of love. Sympathy. Commiseration. More than she's allowed herself to give for some time now. ]
[it doesn't seem like he's even going to respond to any of this for a moment. he's not discarding what she's offering him-- it's just... a lot, right now. he's not sure how it makes him feel-- though... archie's finding once they talked that little freak out they mutually had over, he hasn't been dwelling on it too much. maybe he physically can't, with so much going on.
he says nothing, but when she looks up, he'll meet her eyes. head laying to the side on the pillow, thick brows furrowed, expression a strange mix of happy and pained.]
[ It is a lot. It's been a lot. And they've hardly had a moment to breathe. Certainly not much time alone to just — cope with what had happened between them. Not with all the noise and the chaos and all the other things that needed to be taken care of — and maybe it says something about them, that it took Archie nearly being shot to death to slow things down enough, but at least they're here now, whatever path had to be taken to get there.
She lays her head on the bed, resting it lightly against his leg underneath the sheets as she holds onto his hand, watching that expression on his face with something weary but soft in her own.
At length, because it seems important to say, after everything: ]
I love you too, [he says, with the same warmth in his voice any other time he'd said it to her. unchanged from before, even with all their little baby freakout inbetween. that fact never changed, and he's able to say it without hesitation.] Warts an' all.
[haha. get it. because she can't grow warts.]
Fuck, I don't know where anythin's gonna go after this.
You don't have to tease me. I know I look like shit.
[ She's definitely looked better, anyway — though it's funny, how just exchanging the words with him seems to have eased the naturally harsh lines of her face a little, softening her in a subtle way. ]
You don't need to do anything except lay there and get better. Worry about the other shit later.
[ She rolls her eyes, but just a little, and mostly for show — as she often does. ]
Is that what you wonder when you think about me? What kind of weird shit my body can or can't do? [ To be fair though, if warts and things were something she needed to be concerned about, she probably wouldn't be such an unrepentantly freewheeling slut. Guess there had to be some kind of silver lining to her curse. Not that it's mattered lately — not when she hasn't been with anyone since him. ] Might've liked you better when you were unconscious.
That would be police brutality. [ Deadpan: ] Knock your own damn self out.
[ Though that little grimace didn't pass her notice. She finally lets go of his hand, sitting up again so that she isn't leaning any weight on him. Quieter, and a bit more seriously: ]
Do I look like I can? [he says, making a noise much like a hurmpf.] Yeah. It's gonna for a while. Not all of us are blessed with incredible healin'. Figures I got a power that don't work on myself when it counts, though. Only managed to heal myself once.
[he holds a hand up, that pastel rainbow aura he feels like he stole from a pokémon that knows the move heal pulse floating around it. usually it leaks towards people that need it in the vicinity, but it doesn't affect archie and andy is immortal. so it just floats there, aesthetic and fucking useless.]
[ She frowns a little at that phrasing — blessed with healing, he says, and she might be inclined to argue under different circumstances — but it only lasts a moment or two before the tiredness settles back in. It's not the kind of day where she has the energy to be ornery properly. ]
Maybe you shouldn't go around getting shot then.
[ A little berating, but not with any real bite. She watches that floating light as it hovers there, lovely and utterly unhelpful. ]
[ She opens her mouth to say something, probably about how getting stabbed by a sword is actually a little worse than being shot by a bullet — but then he's reaching out and fucking... Booping her nose. Like she's a little girl or something. And she's so surprised by it that the words die in her mouth when she recoils, her nose wrinkling up as she leans back. ]
Did you just...?
[ Andy squints at him, lifting her hand to lightly touch her own nose, as if the experience was so surreal she isn't one hundred percent sure it just happened. ]
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It's obvious when she enters the room that she wasn't exactly expecting him to be conscious. She stops dead in the doorway with her coffee in her hand, her eyebrows pinching for a moment when she sees him. But fuck it. She's already here. So she comes the rest of the way inside, nudging the door shut behind her with her hip before coming to sit heavily in the same chair she always sits in.
Finally, stating the obvious: ]
You're up.
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Yeaa-aaah. Been in and out a little but finally managin' to hold onto consciousness longer than a couple minutes. What a shitty fuckin' Monday, huh? You holdin' up?
[archie's the one that got shot, leave it to him to ask her how she's doing.]
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I'm fine.
[ Tired mostly. Very fucking tired. But what else is new? She's been tired for months now. Decades. Centuries. Besides, what's she supposed to say? That it terrified her to watch his blood seep out from between her fingers as she tried to stop the bleeding, that night? That this poignant reminder of his morality — and the mortality of everyone she loves — has kept her up at night?
There's no point in saying any of that. So. I'm fine is what he gets. ]
Guess this means you'll live after all.
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[which is a stupid way of saying he doesn't believe it, but he truly doesn't have the energy to dig into this right now.]
Just about, [he says with a shrug.] Don't remember shit all about what happened, after he shot Crobat.
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Can't help you with that. I didn't see shit all of what happened. [ Her coffee is getting lukewarm. She can feel it, through the disposable cup. ] When I showed up, you were down already, so it didn't really fucking matter either.
[ She just wanted him to live. Fuck the rest of it. She must have prayed in every language she knew, to every god she could remember. It seems foolish now. Desperate. He's here, isn't he? He's fine. Not like Noriko, that night the storm came, or Lykon, on the eve of their last battle together. Not like so many others she's lost to violent deaths.
Guess one of those gods must have heard her. ]
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...Sorry. For puttin' you through that. If I hadn't done somethin' so fucking dumb we wouldn't be here.
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Don't apologize to me. [ It was dumb. But she expects that by now — from all of them. From herself. They're stupid and reckless, the whole lot. ] I'm not the one that almost fucking died.
[ Though maybe she regrets putting it that way now. Makes it sound as serious as it was — which makes it harder to play it off. ]
Did you forget that you're mortal, or did you just not care?
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archie groans lightly and leans back, pressing his free hand to his temple lightly.] Didn't care. Was too pissed. The guy that did it-- he's from Niko's region.
[he looks about to say more, but stops suddenly. not sure if he even wants to talk about this with andy. or... at all. even if she'd understand well.]
--From his dad's gang. He's trying to break up the guardianship Niko wanted with me to get him back on his side. 'Cause, you know. Fuck me for thinkin' I can have something nice for longer than two weeks, right?
[the salt in his tone practically erodes part of the wall.]
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Her gaze only slides away again at that last bit. The bitter comment about how nice things don't last around here. It's the truth, and she'd be the last person to disagree, but it's still hard to hear him say it. She would've liked for him to have something nice for a while too.
Finally, she leans down to set her lukewarm coffee down at the foot of her chair. When she straights again, she's quiet and still for a moment — then, finally, her free hand, still a little warm from the paper cup, closes around his where it still grasps her other one. Bowing her head, she brushes her lips briefly against his knuckles, giving his hand a squeeze in both of hers.
She knows there's nothing that can change what happened now. But in the relative privacy of this room, with no one else watching, she can give him that — a small gesture of love. Sympathy. Commiseration. More than she's allowed herself to give for some time now. ]
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he says nothing, but when she looks up, he'll meet her eyes. head laying to the side on the pillow, thick brows furrowed, expression a strange mix of happy and pained.]
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She lays her head on the bed, resting it lightly against his leg underneath the sheets as she holds onto his hand, watching that expression on his face with something weary but soft in her own.
At length, because it seems important to say, after everything: ]
I still love you.
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[haha. get it. because she can't grow warts.]
Fuck, I don't know where anythin's gonna go after this.
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You don't have to tease me. I know I look like shit.
[ She's definitely looked better, anyway — though it's funny, how just exchanging the words with him seems to have eased the naturally harsh lines of her face a little, softening her in a subtle way. ]
You don't need to do anything except lay there and get better. Worry about the other shit later.
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[a strange tangent, but... look, he is on So Many painkillers.]
If I could control when I overfocus on shit, I wouldn't be in this bed.
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Is that what you wonder when you think about me? What kind of weird shit my body can or can't do? [ To be fair though, if warts and things were something she needed to be concerned about, she probably wouldn't be such an unrepentantly freewheeling slut. Guess there had to be some kind of silver lining to her curse. Not that it's mattered lately — not when she hasn't been with anyone since him. ] Might've liked you better when you were unconscious.
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[her comment makes him snort a short laugh, though. it makes him grimace after, but not for long.]
Yeah? Knock me out then, coward.
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[ Though that little grimace didn't pass her notice. She finally lets go of his hand, sitting up again so that she isn't leaning any weight on him. Quieter, and a bit more seriously: ]
Does it still hurt bad?
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[he holds a hand up, that pastel rainbow aura he feels like he stole from a pokémon that knows the move heal pulse floating around it. usually it leaks towards people that need it in the vicinity, but it doesn't affect archie and andy is immortal. so it just floats there, aesthetic and fucking useless.]
Felt like shit then, too. Ugh.
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Maybe you shouldn't go around getting shot then.
[ A little berating, but not with any real bite. She watches that floating light as it hovers there, lovely and utterly unhelpful. ]
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It was a sword, that time. From a fake Roman soldier.
[he reaches out and... pokes her nose with his finger, just as the light fades out.] 2017 was a wild time.
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Did you just...?
[ Andy squints at him, lifting her hand to lightly touch her own nose, as if the experience was so surreal she isn't one hundred percent sure it just happened. ]
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What?
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Then reaches out and smushes his nose in return, pressing it like a button with her palm. ]
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[his voice is a little distorted from his snoot being squished. he does not move back. he is just silently astounded.]
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