darker_london | Liverpool (Matt, Kenzie, Joss) (Reply)

When mid-morning arrived in Liverpool, it bought Matt with it, pulling up in the hospital carpark on his bike. He'd driven all night, eager to get back into the action after two weeks of nothing major happening in Aberdeen.

There'd been some odd stories come out of Aberdeen in the last few years, and Matt had been up there a couple of times before to deal with things. There'd been a highland werewolf pack, really feral, about six years back that the Grenadiers had managed to get rid of, and of course there were the usual number of hauntings for a city that size and age. Still, the last fortnight he hadn't had much to do except catch up with his Scottish Anabella, which was not a hardship.

Liverpool though. He knew Liverpool like the scars on the back of his hand, especially the area around the hospital where he used to work. It wasn't anything like R-Mac's hospital back in London, but they were capable enough. He'd bought a few hardy nurses into the know when he worked there, the ones he thought could handle it, or the ones who had been forced into handling it by sheer bad Liverpuddlian luck. He'd gained a bit of a reputation as the Mulder of EMTs, except Mulder hadn't slept around as much.

It had been a few years since he'd been back, and he didn't recognise anyone on his way into the hospital. That wasn't so surprising, the hospital had an unusually high turnover rate. He made his way to the main nurses station, raking his hands through his hair to neaten it out after a long ride on the bike. His hair looked better messy, though.

Merry had told him what she knew about what had happened, and Matt was planning on winging the rest. He needed to talk to Teagan and her ghostly charge, see how they were faring. Not well, if they'd ended up in hospital.

He said: "I heard you've got a young couple in here? A car accident last night, Joss MacArthur and Teagan Llewellyn. They up for a visit?" He told the head nurse he was a family friend, using his real name and his real ID, since the chances of someone recognising him here were still pretty high.

It was half past ten, and Kenzie was back in Teagan's body. She'd gone back in the morning and had 'woken up' a little after seven, and after letting the doctors prick and prod her (trying to match every poke with the correct reflex, but it was hard to fool doctors and they could tell something was wrong) she'd also managed to get to see Joss. For a little while. So long as she stayed in the wheelchair and neither of them tired the other out.

Teagan began to come back to herself, her first awareness was her own voice talking, her body moving. She was upright, the day outside was bright, and she figured she must be dreaming. The kind of dream you find yourself in when the action is already underway.

This was not waking up, this was dreaming.

She was in an incredible amount of pain.

She fell back into darkness, her mouth still moving and her hands still entwined in the hand of a boy she did not recognise.

Teagan? Kenzie asked, when she became aware of a stirring that wasn't her. But Teagan was gone again, so she turned her attention back to Joss.

Joss was awake, but not very aware. The painkillers they'd given him actually had an effect on him, like they didn't on Kenzie, and he was floating in a cloud of morphine. He wasn't quite sure what was going on when Matt stepped into the room and announced his presence by saying "Now, nobody panic."

Kenzie panicked. She stood up quickly - the pain causing a bolt of Teagan's awareness to zap through her mind before she faded off again - and hissed at him: "Get out."

Joss pulled himself out of bed, almost falling but using his good hand and the bed to steady himself. He threw his bandaged arm out in front of Kenzie to protect her. Wasn't entirely sure what was going on but knew there was badness and knew if he didn't stop the badness it would get worse.

"Now I'm not here to hurt you, any of you; you seem to be managing that well enough on your own," Johnny had taken over, and was holding his hands out in front of him in a gesture of goodwill.

"Get out," Kenzie was raising her voice. Her hands clutched around Joss's arm, above his elbow where the bandage stopped. Joss's bandaged hand throbbed and throbbed like a second heart. "Get out GET OUT!"

Johnny took another step back as a nurse ran into the room, his hand still up. "We had a misunderstanding before she left home," he explained.

"I still have to ask you to leave," she said, eyeing him carefully, her hand extended to stop him coming any closer. "Now's not the time for sorting this out. Now is the time for rest and healing."

"I just gotta tell her," Johnny said, looking over the shoulder of the nurse at Teagan's broken face and seeing Kenzie. "I understand what she's going through. Went through it myself. And that this is a dangerous place to do that alone, if you don't know what you're doing, because there's folk'll take advantage."

"Get out!" Kenzie continued to yell.

"Remember that," Johnny told her. He was backing out, aware that Teagan looked pretty busted up and having a ghost yank her around wouldn't help any; besides, it was a dick move to stress out the staff, they had enough crap to deal with. "Just remember. I'll leave my number with the nurses, you call if you ever get in a jam, you hear?"

Kenzie's eyes were blazing, bright in their dark bruises. One eye was still bloody from last night, though less dramatically so now. She still looked dangerously ferocious. She waited till Matt was definitely out of sight before she took the nurses advice and sat down in the wheelchair again. Joss cupped her cheek very very gently with his uninjured hand, his fingers barely grazing the skin, before the nurse shooed him back into bed as well.

"You kids are involved in some kind of mess, aren't you?" the nurse said, shaking her head sympathetically.

Joss was too tired to answer, he just murmured something unintelligible and crawled back into bed. Kenzie reached for his hand and pulled the wheelchair close to his bed, resting her head next to his thigh.

The nurse watched them both for a moment, but in the end she left them to it.