Chapter Text
The night was humid.
The row lights on the far end of the area had been replaced recently; they hummed and Doctor Moira O’Deorain found herself pacing beneath them, tapping her nails against the glass. She preferred the last set; they weren’t as fickle when overheated.
It was irritating, though unimportant.
The room was like a hospital center, or rather, it was like it was pretending to be a hospital center. The walls were white and crisp and windowless. The cabinets were organized precisely and the sink was clean, housing a pocket of small instruments with sharp blades and glittering steel.
The floors were recently swept. The doctor glanced down and grimaced at several long, dark hairs that marred the tiles like cracks. She swept them out of sight with her polished shoe.
The X-rays on their lighted perch revealed pretty pictures of healed injuries, a woman’s ankles repaired with meticulous effort after long years of abuse. Progress was slow, but fruitful. Patience was important in this line of work.
She leafed through the pages of notes on her desk, leaning a hip against the frame. The edges of the paper had crinkled; she smoothed them with a stern tug. Setting the folder down, she retrieved her cooling tea from its place, disappointed with her forgetfulness. She went to the sink to find a fresh cup.
A messy thud filled the space and rattled the instruments in the sink and the neatly organized cabinets and the cold tea in her hand. A tray of surgery tools clattered to the floor behind her, metal on metal scratching together with an annoying burst of noise. The gurney in the middle of the examination dock was suddenly empty.
Moira sighed, adjusting her collar. That would leave scuffs for sure. It was unfortunate that spills were so common, or she’d install a rug.
Her hand wrapped around the back of the prone woman’s head. Purple fog latched against the mass of long, dark hair. Gerard’s wife coughed and choked, thrashing like an animal. Throwing blood across the tiles. Moira leaned close to where the tray landed.
Yes, scratches. She groaned with irritation. Maybe she should put in a rug anyway.
The morning was rainy. The clouds dispersed by afternoon.
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Amelie has been sitting very still since she woke up.
Angela tugged at her collar and scribbled down a series of patterned vitals into her notebook, a memorized sequence of numbers that represented her friend in the most sterile way possible. They were normal vitals. Nominal, even. Amelie had been diagnosed with a heart murmur in her teens, a condition the two of them had talked about at length. Now, there was no trace of it in the days she had been recording her EKG readings. One could argue that she was in better physical health than before she was captured.
Her hand paused in its scribbling. She watched the grain of the paper.
The pen slid to the side, leaving a red slash in the middle of her page.
She studied the ink.
They had been expecting to get her back in pieces.
Angela shook her head, pinching her eyes shut. Her heart sunk and shuddered, angry wings beating at her ribcage. She kept writing the vitals.
They had expected her to come in boxes.
She had watched as Gerard’s energetic desperation melted into fearful dread.
His insistence of her survival was genuine in the first few weeks. Talon would not take her for nothing. She was a hostage, they wanted something, they wanted him. They would call, offer a trade off, something. Then, they could figure out what to do to get her back. They must have had demands. It didn’t make sense if they didn’t have demands.
They waited to be contacted by Talon. They waited for the negotiations to begin.
But the call never came.
Weeks. Months.
The certainty that Amelie’s disappearance had been a kidnapping withered into a husk of an explanation, and from it something far more sinister emerged.
Not a kidnapping.
A murder.
The first whisper of the possibility passed between the counsel when Gerard wasn’t present. Angela was horrified by it. Of course it had crossed her mind, but only in a guilty and fleeting way. Of course Amelie was out there, of course they could still find her.
She didn’t sleep that night.
Now, Amelie sat very still.
She stared forward, unblinking, and waited to be addressed. When she was alone, she would be like a mannequin someone left posed in her bed for hours.
Angela always had a hard time getting Amelie to sit still. She’d tap her fingers, rock her leg, get up and pace and laugh and apologize for being so terrible at just, being still. Dancer’s blood, she’d say. She just couldn’t do it.
The doctor could feel the tempting webs of paranoia growing on her mind. A fixed heart murmur. The stillness. Little things, pointless things, explainable things, that she wanted to add up into one big something.
No one wanted to ask why.
Talon took her, then gave her back. No communication. It reminded her of a suitcase handoff. No money, but no one checked, and now there was a bomb in the building.
Amelie smiled, eyes glazed and empty. She tugged on Angela’s lab coat and leaned her forehead against her chest.
“I’m cold,” she said, voice ragged from lack of use.
“I’m sorry,” Angela replied, holding her carefully. “I’ll get you a heavier blanket.”
“It’s freezing,” she continued. “Inside. In my bones. It hurts.”
Angela was taken aback.
“I’m sorry, Amelie.”